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nater5000today at 5:52 PM1 replyview on HN

>Do you think Accenture would have 50-60% margins if it were smaller?

Most definitely. Margins go down as revenue goes up. Given that Accenture produces 15x more revenue than Palantir (at least based on the figures the OP provided), it actually makes a lot of sense that these margins compare like they do.

This is a pretty well-understood concept in business. Firms will effectively choose to work on the best opportunities in order of expected value within the capacity they have. In other words, if you order the margins of the projects either of these firms can work on, it might look something like:

> 50%, 30%, 15%, 5%, 5%, 5%

Palantir, being smaller, only has the capacity to work on three projects, so they choose the ones with the highest margins (so 50%, 30%, and 15% for an average margin of about 30%). Accenture, being larger, has the capacity to work on six projects, so they choose all of these, leading to a lower average margin. Both firms make profit on all of the projects, so Accenture isn't making a mistake by working on these projects.

This is fine and all, but it's also important to recognize that Accenture's capacity and magnitude of revenue (and profit) makes them much more valuable in a vacuum than Palantir. Their margins are lower, but the produce way more profit, which matters when you're investment firms, etc., needing to pile cash into investments that can actually meet your capacity needs (on top of the strategic benefits of being larger, etc.)


Replies

estearumtoday at 6:24 PM

Yes, I'm aware margins go down as you get larger. I'm aware that being large has advantages in terms of capital deployment etc.

But yet, no, there is no scale at which Accenture produces 50% net margin. Because it's a consulting shop.