A Short Response on PLTR’s Stock Price Movement.

Blacor Investments
Aug 22
4 min read

Recently Andrew Left of Citron Research began his short campaign against Palantir stock and if you are a shareholder of PLTR you may have noticed how affective he’s been, and no I do not mean effective I mean he has emotionally impacted investors by stoking fears around PLTR. The stock has gone from 190 to 142 in less than a week.

Left is famous or rather infamous for short campaigns against NVDA in 2016, 2017 which has since become the world's largest company. He has also recently been indicted for securities fraud by the SEC for his short campaigns from 2018-2023. The SEC has said he, “coordinated with hedge funds to disseminate short reports and information to be posted on Twitter, coordinated with hedge funds regarding the timing of publication, and enabled the hedge funds to trade in the Targeted Securities before the reports were disseminated… In exchange for sharing his planned announcements with the hedge funds in advance of posting them publicly, the hedge funds paid defendant Left a portion of their trading profits.”

In May 2025 a judge threw out his appeal to be tried in civil court rather than criminal court for manipulating the market in this way. In July of 2025 the Court denied Left’s motion to dismiss the indictment and if found guilty of the 19 charges against him for fraud and manipulation he could spend up to 25 years in jail.

You can read the case here: https://www.justice.gov/criminal/criminal-vns/case/united-states-v-andrew-left Criminal Division | United States v. Andrew Left | United States Department of Justice

All that aside let’s analyze his claims against PLTR and see if there are any similarities to his past schemes. The SEC has identified three patterns in his past short campaigns that they allege he used to manipulate markets and commit fraud.

He alleges the market incorrectly values a stock
Indicates how he or his firm is trading the stock
Assigns an exceedingly low price target to the stock.

Has he done all those this time, Business Insider recaps his main points for us:

He states Palantir is overvalued compared to OpenAI’s valuation as his basis for the stock and cites retail investors as one of the main reasons for the Palantir’s overvaluation.
His firm Citron Research published a piece about how PLTR’s valuation should alarm investors and is “detached from its fundamental valuation further comparing it to Open AI”
Citron went on to say even if PLTR went from 180 per share to 40 it would still be expensive.

Let's break down his thesis to short PLTR and see if it adds up:

Completely lacks the fundamental analysis:

He compares OpenAI’s revenue to Palantir’s and implies that if they are valued at the same 17x multiple PLTR would be $40 per share. However, they are fundamentally different companies with completely different growth rates and margins. PLTR has incredible gross margins of 80% and year over year growth of 39% in 2024 (according to FactSet). A stark contrast to OpenAI’s negative cash burn rate and smaller gross margins of 60%, he seems to have only painted half the picture for his short campaign and doesn’t explain why a publicly traded stocks should be compared to a private corporations funding round valuation.

Apples to oranges:

OpenAI is a consumer product with competition increasing every month. Palantir primarily serves military and government agencies with long-standing contracts and hard to beat technology.

Different Moats:

OpenAi is not a weak company by any means, but it does have increasing competition vying for a piece of their market share. Hence why they have to spend so much in advertising. In finance we can measure how protected a company is from competition with a moat analysis. Comparatively speaking, Palantir would seemingly have a wider moat because their client base is incredibly hard to steal, they are locked into long contracts, with expensive setup fees that would all have to be redone if changed. Clients can’t easily or cheaply migrate away from Palantir’s system without significant cost and disruption to life-or-death situations. In effect they have a monopoly which is one of the most valuable types of companies out there. Or as Peter Thiel puts it in an address to Standford university students. “All happy companies are different: each one earns a monopoly by solving a unique problem. All failed companies are the same: they failed to escape competition.” -Competition is for Losers with Peter Thiel (How to Start a Startup 2014: 5) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Fx5Q8xGU8k

(If you watch the talk addressed to Standford University you’ll notice Thiel was introduced to the class by Sam Altman in 2014 and he’s wearing a Palantir jacket. 11 years later these are leaders of two of the greatest companies of 2025 and the basis for today's comparison)

Summary:

As Andrew Left faces up to 25 years in prison for market manipulation and fraud, he brazenly leads a campaign against the credibility of Palantir’s valuation. Yet investors ought to question his own credibility. Meanwhile Palantir has continued to receive price target upgrades from the likes of Wedbush, DA Davidson, Pipersandler, and Cantor Fitzgerald as it continues to grow its revenue, free cash flows, and client base.

Source References:

The information provided is based on carefully selected sources, believed to be reliable, but whose accuracy or completeness cannot be guaranteed. This material is for informational purposes only and is not a solicitation or a recommendation that any particular investor should purchase or sell any particular security. All information and expressions of opinions are subject to change without notice and are those of Blacor Investments.

A Short Response on PLTR’s Stock Price Movement.

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