'big Short' Investor Michael Burry Just Unveiled A New Bear Case On Palantir. Here's What's Behind His Thesis.

Michael Burry, investor of "The Big Short" fame.

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• Michael Burry unveiled fresh criticism of AI darling Palantir on Thursday.
• "The Big Short" investor said Palantir's finances put the stock's fair value at $46 a share.
• He raised several points about Palantir's spending and accounting, and said its

A fair price for Palantir could be much lower than where the stock is today, according to Michael Burry's newest thesis the AI darling.

"The Big Short" investor unveiled his latest thoughts on Palantir in a new Substack post on Thursday. In it, he speculated that Palantir's stock could be valued as low as $46 a share, or around 66% below its current price, based on his calculations of the firm's finances.

He also outlined several other scenarios in which Palantir's stock price ranges from $21 to $146 per share, but noted that these were not necessarily price targets and that he was not "predicting a prosperous long-term future" for the company.

"I believe Palantir's recent winning streak will not endure," Burry later added, speculating that the company could be worth less than $100 billion dollars over time, implying around a $200 billion drop from Palantir's current market valuation.

Burry, who has lobbed shots at several other iconic AI firms since his return to social media, said the meat of his Palantir thesis lies in the firm's balance sheet and financial history.

Here are some of the points he brought up after his analysis.

1. Palantir's money-losing years were rough

Burry highlighted several details about Palantir's finances when the firm was losing money. The company was unprofitable for its first two decades in business.

At one point in those twenty years, Palantir had no compounding sales, meaning that its sales weren't expanding or leading to future deals, Burry said, citing an "anecdotal report" he received from an unnamed former Palantir staff member.

"So Palantir was like a shark, to grow it needed to just keep swimming, adding as many deals as it could," Burry wrote.

2. Spending is high

Burry highlighted various expenses Palantir accrued over the years.

Notably, the firm poured more than $450 million in SPACs during the pandemic, many of which lost value.

Burry also said that Palantir has a 20/80 compensation split between top management and the rest of the company, citing info from an unnamed former forward-deployed engineer at Palantir. He acknowledged he couldn't verify the information independently.

Prior to going public, the firm racked up around $3.8 billion in losses, Burry noted.

"If you have not realized it by now, the company really knows how to throw money around," he said, pointing to how CEO Alex Karp was awarded more than $1 billion in stock options leading up to Palantir's IPO.

3. R&D spend, gross margins could be inflated

Leading up to its IPO, Palantir included items in its research & development spend that could have inflated the number, Burry suggested, noting how expenses related to travel, cloud hosting, and stock-based compensation were incorporated in the figure.

Gross margins could be overstated, Burry suggested, pointing to how the costs associated with Palantir's forward-deployed engineers are split "atypically" across R&D and sales and marketing, which could make the firm's gross margins look higher, Burry suggested.

"If Palantir were following the accounting standards of Accenture or Deloitte, gross margins would collapse. The SaaS/software charade would be obvious. The stock would also likely have a price to sales multiple magnitude lower," he wrote.

4. High expectations relative to revenue

Burry pointed to the number of billionaires associated with Palantir relative to the company's revenue. He said he believed the firm had the highest ratio of billionaires to sales in "global stock market history," a metric he abbreviated as the "B/S ratio."

"Such B/S speaks to egregious stock based compensation paired to remarkably few dollars of revenue. But it really is an expectations ratio. And if it is the highest in history, so are expectations for Palantir," Burry added.

Burry said that he was not currently shorting Palantir, but has puts on the stock. Late last year, he revealed that his hedge fund, Scion Asset Management, had $912 million in bearish put options on Palantir at the time.

Palantir did not respond to a request for comment.