TIP841: Palantir – Palantir is Cheaper than I Thought! w/ Daniel Mahncke & Shawn O’Malley

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
You're listening to TIP.

**Daniel Mahncke** (0:03)
Welcome back to The Investor's Podcast, episode 841 And the last time the two of us talked, we discussed our biggest winners and our biggest losers out of all the companies that we pitched in the last one and a half years. And I thought that was a lot of fun.

**Shawn O'Malley** (0:19)
It was a nice change of pace, but today we're getting back to what we do best, and that's flipping over more rocks, looking for opportunities. And you've got a stock pick today that listeners will probably have very mixed opinions about, and there's others who have heard a lot about it, but I'm guessing really are going to be excited to better understand what the business is all about.

**Daniel Mahncke** (0:39)
It is a divisive company, I would say, but also a very popular company, especially in the investment circles. And I know you and Kyle looked at SpaceX not too long ago, and surprise, surprise, that company is far away from being a value play and therefore not the type of company that we want to invest in. And I thought it might be the same for today's pitch, which maybe we should say it is Palantir. And please don't get me wrong, Palantir is not a value play. But when I started my research, I did it thinking in the back of my mind, at least, I might need to abort and look for another company because there's just no sense in pitching it. But that wasn't the case. I actually found myself pretty excited about the opportunity. Just a year ago, Palantir traded at twice the multiple with half the growth rate and that has completely shifted now. And again, that doesn't make it a value play. But, for everyone who loves high quality companies, as most of us do, and is a generally curious person, I think you should listen to this. I think you will be positively surprised by today's pitch.

**Shawn O'Malley** (1:35)
Maybe I'll be one of them. Just like you, I never looked at Palantir. I think it was way too expensive anyway. But if you're intrigued by it, then I'm ready to get into it.

**SPEAKER_1** (1:45)
Since 2014, with more than 200 million downloads, we have interviewed the world's best investors, studied deeply the principles of value investing and uncovered many compelling investment opportunities. We focus on understanding businesses and intrinsic value, investing accordingly and sharing everything we learn with you.
This show is not investment advice. It's intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. All opinions expressed by hosts and guests are solely their own, and they may have investments in the securities discussed. Now for your hosts, Shawn O'Malley and Daniel Mahncke.

**Shawn O'Malley** (2:31)
All right. So where do you want to start? Personally, I think I could use a brief explanation of what exactly Palantir does. I can't really say I have a good idea of what they do. It's a very enigmatic company.

**Daniel Mahncke** (2:41)
Yeah. Before looking at this for the episode, I honestly didn't really know either, but it's quite fascinating. So to give a first quick example, let's imagine any large organization, right? It could be an airline, it could be a hospital, it could be a car manufacturer or the army, which is actually a big client, but it could be anything else too. So there's always a lot of information in all of these organizations, right? But it's scattered across dozens of separate systems and departments that barely ever talk to each other, at least not efficiently. And I certainly can say that's the case in Germany, but I think it's also the case in the US. So let's just stick with the example of an airline for now. Assume you have an airplane that runs into technical problems in, let's say, you know, Frankfurt airport, which likely happens again in two weeks' time when I'm on my way to our intrinsic value conference in New York City. That's traditionally how it works with my travel. But then the question for the airport is, what happens now? Well, the maintenance team would know which part has failed and how long the repair would take. A different system would then know, you know, what's about the crew and how many duty hours have they left. A third one, which would know what passengers are on board. Then a fourth would know which of those passengers have connecting flights that they need to get and a fifth one would know what those replacement seats are worth. So you basically have five different systems and teams that need to communicate and coordinate and the way this is actually still getting resolved today in 2026 is by just phone calling each other.