Palantir Vs. Snowflake: Which Is The Better Buy For Long-Term Investors?

seekingalpha2021-05-31

Summary Big data analytics and decisioning is one of the cornerstones of the digital transformation revolution sweeping through much of the IT firmament. The two leading companies in providing the ...

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精彩评论

Superpiggy
2021-05-31
Superpiggy
Think Palantir is a better bet
- Snowball17:
  Agree
神也是人
2021-05-31
神也是人
Liked
Alvinwu
2021-05-31
Alvinwu
Like and comment please
Hodl
2021-05-31
Hodl
Like and comment please
- Gab_Boey:
  Comment
- Alvinwu:
  L
ditti
2021-05-31
ditti
Seems longer term okays to me.
nicoco
2021-05-31
nicoco
like

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Snowflake: Which Is The Better Buy For Long-Term Investors?\n</h2>\n\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\n\n2021-05-31 14:54 GMT+8&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href=https://seekingalpha.com/article/4432000-palantir-stock-vs-snowflake-better-buy><strong>seekingalpha</strong></a>\n\n\n</h4>\n\n</header>\n<article>\n<div>\n<p>Summary\n\nBig data analytics and decisioning is one of the cornerstones of the digital transformation revolution sweeping through much of the IT firmament.\nThe two leading companies in providing the ...</p>\n\n<a href=\"https://seekingalpha.com/article/4432000-palantir-stock-vs-snowflake-better-buy\">网页链接</a>\n\n</div>\n\n\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","isBrief":false,"type":0,"news_type":1,"symbol":"PLTR","symbol_name":"Palantir Technologies Inc.","start_time":0,"source_url":"https://seekingalpha.com/article/4432000-palantir-stock-vs-snowflake-better-buy","article_id":"1187518687","we_media_id":null,"thumbnails":[],"rights":null,"url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=1187518687","pubTimestamp":1622444095,"columns":[],"sourceInfo":null,"weMediaInfo":null,"summary":"Summary\n\nBig data analytics and decisioning is one of the cornerstones of the digital transformation","collect":0,"end_time":0,"defaultTopTitle":"seekingalpha.com","property":[],"viewcount":null,"language":"en","relate_stocks":{"PLTR":"Palantir Technologies Inc.","SNOW":"Snowflake"},"translate_title":"帕兰蒂尔对。雪花：长线投资者买哪个更好？","themeId":null,"isJumpTheme":false,"ttsUrl":null,"symbols_score_info":{"PLTR":0.9,"SNOW":0.9},"content_text":"Summary\n\nBig data analytics and decisioning is one of the cornerstones of the digital transformation revolution sweeping through much of the IT firmament.\nThe two leading companies in providing the building blocks for large data warehouses and for decisioning applications based on big data analytics are Palantir and Snowflake.\nBoth of these companies have already compiled enviable growth records; indeed, the growth Snowflake is enjoying is as rapid as any ramp I have ever seen.\nThe issue for investors is really not the likely success of these companies, or the fact that they are down a great deal from recent post IPO valuations. The issue is their current valuation and future growth.\nMy conclusion, based solely on valuation, is that Palantir will provide a somewhat greater return than Snowflake over the coming years. But in neither case is it likely that long term returns can rise beyond the teens.\n\nPhoto by DKosig/E+ via Getty Images\nA sharp sector rotation affords long-term investors with opportunities not often encountered!\nIt will probably come as no surprise to most readers that the last 3 months have been marked by a very strong sector rotation away from high-growth, high value names to cyclical/reopening names. Even some of the strongest companies have seen their valuations eviscerated over that period. The culprit for the rotation is investor concern with both prior valuations and investor concern about spikes in inflation leading to interest rate increases. The valuation compression is even sharper than it may appear on the surface. Not only are share prices down, but revenue estimates and operational performance are showing very strong positive trends. In most cases, EV/S ratios have fallen by 25% or more and in a few cases the fall has been 50% and even greater. Much like a lake which is plagued by drought, this valuation compression has made visible several islands of opportunity.\nThis is not an article about sector rotation per se, or about the valuation of tech names per se. Have the last several days of trading been a harbinger that sector rotation is ending, or was it simply a long awaited response to several days of extreme valuation compression in the tech space? At some point, the combination of falling share prices and rising growth rates for revenues and free cash flow will obviously lead to a reversal-but lacking 2ndsight, I have to leave that vexed question to others.\nOne of my favorite components of Lincoln’s 2ndinaugural address is the ringing phrase, “fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray.” Now the President was talking about the passing of the scourge of war, and I am writing about the end of a sector rotation. But it has been a difficult period that has scourged the portfolios of many investors and I do hope it will pass away soon.\nOne of the several artifacts of what some might call “The Great Sector Rotation” has been the emergence of several growth names that had been un-investible due to valuation for months or since they became public. This article is focused on two such names, Palantir(NYSE:PLTR)and Snowflake(NYSE:SNOW). These are names that are prominent in the IT space. are amongst the leaders in the Big Data/Analytics space and which have generated remarkable interest amongst many investors and readers of SA. Both of them are quite exceptional companies-but I don’t think either is a particularly remarkable investment. That said, at current valuations (I am using share prices as of 5/24 to calculate my valuation relationships), both of these names can potentially provide investors modest-but double digit long term returns. That is usually less than many tech investors find acceptable-but the visibility and relative stability of both of these companies is an unquantifiable intangible that some may find particularly attractive. Again, entirely based on valuation, and no other factor, Palantir is a more attractive investment-although the calculated return difference compared to Snowflake isn’t huge. Obviously, it is the CAGR differential between businesses that make it so difficult for an observer to make an unqualified choice.