Palantir Technologies, Inc. (NYSE:PLTR) reported Monday after market close second-quarter results that came in line and issued upbeat guidance.

The Palantir Analyst: Wedbush’s Daniel Ives, who recently initiated the stock, maintained an Outperform rating and $25 price target.

The Palantir Thesis: Palantir bulls will likely focus on the positive commentary around AIP, the company’s artificial intelligence platform, launched 10 weeks ago, said Ives in a note. The AIP was front and center of the quarterly results and overall customer count rose about 38% year-over-year, the analyst said.

Ives sees the 35% growth in U.S. commercial customer count to 161 as a large step forward to the company’s expansion in the space.

The revenue beat was made possible due to strength in its government business, the analyst said, adding that the commercial segment was also gaining traction. The company recorded its third consecutive year of GAAP profitability and adjusted free cash flow came in at $96 million, well above the Street estimate of $68.6 million, he added.

The analyst also noted that the company raised the mid-point of full-year revenue guidance, calling for top-line excess of $2.212 billion, compared to the previous outlook of $2.185 billion to $2.235 billion. It also raised the operating income guidance from $506 million-$556 million to $576 million.

See Also: Best Artificial Intelligence Stocks

With AIP “a star is born,” Ives said. CEO Alex Karp’s letter to sharehZenger News suggests the platform is seeing the strongest demand in the past 20 years, the analyst said.

He also noted that the company is engaging with 300+ enterprises to deploy AIP, all “searching for an efficient and secure solution to adapt the latest LLMs for use on internal systems and proprietary data.”

“With a raise in FY23 guidance, a significant increase in customer count, strong performance, and the AI arms race well underway, we continue to believe Palantir is the gold standard in AI,” Ives said.

Palantir Price Action: Palantir rose 2.61% in Monday’s after-hours session to $18.46, according to Zenger News Pro data.

Photo by Spyro the Dragon on Shutterstock

Latest Ratings for PLTR

Date

Firm

Action

From

To

Mar 2022

Piper Sandler

Initiates Coverage On

Overweight

Mar 2022

Morgan Stanley

Upgrades

Underweight

Equal-Weight

Feb 2022

Citigroup

Maintains

Sell

Produced in association with Benzinga

Fighting game tournament EVO 2023 took place Aug. 4-6 at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center in Las Vegas.

EVO, or Evolution Championship Series, started as Battle by the Bay in 1996 with Super Street Fighter II Turbo and Street Fighter Alpha 2.

The event became EVO in 2002 and has since grown, with more than 4,000 participants in the 2022 Las Vegas event. The contest is organized by EVO Community, a collective effort within the fighting game community.

This year’s tournament came with exciting game announcements for the fighting game community. As per IGN, some notable reveals included:

• Capcom ADR’s (OTC: CCOEY) Street Fighter 6 will have a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles crossover on Aug. 8, featuring TMNT gear, emotes, titles, stamps and costumes for the Street Fighter characters.
• A.K.I., a “maniacal poison aficionado,” was teased as the next DLC character for Street Fighter 6, with a confirmed release window in Autumn 2023.
• Warner Bros. Discovery Inc’s (NASDAQ: WBD) Mortal Kombat 1 added new fighters Reptile, Ashrah, Havik and Sareena to its roster, with a release date set for Sept. 19, 2023.
• Bandai Namco Holdings Inc’s (OTC: NCBDY) Tekken 8 confirmed the return of Raven and introduced a new character, Azucena, the Peruvian coffee queen.
• SNK Corporation announced Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves, the first new Fatal Fury game since 1999, but with limited details and no release date.
• Guilty Gear Strive’s third season was detailed, with Jellyfish Pirates captain Johnny joining as a DLC fighter on Aug. 24.
• Project L, Tencent Holdings ADR’s (OTC: TCEHY) Riot Games’ fighting game based on League of Legends, revealed Yasuo as its fourth character, showcasing his mastery of sword and wind manipulation.
• Paramount Global’s (NASDAQ: PARAA) Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl 2 revealed Plankton from SpongeBob SquarePants as a new character, equipped with a mech suit and ketchup-based attacks.

Produced in association with Benzinga

A Tesla, Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA) bull reiterated his view that the company should be valued more like a tech company than as an automaker and said the 2024 consensus estimates for the electric vehicle pioneer are notably low.

What Happened: Tesla could soon overtake revenues of legacy automakers Ford Motor Co. (NYSE:F) and General Motors Corp. (NYSE:GM), said Future Fund’s Gary Black.

Wall Street expects Tesla’s revenue to grow by 24% per year between 2023 and 2027, the fund manager noted. Ford and General Motors will likely to see 2% and 4% revenue growth per year for the same time frame, he said.

Tesla’s top line will steamroll past Ford by 2026 and GM by 2027, the analyst said.

Black also said Tesla, with its 24% expected revenue growth and 28% expected earnings growth, should be valued more like a tech company rather than an auto company.

“Future expected growth rates drive P/Es – not the category in which one competes,” he added.

Street Numbers Fall Short: Tesla is having a number of growth drivers in the near term, Black said. The company is prepping for the launch of the next-gen “Highland” Model 3 over the next few weeks, he said.

In anticipation of the launch, the company has pushed back all Model 3 delivery timelines in Europe to the fourth quarter, with Model 3 Performance deliveries extended to Jan. 2024, he added.

Black noted that the refreshed Model-3 is rumored to resemble a small Model S. “Between refreshed M-3, Cytruck launch, FSD Alpha V12 L4 autonomy, and new $7,500 instant EV rebate, starting 1/1/2024, TSLA 2024 Street volume growth remains way low,” he said.

The fund manager expects Tesla’s 2024 volume growth to be 53%, nearly double the Street’s growth estimate of 27%. He also said he expects 2024 earnings per share of $5.40, well above the consensus of $4.70.

Tesla ended Friday’s session down 2.11% at $253.86, according to Zenger News Pro data. Since the company’s second-quarter earnings report on July 19, the stock has shed about 13%.

Produced in association with Benzinga