BruceLKH
2021-05-11
Lots to understand
Palantir: Highly Favourable Reward-To-Risk
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The consensus 33% growth for FY21 looks way off.</li><li>A deep-dive into the impressive underlying economics of Palantir’s business.</li><li>A simple valuation analysis to outline it's extremely unlikely investors will lose money even by investing at these levels.</li></ul><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/eab06bd9956d953235cc7975b0de6995\" tg-width=\"768\" tg-height=\"512\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\"><b>Contents</b></p><ul><li>Multiples & TAM</li><li>> P/S & TAM Penetration</li><li>>> PLTR’s TAM and Ability to Enter New Markets?</li><li>> Expanding TAM Fueling Expanding Multiple</li><li>>> ServiceNow vs Workday</li><li>>> Cloudflare</li><li>Multiples & TAM Recap</li><li>What is PLTR Actually Good At?</li><li>What’s Not Being Talked About</li><li>Impressive Underlying Economics</li><li>Valuation</li><li>Conclusion</li></ul><p><b>Multiples & TAM</b></p><p>It’s commonly known that multiples are closely correlated with revenue growth expectations – higher growth usually equals higher P/S and P/E. Though we wanted to explore the relationship between multiples and a company’s Total Addressable Market, aka TAM. Firstly, we investigated the correlation between P/S and TAM penetration. Then secondly, we used a qualitative approach to assess how increases in TAM tends to affect a company’s P/S. The reason for delving into this is to gain a better insight into Palantir's (PLTR) ongoing valuation, whether the stock’s P/S will persist, extend, or decline, and ultimately what this means for investors’ returns.</p><p>P/S & TAM Penetration</p><p>We already had metrics for a group of stocks we put together for some other PLTR analysis, therefore we used these to work on the P/S and TAM penetration correlation. To arrive at a TAM for each stock, if we didn’t know beforehand, we reviewed company websites to understand which markets they serve, and then we looked for independent market research (from the likes of Grand View Research and Mordor Intelligence, etc.) estimating the size and growth projections of the subject market. If the size of market estimate seemed odd compared to the company’s revenues and P/S, then we resorted to the company’s investor presentations that usually offer a TAM.</p><p>As this was quite time-consuming, in addition to PLTR we only conducted this process for 15 stocks, so the sample size is 16. Therefore, the statistics shown in the table below should be viewed with caution because the sample is relatively small and adding more to the sample may significantly change the correlation. Nonetheless, you might still be interested despite the sample being on the small side. From this research we found that the P/S and the TAM penetration (defined as LTM revenue divided by the TAM) for this group of stocks had an inverse correlation of -0.6281. The negative sign indicates that a smaller TAM penetration is associated with a higher P/S. The correlation equates to an R-squared of -0.6281 ^ 2 =<b>0.3945</b>. This means that the TAM penetration explains 39.45% of the variability of the P/S within this group. And considering the nature of financial variables, this is a moderately strong correlation. As expected, there is a stronger correlation between P/S and LTM revenue growth. The 0.9248 correlation equates to an R-squared of 85.55%.</p><p>Figure 1 - Correlation between P/S and TAM Penetration</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/6b8853eadde7cac4e62059f7961af215\" tg-width=\"385\" tg-height=\"405\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\"></p><p>Source: Convequity analysis</p><p>This is far from conclusive and requires further research but it certainly looks likely that TAM penetration is inversely correlated to P/S multiples. So, what does this have to do with PLTR’s valuation? Well, the market is currently pricing in the management guided TAM of $119bn, yet in reality the TAM is a lot greater. Once investors realize this the 33x P/S at the time of writing will offer extremely good value.</p><p><b>PLTR’s TAM and Ability to Enter New Markets?</b></p><p>A high stock multiple often results in poor future returns because there are already high growth expectations priced in, and as the growth outlook naturally decelerates, the multiple will decline too. However, we believe PLTR, like other best-in-breed cloud-oriented stocks, are a special case, because they can rotate and enter new markets with relative ease.</p><p>Showcased by theDouble-Clickevent, PLTR is already emerging as a formidable player in the life sciences analytics industry which is projected to grow from$22bn in 2020 to $42bn by 2025. TheERPmarket, in which they’ve smoothly entered via a AWS partnership, is projected to grow from $43bn today up to $60bn by 2026. Despite these markets being heavily competed for by established players, PLTR’s software-defined approach is displacing many incumbents and in due course will grab a sizeable chunk of market share. And these are just two markets that make up over half of PLTR’s supposed TAM of $119bn.</p><p>In reality, PLTR’s TAM is the entire software industry. They have an ability like no other software vendor in history to pivot into new markets as they see fit. They have the programming skills and the thoughtfulness in interface design, along with a deep understanding of how users need to interact with software, that affords them the capability to turn their focus to any software market worthwhile. With this in mind, it is reasonable to assume that whenever PLTR needs a revenue growth and/or share price booster, they can formulate a plan to penetrate a new market and provide that catalyst.</p><p>Below we highlight PLTR’s true potential TAM with reference to a Gartner estimate. The IT services might be a stretch but they certainly have the ability to fully expand within the $483bn Enterprise Software market. With current TTM revenue a little over $1bn, the current TAM penetration of < 0.3% offers high growth for many years which will help prevent a sharp P/S deceleration and support strong future shareholder returns. And in all likelihood, the P/S will probably expand in the interim before beginning a downward trajectory.</p><p>Figure 2 - Worldwide IT Spending Forecasts</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/9dda4329ffe8f2cead662503bd5cd8a8\" tg-width=\"466\" tg-height=\"314\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\"></p><p>Expanding TAM Fueling Expanding Multiple</p><p>With this TAM correlation in mind, it might be interesting for investors to visualize how PLTR’s share price and P/S will respond when management inevitably announce that they’re entering new markets – CRM, Risk Management, Productivity, or whatever it may be. To illustrate this, we’ll review the P/S paths of ServiceNow (NOW) and Workday (WDAY) during the past few years.</p><p><b>ServiceNow vs Workday</b></p><p>Comparing the P/S trends of these two stocks in relation to their TAM development is interesting to observe. To observe the changing TAM, we’ve used research giant Gartner’s Magic Quadrant. Here is the Magic Quadrant template for those unfamiliar.</p><p>Figure 3 - Gartner's Magic Quadrant Template</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/26acf1d90d9c7bc6f9c912e1e938cff7\" tg-width=\"377\" tg-height=\"370\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\"></p><p>Source:gartner.com</p><p>Back in 2016, in reference to Gartner’s Magic Quadrant, Workday (WDAY) was the outright leader in Human Capital Management (HCM) and ServiceNow (NOW) was the same for IT Services Management (ITSM). Both firms had similar revenue growth and gross, operating, and FCF margins, and also neither were serving any other markets. Therefore, as shown in the following chart, WDAY’s higher P/S appeared to be largely attributed to HCM being a larger market than ITSM. During 2017, according to Gartner’s HCM Magic Quadrant WDAY lost its competitive distance as the space became crowded. During the same period, NOW extended their leadership status in the ITSM Magic Quadrant. As a result, the P/S differential closed and the two stocks were trading at almost identical multiples throughout 2017. Despite the same growth rates in 2018, NOW’s P/S pulled sharply higher than WDAY’s because they expanded TAM by entering into two new markets – Integrated Risk Management and CRM Customer Engagement – whilst WDAY didn’t expand their TAM.