$Palantir Tech(PLTR.US)first take: In the third quarter, Palantir delivered an almost perfect report card. Similar to the script from the previous quarter, not only did the current profits exceed expectations significantly, but the upward revision of the full-year guidance further confirmed the growth logic of AI. The forward-looking indicators consistently tracked by Dolphin also show a strong high-growth trend in the short to medium term, with an overall acceleration on a quarter-on-quarter basis. Management stated that the market demand for AI is sustainable, and the AI transformation led by the United States has fully arrived.

Compared to many currently loss-expanding AI companies, Palantir has not been dragged down by the cost recognition of AI investments. While there are reasons related to the cost recognition cycle (although the gross margin in the third quarter reflected some cost increments, it was offset by cost control), from the perspective of capital expenditure, Palantir has not significantly increased Capex in this round of AI transformation. Therefore, even if subsequent costs are gradually recognized, the impact on profits may be limited.

Dolphin believes this is due to its original positioning advantage (the original products already include AI-related technologies, and most of the required foundational technologies have been pre-invested or directly improved using existing large models), and the commercial strategy of AIP Bootcamp has compensated for some of the shortcomings of customized products, relatively increasing the speed of scaling. Thus, compared to other companies starting from scratch, it can more efficiently drive AI monetization.

However, despite the valuation deviating from the normal track, due to the vast AI market and the uniqueness of Palantir's customized solutions, institutions find it difficult to make accurate long-term growth expectations for PLTR. Essentially, they can only follow the company's guidance and assess the likelihood of performance beats by comparing the marginal changes of AIP's Bootcamp.