Palantir High Expectations Profit Earnings

(CSA Archive/Getty Images)

Ahead of Palantir earnings today, expectations are high

It’s up 450% over the past 12 months and is the top S&P 500 stock in 2025.

5/5/25 11:35AM

Data, defense, and AI software company Palantir is due to report results after the close of trading Monday, with the expectations priced into the shares — they’re flirting with record highs — implying a rock ’n’ roll result.

And for good reason. The company qualifies as both a Trump trade and an AI beneficiary, nestling it in the sweet spot between two of the market’s favorite stories of the year.

It’s also a favorite of retail traders, for whom such narratives can sometimes be more compelling that the dry realities of profits, losses, and valuation metrics. Its performance doesn’t hurt either, as the stock has trounced not only the index, but several of the hottest stocks among speculative traders like Nvidia, Amazon, and Tesla.

For the record, the Street expects the second-straight quarter of top-line (or revenue) growth of 36%, compared to the same quarter last year.

The forecast for non-GAAP earnings per share of $0.13 would represent an increase of 60% in profits.

The market will also be closely watching the company’s ability to keep diversifying its business away from its single largest customer — the US federal government — and continue the momentum it’s seen in its software business selling corporations a secure approach to mapping their communications networks and connecting them to AI engines.

There will also be interest in whether the Trump administration’s efforts to rip up the federal bureaucracy have any implications for Palantir, after reports of plans to axe defense spending hammered the shares at times over the last few months. (Such plans seem to have gone out the window for now.)

An update to Palantir’s guidance for the rest of 2025 will be a major focus. Last quarter, the company announced full-year guidance on sales of $3.75 billion, besting the $3.50 billion analysts had penciled in.

That was likely part of the reason the shares went parabolic in the after-hours trading session on February 3, when Palantir last reported.

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AI server cluster maker Penguin Solutions takes flight

Small-cap AI server cluster maker Penguin Solutions surged Thursday after posting better-than-expected Q2 revenue and profit numbers Wednesday after the close, along with an increase in full-year sales and profit guidance.

The company, which was known as Smart Global Holdings until July 2024, has positioned itself as a provider of “end-to-end AI infrastructure solutions.”

Its Advanced Computing division designs and sells computers, cabling, and cooling systems, the server racks and clusters of racks AI data centers need. Its other main division sells flash and DRAM memory products.

It’s a pretty small company, with a fully diluted market cap of just over $1 billion and roughly 2,900 employees, according to FactSet.

The stock is volatile. Penguin dove during last year’s tariff tantrum that followed “Liberation Day” in April. Then it turned tail and doubled through early October amid a surge of call options activity, which tends to reflect retail interest. From the October peak, it then plunged by about 50%, before Thursday’s renaissance.

For what it’s worth, call options activity in Penguin is pretty busy today, too — relatively speaking — with roughly 2,625 traded as of 1:15 p.m. ET. That’s the most since early January, when the company last reported quarterly numbers. The average volume over the previous 25 trading sessions is about 325 calls a day, FactSet data shows.

Penguin Solutions Stock Takes Off On AI Bolstered Outlook

The company, which was known as Smart Global Holdings until July 2024, has positioned itself as a provider of “end-to-end AI infrastructure solutions.”

It’s a pretty small company, with a fully diluted market cap of just over $1 billion and roughly 2,900 employees, according to FactSet.

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Momentum returns to optics stocks as the release valve for AI optimism

Potentially imminent end to the war? Buy optics stocks.

Maybe not? Buy optics stocks anyway.

Effectively all the juice left in the AI trade is coming from optics (and memory) stocks. And the latter group is taking a bit of a breather today while the former continues to surge.

Shares of Ciena Corp., Lumentum, and Coherent are building on recent big gains and among the biggest gainers in the S&P 500 near midday, while Applied Optoelectronics is also surging on Thursday.

These companies all provide solutions that help information move around in data centers, and thus are key beneficiaries of the aggressive capex plans of hyperscalers. Nvidia has invested $2 billion apiece in Coherent and Lumentum in deals that also include purchase commitments.

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Space stocks rip during a topsy-turvy day for the equity market

Satellite-services-from-space stocks surged Thursday after reports that Amazon is in talks to buy Globalstar, which provides voice and connectivity services from its satellite network. It also can’t hurt that the general mood around space is ebullient, following the successful launch of Artemis II on Thursday.

Planet Labs and ViaSat also soared on the news.

The gains for EchoStar — seen as a backdoor play at pre-IPO SpaceX exposure — and Rocket Lab were more muted, perhaps because a deep-pocketed competitor like Jeff Bezos getting serious about space services could complicate the plans of the two largest commercial space launch companies.

Rocket Lab and SpaceX see launch services as key to their aspirations of being major providers of voice and data services from low-Earth orbit satellites.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s SpaceX is the dominant provider of such services, and the early rumors on the company’s planned IPO — expected to be the largest ever — suggest the market is very excited about the prospects for the industry.

Elsewhere in the space stock world, Intuitive Machines — a maker of space infrastructure that provides services to NASA for lunar missions — also rose.

Globalstar surges after FT reports that Amazon is in talks to buy the satellite group

Rocket Lab and SpaceX see launch services as key to their aspirations of being major providers of voice and data services from low-Earth orbit satellites.

Elsewhere in the space stock world, Intuitive Machines — a maker of space infrastructure that provides services to NASA for lunar missions — also rose.

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