Pedro Goncalves writes:
Shares in Palantir rose more than 10% in pre market trading after the data analytics group beat Wall Street estimates for the fourth quarter, as demand surged for its artificial intelligence software from businesses and the US government.
Revenue increased 70% from $827.5m a year earlier. For the full fiscal year, sales at the Denver-based company totalled $4.48bn.
US revenue from government customers climbed to $570m, while commercial revenue rose to $507m, both exceeding estimates compiled by FactSet.
Net income amounted to more than $608m, or 24 cents per share, compared with $79m, or 3 cents per share, a year earlier.
Palantir, which sells software and data tools to businesses and government agencies including the Department of Defense, the Internal Revenue Service and the Department of Homeland Security, has benefited from growing demand for AI systems and enthusiasm from retail investors.
Alex Karp, Palantir’s chief executive, defended the company’s surveillance technology amid criticism of its work with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
“It should indeed be uncontroversial that the single most effective means of guarding against incursions into our private lives is to invest in the development of a technical platform that makes possible constraints on government action and investigation through granular permissioning capabilities,” Karp wrote in a letter to shareholders.
Last year, ICE awarded Palantir a nearly $30m contract to build ImmigrationOS, a system designed to make it easier to draw together information about immigrants from across government databases.
