Palantir shares jumped 13.7% on news of an $823m contract with the US Army

The reason for the rise in the company's shares

The share price of Palantir (PLTR) rose sharply after Tuesday's close after the company won a multi-year contract worth 823 million from the US Army. The Palantir Gotham platform will be used to integrate and migrate the Army's information and analytics databases into a single cloud system as part of the Capability Drop 2 program.

Palantir shares rose 13.74% after Tuesday's close, a sharp rise, following weak performance since mid-February. Palantir shares declined after a sharp jump earlier in the year and have not added in value since early 2021.

Palantir shares are up 135% in the three months of 2020, as investors praised the big silo data collection and analytics company with large government contracts and a growing number of commercial clients since its direct listing on the NYSE on 30 September last year.

According to a press release from Palantir, the company's Gotham and Intelligence analytics platform is "used by US military intelligence agencies worldwide" to "integrate, correlate, combine and analyse data".

Palantir will help US intelligence modernise its databases through the migration of legacy software to a secure cloud-based operating system under the Capability Drop 2 (CD-2) programme.

CD 2 is one of several Palantire programs working with the U.S. Army Program Executive Agency (EMBE IEW S) to modernize the Army Intelligence Division, including CD1 (Capability Drop 1) or TITAN (Tactical Intelligence Targeting Access Nod).

Earlier on Monday, the company said that the National Institute of Health (NIH) will continue its partnership with Palantir to support COVID-19 research. The total potential value of the two-year contract is $59.5 million, with an initial task order of $7.9 million for the first five months.

Shares in Amazon (AMZN), Microsoft (MSFT) and Alphabet Google (GOOGL, GOOG) have not risen equally this year: -1.1%, +29.8% and +55.2% respectively (from the start of 2021 to Tuesday's close). Palantir's 1 share price was $2720.46 at Tuesday's close. Jefferies analysts gave them a "hold" rating but raised their target price from $3150 to $3325 in September.