\nI want to make clear than when asked for a choice between these two names, my first response would be neither. There are simply better choices in the IT world as potential investments. Investors have a wide choice of names in the space in the wake of the valuation compression and there are different attributes associated with these names.\nFor those investors looking for my choices in the high growth/high valuation segment, I would recommend CrowdStrike (CRWD), Datadog (DDOG). Zscaler (ZI) and ZoomInfo (ZI). Could Snowflake make this list-possibly because it certainly has the highest CAGR of any of the names that I follow. But even using what is essentially a 4 year CAGR of 70% to reach a terminal sales level of more than $6 billion, and a terminal growth rate in the mid-thirty percent range still does not produce super returns for Snowflake because it is hard to do so when the starting point is a valuation of 53X EV/S (as of the close on Monday, May 24th). And forecasting that a company with a $6 billion run rate to continue growth in the mid-30% range is certainly a bit of a reach-although the market that SNOW addresses is enormous and growing.\nFor investors looking for a combination of growth coupled with less than average valuation in terms of their EV/S ratio, choices include names such as Upstart (UPST). Affirm (AFRM), Asana (ASAN), Elastic (ESTC), Wix (WIX) and Jamf (JAMF). Some investors are looking for names with very high free cash flow margins. Here choices include Atlassian (TEAM), Dynatrace (DT), Veeva (VEEV), Microsoft (MSFT) and Adobe (ADBE). Many investors would choose to use some kind of combination of free cash flow margin + growth rate in compiling a buy list. Here, the regnant champion is ZoomInfo (ZI) but perhaps Palantir makes the list-depending on whether the free cash flow metric achieved last quarter was an outlier or represented the start of a trend. Trade Desk (TTD), in the wake of its recent share price compression of 40% since mid-February would also be on this list.\nSome investors look for bargains amongst fairly IPO’s. There are some bargains now to be seen in that sector such as Affirm and also nCino (NCNO) and perhaps Jamf. These are companies whose price action after the IPO took their valuations to unsustainable levels and which have now compressed to what appear to be bargains. I try to approach the recent IPOs with the same methodology as the rest of the names I follow. Inevitably, given the small number of shares in most IPOs, stock prices can subsequently reach dizzying levels as institutions, in particular, look to establish full positions that they were unable to create with an IPO allocation. But once that demand ceases, these names fall, and can do so to very compressed valuations.\nFinally, there are some investors who look for proverbial bargains by screening for percentage declines over some fixed period. That is not a methodology I favor. Many companies can be mis-priced in terms of valuation and so the fact that a name is down a particular percentage is of less importance to me, than how the companies score on EV/S valuation and free cash flow margins. I have seen many articles that focus on either Snowflake or Palantir because of their steep declines during and even before the sector rotation. While it is not uncommon for commentators to use a percentage decline as a screening point, my approach doesn’t value that technique. Specifically, there was no conceivable logical methodology that could have supported the peak valuations of either Snowflake or Palantir, so the fact that they have fallen substantially is not proof-at least to this writer-that they are now reasonably valued.\nI try not to be obsessively tied to formulas in creating a buy list for my own portfolio or for my recommendations. I am, admittedly, biased toward growth, but when I see a combination of growth and free cash flow margin, I can fall in love-at least figuratively. (Sort of like Daumier’s famous lithograph, “Fusion des Compagnies. Effusion des actionnaires. (Les Beaux Jours de la Vie), from Le Charivari, Honoré Daumier ^ Minneapolis Institute of Art. I use some combination of all approaches in compiling my own list of names that I think are buy rated. I don’t include any megacap names, more because I think their investment merits are well recognized and there isn’t too much in the way of value add that I might provide.\nTo repeat: both Palantir and Snowflake are and will remain remarkable businesses that are revolutionizing the way software is used in both government and commercial applications. Bringing storage to the cloud the way it is done by Snowflake is hastening digital transformation and making it easier to migrate workloads to the cloud-a significant priority for many-probably most enterprise users of IT. The combination of data integration, AI and search which enable users to find patterns and develop useful insights is achieving some of the more “Buck Rogerish” dreams of software engineers and ultimately all classes of users.\nBut having said that, it is still necessary to look at growth and cash flow to arrive at a valuation and while the valuation compression has led to opportunities, the opportunities are not of the once in a generation scale. Investors who want to own the best companies frequently are going to be asked to sacrifice some percentage upside to buy the best of the breed, and that is what I see here, regardless of my admiration of the offerings of both companies.\nOne thing to note: I would be greatly surprised if either Palantir or Snowflake will precisely look the way they do at this writing. They are going to wind up making acquisitions-I doubt that valuations and chemistry would allow either company to be acquired. Speculating about acquisitions is a fun parlor trick, but not something that can really be forecast with any degree of specificity. But one reason as to why I have suggested that these companies will continue to grow at elevated rates relates to my belief that there will be some element of inorganic revenue in the results of both companies 4 years from now.