BofA Securities analysts believe Palantir (NYSE:PLTR) has a "unique position" to take advantage of the "rising AI opportunity," as they bump their price target on shares to $18 from $13, and reiterate a "Buy" rating.
In their latest note on the company, the analysts argue that the growing number of companies "eager to use generative AI" are all facing the same set of major "compliance, regulatory, ethical, legal, privacy rights, data security, and accountability/oversight requirements."
As such, they underscore Palantir's inherent competitive advantage, stemming from "its experience working with the government and highly regulated industries" and note that "PLTR has already developed and implemented the architectural design that supports generative AI in a compliant and private world."
"For companies looking to leverage AI in the near term under a compliant, regulated world, all roads lead to Palantir," the analysts argue, citing comments by PLTR's CEO Alex Karp who said "the company has received more inbound interest in the last few weeks than in all of last year, all related to the recent launch of AIP (Artificial Intelligence Platform)."
Lastly, the analysts also cite recent conversations with existing Palantir clients, who suggest "PLTR is five years ahead of the closest company," and estimate "AIP solutions could help PLTR further penetrate within existing customers and open up partnership opportunities."
Based on the above, the BofA analysts conclude that "Palantir is positioned to be one of the dominate providers in generative AI by providing a near term solution, agnostic to a preferred LLM (large language model), compliant to tight security, data privacy and regulatory requirements, with demonstrated use cases across sectors," as they reiterate a "Buy" rating and raise their price target to $18 from $13.
PLTR closed at $15.02 on Friday, and is up over 135% YTD.