Palantir Technologies Inc (NYSE:PLTR) stock tumbled after third-quarter earnings from Peter Thiel's company disappointed Wall Street and the company said countries in Europe were less willing to use its controversial data processing software.
Revenue from Denver, Colorado-based group was better than analysts expected however, up 22% to US$478mln, which was slower than the growth seen in the second quarter and from a year ago. Palantir guided to US$503-505mln revenue for the fourth quarter, in line with estimates.
As the company continued to focus on recruitment to grow its top line, adjusted earnings per share shrank to US$0.01 for the third quarter from US$0.04 a year ago, and which also compared badly with the $0.02 expected by the Street.
US commercial revenue grew 53% as commercial customer numbers in its home country increased 124% year-over-year to 132.
Chief executive Alex Karp said in a letter to shareholders that the company anticipates growing large regional markets within the US but countries in Europe, especially Germany, have been less willing to introduce “software systems that challenge existing habits and modes of operation”.
Karp said: “We have found that large institutions in the United States have been far more willing to investigate the most significant sources of systemic dysfunction within their organizations, which in the current moment often relate to the ability or rather inability of an institution to metabolize its own data,” he said.
“We are building the digital infrastructure that makes continued industrial progress in late capitalism possible,” Karp said in the letter. “The metaverse and other idiosyncratic pursuits of the technocratic elite may be luxury goods. But foundational data platforms are not.”
Palantir, which was founded in 2003 by Karp and German-born, Trump-supporting billionaire Thiel, has had more success in the UK than the continent, with a number of government contracts won despite public opposition, with revelations in the past quarter that the company's secret plan to “buy our way in” to the NHS by “hoovering up” small businesses serving the NHS to “take down a lot of political resistance”.
Last year UK public opposition led to a U-turn on an NHS contract and in June this year there was vocal concern when government ministers suggested that NHS England would use Palantir to set up an overarching data platform.
Foxglove, a UK legal campaign group that focuses on accountability in the technology industry, said Palantir "has no place" being used in the heart of the NHS as the company "makes no secret of its desire to keep profiting from war and surveillance".
Palantir shares fell over 11% to $7.02 on Monday, not far from lows seen early in the summer.