\nThe background of Snowflake and Palantir\nBoth of these businesses have been and remain high growth companies with strong technology moats and a host of the most prominent IT users in the world. Palantir reported recent results that swung strongly to free cash generation; SNOW is perhaps the fastest growing name I have seen at scale. And the shares of both companies have seen rather substantial compression. Since the rotation began in early/mid-February, shares of Snowflake have fallen as much as 39% before bouncing 11.5% on Friday, May 14th partially due to a new recommendation from the analyst at Goldman Sachs.Shares of Palantir had fallen as much as 53% before its bounce 9.3% on Friday May 14th.\nBoth of these companies seem destined to be major factors in the software over the course of the coming years. Over time, as they mature, I expect that both of these company’s will evolve highly profitable business models. Based strictly on the way I value companies, I find the shares of Palantir to be more attractive to investors than the shares of Snowflake-even though self-evidently, Snowflake is growing faster than Palantir. I believe that long-term investors will achieve a somewhat greater return investing in Palantir than in Snowflake-but the difference isn’t huge and speculating about an end-result 4 years from now is inevitably a fraught undertaking.\nI have been frequently asked by subscribers to my Ticker Target service. by investment advisory clients and by readers of SA articles to provide some opinion on both of these companies with a plurality inquiring about Palantir. For months, until now, I haven’t chosen to make much of a response given the valuations have been of a magnitude that made any kind of positive recommendation more faith based than logical.\nTrying to find a formula for relative valuations\nLet’s face it-trying to decide between the investment merits of two companies with a great base of IP, addressing hot spaces within the enterprise software space is a bit like handicapping the results of sporting events before the start of a season. There is loads of pure guesswork and less substance than most would like. Many analysts demur doing something like this-or if they are like me, they suggest to clients that there is no reason just to own a single name of this kind in a portfolio. I am going to attempt to present some qualitative as well as quantitative analysis-but in the nature of things it will be subjective.\nOne consideration is always management. Does either Palantir or Snowflake have better management?Frank Slootman of Snowflak eprobably has better bona fides than the Alex Karp, the CEO of Palantir- he has, after all , sold one company he founded, Data Domain to EMC for an incredible valuation and he guided Service Now to huge success, and in the process more or less ran over BMC Software which was one of the stalwarts of the enterprise software space for many years.\nThe CEO of Palantir is Alex Karp and he co founded the company 17 years ago. He has a host of beliefs that many might consider outside of the mainstream, especially for a company that makes a living selling to the US government and particularly the US military. He has been described as eccentric and I imagine that any self-professed socialist who has built a net worth of almost $2 billion is likely to have an unusual set of values. The fact that he keeps Tai Chi swords in his office-which at times can be in a barn in New Hampshire-while not entirely abnormal amongst tech entrepreneurs, is more than a bit different than the background of Mr. Slootman.\nBut company’s such as Palantir are run by teams and there are some extraordinary players on Palantir’s team.Peter Thiel,well known as a co-founder of PayPal (PYPL) and one of the first outside investors in Facebook, also co-founded Palantir and remains on the board. So too,is famed tech investor, Joe Lonsdale who recently said that:\n\n “As a director of a public co there are regulations about what you can say – you’re discouraged from speaking up & nobody does in our risk-averse society. But #’s came out yesterday and were misunderstood… we are going to crush the shorts / I am extremely bullish.\"\n\nI am not quite sure why Mr. Lonsdale felt that the quarterly results were misinterpreted. Palantir was caught up in a tech rout on the day after its earnings were released. It was just reflecting the sector rotation that has marked much trading in these names .\nFinally,there is Stephen Cohen,another co-founder of Palantir and currently an Executive VP of the company. Famously, at the ripe age of 23, he has been credited with writing the initial prototype of the Palantir platform in all of 8 weeks.\nAs must people who know me would agree, I am a somewhat desiccated older curmudgeon, whose acceptance of eccentricities is perhaps less than it should be. But overall, I believe that in evaluating these two companies, there is not all that much to choose. It is a bit easier to conclude that Snowflake has a management structure that will lead to better investor returns simply because of the track record of the CEO. But Peter Thiel and Joe Lonsdale have made themselves billions and those along for their various rides have done quite well. I can wish that there was less mystery surrounding some parts of the Palantir business, but at the end of the day, I don’t think an investment decision between these two names can be made based on differences in management capabilities.\nLike most other analysts, I try to look at relative valuations in making a recommendation. The fact is that Snowflake still has the highest 12 month forward EV/S ratio of any name I follow, and that valuation is based on a revenue estimate of $1.2 billion. That is a forecast for growth of just over 100% for the next 12 months-and about 10% above the current published consensus for the same period. Despite the forecast for triple digit growth, I wouldn’t find it terribly surprising for Snowflake to continue to exceed estimates-the momentum in its space is just that strong.