Summary
- Palantir's stock has rallied by as much as 14% in pre-market trading after announcing a $823 million contract win with the U.S. Army on Tuesday.
- The announcement further bolsters Palantir’s continued efforts in recent years to increase its market share of annual U.S. Defense spending, which currently sits at more than $700 billion.
- A look back on Palantir's military contract wins in recent years show how its cutting-edge technological competencies have disrupted one of the most closed-off markets in the world.
- Paired with the Pentagon's increasing demand for innovation to support government intelligence needs, and a Defense budget that favours investments in forward-looking technologies like AI, Palantir is well-positioned for significant upside realization going into the next decade.
Palantir's stock(NYSE:PLTR)rallied by as much as 14% in pre-market trading on Tuesday after announcing a $823 million contract win with the U.S. Army. Palantir has been selected by the U.S. Army’s Program Manager for Intelligence Systems and Analytics to facilitate deployment of the “Capability Drop 2 Program” (“CD-2 program”). The Army Intelligence community will be leveraging Palantir’s Gotham platform to consolidate data from disparate databases, and create a “data fabric and analytics foundation” for the CD-2 program, which will be used to enable data modernization and analytic capabilities required for preparing against future threats to national security.
The announcement further bolsters Palantir’s continued efforts in recent years to increasing its market share of annual U.S. defense spending, which currently sits at more than $700 billion. The Silicon Valley start-up turned tech unicorn has time and again put giant military supply companies on notice with notable contract wins in recent years. The giant military suppliers have long-dominated the industry with their “deep connections, [and] decades of experience with government buying processes”. While Palantir’s current revenues generated from government contracts remain a nominal portion of total U.S. annual defense spending, the recent deal represents an inflection point for the military intelligence supply industry, and paves the foundation for greater market penetration in the foreseeable future.
Palantir’s recent milestone only bolsters our bullish outlook on the stock. We remain confident on a 12-month price target of $28.18, with a longer-term upside realization trajectory that points towards $46.30 as discussed in detail in our previous coverage on the stock.
Palantir’s History of Key Government Contract Wins
Palantir’s government business segment continues to dominate its consolidated revenue growth. During the second quarter, Palantir generated government revenues of $232 million, representing year-over-year growth of more than 66%. Much of this revenue growth was achieved through new government contracts, like the $90 million five-year deal inked with the National Nuclear Security Administration earlier this year, in addition to many other existing long-term arrangements like the following:
- 2019 Pentagon Deal – Palantir was awarded a four-year contract valued at $440 million to provide a system that can link “human resources, supply chains and other Army operations systems into a single dashboard”.
- 2020 Army Network Modernization Contract – Palantir was selected by the Army Futures Command to deploy its Gotham platform, designed for government and military use, in modernizing the U.S. Army’s battlefield network. Under the arrangement, Gotham will be used with the Army’s “Command Post Computing Environment” (“CPCE”) system to consolidate data from various battlefield networks into one, creating a “Common Data Fabric”.
- 2020 U.S. Navy NOBLE Contract – Palantir beat a major U.S. defense contractor, Raytheon(NYSE:RTX), in securing its first contract with the U.S. Navy last year. Similar to the Army Network Modernization Contract, the $80 million sole-source contract calls for the deployment of Gotham to consolidate data on the U.S. Navy’s warships and aircrafts scattered around the world into one operating system called the “Naval Operational Business Logistics Enterprise” (“NOBLE”). The success of this collaboration will also be fundamental to the Navy’s ultimate integration of AI into its modernized network.
- 2020 Contract for upgrading the “Distributed Common Ground System” (“DCGS”) – Palantir, along with British defense and security contractor BAE Systems, was awarded an $823 million “firm-fixed-price” contract to facilitate the build out of the DCGS system. Under the arrangement, both companies will “compete for orders to build out the strategic data platform for the system”, which will be used for deploying information and intelligence to command posts around the world. Palantir’s most recent contract win on Tuesday was actually an update to the existing arrangement, where it has been selected as the sole data analytics platform provider for the CD-2 program. The CD-2 program will also be used to support the “Joint All Domain Operations” (“JADC2”). JADC2 is an ongoing campaign implemented by the Pentagon to connect sensors from every U.S. military agency into one consolidated network, which will enable a quick and streamlined sensor-to-shooter connection using data and AI processing in which Palantir is also a participating partner in.
