The sale comes as a Morgan Stanley analyst cautioned that Palantir is “trading too far ahead” of its intrinsic value as it looks to take advantage of the generative AI boom.
Dive Brief:
- Palantir Technologies CFO David Glazer recently sold 96,273 shares of the company’s common stock, representing an aggregate market value of approximately $7.2 million, according to a recent securities filing.
- The sale, coinciding with those by other company directors and executives, comes amid debate over Palantir’s stock price, with analysts from Morgan Stanley led by Sanjit Singh giving the shares an underweight rating and flagging potential setbacks for the company in 2025.
- Palantir is well-positioned to benefit from the surge of investment into generative artificial intelligence, but “while we acknowledge this positive inflection and are looking for ways to become more constructive on [the] shares, the lack of visibility on material estimate revisions leaves Palantir trading too far ahead of the company’s intrinsic value to justify a rating upgrade,” Singh and his team said in their note, according to a recent report by The Street.
Dive Insight:
The sale still leaves Glazer, an 11 year-veteran of the Denver, Colorado-based data analytics firm, as an ample stockholder, according to the Jan. 2 filing. Glazer has served as the company’s finance chief since July 2020, just prior to the company’s initial public offering that September, according to his LinkedIn profile. Before joining Palantir, he served as a corporate securities attorney for Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati.
In 2020, the finance chief received a pre-listing stock grant of 4,030,000 shares of Class A common stock, according to the company’s proxy statement for the year filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, back-loaded with a higher percentage set to vest in 2023. Glazer did not receive stock in 2023, with his total compensation for the year reaching $474,755, according to the company’s latest proxy statement. As of Dec. 31, 2023, Glazer’s number of shares acquired upon vesting reached 1,504,760, with a value realized upon vesting of approximately $21 million, according to the company’s latest proxy.
Source: https://www.cfodive.com/news/palantir-cfo-sells-stock-amid-valuation-dip/736701/