\nEssentially the problem I have with recommending Snowflake shares is just how much the company will have to grow in order to justify the current valuation-even after the huge haircut of recent months. I have used a 3 year forward CAGR estimate of 70%-I think that is reasonable, if growth this year is over 100% as seems likely.\nSnowflake in its latest reported quarter started to generate free cash flow. To do so, however, it needed to have an enormous growth in its deferred revenue balance-a result that is partially seasonal as its clients renew their agreements. I expect SNOW to generate a modest level of free cash flow in its current year, but that is not going to be a sufficient reason to recommend the shares. In order to generate 70% revenue growth over several years, I anticipate that the company’s ability to generate a substantial free cash flow margin will be challenging. The company will simply have to continue to make outsize investments in sales and marketing and research and development. I imagine that some of that will continue to be part of the company culture even looking out several years; I would not anticipate anything more than average cash flow margins by that time-and those margins could easily be less than average.\nIn any event, using a multi-year CAGR of 70%-and then starting the compounding from the base of $1.2 billion of revenues that I anticipate for the current year produces a terminal revenue estimate of about $5.9 billion. I assume that this company will still be enjoying hyper growth at the end of the period-just not at the current elevated levels. I think using a terminal growth rate of 35% is reasonable and even after valuation compression, the average EV/S for that growth rate is 16X. So, that might suggest that the enterprise value for Snowflake 4 years from now ought to be about $94 billion-the enterprise value as of the close on Friday was $56 billion, or thereabouts. That works out to a 14% annualized return. That is certainly far better than such a calculation might recently have been, and far greater than any assumed inflation rate I have seen…but I wonder if it is enough for most investors who are usually looking for something more to be properly compensated for risk in investing in a name such as this.\nA comparable calculation for Palantir starts with estimated revenues of $1.8 billion for the next 12 months. This estimate was revised based on the results that the company reported on 5/11/21. That is considerably greater than the currently published consensus-for 2021 of $1.47 billion-but my estimate goes out an additional quarter and is not burdened by the adherence to the company’s rather mechanical guidance of “greater than 30% for the foreseeable future” which has been the mantra of the company CEO, and which is used by many analysts as a substitute for preparing their own set of expectations.\nLast year, the company reported a 47% growth in revenues and had forecast a 45% growth in revenues for Q1. Q1 revenue growth came to 49%; the company is forecasting 43% revenue growth year on year in the current quarter but given the rather muted sequential growth implied in that forecast (5.6%), I believe it will be exceeded by some noticeable amount. The company reported a free cash flow margin of 34%, a very dramatic change from the negative free cash flow margin reported in 2020.\nWhile the company saw a decline in its deferred revenue balance in Q1, the more inclusive metric of remaining performance obligation rose by 4.7% sequentially, which is a strong performance given the typical seasonal decline usually seen in that metric in Q1.Overall, calculated billings were up 248% year on year and the year on year increase in the RPO balance came to 129%. These are, in my opinion, strong indicators for future growth.\nSince the time that Palantir became a public company, it has been criticized for the slow growth of its commercial business compared to its government business. But in the last quarter, the company’s US commercial business finally showed some decent growth of 72%. I will cover this subject more fully later on in this article.\nIn any event, I have chosen to use a 3 year forward CAGR of 42% in evaluating Palantir, based more on its historical growth than some special knowledge about how fast it might grow. Because of the multiplicity of products and solutions that are enabled by Palantir’s platforms, it can be a bit more difficult to estimate a longer term growth rate than would be the case when dealing with a company whose revenues are coming from a more targeted focus. In any event, using a 42% CAGR, and my current estimate for 12 month forward revenues yields a run -rate estimate 4years out of greater than $5.2 billion. My guess, and I make no representation that it is more than that, is that the company will be still growing in the low 30% range at that point, with a free cash flow margin of greater than 20%.Just to be clear, the cash flow results seen last quarter, while perhaps not enough to suggest a trend, are certainly suggestive of a business model that is potentially very profitable. Taking the estimated cash flow generation into account, the CAGR that I am estimating for Palantir is currently worth an EV/S of about 16X-17X looking at the average EV/S metric for a low 40% growth estimate. In turn, this leads to an enterprise value forecast of about $86 billion compared to last Friday’s enterprise value of $$44.5 billion. This suggests a 4 year return of about 18% compounded, somewhat better than the rate of return I calculate for Snowflake. Snowflake’s elevated valuation simply makes it very difficult to realistically project exceptional long-term returns-even though in many ways Snowflake is an exceptional company operating in an exceptional market.\nWhere the analysis could be off and what are the risks?