Palantir SPAC Lilium Will Send Electric Jets To The Skies of Spain
A SPAC Under Investigation
Palantir SPAC Lilium (NYSE: LILM) is currently being investigated for fraud. As I reported here, there has been new research published to suggest that Lilium actually cant get their electric jets in the sky and have been lying to investors about their key metrics.
The report was published by Iceberg Research, which has disclosed they are shorting the stock. Shortly after, an official investigation into the company was launched.
Well, Lilium seems to not be worrying about the investigation, especially because they are making final preparations to launch their electric jets into the skies of Spain.
From their press release:
"Lilium N.V. (NASDAQ: LILM) (“Lilium”), developer of the first all-electric vertical take-off and landing (“eVTOL”) jet, announced today that the Operational Authorization permit to fly in Spain has been secured. The permit enables Lilium to conduct its flight test campaign at the ATLAS Flight Test Center in Villacarrillo, Spain with its 5th generation technology demonstrator – Phoenix 2."
Is Lilium Legit?
The answer to this question is yet to be known. As shown in the report published 2 weeks ago, there were some legitimate concerns brought up against the company, which likely warranted a full investigation.
The problem is that the report also had an agenda underlying it: the people who published it want the stock and company to fail so they can participate in the massive upside of shorting the position. While their claims might be true, we don't fully know if they are correct and how much they may be "reaching" to justify their short hypothesis.
A Palantir SPAC being shorted and coming out as a fraud is not good news for Palantir. It would show management's inability to do proper due diligence on a company if they couldn't even find out the jets the company was building (which their entire business model is rooted in) couldn't actually fly.
It would also feed into the argument that the Palantir SPAC strategy is incredibly risky because if a company fails, Palantir's entire equity stake goes to zero, the money they invested becomes a waste, and they never get the benefit to show their software was the underlying foundation for the success of the SPAC.
In fact, it almost can be perceived as if the software itself may have hurt the SPAC vs. help it showing that other alternatives would be better.
If Lilium Can Fly, None of This Matters
Nonetheless, if Lilium can get their jets in the sky - none of this matters. They recently received a MOU to order 150 jets from the biggest private jet company in the world - NetJets.
If the company turns out to be a fraud, that order will be default. But if the company is getting prepared to fly their jets in the skies of Spain, it is hard to believe that the company has been lying this whole time about their technology.
Since this is a test flight, we aren't sure what is going to happen yet. However, flights like these are encouraging. Getting electric planes to work is difficult. Palantir didn't invest in the company because they knew what they were doing was simple - the whole thesis of the SPAC strategy (outlined here) was to find companies doing very challenging things that would be willing to adopt software from the beginning of their lifecycles to fundamentally transform how they use data to operationalize the innovations they are trying to get into the world.
The story goes on if Lilium can fly through the skies. We'll keep you updated on this one.
Thanks for reading the article. If you'd like to get in contact, please @ me on twitter here or email me at amit@dailypalantir.com.
