If you've considered investing in the software-as-a-service trend, you've likely come across Palantir Technologies (PLTR -1.95%). In this segment of Backstage Pass, recorded on Nov. 1, Fool.com contributors Danny Vena, Toby Bordelon, and Jose Najarro discuss the newly public stock and its long-term investment runway.
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Danny Vena: Palantir is a company that I personally I'm invested in. I invested in the company within the first couple of quarters after it went public last year and I think it's one that's worth a look out. It's not going to be everybody's cup of tea. Particularly since it has so many contracts that are with defense agencies. But on the other hand, I think it's quickly building out its enterprise level business and think it certainly deserves a look. What do you guys think?
Toby Bordelon: Interesting company, Danny. What's the most important part of that business, right? Is it just the government stuff, or is it the enterprise stuff? Because I think for me, I think the government's stuff is the coolest part. You talked about stopping terrorist attacks, but we're also raising some privacy concerns potentially. But I wonder how much upside there is because it's not like the U.S. is going to look favorably upon them just offering it to any government in the world who wants it, you know what I mean?
Vena: Oh, you're absolutely right and that's the reason that they do not because a lot of the data that they deal with is sensitive, also because they deal with the FBI, the CIA, the Department of Homeland Security and because they have access to those databases, they will not do business with any country that is not a direct ally of the United States.
They're not going to use that particular platform for any other governments other than those that essentially are approved by the U.S. government. On the other hand, I think the big opportunity and I think the biggest opportunity is the fact that they are able to use this artificial intelligence to gather data from these various siloed databases within a company. Companies have a lot of data.
They have mountains and volumes of data, but they don't really know what to do with it and they don't know what the data tells them and that's where this platform comes in is it can draw from millions of data points. It can infer certain things, and it can draw certain conclusions that you might not even think about that might not be apparent.
They might be able to draw a conclusion and say, this particular product line that you're not really focusing on, based on these customer metrics, you should really be focusing on this because that could make you a lot more money because it has greater margins and also there's more demand coming up for that.
Things of that nature. I think the focus for Palantir going forward, I think the government business is going to be the bread and butter right now. But I think the future, essentially, the big future opportunity is going to be in the enterprise space.
Bordelon: You can certainly see, I'm going to call it, the attraction for big conglomerates who have a lot of different businesses and may have their data kind of I could say siloed away like a secret source feed. We can take all of that no matter where it is and give you a holistic picture for senior management. It could aid decision-making at the level of like those big companies or the companies where you have these kind of units to operate independently. Help with capital allocation stuff that sort of thing at the high level. Very intriguing.
Vena: Again, I think it's certainly worth a look. Any thoughts, Jose?
Jose Najarro: Yes, Palantir in my book is one that kind of hits all the green marks for me in forms of like innovation and future optionality of where that market can go. But for some reason, I just haven't taken the time to sit down and really look through it. But some of the investors that I read or talk to always, discuss Palantir for me. Maybe one of these days I'll finally take a few hours and read a little bit more about it.