</p><p>Figure 4 - NOW vs WDAY P/S Multiple Journey, Part 1</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/819428f5fd07f5be31e2e242101675e8\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"334\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\"></p><p>Source: Koyfin chart, Convequity analysis</p><p>In early 2019, the P/S differential tightened with WDAY’s multiple climbing partly attributable to expanding into the Cloud Financial Management market; NOW also entered a new market in early 2019. Then in 2020, the difference widened further as a result of NOW expanding into 3 more markets and turning from visionary to leader in the Magic Quadrant for Software Asset Management (SAM) whilst WDAY did not even enter one new market.</p><p>Figure 5 - Figure 1 - NOW vs WDAY P/S Multiple Journey, Part 2</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/671154b03eb210d553999cf81e22632c\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"316\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\"></p><p>Source: Koyfin chart, Convequity analysis</p><p>This is a classic example of how entering new markets raises expectations for growth and long-term profitability, thereby raising multiples and ultimately increasing returns for shareholders. We don’t claim that inclusion into Gartner’s Magic Quadrants were the sole factor at play, however, given that both firms’ growth and margins were similar for most of the period under review, it certainly appears to have had a significant influence.</p><p>Cloudflare</p><p>Cloudflare (NET) offers another good example of how TAM expansion influences a stock’s multiple. NET certainly benefitted from the general COVID-induced WFH dynamic during 2020, however, their new product launches also contributed to multiple expansion in a significant way. NET have moved so fast that Gartner haven’t even had time to update their Magic Quadrants, therefore we shall leave Gartner out of this observation. In just 16 months, NET has tripled their P/S mainly as a result of entering new markets. In January 2020, they entered into a $20bn market by announcing their offerings for Secure Web Gateways and Zero Trust products. In July 2020, they made a big move by making their edge compute Workers platform accessible to all developers; in October 2020 they officially launched their SASE offering; and then in March 2021, they introduced Magic WAN which has kind of created a new market altogether because NET is the first to offer a global private WAN.</p><p>Figure 6 - NET's P/S Journey</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/12bc7ba8e1617c02699be8a7509ec27d\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"303\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\"></p><p>Source: Koyfin chart, Convequity analysis</p><p>There are plenty of other recent examples in which stocks have expanded multiples thanks to TAM expansion - Zscaler and Twilio to name a couple. An underlying driving factor enabling software companies to enter new markets with relative ease is the growth of cloud computing. The required capex to move into new markets is minimal in comparison to the pre-cloud era because software firms don’t need to purchase and implement more servers. Once an application is developed and ready to be deployed, they can scale it across the elastic supply of AWS, Azure, or GCP servers that provide all the necessary compute, networking, and storage requirements – and ramp-up or decrease capacity according to demand.</p><p>As we point out in our articleS&P 500 is Undervalued, Tech is in a New Paradigm, cloud computing has altered the software industry’s competitive dynamics. It has radically lowered the entry barriers thereby making many software markets overcrowded - in 2007 there were 115 U.S. software stocks and today there are 284. This isn’t alarming as the numbers suggest because the cloud has opened up many greenfield markets, however, the cloud has ushered in a winner-takes-all dynamic into various markets also. And given the reach enabled by the cloud, the prize for the market winners is larger than it’s ever been before. At Asymmetric Tech Investments we aim to identify these future winners.</p><p><b>Multiples & TAM Recap</b></p><p>Here is a quick recap:</p><ul><li>There is evidence that a stock’s P/S is moderately correlated to revenue divided by TAM, or TAM penetration. This may appear obvious to some investors though doing this bit of research has helped us refine how we view a company’s market opportunity and shareholder investment prospects.</li><li>There are many examples that illustrate how TAM expansion tends to increase stock multiples, or at least play a significant part.</li><li>Cloud computing has made it easier than ever before for software firms to expand TAM.</li></ul><p>Taking this into account, the future looks incredibly bright for PLTR’s share price. As and when PLTR enter new markets and expand the company’s TAM, there is a high probability that the share price will climb driven by altering growth expectations. If it can be argued that PLTR’s software is already effectively doing stuff like Software Asset Management, Integrated Risk Management, and CRM, then the TAM should be higher than the current $119bn priced in. And if this is the case, PLTR’s multiple should adjust higher to reflect this in due course. Either way despite the perceived high P/S at present, it will probably persist or even rise from here, and over a longer timeframe we suspect PLTR’s multiple will decelerate at a much slower pace than many other high-growth software stocks.</p><p>Lastly, not only does PLTR have the core software skills to enter almost any market, they are well and truly cloud-enabled following their partnerships with AWS and IBM. This will accelerate the TAM expansion for sure.</p><p><b>What is PLTR Actually Good At?</b></p><p>It might be easier to try and answer what they aren’t good at. All the information given in the S-1, the 10-k, and investor presentations, pertaining to what PLTR do can be somewhat overwhelming. At the same time, just labelling them a data analysis company is a gross oversimplification. To help us refine our understanding of PLTR’s scope, below we’ve categorized 4 areas, or pillars, in which we believe lays the foundation for all they do – Data Connectivity, Data, Analysis, Data Governance, and User Interface. We’re probably not alone in inferring that the underpinning to PLTR’s superior advantages is closely associated with these 4 pillars. Each of which appear to be in a transformative stage due to the world delving deeper into an era of hyperconnectivity. Within each category we listed things that PLTR are good at dealing with. By the time we had finished we realized the depth and sheer breadth of what they can do.</p><p>Figure 7 – The 4 Pillars to PLTR’s Competitive Edge</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/a8e17daf500fc82224591acb8ed9bee2\" tg-width=\"555\" tg-height=\"343\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\"></p><p>Source: Convequity analysis</p><p>And the only way we can surmise as to how they are capable of such depth and scope, is that they have the deepest understanding of the core principles of software engineering and have an amazing ability to leverage this to various platforms and technologies. Elon Musk’s advocacy for First Principles thinking springs to mind.</p><p>Figure 8 - First Principles Thinking</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/f9bda1fb57abaf33eff8dfacd2457aa2\" tg-width=\"513\" tg-height=\"401\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\"></p><p>Source:safalniveshak.com</p><p>It is these 4 pillars in which PLTR are building their moat around, and this foundation can be leveraged to enter almost any software market. Throw in the network effects within enterprise customers’ organization, across verticals (life sciences, airline industry, etc.), and within PLTR itself, it’s hard to envisage them losing their competitive lead.