\nThis article is basically about which of the two names I would rather hold or invest in for the long-term. It isn’t a terribly obvious choice-although the numbers, as I see them, suggest that Palantir will relatively outperform Snowflake-mainly because even after a substantial valuation compression, Snowflake shares are still the most expensive name in the IT space in terms of EV/S by a fairly substantial margin. Just to make that point abundantly clear, Snowflake shares, as of the close on Friday, May 21thhad an EV/S ratio based on forward revenues of 53.5X; the next two highest ratios in my coverage universe were those of Bill.com (BILL) at 36.5X and Cloudflare (NET) at 35.9X. Meanwhile, Palantir shares currently sell for an EV/S of 25.5X.\nThere are certainly flaws in the investment merits of both companies. I have presented a quantitative model that attempts to deal with the difference in growth rates for the two companies at the present time. But I would be the last analyst on the planet to suggest that I have some crystal ball. I really have no specific way of addressing the potential growth of Snowflake over the next 4 years. I feel reasonably comfortable in suggesting that my use of $1.2 billion for SNOW revenue over the coming 4 quarters is supported both by qualitative comments made by company management and by using sequential quarterly growth estimates that are consistent with recent history. Further, the company’s RPO balance grew to $1.3 billion, up 213% for the year and its DBE ratio was 168%. The RPO balance actually rose by 44% sequentially the latest reported quarter, after rising by 35% sequentially the prior quarter, and the sequential growth in revenues was 19% for the quarter compared to 20% the prior quarter. Given all of those statistics, I felt that forecasting $1.2 billion for the next 4 quarters, compared to the company’s forecast of about $1075 million for the current (2021) year made sense.\nBut when it comes to supporting a CAGR of 70% for the 3 years after this one, I would acknowledge that it is somewhat of a guess-and a CAGR of that rate would be breaking new ground in terms of growth at scale. I will be reviewing some of the reasons for the company’s exceptional growth opportunities below-but those specifics are simply not going to allow me, or anyone else, to determine if the most reasonable CAGR is 50% or 70% or some other number. I have yet to see a 3 year CAGR of 70% for a company of this scale. But given that I anticipate that the first year in the forecast period will be nearly 100%, then 70% growth is quite likely and allows for slowing growth as the company’s scale approaches and exceeds a $6 billion revenue run rate.\nNot terribly surprisingly,many analysts rate SNOW shares as a hold although some percentage do rate it as a buy. The issue is almost entirely one of valuation-with a current EV/S of 54X based on the share price of May 28th, at least a plurality of analysts are forecasting some level of multiple compression; it makes price target setting a fraught undertaking.\nThere is, perhaps a bit more murkiness, when it comes to evaluating Palantir’s multi-year CAGR and that is a function of the long standing comment of by the CEO, “Per long-term guidance policy, as provided by our Chief Executive Officer, Alex Karp, we continue to expect:\n\nAnnual revenue growth of 30% or greater for 2021 through 2025.”\n\nThis comment appears regularly as part of the guidance section in the quarterly earnings release-just my opinion-but I think the company ought to drop the statement or revise it to take some account of what appears to be happening in the market.\nIn turn, this has led to consensus forecast that have 2022 revenues rising by just 30%. It should be reasonably obvious that no one owning the shares can believe such a forecast and analysts who recommend the shares can’t really do so with a straight face using a 30% revenue growth estimate.\nThat said, Palantir shares certainly don’t have a particularly strong consensus rating compared to many other enterprise software names. First Call suggests that on average the rating is between a hold and an underperform. At the moment, however, only 7 ratings and 8 estimates are being reported to First Call. Most estimates were raised in the wake of the latest earnings report.\nAs subscribers are aware, when I try to triangulate some kind of buy/sell hold rating for shares by using some combination of expected future growth rates coupled with free cash flow margins. But in order to even guess responsibly at what a growth rate for a company in the space might be, I try to use some expectation of how the solutions offered are going to create positive ROI for users.\nI will cover below my expectations in that regard but I really see no reason to believe that any long term growth estimate of less than 40% for Palantir is well founded. The company has a rather wide variety of solutions and users seem to be achieving more than acceptable ROI’s when implementing what they have bought. The key to maintaining growth at greater than 40% is self-evidently the market opportunities that are outside of the company’s efforts in its Federal vertical.\nAs mentioned, there were some signs of progress last quarter with growth in the US Commercial space reaching 72%. I imagine, however, that many observers and stakeholders might be concerned that the growth in US government revenues which reached 83% last quarter is unlikely to be duplicated in coming periods. Overall, the growth in commercial deal value, after adjustments for duration, was 76%. Overall, the company got $208 million or 61% of its revenues from government entities while the other 39% of its revenues came from commercial customers.\nBefore leaving the subject of risk, and perhaps being guilty of restating the obvious, the shares of both companies will perform poorly in a period of rotation favoring value names, and will perform rather well if the rotation favors growth names. Because of their valuation, the shares of these companies will be strongly correlated with the performance of an index of Cloud stocks, so called, such as CLOU until either or both start to generate substantial and sustained free cash flow margins that will start to change the valuation paradigm substantially.\nWhat does Palantir offer its users and how is that resonating in the market?