Twelve consecutive quarters of accelerating revenue growth is the kind of performance that tends to reorder Wall Street’s attention, and JPMorgan is now paying it.
JPMorgan (NYSE: JPM) analyst Brian Essex initiated coverage of Palantir Technologies (NASDAQ: PLTR) with an Overweight rating and a December 2027 price target of $262 per share this week.
The bank simultaneously added the stock to its Analyst Focus List and placed it on Positive Catalyst Watch ahead of the company’s November 2 earnings report.
Last quarter, Palantir’s revenue grew 93% year over year, while non-GAAP operating margin expanded to 62% and free cash flow surged 126%, figures that underpin JPMorgan’s bullish stance.
Essex framed the broader shift in enterprise AI spending as central to his thesis, arguing that corporations have moved beyond debating how to deploy AI and are now demanding measurable financial returns from it.
“Palantir is already delivering ROI by leveraging its platform to fundamentally transform the business operations of its customers, and growth is accelerating,” Essex wrote in his note to clients.
A key pillar of JPMorgan’s analysis is the rising corporate and government appetite for what it describes as AI sovereignty, a concept extending well beyond data privacy to encompass logic, intellectual property, processes, outcomes, and security.
Essex characterized Palantir’s positioning within that trend in direct terms: “Palantir enables Enterprise and Government organizations to secure and own their means of production and services, or their alpha and value creation.”
The $262 price target is anchored to 55 times JPMorgan’s 2028 enterprise value-to-free cash flow estimate, which assumes the company generates $11.7 billion in free cash flow that year.
To reach that figure, the bank projects a three-year free cash flow compound growth rate of 77% through 2028, a trajectory it considers supportable given what it called uniquely profitable hyper-growth.
Despite valuation concerns that have long shadowed Palantir’s stock, JPMorgan argued that the premium is justified by the combination of accelerating top-line momentum and expanding profitability at scale.
Third-quarter estimates from the bank are broadly aligned with Wall Street consensus, but Essex indicated he sees room for meaningful upside if execution remains strong when results land on November 2.
The initiation adds institutional weight to a name that has polarized analysts, with the bank’s price target implying substantial upside from current trading levels.