</p><p>Recently I spoke to a friend who is an engineer at Rolls Royce who shed some light on how PLTR could help him in his job. Below is what he told me.</p><blockquote><i>“When designing a product, a RR engineer will spend ~25% of their time gathering and pre-processing data in order to perform a design study. Typically, the data is created by multiple teams, each working in different systems and supplying the data in different formats by differing means. For example, the stress engineer will supply speeds/temperatures/pressures in the form of an emailed spreadsheet. The aero engineer will supply geometry as a CAD file and a pressure map as a .csv file via a shared drive. The designer will supply geometric information and tolerances as a printed word document. All this data must be extracted and processed into a single format before the designer can do any analysis. Having all this data in one system would massively reduce the time spent processing data and would free up the designer to do the actual engineering.”</i></blockquote><p>Foundry would solve his problem by connecting to all the relevant data sources and standardizing the data ready for immediate analysis. The ramp-up in my friend’s productivity would be profound. Generally, it seems as though this type of problem involving data located across disjointed systems and existing in different formats has up until now been the main use case for Foundry. Increasingly, however, we’re hearing cases whereby Foundry has been laid atop an enterprise’s legacy systems and deliver what works like a brand-new IT infrastructure built from the ground up. For example, in the Double Click event, Forward Deploy Engineer, Liam Mawe, explained how a Foundry ERP archetype was installed for one industrial client that already had 25 ERP systems in operation that were largely siloed from each other. After a few hours of configuration, Foundry’s ERP had every single piece of data readily available. Mawe didn’t elaborate, though we presume Foundry’s ERP could carry on working in conjunction with the other ERP systems or work just as well should the client decide to remove them – which is more probable. This incredible flexibility is the key to the seemingly rapid customer acquisition of late – there is no rip and replace required, so the stakes are lower and as a result decision-makers are more willing to give PLTR a try.</p><p><b>What’s Not Being Talked About</b></p><p>From what we’ve read about PLTR, there hasn’t been any mention of the fact that they only added 6 customers in FY20 whilst growing revenue by 47%. This is staggering; and achieved by the 41% increase in revenue per customer, as shown in the chart below. When we think about the AWS and IBM cloud partnerships and the various press releases thus far into 2021, they could have tripled the FY20 new customer number in the first quarter alone. Couple that with another >20% increase in per customer revenue, it’s not beyond the realm of possibility for PLTR to grow revenue by 60% this year.</p><p>Figure 9 - Net New Customer Additions in FY20</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/a5c6b020093a59492fcc6c4c50812b65\" tg-width=\"314\" tg-height=\"128\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\"></p><p>Source: 10-k, Convequity analysis</p><p>We thought we’d have a go at forecasting 1Q21 revenue – which will be released before the market open on Tuesday 11thMay. We began by building up the revenue estimate based on available information such as the press releases thus far in 2021, balance sheet items such as deferred revenue and customer deposits, as well as off-balance sheet deal value which includes remaining performance obligations and contract renewal options. In the 3Q20 investor presentation we noticed the average contract duration was 3.6 years, so we used this to estimate what might come off deferred revenue and customer deposits and be recorded as income statement revenue. To estimate how much deal value might be transferred into revenue for 1Q21, we used a longer duration of 4.6 years. We infer that a small portion of deal value could skip the balance sheet and land straight on the income statement when customers renew their contracts. Of course, this is an oversimplification of how these financial items are linked together so the estimate might be way off. Nonetheless, based on all this, as shown below, we estimate 1Q21 revenue of $259m which, as a reminder, is derived from available information and has not accounted for unknowns. This is a shortfall of $73m versus the $332m consensus estimate. Given all the unknown revenue sources from the AWS and IBM deals and elsewhere, and the general confidence from management, it looks like PLTR are going to blow these forecasts out the water.</p><p>Figure 10 - 1Q21 Revenue Estimates Based on Available Information</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/5c976ca3fc200ad63eb7ee9595b6b8a5\" tg-width=\"633\" tg-height=\"345\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\"></p><p>Source: 10-k, Convequity analysis</p><p><b>Impressive Underlying Economics</b></p><p>We believe the greatest investment catalyst is tied to PLTR’s profitability potential; and this is because of the pervasive doubt of the business model viability at present. Management have heavily focused on contribution margin (that we’ll refer to as CM) in previous investor presentations. As the they presented in the 4Q20 presentation shown below, CM margin has more than doubled from FY19 to FY20. However, this could be skewed due to the low number of customer additions – only 6 in FY20. With this in mind we wanted to dig deeper in understanding how the underlying economics have really improved.</p><p>Figure 11 - High-Level View of Contribution Margin and Gross Margin</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/d46bd90bbcfcc1028ec0417d858ec8f8\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"270\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\"></p><p>Source:4Q20 Investor Presentation</p><p>Management have presented the efficiency of the business by grouping customers into 3 phases – Acquire, Expand, and Scale – and in each phase, show how the CM changes within each group. To illustrate, take a look at the figures below, extracted from the S-1 and the 10-k. The customers in the Acquire Phase in FY19 (fiscal year-end 31stDec-21) generated a very negative CM. Those same customers, generated a 17% CM in FY20. The customers in the Expand Phase in FY19 generated -43% CM, and those same customers generated 47% CM in the following year. What’s important to note here, is that the Acquire Phase customers in FY19 will not be the same Acquire Phase customers in FY20 – they will become the Expand Phase customers (or potentially even the Scale Phase customers).</p><p>Figure 12 - PLTR's Customer Phases</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/349bc44eeb8317f08f36bb9da9a2d261\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"83\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\"></p><p>Source: PLTR’s S-1 and FY20 10-k</p><p>On the face of it, this looks impressive, but when we think deeper about it, this is what most SaaS/software firms are doing nowadays. The S&M expenditure to bring the customer to a company and the initial deployment and operational costs make the Acquire phase the costliest. At the same time, free trial or preliminary testing periods don’t generate much revenue. So, for any SaaS-type firm, negative CM is the case for the Acquire and the Expand phases and those same customers will become profitable at a later point in the relationship. We think investors are aware of this and this is why there doesn’t seem to be much online discussion about PLTR’s CM. Of course, investors could simply take the higher-level view of overall CM more than doubling in FY20, however, as aforementioned this is potentially skewed because of the few new customers acquired.</p><p>What can be instantly gleaned from the above CM metrics, is that when the proportion of new customers joining PLTR is small in relation to existing customers the overall CM will be close to the Scale Phase CM. But perhaps that still doesn’t impressive investors enough, because it may take a few years to reach that state.