Palantir beats Q4 earnings and sales expectations, stock surges
The numbers are in.
Defense, intelligence, and AI software giant Palantir Technologies reported Q4 numbers that blew past expectations after the close of trading on Monday.
The company, which exploded as a favorite of retail traders in 2024, reported:
Adjusted earnings per share of $0.25 vs. Wall Street expectations for $0.23.
Sales of $1.41 billion vs. an expected $1.34 billion, per FactSet data.
Q4 2025 sales growth of 70% year over year vs. a 62% Wall Street expectation.
Looking forward, Palantir forecast:
Q1 2026 revenue in the range of $1.532 billion to $1.536 billion, vs. Wall Street expectations for $1.33 billion.
Full-year 2026 revenue in the range of $7.182 billion to $7.198 billion, vs. Wall Street expectations for $6.30 billion.
Q1 2026 adjusted operating income between $870 million to $874 million, vs. an expectation for $641 million.
Full-year 2026 adjusted operating income between $4.126 billion and $4.142 billion, vs. expectations for $3.14 billion, according to FactSet.
On the company’s earnings call with analysts, Alex Karp — Palantir’s bombastic CEO — called the Q4 results “one of the truly iconic performances in the history of corporate performance.”
Palantir shares jumped in aftermarket trading following the results.
That’s something of a shift, as Palantir seemed to have lost some of its cachet among retail investors in recent months, even as its operational performance has been increasingly impressive.
Just a few months back, the company’s fairly stellar Q3 numbers were received with a Bronx cheer from traders who dumped the stock in the days after the print. It remains down roughly 25% from the all-time high it hit back in early November, a period over which the major indexes were more or less flat.
That’s no skin off the noses of long-time holders. Over the last three years, Palantir is still up 1,500% or so.
On the other hand, that remarkable run-up essentially means that lots of gob-smackingly good quarterly results have already been priced into the shares.
And with new retail darlings like Sandisk — it’s more than tripled since Palantir’s slump set in — offering short-term traders the prospect of making fast money, it might take more than strong, but priced-in, profits to reinvigorate retail interest. But by the look of the market reaction, Palantir’s numbers are raising retail eyebrows once again.
