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This blog post is a practical application of the ultimate guide that we have created on how to to analyze a stock, which can also be downloaded as a free eBook.
If you have not read the guide yet, you should do so, but since in the world of investing practice is much more important than theory, we wanted to take it a step further and show you how to apply the knowledge from the guide in practice.
After all, you can’t learn to swim by just reading about swimming.
We decided to take two technology stocks (outside of the FAANG scope – Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix Google), and analyze them using exactly the same methodology presented in the guide.
We’ll go through how to gather information and then analyze the selected stocks through four main aspects:
Please note that this article was last updated in June 2022. The numbers might have changed if you read this article at a later date, however, you can still follow the same process of analysis (and improve it according to your own research style) using the latest data and different stocks of your choice.
As you might imagine, this content is not investment advice, but rather just an educational article about how to gather information and read financial statements. It is also not an invitation to buy or sell any financial instrument mentioned in the content.
The first step when analyzing a stock is to gather all the intel in one place. Searching for the right documents, arranging them and separating the wheat from the chaff can take quite a lot of time.
For our research purposes, we sought information on the following sites:
We haven’t included all the resources and screenshots here in this blog post, otherwise this already long article would be even longer. So, if you would like to browse more interesting resources for investors, please check out our article: The 100 best websites for investors.
You must be eager to know which two stocks we have chosen so, here they are:
Why have we chosen these two stocks? As you’ve probably heard, data is the new oil. These two companies are providing the infrastructure for data to be stored and processed.
As the saying goes: ”During a gold rush, sell the shovels”, something that these two companies have taken to heart and which gives them a very bright future.
Both companies are competitors in terms of AI-fueled data warehousing tools (they both create software tools that allow enterprises to derive data-driven insights) but have a different approach to the challenge.
Both stocks can be considered growth stocks, since their revenues are increasing fast, but on the other hand, both companies are still not profitable (based on the annual data for 2021).
At the moment of writing this blog post, tech stocks have suffered a huge hit, which provides an additional argument as to why Snowflake and Palantir might be a good buy.
Understanding the business is about knowing what you are investing in, not only from a security perspective (for more, read our article on the different types of investments), but in terms of actually understanding the business; namely how they create value from shareholders.
In the scope of understanding the business, it makes sense to analyze the following factors:
If you would like to learn more about the factors listed above, please refer to our ultimate guide on How to analyze a stock.
Every company is becoming not only a software company, but also a data company. Data is the new oil. To extract value from big data you need Data Warehousing Tools.
These tools are used to perform various operations on a large volume of data, such as collecting, reading, writing, and migrating large amounts of data from different sources.
The global data warehousing market size was valued at $21.18 billion in 2019, and is projected to reach $51.18 billion by 2028, growing at a CAGR of 10.7%. Nevertheless, the market is already crowded, and companies need a real competitive advantage (“moat”) to dominate the market. Below is a good overview of the whole market:
Source: Matt Truck
Palantir and Snowflake are both considered Data Warehousing Tools. They offer unique methods for interacting with large, non-relational data sets. While Palantir uses private operating system models (a specialized solution), Snowflake offers a more conventional, cloud-based warehousing approach (a general solution).
If you are not a tech person, here’s a nice description from Reddit of the difference between the products (source):
A company [Snowflake] has lots of data in different departments. This company has analysts and other users that work with that data. Instead of having to buy servers and software to store, access, and analyze data, the company can just use Snowflake as a data warehouse service which also has some analytical capabilities.
Palantir doesn’t really serve to provide generalized cloud data storage, compute, or access. Palantir’s goal is to gather data (much more broadly than Snowflake from almost any source) in order to help to make relationships between the data to come to a decision/conclusion (much more deeply than Snowflake).
Palantir software could be used to analyze data on Snowflake (plus any data source missed by Snowflake), but Snowflake would not/could not be useful on Palantir.
Now let’s take a closer look at the websites of both companies.
Source: Snowflake
Snowflake is a cloud-based data warehouse company. Snowflake provides data cloud platforms for customers in data engineering, data lake, data warehousing, data science, data applications, and data storage solutions that are entirely separate from other non-relational data technologies.
With Snowflake, organizations can use a large number of third-party integrations and programming languages to analyze and control their data.
Their IPO was one of the biggest in history, raising $3,4B. They have more than 5.000 customers and around 30 % of Fortune 500 companies use their product. Snowflake has become invaluable in the data and cloud-computing market.
For more information, please make sure to read the company’s 10K and 10Q.
Source: TradingView
We’ll look closely at their financial performance later, but at this point we just want to get a general overview of the business. As you can see above, the market capitalization of Snowflake is $43B, they have almost 4.000 employees, and they are making a loss of $680m, with $1,2B in revenue.