\nWhat I would like to do-but which is not totally feasible-is to run through Palantir’s products and solutions to try to build a reasonable model that supports 40%+ growth. But this company has a multiplicity of platforms in discrete areas, and many more solutions so about all I am going to be able to do is touch the highlights and competition of the areas in which the company competes.\nPalantir offers 3 major product categories. These include Gotham, Foundry and Apollo.I imagine that Foundry is the best known product set offered by Palantir. Foundry is a data integration platform. There are many companies in this space including Boomi, Informatica, MuleSoft/Salesforce (CRM), Oracle (ORCL), Talend (TLND), Tableau/Salesforce and Alteryx (AYX). The data integration market has a relatively pedestrian growth forecast of a bit less than 8% although its size, estimated to be over $11 billion by 2026, is a worthwhile target. How does Palantir stack up? Here is a review of Palantir when compared to the leading data integration platform, Informatica Power Center:Compare Informatica PowerCenter vs Palantir Foundry. From a product perspective, there is nothing striking that would allow Palantir to gain a huge amount of market share in the commercial space.\nGotham is the heart of the Palantir franchise and the company continues to enhance the platform. While the linked description of the latest launch probably reads a bit like science fiction:Palantir Gotham | 21 Launch, the fact is that in terms of forecasting growth, this is probably where an analyst needs to start. Gotham is essentially big data analytics-with a full panoply of bells and whistles. The Gotham platform is designed to integrate structured data that is contained in rows and columns, as well as unstructured data such as emails, images and videos. It is basically a sophisticated query tool, and may be thought to be competitive with Elastic’s search technology. Here is a competitive analysis of the two solutions:Palantir Gotham.\nThe data that is collected using Gotham is integrated and then is mapped into what are meaningfully defined objects-enhanced by the relationships that connect them. From that point, the data is tagged, secured and tracked.\nGotham is the heart of Palantir’s government practice in that it is often used by agencies looking to “find bad actors hiding in complex networks.” It is the elaboration of that technology that I believe is driving the extremely strong growth of Palantir’s government business, and with the recent breaches at Colonial Pipelineand through SolarWinds (SWI) hack, coupled with aggressive remediation/security efforts, I believe that the very strong growth rates seen by Palantir in its Federal business are likely to continue and remain at hyper-growth levels for some years to come.\nThere are many interesting use cases for Gotham that highlight its versatility. The following link shows a variety of use cases as one scrolls through the article:Palantir: Transforming the way organizations use data - CTOvision.com. While the CAGR for big data analytics as projected in the linked study is only around 11%, the size of the space, relative to the size of Palantir is so substantial as to suggest that forecasting hyper growth is quite reasonable:Big Data and Business Analytics Market Size, Share | 2027. There are going to be many winners and leaders in the big data analytic market. Many enterprises are going to roll their own, using some 3rdparty tools such as those on offer from Elastic, for example. Some users will take advantage of the current offering from low code/no code vendors to facilitate building their own applications from the ground up. But the available market for Gotham is still an opportunity many times the current size of Palantir and looking at all of the problems it can solve perhaps gives readers some sense of why I find it reasonable to believe that Palantir will reach $5 billion in revenues over the coming 4 years.\nApollo is the 3rdmajor platform offered by Palantir although it is more of an enabling technology that is most often used in conjunction with both Gotham and Foundry. It is said to enable the use of SaaS applications where no SaaS applications have gone before.\nHere is a link to a 3rdparty review of the technology:Palantir Apollo. It is because of Apollo, and its ability to deliver software securely into just about any conceivable location from a battlefield to a submarine, that has enabled the company to win some major deals with the US Government customers and particularly the military and security agencies. Here is a link to a specialist 3rdparty consultant that follows technology trends and market share gains and losses amongst vendors to the US government:Competitor highlights: Palantir.\nAt the moment, the market addressed by Apollo is not well defined, and there are no publicly available statistics on the size or growth of the space. What I can suggest, is that Apollo is a key differentiator for the company and that the technology is a key factor in the success that the company has had and will likely continue to have in selling to the government and to some commercial enterprises as well.\nOverall, Palantir’s products are aimed at high-end enterprise users. Typical sales are going to be in the millions of dollars, even when looking at the commercial market. Here is a current analysis of prices that Palantir is charging:Palantir Gotham Pricing.\nMany readers will be familiar with the Palantir story; others will not. This is not intended to be a detailed evaluation of the various solution sets that are offered by the company, but might serve to illuminate the likely growth drivers the company has put in place that should resonate strongly with users over the next several years. Palantir advertises solution capabilities in 20 specific areas. I have linked to the solution directory the company presents:Solutions. It would be difficult to categorize the solutions in any meaningful sense.\nLike many software companies at this point, Palantir offers AI capabilities as part of its stack. Whether the form of AI offered by Palantir is better than many other implementations of AI that are nowadays used for many different purposes is not readily determinable.