Palantir jumps 11% to a record after announcing move to Nasdaq

Palantir shares continued their torrid run on Friday, rising 11% to a record, after the developer of software for the military announced plans to transfer its listing to Nasdaq from the New York Stock Exchange.

The stock jumped past $65.77 at the close, lifting the company’s market capitalization to $150 billion. Shares are now up more than 45% since Palantir’s better-than-expected earnings report last week and have nearly quadrupled in value this year.

Palantir said late Thursday that it expects to begin trading on Nasdaq on Nov. 26 under its existing ticker symbol “PLTR.” While changing listing sites doesn’t change a company’s fundamentals, board member Alexander Moore, a partner at venture firm 8VC, suggested in a posts on social media X that the move could be a win for retail investors because “it will force” billions of dollars in purchases of exchange-traded funds.

“All we do is reward and support our retail diamond traders who follow,” Moore wrote, referring to a term popularized in the crypto community for long-term believers.

Moore appears to have subsequently deleted his X account. His company, 8VC, did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.

Last Monday after the market closed, Palantir reported third-quarter earnings and revenue that topped estimates and issued a fourth-quarter forecast that was also ahead of Wall Street expectations. CEO Alex Karp wrote in the earnings release that the company “absolutely gutted this quarter,” driven by demand for artificial intelligence technologies.

US government revenue rose 40% from a year earlier to $320 million, while US commercial revenue rose 54% to $179 million. On the earnings call, the company highlighted a five-year contract to expand its Maven technology across the US military. Palantir established The stomach in 2017 to provide AI tools to the Department of Defense.

The post-earnings rally coincides with the period following last week’s presidential election. Palantir is seen as a potential recipient given the company’s ties to the Trump camp. Co-founder and chairman Peter Thiel was a big booster of Donald Trump’s first victorious campaign, although he had a public spat with Trump in the years that followed.

When asked in June about his stance on the 2024 election, Thiel said, “If you put a gun to my head, I’ll vote for Trump.”

Thiel’s Palantir holdings have increased in value by about $3 billion since the earnings report and $2 billion since the election.

In September, S&P Global announced that Palantir would join the S&P 500 stock index.

Analysts at Argus Research say the rally has pushed the stock too high given current economic and growth forecasts. The analysts still have a long-term buy rating on the stock and said in a report last week that the company had a “stellar” quarter, but they downgraded their 12-month recommendation to a hold.

The stock “may be getting ahead of what the company’s fundamentals can support,” the analysts wrote.