Source: TradingView
What’s more interesting is that the SNOW stock price collapsed with all tech/growth stocks in the past few months, going from an all time high of $405 to $112 and now trading around $113. The stock is almost 4-times cheaper than it was less than a year ago, the 1-year change being – 53 %. That’s the first signal that the stock might be a good buy, assuming that the underlying business is sound.
Source: Palantir
Palantir was founded in 2002 by Peter Thiel, founder and former chief executive officer of Paypal, who is sometimes referred to as the “don” of the PayPal Mafia. Palantir began as a company that worked for government institutions, with the specific goal of preventing terrorism.
In general, Palantir’s product is software that aggregates data from different sources to perform data analytics by applying advanced machine algorithms. Their mission is to provide software to empower organizations to effectively integrate their data, decisions, and operations at scale. Their product performs integration, analysis and visualization of data.
They offer three platforms on the market:
It’s also worth mentioning from their 10K 2021 report that out of the $1.5 billion in revenue that was generated in 2021, 58% came from customers in the governmental sector, and 42% came from customers in the commercial sector. 57% of Palantir’s revenue was earned from customers in the United States, and 43% from those abroad.
With Palantir Foundry, the company plans to expand to mass market, since their growth was limited through targeting only niche markets. By expanding into the general market, Palantir will likely have to pay the price of sacrificing an important part of its competitive advantage to compete in a crowded market and achieve scale in the commercial market.
For more information, please make sure to read the company’s 10K and 10Q.
Source: Tradingview
Palantir’s market capitalization is $18.8B, they have around 2.900 employees and are making a loss of $520m with $1,54B in revenue. They have higher revenue than Snowflake, smaller losses, and fewer employees. They were founded in 2003 and are still not profitable. Their market capitalization is much lower than that one of Snowflake.
Source: TradingView
The stock price of Palantir also basically collapsed. It went from $29.29 to $6.44 in 52-week range and now trades around $7.9. The stock is almost 3-times cheaper as it was less than a year ago, and the 1-year change is – 68 %.
In USD | Snowflake | Palantir |
Market Cap | 43 B | 18.7 B |
Enterprise value | 50 B | 25.6 B |
Revenue | 1.2 B | 1.5 B |
Profit | – 680 m | – 520 m |
Number of employees | 3.992 | 2.920 |
Number of customers | 5.000 + | 200 + |
Stock price | $113 (drop from $405) | $8 (drop from $29) |
Founded | 2012 | 2003 |
Business model | Pure SaaS | Transition to SaaS |
If we compare both companies, Snowflake’s market capitalization is almost twice as big. The Enterprise value, I.e., how much money would be needed to buy the whole company and pay off all its debt (market cap + debt – cash and cash equivalents) of Snowflake is also twice as much as Palantir’s.
The main reasons for such a difference in market capitalization are as follows:
It’s a signal to deeply analyze:
Both stocks witnessed a significant drop and are at the moment more than 3-times cheaper than they were the previous few months. Nevertheless, they can’t be categorized as value stocks, since they are not profitable and invest heavily in their growth, meaning they are typical growth stocks.
That means we also have to thoroughly analyze their growth plans and how much room is left on the market. With growth stocks the analysis is focused more on their potential future performance.
In the scope of fundamental analysis, it makes sense to analyze the following factors:
If you would like to learn more about the factors listed above, please refer to our ultimate guide on How to analyze a stock.
The table above shows selected values from the company’s balance sheet and income statement. What we can say from those numbers is:
And now let’s focus on valuation metrics. Since the company is making a loss, many valuation metrics can’t be calculated (P/E, EV/EBIT, PEG etc.). Nevertheless, we can rely on some numbers:
The situation with Palantir is pretty much the same as with Snowflake.
As with Snowflake, we have a similar situation here. Since the company is making a loss, many valuation metrics can’t be calculated (P/E, EV/BIT, PEG etc.). Nevertheless, there are some numbers we can rely on:
Comparing financial statements and valuation metrics, we can say that Snowflake is growing more aggressively. Their revenues are growing faster, and they are on the way to catching Palantir. Their enterprise value is also higher. But the growth of the company comes at the cost of higher losses. Palantir is better in this regard, decreasing their losses in the past few years.
Since there’s a big difference in the enterprise value, we advised looking closely at cash and debt structure. In table below are data for the most recent quarter or trailing twelve months. As we can see, Snowflake has more cash (especially per share) and less debt, but the biggest difference in EV is really market capitalization.
