Corporate finance: Palantir puts itself above Silicon Valley

The S-1 disclosures that tech companies file with the SEC before a stock listing have grown in entertainment in recent years. At barely 250 pages, the prospectus for Palantir Technologies is almost unputdownable.

The comedy memes first established by Uber and WeWork all recur: the disregard for old-fashioned notions of return – “we may never achieve or maintain profitability” – and the embrace of non-GAAP accounting BS, including the infamous contribution margin.

This suggests that investors should look at the cost of a companies’ revenue as just marketing and customer acquisition, while ignoring those other pesky running expenses, such as paying employees.