Billionaire Peter Thiel’s secretive data mining firm Palantir slips on first day after long-awaited listing
- Palantir debuted as a public company on Wednesday, ending a 17-year tradition of secrecy surrounding the software business
- Going public was the right decision for Palantir, chief executive officer and co-founder Alex Karp said in an interview
The data analytics company’s share price fell to US$9.50 after opening on Wednesday at US$10 on the New York Stock Exchange. Palantir listed its shares directly on the exchange, rather than raising capital through an initial public offering.
As in the three other major direct listings that have taken place, the exchange had set a reference price – US$7.25 for Palantir – to help guide investors and to allow shares to begin trading.
Palantir ended the day with a market capitalisation of about US$15.7 billion based on its listed shares, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. On a fully diluted basis based on all the shares covered in its filings, the company has a value of almost US$21 billion, in line with the US$20 billion valuation private investors awarded it in 2015.
Going public was the right decision for Palantir, chief executive officer and co-founder Alex Karp said in an interview, without commenting directly on the first day’s trading.
“We did not need to change our culture,” he said, referring among other things to Palantir’s tight group of insiders and their support for the programs run by US government agencies. “I feel really good.”