Palantir propels growth with AI as government, commercial revenue surges

Palantir Technologies (NYSE:PLTR) second quarter 2024 financial results topped estimates as the company’s revenue catapulted 27% year over year, due to its artificial intelligence platform.

Although the stock closed Monday down 2.6%, it surged as high as 15% during early post-market trading after reporting its latest earnings.

“Our growth across the commercial and government markets has been driven by an unrelenting wave of demand from customers for artificial intelligence systems that go beyond the merely performative and academic,” said Palantir CEO Alex Karp, in a letter to shareholders.

For the quarter ended June 30, the Denver-based big data analytics and AI company reported earnings per share of $0.09 versus the consensus estimate of $0.08. Revenue totaled $678.13M versus the estimate of $652.42M.

Karp credited Palantir’s flagship AI platform, AIP, as critical in transforming its business.

“And the persistent and unbridled demand for our software, for an effective enterprise platform that makes artificial intelligence capabilities useful to large institutions, shows no sign of relenting,” Karp added.

U.S. commercial revenue increased 55% year over year, while U.S. government revenue increased 24%, during the second quarter.

Looking ahead, Palantir expects third quarter revenue to range from $697M to $701M, which is well above the consensus of $681.4M.

“The language models that have captured our collective attention have an ability to approximate truth,” Karp said. “They are wild animals, whose power and capabilities must be tamed and harnessed. And we are now seeing what is possible once they are.”

Palantir also increased its full-year guidance to range from $2.74B to $2.75B, which is more than the consensus estimate of $2.7B.

“Palantir’s sharp acceleration in Q2 revenue, both in the government and commercial segments, is proof of the broad untapped market that Palantir has in AI,” said Seeking Alpha analyst Gary Alexander. “Amid recent doubts that the tech rally will hold up, Palantir is showing us that the investment cycle in AI will be multi-year and provide plenty of tailwinds for this stock.”

Palantir will hold an earnings call at 5 p.m. EDT today.