Palantir might be the most over-valued firm of all time | Hacker News Reader

Palantir might be the most over-valued firm of all time

economist.com

26 pointsFabHK15 comments

The competition in the space of the most over-valued firms at the moment is very fierce. It's complete insanity and makes absolutely no sense. I know that for now the numbers don't make sense and it's all vibe etc, but at some point it will. Careful there younger folks.

The valuation is based on the unspecified expectation of changes in the law to empower Palantir to come. What kind of valuation would people give the Blackshirts in 1932, or the OGPU/Cheka in 1923?

They are just taking advantage of current administration's policies (ICE) and AI hype.

Their differentiator is gov. contracts (clearance), which is easy to fool - helped by Sam Altman's AI "doom and gloom" warnings to congress.

Look at their competitors and their TAM, all in the red - looks like a short case: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOuBCk8XMC8&t=1769s

https://archive.is/iVL8Q

Didn't Amazon and Tesla had historic P/E ratios above 700?

Could be worse, you could have P/E infinity (I never even heard of this lol).

https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/PI/

Hahaha, that's hilarious. I'm buying!

I'm not even sure how to interpret it, let me know how that works out for ya I did wind up scratching my head over it.

More than a decade ago, I recall Amazon having a P/E of -1400 or something (earnings weee negative).

Amazon has the exceptionalism syndrome whereby they trade short-term dividends and profits for reinvestment into expansion that they claim they can dial up and down to ensure minimum profitability with maximum growth. They want to be a real Tyrell Corporation, but they might discover the same fate instead.

Tesla yes (it's still crazy high, getting close to Palantir), Amazon case was different. Amazon maintained its earnings very low for a very long time, since it was using all the money to strenghten the business, build AWS and kill the competition.

Had the same thought, but look at Price to Sales (Revenue) ratio. Huge difference between Palantir and both Tesla/Amazon at their respective peak P/E ratio. If you're betting on growth, then P/S ratio is a really useful metric and even by that standard PLTR is way overvalued.

Peak P/S Ratios: PLTR (150 now): https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/PLTR/palantir-tech... TSLA (23, in 2020): https://macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/TSLA/tesla/price-sales AMZN (4, in 2018): https://macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/AMZN/amazon/price-sale...

idk, feels like getting in the good graces of oppressive regimes is a good way to ensure value is protected. Evil value, but the dollar doesn't come with an alignment chart.

It reminds me of the early-2010s SaaS wave. Back then, you could argue Salesforce or ServiceNow had huge TAMs and defensible positions, but the best entry points were when their multiples compressed and execution caught up to expectations, not when valuation implied flawless performance. At those heights, any hiccup, a missed quarter, a competitor with a better AI story, or a shift in procurement priorities, can rerate the stock brutally.

From the tech side, I’d be curious how much of Palantir’s AI-driven growth is tied to custom, high-touch deployments vs. something that scales like a true product. If a lot of revenue still depends on specialized integration work, sustaining that 40%+ clip at their current size gets trickier.

I invested in Lockeed Martin a few years back thinking that defense will be a bigger deal going forward in the current uncertain geopolitical situation. Looks like I should've picked Palantir instead, which is not only defense but also AI.

I don't think so.

It will be a global uhh watch company

Reply on news.ycombinator.com