What do these Milestones Imply?
Data is the strongest link in aligning U.S. foreign policy with the country’s national security goals. This underscores why making sense of data, and using it to drive decision-making processes remains a top priority for the Defense Department. And this has increased their urgency in recent years to reconnect the fragmented nature of databases set up across their sub-departments, a common theme in Palantir’s government contract wins discussed above.
The government agency’s increasing collaboration with Palantir in recent years is a testament to Gotham’s proven effectiveness in addressing the U.S. Army’s headache with their disparate data sources. And this should put defense contractors, which have long dominated the industry, on notice.
Palantir’s win over Raytheon for the NOBLE contract in 2020, and recent win over BAE Systems for the CD-2 contract marks a clear inflection point for the defense industry. When Palantir beat Raytheon in 2020, the U.S. Navy commended Palantir for being the only bidder that was able to “eliminate the redundant, resource-intensive, and stove-piped systems” that the agency’s legacy network had relied on. And Tuesday’s contract win further proves Gotham’s competency and effectiveness in supporting the army’s network modernization efforts, while also enabling time and cost-efficiencies. Palantir’s recent contract wins over the tight-knitted group of defense contractors that have historically dominated the industry is a clear sign that the latter’s technological competency in data management and analytics is just not where it needs to be yet in order to satisfy the U.S. Army’s network modernization needs. Time and again, Palantir has proven to the Defense Department that while taking advantage of data is a complex process, it has the technological capacity and resources to link and make sense of the vast troves of information without compromising on time- and cost-efficiencies. Palantir’s recent contract wins also foreshadow the Defense Department’s pivot towards increasing collaborations with software and innovation-driven technology partners to modernize and enhance their current “command and control” architecture. And this puts Palantir closer to their goal of becoming the “central operating system for all U.S. defense programs” than ever before.
What Does President Biden’s Fiscal 2022 Defense Budget Mean for Palantir?
President Biden’s proposed budget for the U.S. Department of Defense in the coming fiscal year also implies the government’s increasing preference for innovation, which makes strong tailwinds for Palantir. The $706 billion budgeted for fiscal 2022 remains relatively flat from the fiscal 2021 budget, and even reflects a slight decrease if adjusted for inflation. Coupled with a goal to invest more heavily in new technologies products like AI and hypersonic weapons, it is clear the government is looking to achieve more while spending less. And only the accelerated adoption of innovative software and systems like those provided by Palantir can enable that kind of time- and cost-efficiencies.
The Pentagon’s growing acceptance of innovators is further corroborated by their generosity in supporting more than 1,600 software-as-a-service start-ups last year with $1.5 billion in direct funding. A number of defense contracts valued at up to $3 million each have also been set aside for early-stage companies within the sector, indicating the agency’s active efforts in breaking the high barriers of entry that the giant defense contractors have historically built. This signals that a greater market of opportunities from the U.S. Department of Defense is coming Palantir’s way, underpinning additional growth in the foreseeable future.
Conclusion
With Palantir’s current government revenues representing only 1/10thof a percent of total U.S. annual defense spending, there is still significant headroom for market penetration. And Palantir’s track record in assisting the network modernization efforts across various U.S. military agencies, paired with the Defense Department’s increasing demand for innovation to support their intelligence needs further bolsters the company’s long-term growth outlook. Palantir’s government contract capabilities, which currently leads the company’s revenue growth, is also expected to encourage broader adoption of its software offerings and drive adjacent revenues to its commercial business. We believe Palantir, both the company and the stock, is only starting to scratch the surface of its growth potential, and is slated for significant upside realization going into the next decade.