\nThese days there are a number of AI focused vendors whose shares have attracted interest. Perhaps the most prominent of these is C3.ai (AI). I think that Palantir’s differentiation is the use cases in which its form of AI is embodied in a specific solution that can create rapid time to benefit for many users. Indeed, I think the fact that Palantir already has a multiplicity of use cases that are based on AI technology coupled with deep learning is one of the reasons that I feel comfortable in forecasting 40%+ growth over some years.\nOverall, I think that the scope of the technology and the success that the company has had in translating that technology into usable solutions for both government and commercial users is likely to enable Palantir to maintain growth of above 40% for sometime into the future.\nWhy has Snowflake become the fastest growing software companies at scale?\nAgain, I assume that many readers will be familiar with the Snowflake story and others will not. The key to making a successful investment in Snowflake is not the fact that it is the fastest growing company in the enterprise software space, but in determining just how long that happy state can last, and the ramp that the company will achieve in terms of developing a consistent free cash flow margin. And while I do not purport to be a fortune teller, or even aspire to such a capability, I think looking at the solutions offered by Snowflake can help investors determine just what a long term CAGR might be.\nHere I have linked to a publication from Snowflake called “Data Cloud for Dummies.” I certainly am not intending to cast aspersions on the intellectual prowess of subscribers and general readers, but for those looking for a very quick synopsis of the company’s capabilities and what customers do with Snowflake implementations, this is a go to reference manual:The Data Cloud for Dummies | Snowflake. Most everything an investor might need to know about the Snowflake product offering and differentiation is contained in these few pages. Indeed, investors will not have to read all of this handbook to figure out who is using Snowflake, the benefits they are achieving from deploying the product and the value and capabilities a user can get from using the Snowflake data cloud. Most of that material can be seen on pgs. 18-20 while some selected use cases are described on pgs. 29-41. Most of the rest of the handbook describes how to use the Snowflake data cloud which is not really going to help readers figure out why Snowflake’s revenues and its bookings are rising at triple digit rates.\nThe Data Cloud allows users to do many of the things with data that consultants and most IT staff members have wanted to accomplish for the last decade or more. One of the most important attributes of the Data Cloud is its ability to unite siloed data so that organizations can discover what they have and securely share the now governed data. If this sounds something like the data integration capabilities offered by Palantir and others, it is because it is-although the technology is quite a bit different, and with Snowflake everything is cloud native-there is no equivalent to Apollo.\nWhile security has to be a component of what everyone does with data these days-the Snowflake solutions are more about access and sharing with security as part of the solution while Palantir starts with data security. It is more a matter of emphasis than functionality. I have linked here to an interesting thread that compares the two solutions-note carefully that the initiator of this thread is an original investor in Palantir and needless to say has a viewpoint relative to the merits of the two companies that would be disputed by many:Palantir Tech Platforms vs Snowflake\nSnowflake has plenty of competitors and that has been the case for many years. Many of its wins are competitive displacements and it usually has to battle one or more of the big 3 cloud vendors to secure a deal. The mega-cap cloud companies all offer capabilities that users generally evaluate before choosing Snowflake. Specifically, Google(NASDAQ:GOOG)(NASDAQ:GOOGL)Big Query, Amazon (AMZN) Red Shift and Microsoft (MSFT) Azure SQL Server are competitors. Here is a link by a 3rdparty comparing Google and Snowflake. Essentially, Snowflake is considered the winner:Snowflake vs. BigQuery\nHere is a link comparing Snowflake with Amazon Redshift. I think it is fair to synthesize the comparison with a view that for users with an all-cloud environment, and who have not become overly dependent on Amazon, Snowflake offers a better alternative, although the competition is less unequal than would be the case in looking at Google vs. Snowflake:Redshift vs Snowflake: 6 Key Differences.\nFinally, there is the comparison of Snowflake vs. Microsoft Azure. Here the review linked didn’t reach a conclusion. What I think comes through, however, is that the perception is that Snowflake provides higher performance with some critical database features. In any event, in terms of user reviews: Snowflake was a winner:Redshift vs Snowflake: 6 Key Differences.\nCloud data warehousing is a high growth area-it is essentially the future of most data storage: although hybrid solutions will remain a popular choice. See this link for the reason for the transformation:Cloud Data Warehouse is The Future of Data storage.\nAccording to a couple of market research vendors, the cloud storage market is likely to achieve a CAGR in the low 20% range for the next several years. The available market is forecast to reach $137 billion at the end of the period. Given the strong user ratings for SNOW, its competitive advantages vis-à-vis the largest competitors, the perception of the company’s functionality in the market and the track record of the company’s leader in past competitive situations, I don’t think the forecast of a multi-year CAGR of 70% is all that much of a stretch.