Wall Street says buy. Palantir founders sell
Goldman Sachs raised its target to $230, the stock is a few dollars below its record, and the company is growing 93%. Yet only one side has bet its own money on it this year. Who's actually on the other side?
Key points
Goldman Sachs raised its target to $230 in the same week a document with the opposite message hit the SEC.
Founders and executives have sold over $400 million in stock this year, bought zero.
A company with $9.2 billion in cash canceled a billion-dollar buyback after spending just $75 million.
Three weeks after telling investors to "get off the sidelines," Alex Karp sold $86 million in stock.
In Form 4, there's one letter that hasn't appeared for Palantir even once this year.
Two signals on the same day
This week looked like a dream come true for $PLTR shareholders. On Monday, October 6, the S&P 500 and Nasdaq both closed at record highs, and on Wednesday morning came the Goldman Sachs upgrade bulls had been waiting a year for: analyst Gabriela Borges raised her rating from Neutral to Buy with a $230 price target. The stock closed Tuesday at $194.12 and added about 2.5% in premarket to $199. It's only a few dollars from its all-time high of $207.52.
That same week, another document arrived at the SEC that almost no one noticed. Board member Lauren Friedman Stat sold 1,337 shares on October 1 at $189.95. A trifle, a quarter of a million dollars. But it's her third sale in three months: in August at $165, in September at $182.50, now at almost $190. Each time a bit higher.
And here begins the question that matters more for your portfolio than any analyst target. Goldman Sachs and Palantir's leadership look at the same numbers. One side recommends what you should do with your money. The other decides about their own. And those two answers haven't met once this year.