</p><p>Let’s go back to notion that the Acquire Phase customers in FY19 go on to be the Expand (or even Scale) Phase customers in FY20. This is useful but we wanted to see if we could compare the FY20 Acquire Phase with the FY19 Acquire Phase; and the FY20 Expand Phase with the FY19 Expand Phase; and the same for the Scale Phase. This cannot be derived from the data above. Therefore, we’ve had to dig deeper, scan for more information, and make some educated guesses to piece this together. Because knowing by how much the Expand Phase CM has improved from FY19 to FY20 would be really insightful and we don’t suspect many analysts have tried this so far so there is probably an information edge to be gained over the market.</p><p>We show the analysis we did on this below, however,it may be easier for readers to access the actual spreadsheetto take a closer look. If you click the link make sure to download the spreadsheet to see all the comment boxes.</p><p>What interests us the most in the spreadsheet, is the Expand Phase comparisons in FY19 and FY20. The 28% CM highlighted in yellow, under the FY20 Expand Cohort, is what we think the Expand Phase CM must have been in FY20. The equivalent CM in FY19 was -43%. This is a huge like-for-like improvement in the CM and indicates how PLTR has/is radically shortening the deployment phase of their software by utilizing their Apollo SaaS-installation. Personally, we think this is more insightful and meaningful than the overall CM presented which could be skewed, and also versus management’s presentation of the Acquire/Expand/Scale CMs.</p><p>Figure 13 - Contribution Margin Like-for-Like Comparisons</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/14c581fd6fbbccea3d7a5da87480edf5\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"694\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\"></p><p>Source: 10-k, Convequity analysis</p><p>Another way to view this is that customers are classified as Expand Phase customers when they’ve exceeded $100k in annualized revenue but CM is negative. If the FY19 Expand Phase CM was -43%, it indicates that the majority of these customers remained negative CM customers throughout FY19. If the FY20 Expand Phase CM is 28%, it indicates that the majority of these customers turned from negative to positive within the same year. Again, in our opinion, this is way more impressive than what PLTR’s management has presented to date.</p><p>Lastly, in the final section of the spreadsheet, the Total CMs highlighted in gold text are actual and the ones in red are composed of actual and estimated figures. We can see that all the FY19 customers generated a weighted average CM of 23% in FY19, and then those same customers generated 58% CM in FY20. Going into FY21 we forecast that these same FY19 customers will generate 68% in CM. All the FY20 customers generated a CM of 54% in FY20, though had PLTR brought on board more new customers in FY20, the CM would be considerably lower. These same customers are estimated to generate 65% in CM in FY21 and then 75% in FY22.</p><p>To conclude, PLTR’s current CM of 54% is already high, especially for a high growth software stock, yet it’s likely to move higher. We expect the AWS and IBM partnerships to give PLTR the scale to expand its margins. We think this should erase the doubt that PLTR will be highly profitable. The huge nonrecurring expenses related to the DPO and associated stock-based compensation and other opex categories have contributed to the appearance of an unprofitable business. As these costs normalize and PLTR further leverage Apollo’s SaaS installation/deployment, the CM will continue to rise and PLTR’s margins lower down the income statement will also look attractive.</p><p><b>Valuation</b></p><p>In our previous article on PLTR we presented our DCF valuation for PLTR which arrived at a value per share of $47. We still have full faith in this valuation; however, it may take longer than we initially anticipated. And we partly assign this to the misunderstanding of the potential profitability of the stock. Therefore, for this section, we approached the valuation through a different lens. We’ve projected PLTR’s average revenue growth rate through FY25 and used possible P/S multiples in FY25.</p><p>In the 4Q20 earnings call, management stated that they believe revenue growth will be above 30% each year through to FY25 – quite incredible considering the current TTM revenue of $1.1bn. Knowing this, below we’ve projected some arbitrary growth rates. We know FY20 growth was 47% and based off what management has stated, we’ll put FY25 growth as 30% as a minimum. Therefore, we’ve randomly decelerated from 47% to 30% for each year. The Compounded Annual Growth Rate, or CAGR, of this series of growth rates equals 34%. We shall use this for the valuation exercise.</p><p>Figure 14 - Estimate for Average Revenue Growth Through FY25</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/b76e91d228a978ddd8a18a8a102ea495\" tg-width=\"449\" tg-height=\"109\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\"></p><p>Source: Convequity analysis</p><p>By using this 34% average revenue growth rate (or CAGR) we calculate revenue will be $4.784bn in FY25/2025. Due to the natural growth expectations decline, we guess that the P/S will be 20x in 2025. ServiceNow’s is currently 20x whilst having TTM revenue of $4,500m, so this is plausible for exceptional companies. These parameters calculate a 2025 market cap of $96bn, a share price of $53.39, and an annualized return of 21%.</p><p>Figure 15 - 2025 Market Cap Forecast</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/ef9e349e3ba5ffdd5f413a5c857fcb18\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"47\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\"></p><p>Source: Convequity analysis</p><p>Below we show the 2025 share price sensitivity table with the 2025 P/S and the CAGR being the two variables. The probabilities are arbitrary just to express how likely we think the respective P/S metrics are in 2025. The share prices in purple text represent the range of what we think our estimation error is likely to be.</p><p>Figure 16 - PLTR's 2025 Share Price Sensitivity Table</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/c7192c1e4fcda23289de59a09c242fec\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"203\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\"></p><p>Source: Convequity analysis</p><p>If management are correct with their growth prediction, then a P/S toward 30x would be fairer than a <20x P/S. However, even if PLTR only generate an average growth rate of 24% and the P/S is 14x at the end of 2025, at the current share price of ~$20 investors still wouldn’t have lost capital. Indeed, it would have been a disappointing investment, but it wouldn’t have lost money. This sensitivity table shows that, despite PLTR’s high multiple at present, the future returns look very appetizing.</p><p>The next sensitivity table replaces the share price with the annualized return through to 2025.</p><p>Figure 17 - PLTR's 2025 Annualized Return Sensitivity Table</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/5f3a6e9d761e6e7fcb3fb918df9b8503\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"205\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\"></p><p>Source: Convequity analysis</p><p>In summary, even at the current high P/S of 34x, we consider it extremely unlikely that investors will lose money investing in PLTR now and holding through to 2025 – simply because of growth projections. Add in the impressive underlying economics, we believe this will prove to be a very good long-term investment.</p><p>So, given the minimal downside and the attractive upside, PLTR is one of the most favourable reward-to-risk holdings in the Convequity Portfolio.</p><p><b>Conclusion</b></p><p>PLTR’s stock is going to be driven by a combination of changing TAM expectations, high growth, and impressive profitability in due course. Currently, it looks as though the market is underestimating all of these, so the future looks very bright, indeed.