What happened

Shares of defense contractor and intelligence software specialist Palantir Technologies (PLTR 3.19%) are tumbling today, down by 11.2% as of 11:10 a.m. ET, after the company reported mixed earnings results this morning.

Sales for Palantir's Q3 2022 came in ahead of estimates at $478 million (Wall Street only expected $470.3 million), but earnings missed by the proverbial penny. Instead of the Street's hoped-for $0.02 per share, Palantir earned only $0.01 per share -- and even that was on an adjusted basis.  

So what

When calculated according to generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP), you see, Palantir's losses actually amounted to $0.06 per share, and widened versus the year-ago period. Yet despite the loss, not all the news was bad.

Revenue, after all, did beat expectations -- and revenue growth was simply gangbusters. Sales increased 22% year over year, with U.S. revenue up 31%. Palantir's greatest strength was U.S. commercial customers, with sales in that unit soaring 53%. U.S. government revenue growth was 23%.

Now what

What's most curious to me, though, is that each of those figures -- 23% U.S. government growth, 53% U.S. commercial growth, and 31% overall U.S. growth -- are bigger numbers than Palantir's 22% total revenue growth. So while Palantir didn't emphasize the fact, it stands to reason that if the only numbers the company highlighted were bigger than total sales growth, then growth may be lagging somewhere else -- perhaps outside the United States, among foreign commercial and government customers. Or perhaps revenue growth ex-U.S. was only subdued because of unfavorable currency exchange rates.

Either way, that's probably something to keep an eye on going forward.

Speaking of which, going forward, Palantir told investors they can expect to see the company generate revenue of about $504 million in Q4, which implies growth of 16%, and total revenue for the year of $1.9 billion (good for 23% growth). Both of those numbers are ahead of analyst estimates, by the way, but that fact doesn't seem to be helping out Palantir stock very much today.