PLTR lacks margin of safety at current prices; DCF indicates ~5% return despite strong growth and cash position.

If you own shares of Nvidia, AMD, or Palantir, you are told to hold on, buy on the dip, and strengthen your positions because a multi-billion dollar wave is coming.

We will start with the most controversial of the three, Palantir. This stock has become the advertising face of the artificial intelligence business . So, let's see if the numbers actually support that .

We will present the optimistic viewpoint, then the pessimistic viewpoint , and then I will tell you what I personally believe.

For years, Palantir was merely a contractor for the government . That story has ended. Their commercial revenues in the United States jumped 149% year-on-year, and are on track to overtake the government sector as their largest sector before 2027.

Palantir is building the layer that allows companies and governments to effectively use artificial intelligence on their own data without disclosing it. Optimists say this gives Palantir a monopoly on enterprise data integration that the big players in the cloud can't simply copy.

Palantir raised its free cash flow guidance to $4.5 billion or $4.7 billion with an operating margin of 47% and fewer employees than it had two years ago. Therefore, every new dollar of revenue is almost pure profit because the platform is already built.

The first pessimistic viewpoint: the price is insane. The Interbank Offered Rate (IOR) is trading at approximately 154 times earnings and 75 times sales. To put that in perspective, even if this company had no costs, salaries, or taxes, and had to give away every dollar of revenue as profit, it would take 75 years to get your money back at current prices. Guys, there is no margin of safety here.

The second pessimistic viewpoint is that they are printing shares to pay employee wages. Palantir recorded $315 million in equity-based compensation in just one quarter. This means that while they are showing record profits, they are printing new shares to cover salaries , thus reducing your share as an owner.

If you run a real discounted cash flow model using fully diluted shares instead of the basic number, the intrinsic value of the share will decrease significantly.

The third pessimistic scenario is that insiders are selling their shares. While retail investors are flocking to the AI story , insiders, including CEO Alex Karp, are dumping shares during this rally.

Analysts are asking: If the people in charge of this company truly believe in the value of the stock or its potential for further growth, why are they selling it?

Now, guys, I don't necessarily agree with this opinion at all. The reason is that I believe many people, including CEOs, sell for a thousand and one reasons out of financial responsibility.

If they were the ones buying, my interest in the subject would be much greater. This is the statistic that actually makes me very interested. If you look at the history of CEO and executive purchases at Palantir, you will find that it is practically non-existent.

Even when the share price was much lower. This is what worries me.

Okay, guys. Here's how to position yourself in Palantir. The actual price of the company is not the share price. That's $465 billion. This is the number of outstanding shares multiplied by the current share price .

This is the amount required if you wanted to buy every single outstanding share. The next thing I look at is the value of the facility. Guys, in the vast majority of companies, the value of the enterprise is greater than the market value.

The reason is that the value of the establishment equals the market value plus debts minus cash. So, it's like buying the company, getting rid of all the debt, and emptying the bank account.

Guys, that's $457 billion. It is less than the market value . This is rare. This means they have more cash than debt. This is amazing. I love this about Palantir. This is probably one of the best statistics about Palantir ever.

Now, here lies the slightly ugly side . Yes, free cash flow has increased significantly, tripling in the past five years , but it is still 140 times free cash flow and 150 times earnings .

Yes, the company is growing like crazy, and that certainly makes this indicator easier to accept. But if insane growth is all that matters, why not pay 1380 times the free cash flow?

At some point , the price becomes too high , even taking all this growth into account.

Now, here's another great statistic, look at this. The return on capital over five years is only 8% , but it reached 33% last year. They are making really great progress here, and that's fantastic.

A gross profit margin of 85% is unbelievable. Look at this profit margin. 22.5 % annually over the past five years, and 49% in the last year, and their revenue growth is 44% annually, Phil.

I mean, guys, this company is operating at full capacity. There is no escaping this fact.

Fraud aside, and I'm not trying to say they are fraudsters, but there were some accounting questions we had a year and a half ago and I sit and wonder: " Why did they do that?"

It was rather strange . However, with regard to fraud in general, that is probably difficult to achieve here.

Let's take a look at their eight pillars. Good. That's the negative point. We have talked about equity-based compensation , and a significant increase in their outstanding shares .

Yes, the company has grown much larger in the past five years to surpass that, but it's still a nuisance. Return on capital, I'm not worried about that because it's much better now, but these big metrics are here.

Guys, yes, their free cash flow and profits have increased significantly in the past five years, but it's still a large number.

Analysts expect the company's profits to grow from $1.46 to $13.27 over the next four years . This means approximately ten times as much. At a price of $13.27, let's assume you applied a price-to- earnings ratio of 25 to the company, which is a large number.

How much will you get ? $300 per share? Is this correct? Do I appreciate things here? So, there is enormous potential if they are correct about revenue growth from $7.7 billion to $68 billion .

What the hell is this? This is madness. This is absolute madness for any company.

So, folks, here are my assumptions for Palantir's next ten years. Revenue growth rates of 15%, 25% and 35% were set. For the free cash flow margin, I chose 40%, 47.5% and 55%. They may be a little low based on their recent performance, but I'm still comfortable with these numbers.

Given the price-to-earnings ratio and free cash flow rate, what should I allocate to this company after 10 years? Not today, and not the average of the next ten years, what about the situation 10 years from now?

Well, they have increasing returns on capital, which means they are a high-quality company, and they are completely dominant in their sector, so they definitely deserve a premium compared to the average 15 or 16 in the Standard & Poor's index.

So, I put 20, 24, and 28. Finally, guys, I'm going to use a 9.5% discount rate for intrinsic value. Remember, there is no margin of safety here. This is not the price I am willing to pay.

That is the value I believe the company deserves based on these assumptions I have made.

So, guys, I pressed the analyze button and got a low of 42, a high of 340 , and an average of 123. Based on my average assumptions, if I pay today's price, I'm looking at a 5% return.

Guys, think about this. What is the cost of buying Nvidia shares at the wrong price? Buying Nvidia or Palantir and paying an exorbitant price because a news headline excited you, and because everyone is shouting that these companies are growing like crazy.

But guys, one bad decision about one stock could cost you thousands and thousands of dollars.

Okay guys, let 's review "Nvidia" here. Again, it's a company worth five and a half trillion dollars. This is the price. The company is valued at 5.5 trillion. So it's not as good a " Balantir" as it is, but its debt is still very low for a company that generated $127 billion in free cash flow last year.

Now , this company is much cleaner than Palantir.

It is not a media-hyped stock like Palantir, nor is it a king like Nvidia. Unlike Nvidia and Palantir, AMD stock is trading at a much more reasonable forward price-to-earnings ratio .