</p>","source":"seekingalpha","collect":0,"html":"<!DOCTYPE html>\n<html>\n<head>\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html; charset=utf-8\" />\n<meta name=\"viewport\" content=\"width=device-width,initial-scale=1.0,minimum-scale=1.0,maximum-scale=1.0,user-scalable=no\"/>\n<meta name=\"format-detection\" content=\"telephone=no,email=no,address=no\" />\n<title>Palantir: Highly Favourable Reward-To-Risk</title>\n<style type=\"text/css\">\na,abbr,acronym,address,applet,article,aside,audio,b,big,blockquote,body,canvas,caption,center,cite,code,dd,del,details,dfn,div,dl,dt,\nem,embed,fieldset,figcaption,figure,footer,form,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,header,hgroup,html,i,iframe,img,ins,kbd,label,legend,li,mark,menu,nav,\nobject,ol,output,p,pre,q,ruby,s,samp,section,small,span,strike,strong,sub,summary,sup,table,tbody,td,tfoot,th,thead,time,tr,tt,u,ul,var,video{ font:inherit;margin:0;padding:0;vertical-align:baseline;border:0 }\nbody{ font-size:16px; line-height:1.5; color:#999; background:transparent; }\n.wrapper{ overflow:hidden;word-break:break-all;padding:10px; }\nh1,h2{ font-weight:normal; line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:.6em; }\nh3,h4,h5,h6{ line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:1em; }\nh1{ font-size:24px; }\nh2{ font-size:20px; }\nh3{ font-size:18px; }\nh4{ font-size:16px; }\nh5{ font-size:14px; }\nh6{ font-size:12px; }\np,ul,ol,blockquote,dl,table{ margin:1.2em 0; }\nul,ol{ margin-left:2em; }\nul{ list-style:disc; }\nol{ list-style:decimal; }\nli,li p{ margin:10px 0;}\nimg{ max-width:100%;display:block;margin:0 auto 1em; }\nblockquote{ color:#B5B2B1; border-left:3px solid #aaa; padding:1em; }\nstrong,b{font-weight:bold;}\nem,i{font-style:italic;}\ntable{ width:100%;border-collapse:collapse;border-spacing:1px;margin:1em 0;font-size:.9em; }\nth,td{ padding:5px;text-align:left;border:1px solid #aaa; }\nth{ font-weight:bold;background:#5d5d5d; }\n.symbol-link{font-weight:bold;}\n/* header{ border-bottom:1px solid #494756; } */\n.title{ margin:0 0 8px;line-height:1.3;color:#ddd; }\n.meta {color:#5e5c6d;font-size:13px;margin:0 0 .5em; }\na{text-decoration:none; color:#2a4b87;}\n.meta .head { display: inline-block; overflow: hidden}\n.head .h-thumb { width: 30px; height: 30px; margin: 0; padding: 0; border-radius: 50%; float: left;}\n.head .h-content { margin: 0; padding: 0 0 0 9px; float: left;}\n.head .h-name {font-size: 13px; color: #eee; margin: 0;}\n.head .h-time {font-size: 11px; color: #7E829C; margin: 0;line-height: 11px;}\n.small {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.9); -webkit-transform: scale(0.9); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.smaller {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.8); -webkit-transform: scale(0.8); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.bt-text {font-size: 12px;margin: 1.5em 0 0 0}\n.bt-text p {margin: 0}\n</style>\n</head>\n<body>\n<div class=\"wrapper\">\n<header>\n<h2 class=\"title\">\nPalantir: Highly Favourable Reward-To-Risk\n</h2>\n\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\n\n2021-05-11 15:44 GMT+8 <a href=https://seekingalpha.com/article/4426825-palantir-highly-favourable-reward-to-risk><strong>seekingalpha</strong></a>\n\n\n</h4>\n\n</header>\n<article>\n<div>\n<p>SummaryA look at the relationship between P/S and Total Addressable Market and what it means for Palantir.In FY20, revenue grew 47% with only 6 customer additions. The consensus 33% growth for FY21 ...</p>\n\n<a href=\"https://seekingalpha.com/article/4426825-palantir-highly-favourable-reward-to-risk\">Web Link</a>\n\n</div>\n\n\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"","relate_stocks":{"PLTR":"Palantir Technologies Inc."},"source_url":"https://seekingalpha.com/article/4426825-palantir-highly-favourable-reward-to-risk","is_english":true,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/5a36db9d73b4222bc376d24ccc48c8a4","article_id":"1191876953","content_text":"SummaryA look at the relationship between P/S and Total Addressable Market and what it means for Palantir.In FY20, revenue grew 47% with only 6 customer additions. The consensus 33% growth for FY21 looks way off.A deep-dive into the impressive underlying economics of Palantir’s business.A simple valuation analysis to outline it's extremely unlikely investors will lose money even by investing at these levels.ContentsMultiples & TAM> P/S & TAM Penetration>> PLTR’s TAM and Ability to Enter New Markets?> Expanding TAM Fueling Expanding Multiple>> ServiceNow vs Workday>> CloudflareMultiples & TAM RecapWhat is PLTR Actually Good At?What’s Not Being Talked AboutImpressive Underlying EconomicsValuationConclusionMultiples & TAMIt’s commonly known that multiples are closely correlated with revenue growth expectations – higher growth usually equals higher P/S and P/E. Though we wanted to explore the relationship between multiples and a company’s Total Addressable Market, aka TAM. Firstly, we investigated the correlation between P/S and TAM penetration. Then secondly, we used a qualitative approach to assess how increases in TAM tends to affect a company’s P/S. The reason for delving into this is to gain a better insight into Palantir's (PLTR) ongoing valuation, whether the stock’s P/S will persist, extend, or decline, and ultimately what this means for investors’ returns.P/S & TAM PenetrationWe already had metrics for a group of stocks we put together for some other PLTR analysis, therefore we used these to work on the P/S and TAM penetration correlation. To arrive at a TAM for each stock, if we didn’t know beforehand, we reviewed company websites to understand which markets they serve, and then we looked for independent market research (from the likes of Grand View Research and Mordor Intelligence, etc.) estimating the size and growth projections of the subject market. If the size of market estimate seemed odd compared to the company’s revenues and P/S, then we resorted to the company’s investor presentations that usually offer a TAM.As this was quite time-consuming, in addition to PLTR we only conducted this process for 15 stocks, so the sample size is 16. Therefore, the statistics shown in the table below should be viewed with caution because the sample is relatively small and adding more to the sample may significantly change the correlation. Nonetheless, you might still be interested despite the sample being on the small side. From this research we found that the P/S and the TAM penetration (defined as LTM revenue divided by the TAM) for this group of stocks had an inverse correlation of -0.6281. The negative sign indicates that a smaller TAM penetration is associated with a higher P/S. The correlation equates to an R-squared of -0.6281 ^ 2 =0.3945. This means that the TAM penetration explains 39.45% of the variability of the P/S within this group. And considering the nature of financial variables, this is a moderately strong correlation. As expected, there is a stronger correlation between P/S and LTM revenue growth. The 0.9248 correlation equates to an R-squared of 85.55%.Figure 1 - Correlation between P/S and TAM PenetrationSource: Convequity analysisThis is far from conclusive and requires further research but it certainly looks likely that TAM penetration is inversely correlated to P/S multiples. So, what does this have to do with PLTR’s valuation? Well, the market is currently pricing in the management guided TAM of $119bn, yet in reality the TAM is a lot greater. Once investors realize this the 33x P/S at the time of writing will offer extremely good value.PLTR’s TAM and Ability to Enter New Markets?A high stock multiple often results in poor future returns because there are already high growth expectations priced in, and as the growth outlook naturally decelerates, the multiple will decline too. However, we believe PLTR, like other best-in-breed cloud-oriented stocks, are a special case, because they can rotate and enter new markets with relative ease.Showcased by theDouble-Clickevent, PLTR is already emerging as a formidable player in the life sciences analytics industry which is projected to grow from$22bn in 2020 to $42bn by 2025. TheERPmarket, in which they’ve smoothly entered via a AWS partnership, is projected to grow from $43bn today up to $60bn by 2026. Despite these markets being heavily competed for by established players, PLTR’s software-defined