In USD (mrq or ttm) | Snowflake | Palantir |
Market cap | 43 B | 18.7 B |
Revenue | 1.41 B | 1.65 B |
Profit / Loss | -642 M | -498 M |
Cash | 3.8 B | 2.52 B |
Cash per share | 11.99 | 1.23 |
Debt / Equity | 3.78 % | 11.32 % |
Total debt | 206.55 M | 267.66 M |
BV per share | 17.17 | 1.16 |
P/S | 28.40 | 10.79 |
The Piotroski F-score is one of the most popular methods used by value investors to score the stocks. This method considers the 9 fundamental metrics of a healthy business.
For each “yes” at each metric, the company gets 1 point. Companies with a score above 8 are considered fundamentally good, companies between 5 and 8 can be considered good companies, and care should be taken with companies that have a score below 5.
If you would like to learn more about the Piotroski F-score, please refer to our ultimate guide on How to analyze a stock.
As you can see above, Snowflake’s score was 6.38 for the year 2021 and has been improving over years. It’s not an ideal score, but still high enough to be considered as a solid investment if other factors are counted in. The biggest issue is that the company is still not profitable, although revenue is growing fast.
Palantir’s score for the year 2021 was similar to Snowflakes at 6.48. Based on the latest quarterly results, they improved by 1 whole point. As with Snowflake, the biggest issue is profitability.
When comparing Snowflake and Palantir based on the F-score, Palantir is considered a slightly better investment.
Snowflake | Palantir | |
F-Score | 6 | 7 |
In the scope of market sentiment and news, it makes sense to analyze the following factors:
If you would like to learn more about the factors listed above, please refer to our ultimate guide on How to analyze a stock.
Source: WeBull
Source: Investing.com
WeBull shows a nice summary of different analysts’ ratings. As we can see above, the sentiment is leaning strongly to the “buy” side. There is a pretty similar sentiment among the aggregated analysts’ opinions on investing.com.
Source: WeBull
Source: Investing.com
The picture above shows that the stock is very interesting for institutional investors. More than 900 institutional investors own more than 68 % of the company. There’s an increase in institutional holdings, which is a good sign. And as we can see, the company is owned by some of the best institutional investors such as Berkshire Hathaway, Tiger Global Management, Vanguard, Morgan Stanley and others.
Source: WeBull
One more important sentiment is how the company meets the expectation of investors, especially in terms of earnings. As we can see above, Snowflake beat the EPS expectations for the last four quarters.
Source: WeBull
Source: Investing.com
Analysts’ consensus for Palantir is not as good as for Snowflake, but still, it doesn’t lean towards selling the stock, but rather keeping it if you already own it. We can say that the overall sentiment is still bullish, but that the company’s stock price has the potential to grow.
Source: WeBull
Source: Investing.com
As with Snowflake, Palantir is owned by reputable institutional holdings. The institutional holdings are a little bit lower at around 32 %, and the value of share ownership decreased, which is interesting.
The main reason for the stock being less attractive than Snowflake at the moment is shown nicely by the photo above. The company missed EPS expectations in the last few quarters. That doesn’t mean a stock is not interesting: expectations might sometimes be too high, or a company could have faced a temporary setback (that’s something to explore in this case).
Both stocks have strong institutional holdings. The market sentiment leans towards Snowflake, especially because of strong revenue and market share growth.
Snowflake | Palantir | |
Institutional holdings | Stronger | Strong |
Analysts’ opinion | Buy | Hold |
Meeting recent EPS expectations | Yes | No |
Now let’s look at the conclusion on how the companies compare in terms of investment attractiveness.
In USD | Snowflake | Palantir |
Market cap | 43 B | 18.7 B |
Enterprise value | 50 B | 25.6 B |
Revenue | 1.41 B | 1.65 B |
YOY Revenue growth | cca. 100 % | cca. 40 % |
Profit / Loss | -642 M | -498 M |
Cash | 3.8 B | 2.52 B |
Debt / Equity | 3.78 % | 11.32 % |
Total debt | 206.55 M | 267.66 M |
BV per share | 17.17 | 1.16 |
P/S | 28.40 | 10.79 |
Piotroski F-Score | 6 | 7 |
Institutional holdings | Stronger | Strong |
Analysts’ opinion | Buy | Hold |
Technical analysis | Buy (a little stronger) | Buy |
Meeting EPS Expectations | Yes | No |
Number of employees | 3.992 | 2.920 |
Number of customers | 5.000 + | 200 + |
Stock price | $113 (drop from $405) | $8 (drop from $29) |
Founded | 2012 | 2003 |
Business model | Pure SaaS | Transition to SaaS |
Since growth stocks have been hit hard in the past couple of months, some investors find both companies attractive at these valuations.
Both companies have low leverage, meaning lower interest rates won’t directly impact cash flows in a big way. On the other hand, if there is another market correction in the following months, both stocks will probably take an additional hit.
PS: The content above is for educational and informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice. The data presented above will change over time and the content might not be updated with those changes. Investing in stocks is risky, since investors can lose their invested capital.