Palantir Is Helping People With Cancer
During a bear market, the existential question for shareholders that have consolidated their positions is the following,
"Has my thesis broken on the company I have invested in?"
Amazon stock fell from $106 to $6 in the dot-com crash, but the company was performing better than ever. Investors that were patient, believed in the long term vision, gave the company time to execute, and saw that the fundamentals only got better were eventually rewarded.
During a bear market, your highest conviction play has to be giving you a reason to stay as an investor.
Palantir, in a horrible macro-economic environment, is using it's software to help cancer patients.
An article from the Times, a publication in the UK (where Palantir has the largest presence but still gets a lot of negative press), reported on Palantir reducing backlogs and wait-times for cancer patients.
From the article,
'Doctors are being freed from piles of paperwork by NHS software that stores all a patient’s records in one place. The technology, used by 20 NHS trusts, means that hospital staff no longer have to waste time filling in forms or looking up records. It has significantly reduced waiting times, helping cancer patients to receive life-saving treatment two days faster, on average, by reducing time-sapping administrative work and freeing doctors to treat patients.
The software also means that patients with cancer can be tracked from the moment it is diagnosed, providing a single digital record of their illness, and doctors and nurses no longer have to rifle through paper records.
The system, developed by tech firm Palantir, was piloted at Chelsea and Westminster NHS Foundation Trust, where 382 consultants are using it. Patients with suspected cancer now have their first appointment on average two days sooner, and the length of time staff spend discussing them in meetings has halved. Appointments cancelled on the day due to avoidable errors with records have been cut by 56 per cent."
After reading this article, my conviction for Palantir continued to strengthen due to a few core points:
First, the UK has not been friendly to Palantir from a press perspective. If the NHS is continuing to use Palantir and actually seeing results, it proves that the negative media is simply not as large of a concern since the software works. Saving lives matters more than what some angry people have to say on the internet.
Second, the company is actually doing things that matter. When the macro-economic environment changes, there will be companies that thrive in a low inflation, low interest rate environment, and companies that did not survive the bear market because their products or technology were not exceptional enough to make it through. In a hospital, decisions truly can become a matter of life and death. If software can help solve those problems, that software can save lives - that cannot and should not be understated when figuring out if your high conviction play is actually performing during a bear market. Is the tech changing the world and saving lives? If it is, it may be around after the bear market.
Palantir is continuing to look like a company that will make it out the bear market and establish themselves as a leader in software globally by doing tasks for organizations that very few, if any companies, can replicate.
Finally, the global ramifications for Palantir improving the healthcare efficiencies within the NHS are massive. If the NHS ultimately adopts Palantir nationwide and backlogs (along with other issues) can be solved, there could be hundreds, if not thousands, of other hospitals around the globe that are massively inefficient and could benefit from implementing Palantir's software within their hospitals. The global expansion of this software could signal higher growth has yet to be experienced.
The people working within hospitals and the NHS are also keen on the software:
Dr Timothy Ferris, NHS England’s director of transformation, said: “To reduce waiting lists, the NHS must use the latest technology and harness data in more innovative ways to improve outcomes for patients. Trusts need an accurate and up-to-date picture of who is waiting for treatment and for how long. This software gives them the means to harness their resources and plan better to ensure patients get the right treatment as soon as possible.”
One thing is certain, either you have conviction in your biggest plays during a bear market or not.
Palantir, continually, has forced my conviction to get stronger.
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