approach is displacing many incumbents and in due course will grab a sizeable chunk of market share. And these are just two markets that make up over half of PLTR’s supposed TAM of $119bn.In reality, PLTR’s TAM is the entire software industry. They have an ability like no other software vendor in history to pivot into new markets as they see fit. They have the programming skills and the thoughtfulness in interface design, along with a deep understanding of how users need to interact with software, that affords them the capability to turn their focus to any software market worthwhile. With this in mind, it is reasonable to assume that whenever PLTR needs a revenue growth and/or share price booster, they can formulate a plan to penetrate a new market and provide that catalyst.Below we highlight PLTR’s true potential TAM with reference to a Gartner estimate. The IT services might be a stretch but they certainly have the ability to fully expand within the $483bn Enterprise Software market. With current TTM revenue a little over $1bn, the current TAM penetration of < 0.3% offers high growth for many years which will help prevent a sharp P/S deceleration and support strong future shareholder returns. And in all likelihood, the P/S will probably expand in the interim before beginning a downward trajectory.Figure 2 - Worldwide IT Spending ForecastsExpanding TAM Fueling Expanding MultipleWith this TAM correlation in mind, it might be interesting for investors to visualize how PLTR’s share price and P/S will respond when management inevitably announce that they’re entering new markets – CRM, Risk Management, Productivity, or whatever it may be. To illustrate this, we’ll review the P/S paths of ServiceNow (NOW) and Workday (WDAY) during the past few years.ServiceNow vs WorkdayComparing the P/S trends of these two stocks in relation to their TAM development is interesting to observe. To observe the changing TAM, we’ve used research giant Gartner’s Magic Quadrant. Here is the Magic Quadrant template for those unfamiliar.Figure 3 - Gartner's Magic Quadrant TemplateSource:gartner.comBack in 2016, in reference to Gartner’s Magic Quadrant, Workday (WDAY) was the outright leader in Human Capital Management (HCM) and ServiceNow (NOW) was the same for IT Services Management (ITSM). Both firms had similar revenue growth and gross, operating, and FCF margins, and also neither were serving any other markets. Therefore, as shown in the following chart, WDAY’s higher P/S appeared to be largely attributed to HCM being a larger market than ITSM. During 2017, according to Gartner’s HCM Magic Quadrant WDAY lost its competitive distance as the space became crowded. During the same period, NOW extended their leadership status in the ITSM Magic Quadrant. As a result, the P/S differential closed and the two stocks were trading at almost identical multiples throughout 2017. Despite the same growth rates in 2018, NOW’s P/S pulled sharply higher than WDAY’s because they expanded TAM by entering into two new markets – Integrated Risk Management and CRM Customer Engagement – whilst WDAY didn’t expand their TAM.Figure 4 - NOW vs WDAY P/S Multiple Journey, Part 1Source: Koyfin chart, Convequity analysisIn early 2019, the P/S differential tightened with WDAY’s multiple climbing partly attributable to expanding into the Cloud Financial Management market; NOW also entered a new market in early 2019. Then in 2020, the difference widened further as a result of NOW expanding into 3 more markets and turning from visionary to leader in the Magic Quadrant for Software Asset Management (SAM) whilst WDAY did not even enter one new market.Figure 5 - Figure 1 - NOW vs WDAY P/S Multiple Journey, Part 2Source: Koyfin chart, Convequity analysisThis is a classic example of how entering new markets raises expectations for growth and long-term profitability, thereby raising multiples and ultimately increasing returns for shareholders. We don’t claim that inclusion into Gartner’s Magic Quadrants were the sole factor at play, however, given that both firms’ growth and margins were similar for most of the period under review, it certainly appears to have had a significant influence.CloudflareCloudflare (NET) offers another good example of how TAM expansion influences a stock’s multiple. NET certainly benefitted from the general COVID-induced WFH dynamic during 2020, however, their new product launches also contributed to multiple expansion in a significant way. NET have moved so fast that Gartner haven’t even had time to update their Magic Quadrants, therefore we shall leave Gartner out of this observation. In just 16 months, NET has tripled their P/S mainly as a result of entering new markets. In January 2020, they entered into a $20bn market by announcing their offerings for Secure Web Gateways and Zero Trust products. In July 2020, they made a big move by making their edge compute Workers platform accessible to all developers; in October 2020 they officially launched their SASE offering; and then in March 2021, they introduced Magic WAN which has kind of created a new market altogether because NET is the first to offer a global private WAN.Figure 6 - NET's P/S JourneySource: Koyfin chart, Convequity analysisThere are plenty of other recent examples in which stocks have expanded multiples thanks to TAM expansion - Zscaler and Twilio to name a couple. An underlying driving factor enabling software companies to enter new markets with relative ease is the growth of cloud computing. The required capex to move into new markets is minimal in comparison to the pre-cloud era because software firms don’t need to purchase and implement more servers. Once an application is developed and ready to be deployed, they can scale it across the elastic supply of AWS, Azure, or GCP servers that provide all the necessary compute, networking, and storage requirements – and ramp-up or decrease capacity according to demand.As we point out in our articleS&P 500 is Undervalued, Tech is in a New Paradigm, cloud computing has altered the software industry’s competitive dynamics. It has radically lowered the entry barriers thereby making many software markets overcrowded - in 2007 there were 115 U.S. software stocks and today there are 284. This isn’t alarming as the numbers suggest because the cloud has opened up many greenfield markets, however, the cloud has ushered in a winner-takes-all dynamic into various markets also. And given the reach enabled by the cloud, the prize for the market winners is larger than it’s ever been before. At Asymmetric Tech Investments we aim to identify these future winners.Multiples & TAM RecapHere is a quick recap:There is evidence that a stock’s P/S is moderately correlated to revenue divided by TAM, or TAM penetration. This may appear obvious to some investors though doing this bit of research has helped us refine how we view a company’s market opportunity and shareholder investment prospects.There are many examples that illustrate how TAM expansion tends to increase stock multiples, or at least play a significant part.Cloud computing has made it easier than ever before for software firms to expand TAM.Taking this into account, the future looks incredibly bright for PLTR’s share price. As and when PLTR enter new markets and expand the company’s TAM, there is a high probability that the share price will climb driven by altering growth expectations. If it can be argued that PLTR’s software is already effectively doing stuff like Software Asset Management, Integrated Risk Management, and CRM, then the TAM should be higher than the current $119bn priced in. And if this is the case, PLTR’s multiple should adjust higher to reflect this in due course. Either way despite the perceived high P/S at present, it will probably persist or even rise from here, and over a longer timeframe we suspect PLTR’s multiple will decelerate at a much slower pace than many other high-growth software stocks.Lastly, not only does PLTR have the core software skills to enter almost any market, they are well and truly cloud-enabled following their partnerships with AWS and IBM. This will accelerate the TAM expansion for sure.What is PLTR Actually Good At?It might be easier to try and answer what they aren’t good at. All the information