\nI expect that the Snowflake earnings which will be reported while this article is in the review process to significantly exceed the consensus forecast which is for quarterly revenues of $213 million and an EPS loss of $.16. The current consensus calls for sequential growth of just 10% and that seems to be more or less of a sandbag. I see no reason to expect such a muted growth level-either in the reported quarter or in the near future. But that said, much of the enviable performance that Snowflake has achieved, and is likely to achieve going forward is already priced into the shares.\nWrapping up: Palantir or Snowflake?\nBoth Snowflake and Palantir have created advanced IT solutions for their clients. Snowflake has been able to leverage its technology more successfully than Palantir to achieve unheard of growth rates. Part of that is clearly a testament to the leadership of Frank Slootman and his competitive ethos. Part of it is a function of history.\nJust judging by the number of articles on SA, and their generally positive tenor, there are some who feel that users can do more with Palantir’s set of solutions than has been done with Snowflake. Palantir has been designed to be used by government agencies and AI is at the core of the offering. That is somewhat different from Snowflake. The key to Palantir’s ability to achieve hyper growth for years into the future will be the success it has in terms of the commercial market and in non-US geos. The results the company recently reported certainly provide a level of comfort in that regard.\nThe key to Snowflake’s continued success will be its continued success in sales execution. Given that the effort is now lead by a very resourceful and aggressive CFO, Frank Slootman, I expect big things.\nAs mentioned, I think it’s inevitable that both Snowflake and Palantir will become major IT vendors over time. Unfortunately-what I think, is obviously also thought by many major investors in the IT space. Neither Palantir or Snowflake is likely to be the next Tesla with a valuation more or less unrelated to operational fundamentals. I would never have chosen to write this article if I had much expectation of that kind of frenzy arising. These are both software companies and they can and will be valued by long term investors based on revenue growth and free cash flow generation.\nIf I had to pick one investment between these two companies, it would be Palantir-simply because of valuation. But as President Lincoln once said in a far different context, “I do not have to choose either, I can simply leave [her]alone.” In this case the recommendation is to leave the shares alone and look for stronger returns. For those interested in such things-here is the link to President Lincoln’s comment:Fourth Debate: Charleston, Illinois – Lincoln Home National Historic Site (U.S. National Park Service). And at the end of the day, that is my conclusion-find investments in the space with greater percentage upside potential.","kind":"news","is_publish_news":true,"is_publish_highlight":true,"is_publish_live":false,"is_publish_wemedia":null,"editions":null,"column":"","sentiment":"0","news_tag":"","news_rank":0,"symbols":[],"gpt_button":1},"commentList":[{"id":110653468,"gmtCreate":1622451425754,"gmtModify":1634101381693,"author":{"id":"3585443322417198","authorId":"3585443322417198","name":"Superpiggy","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/93ba1327cb2f2000ce46f90e378007a6","vip":1,"crmLevel":2,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"idStr":"3585443322417198","authorIdStr":"3585443322417198"},"htmlText":"Think Palantir is a better bet","listText":"Think Palantir is a better bet","text":"Think Palantir is a better 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and comment please","listText":"Like and comment please","text":"Like and comment please","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":0,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://laohu8.com/post/110685851","repostId":1187518687,"repostType":4,"isVote":1,"likeStatus":false,"favoriteStatus":false,"reportStatus":false,"tweetType":1,"langContent":"EN"},{"id":110614551,"gmtCreate":1622448929273,"gmtModify":1634101400420,"author":{"id":"3579666066637422","authorId":"3579666066637422","name":"Hodl","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/d591a82f579d3114da9795812a4217a0","vip":1,"crmLevel":3,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"idStr":"3579666066637422","authorIdStr":"3579666066637422"},"htmlText":"Like and comment please&nbsp;","listText":"Like and comment please&nbsp;","text":"Like and comment please","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":3,"commentSize":2,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://laohu8.com/post/110614551","repostId":1187518687,"repostType":4,"isVote":1,"likeStatus":false,"favoriteStatus":false,"reportStatus":false,"tweetType":1,"comments":[{"id":4516810,"gmtCreate":1622449141593,"gmtModify":1635393688952,"authorId":3579833810423165,"author":{"id":3579833810423165,"idStr":"3579833810423165","authorId":3579833810423165,"name":"Gab_Boey","avatar":"https://static.laohu8.com/default-avatar.jpg","vip":1,"crmLevel":2,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"individualDisplayBadges":[]},"repliedAuthorId":0,"objectId":110614551,"type":1,"supId":0,"prevId":0,"content":"Comment","text":"Comment","html":"Comment"},{"id":4516855,"gmtCreate":1622449575364,"gmtModify":1635393685360,"authorId":3577748298116453,"author":{"id":3577748298116453,"idStr":"3577748298116453","authorId":3577748298116453,"name":"Alvinwu","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/933e5bef36fb7b59c386d71a110572f1","vip":1,"crmLevel":2,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"individualDisplayBadges":[]},"repliedAuthorId":0,"objectId":110614551,"type":1,"supId":0,"prevId":0,"content":"L","text":"L","html":"L"}],"langContent":"EN"},{"id":110615334,"gmtCreate":1622448836028,"gmtModify":1634101401249,"author":{"id":"3582063611426818","authorId":"3582063611426818","name":"ditti","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/2566ca38eea90f53931296c3d19d66e5","vip":1,"crmLevel":4,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"idStr":"3582063611426818","authorIdStr":"3582063611426818"},"htmlText":"Seems longer term okays to me.","listText":"Seems longer term okays to me.","text":"Seems longer term okays to 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