given in the S-1, the 10-k, and investor presentations, pertaining to what PLTR do can be somewhat overwhelming. At the same time, just labelling them a data analysis company is a gross oversimplification. To help us refine our understanding of PLTR’s scope, below we’ve categorized 4 areas, or pillars, in which we believe lays the foundation for all they do – Data Connectivity, Data, Analysis, Data Governance, and User Interface. We’re probably not alone in inferring that the underpinning to PLTR’s superior advantages is closely associated with these 4 pillars. Each of which appear to be in a transformative stage due to the world delving deeper into an era of hyperconnectivity. Within each category we listed things that PLTR are good at dealing with. By the time we had finished we realized the depth and sheer breadth of what they can do.Figure 7 – The 4 Pillars to PLTR’s Competitive EdgeSource: Convequity analysisAnd the only way we can surmise as to how they are capable of such depth and scope, is that they have the deepest understanding of the core principles of software engineering and have an amazing ability to leverage this to various platforms and technologies. Elon Musk’s advocacy for First Principles thinking springs to mind.Figure 8 - First Principles ThinkingSource:safalniveshak.comIt is these 4 pillars in which PLTR are building their moat around, and this foundation can be leveraged to enter almost any software market. Throw in the network effects within enterprise customers’ organization, across verticals (life sciences, airline industry, etc.), and within PLTR itself, it’s hard to envisage them losing their competitive lead.Recently I spoke to a friend who is an engineer at Rolls Royce who shed some light on how PLTR could help him in his job. Below is what he told me.“When designing a product, a RR engineer will spend ~25% of their time gathering and pre-processing data in order to perform a design study. Typically, the data is created by multiple teams, each working in different systems and supplying the data in different formats by differing means. For example, the stress engineer will supply speeds/temperatures/pressures in the form of an emailed spreadsheet. The aero engineer will supply geometry as a CAD file and a pressure map as a .csv file via a shared drive. The designer will supply geometric information and tolerances as a printed word document. All this data must be extracted and processed into a single format before the designer can do any analysis. Having all this data in one system would massively reduce the time spent processing data and would free up the designer to do the actual engineering.”Foundry would solve his problem by connecting to all the relevant data sources and standardizing the data ready for immediate analysis. The ramp-up in my friend’s productivity would be profound. Generally, it seems as though this type of problem involving data located across disjointed systems and existing in different formats has up until now been the main use case for Foundry. Increasingly, however, we’re hearing cases whereby Foundry has been laid atop an enterprise’s legacy systems and deliver what works like a brand-new IT infrastructure built from the ground up. For example, in the Double Click event, Forward Deploy Engineer, Liam Mawe, explained how a Foundry ERP archetype was installed for one industrial client that already had 25 ERP systems in operation that were largely siloed from each other. After a few hours of configuration, Foundry’s ERP had every single piece of data readily available. Mawe didn’t elaborate, though we presume Foundry’s ERP could carry on working in conjunction with the other ERP systems or work just as well should the client decide to remove them – which is more probable. This incredible flexibility is the key to the seemingly rapid customer acquisition of late – there is no rip and replace required, so the stakes are lower and as a result decision-makers are more willing to give PLTR a try.What’s Not Being Talked AboutFrom what we’ve read about PLTR, there hasn’t been any mention of the fact that they only added 6 customers in FY20 whilst growing revenue by 47%. This is staggering; and achieved by the 41% increase in revenue per customer, as shown in the chart below. When we think about the AWS and IBM cloud partnerships and the various press releases thus far into 2021, they could have tripled the FY20 new customer number in the first quarter alone. Couple that with another >20% increase in per customer revenue, it’s not beyond the realm of possibility for PLTR to grow revenue by 60% this year.Figure 9 - Net New Customer Additions in FY20Source: 10-k, Convequity analysisWe thought we’d have a go at forecasting 1Q21 revenue – which will be released before the market open on Tuesday 11thMay. We began by building up the revenue estimate based on available information such as the press releases thus far in 2021, balance sheet items such as deferred revenue and customer deposits, as well as off-balance sheet deal value which includes remaining performance obligations and contract renewal options. In the 3Q20 investor presentation we noticed the average contract duration was 3.6 years, so we used this to estimate what might come off deferred revenue and customer deposits and be recorded as income statement revenue. To estimate how much deal value might be transferred into revenue for 1Q21, we used a longer duration of 4.6 years. We infer that a small portion of deal value could skip the balance sheet and land straight on the income statement when customers renew their contracts. Of course, this is an oversimplification of how these financial items are linked together so the estimate might be way off. Nonetheless, based on all this, as shown below, we estimate 1Q21 revenue of $259m which, as a reminder, is derived from available information and has not accounted for unknowns. This is a shortfall of $73m versus the $332m consensus estimate. Given all the unknown revenue sources from the AWS and IBM deals and elsewhere, and the general confidence from management, it looks like PLTR are going to blow these forecasts out the water.Figure 10 - 1Q21 Revenue Estimates Based on Available InformationSource: 10-k, Convequity analysisImpressive Underlying EconomicsWe believe the greatest investment catalyst is tied to PLTR’s profitability potential; and this is because of the pervasive doubt of the business model viability at present. Management have heavily focused on contribution margin (that we’ll refer to as CM) in previous investor presentations. As the they presented in the 4Q20 presentation shown below, CM margin has more than doubled from FY19 to FY20. However, this could be skewed due to the low number of customer additions – only 6 in FY20. With this in mind we wanted to dig deeper in understanding how the underlying economics have really improved.Figure 11 - High-Level View of Contribution Margin and Gross MarginSource:4Q20 Investor PresentationManagement have presented the efficiency of the business by grouping customers into 3 phases – Acquire, Expand, and Scale – and in each phase, show how the CM changes within each group. To illustrate, take a look at the figures below, extracted from the S-1 and the 10-k. The customers in the Acquire Phase in FY19 (fiscal year-end 31stDec-21) generated a very negative CM. Those same customers, generated a 17% CM in FY20. The customers in the Expand Phase in FY19 generated -43% CM, and those same customers generated 47% CM in the following year. What’s important to note here, is that the Acquire Phase customers in FY19 will not be the same Acquire Phase customers in FY20 – they will become the Expand Phase customers (or potentially even the Scale Phase customers).Figure 12 - PLTR's Customer PhasesSource: PLTR’s S-1 and FY20 10-kOn the face of it, this looks impressive, but when we think deeper about it, this is what most SaaS/software firms are doing nowadays. The S&M expenditure to bring the customer to a company and the initial deployment and operational costs make the Acquire phase the costliest. At the same time, free trial or preliminary testing periods don’t generate much revenue. So, for any SaaS-type firm, negative CM is the case for the Acquire and the Expand phases and those same customers will become profitable at a later point in the relationship. We think investors are aware of this and this is why there doesn’t seem to be much online discussion about PLTR’s CM. Of course, investors could simply take the higher-level view of overall CM more than doubling in FY20, however, as aforementioned this is potentially skewed because of the few new customers acquired.What can be instantly gleaned from the above CM metrics, is that when the proportion of new customers joining PLTR is small in relation to existing customers the overall CM will be close to the Scale Phase CM. But perhaps that still doesn’t impressive investors enough, because it may take a few years to reach that state.Let’s go back to notion that the Acquire Phase customers in FY19 go on to be the Expand (or even Scale) Phase customers in FY20. This is useful but we wanted to see if we could compare the FY20 Acquire Phase with the FY19 Acquire Phase; and the FY20 Expand Phase with the FY19 Expand Phase; and the same for the Scale Phase. This cannot be derived from the data above. Therefore, we’ve had to dig deeper, scan for more information, and make some educated guesses to piece this together. Because knowing by how much the Expand Phase CM has improved from FY19 to FY20 would be really insightful and we don’t suspect many analysts have tried this so far so there is probably an information edge to be gained over the market.We show the analysis we did on this below, however,it may be easier for readers to access the actual spreadsheetto take a closer look. If you click the link make sure to download the spreadsheet to see all the comment boxes.What interests us the most in the spreadsheet, is the Expand Phase comparisons in FY19 and FY20. The 28% CM highlighted in yellow, under the FY20 Expand Cohort, is what we think the Expand Phase CM must have been in FY20. The equivalent CM in FY19 was -43%. This is a huge like-for-like improvement in the CM and indicates how PLTR has/is radically shortening the deployment phase of their software by utilizing their Apollo SaaS-installation. Personally, we think this is more insightful and meaningful than the overall CM presented which could be skewed, and also versus management’s presentation of the Acquire/Expand/Scale CMs.Figure 13 - Contribution Margin Like-for-Like ComparisonsSource: 10-k, Convequity analysisAnother way to view this is that customers are classified as Expand Phase customers when they’ve exceeded $100k in annualized revenue but CM is negative. If the FY19 Expand Phase CM was -43%, it indicates that the majority of these customers remained negative CM customers throughout FY19. If the FY20 Expand Phase CM is 28%, it indicates that the majority of these customers turned from negative to positive within the same year. Again, in our opinion, this is way more impressive than what PLTR’s management has presented to date.Lastly, in the final section of the spreadsheet, the Total CMs highlighted in gold text are actual and the ones in red are composed of actual and estimated figures. We can see that all the FY19 customers generated a weighted average CM of 23% in FY19, and then those same customers generated 58% CM in FY20. Going into FY21 we forecast that these same FY19 customers will generate 68% in CM. All the FY20 customers generated a CM of 54% in FY20, though had PLTR brought on board more new customers in FY20, the CM would be considerably lower. These same customers are estimated to generate 65% in CM in FY21 and then 75% in FY22.To conclude, PLTR’s current CM of 54% is already high, especially for a high growth software stock, yet it’s likely to move higher. We expect the AWS and IBM partnerships to give PLTR the scale to expand its margins. We think this should erase the doubt that PLTR will be highly profitable. The huge nonrecurring expenses related to the DPO and associated stock-based compensation and other opex categories have contributed to the appearance of an unprofitable business. As these costs normalize and PLTR further leverage Apollo’s SaaS installation/deployment, the CM will continue to rise and PLTR’s margins lower down the income statement will also look attractive.ValuationIn our previous article on PLTR we presented our DCF valuation for PLTR which arrived at a value per share of $47. We still have full faith in this valuation; however, it may take longer than we initially anticipated. And we partly assign this to the misunderstanding of the potential profitability of the stock. Therefore, for this section, we approached the valuation through a different lens. We’ve projected PLTR’s average revenue growth rate through FY25 and used possible P/S multiples in FY25.In the 4Q20 earnings call, management stated that they believe revenue growth will be above 30% each year through to FY25 – quite incredible considering the current TTM revenue of $1.1bn. Knowing this, below we’ve projected some arbitrary growth rates. We know FY20 growth was 47% and based off what management has stated, we’ll put FY25 growth as 30% as a minimum. Therefore, we’ve randomly decelerated from 47% to 30% for each year. The Compounded Annual Growth Rate, or CAGR, of this series of growth rates equals 34%. We shall use this for the valuation exercise.Figure 14 - Estimate for Average Revenue Growth Through FY25Source: Convequity analysisBy using this 34% average revenue growth rate (or CAGR) we calculate revenue will be $4.784bn in FY25/2025. Due to the natural growth expectations decline, we guess that the P/S will be 20x in 2025. ServiceNow’s is currently 20x whilst having TTM revenue of $4,500m, so this is plausible for exceptional companies. These parameters calculate a 2025 market cap of $96bn, a share price of $53.39, and an annualized return of 21%.Figure 15 - 2025 Market Cap ForecastSource: Convequity analysisBelow we show the 2025 share price sensitivity table with the 2025 P/S and the CAGR being the two variables. The probabilities are arbitrary just to express how likely we think the respective P/S metrics are in 2025. The share prices in purple text represent the range of what we think our estimation error is likely to be.Figure 16 - PLTR's 2025 Share Price Sensitivity TableSource: Convequity analysisIf management are correct with their growth prediction, then a P/S toward 30x would be fairer than a <20x P/S. However, even if PLTR only generate an average growth rate of 24% and the P/S is 14x at the end of 2025, at the current share price of ~$20 investors still wouldn’t have lost capital. Indeed, it would have been a disappointing investment, but it wouldn’t have lost money. This sensitivity table shows that, despite PLTR’s high multiple at present, the future returns look very appetizing.The next sensitivity table replaces the share price with the annualized return through to 2025.Figure 17 - PLTR's 2025 Annualized Return Sensitivity TableSource: Convequity analysisIn summary, even at the current high P/S of 34x, we consider it extremely unlikely that investors will lose money investing in PLTR now and holding through to 2025 – simply because of growth projections. Add in the impressive underlying economics, we believe this will prove to be a very good long-term investment.So, given the minimal downside and the attractive upside, PLTR is one of the most favourable reward-to-risk holdings in the Convequity Portfolio.ConclusionPLTR’s stock is going to be driven by a combination of changing TAM expectations, high growth, and impressive profitability in due course. Currently, it looks as though the market is underestimating all of these, so the future looks very bright, indeed.","news_type":1},"isVote":1,"tweetType":1,"viewCount":141,"commentLimit":10,"likeStatus":false,"favoriteStatus":false,"reportStatus":false,"symbols":[],"verified":2,"subType":0,"readableState":1,"langContent":"EN","currentLanguage":"EN","warmUpFlag":false,"orderFlag":false,"shareable":true,"causeOfNotShareable":"","featuresForAnalytics":[],"commentAndTweetFlag":false,"andRepostAutoSelectedFlag":false,"upFlag":false,"length":16,"xxTargetLangEnum":"ORIG"},"commentList":[],"isCommentEnd":true,"isTiger":false,"isWeiXinMini":false,"url":"/m/post/193902563"}
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