Planet Labs (PL) Q4 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

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DATE

Thursday, March 19, 2026 at 5 p.m. ET

CALL PARTICIPANTS

• Chief Executive Officer, Chairperson, and Co-Founder — Will Marshall
• President, Chief Financial Officer, and Chief Operating Officer — Ashley Johnson

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TAKEAWAYS

• Total Revenue -- $307.7 million for the year, up 26% year over year.
• Q4 Revenue -- $86.8 million, reflecting 41% year-over-year growth.
• Non-GAAP Gross Margin (Full Year) -- 59% versus 60% for the prior year.
• Non-GAAP Gross Margin (Q4) -- 57%, down from 65% in the prior-year quarter, attributed to Satellite Services investments and contract mix.
• Adjusted EBITDA Profit (Full Year) -- $15.5 million, representing the first annual adjusted EBITDA profitability.
• Adjusted EBITDA Profit (Q4) -- $2.3 million, marking the fifth straight quarter of positive adjusted EBITDA.
• Free Cash Flow (Full Year) -- $52.9 million, also a first for annual positive free cash flow.
• Defense and Intelligence Revenue Growth -- More than 50% year over year, cited as a core driver by management.
• Civil Government Revenue -- Flat year over year; Commercial sector revenue decreased.
• Backlog -- Over $900 million at year-end, up 79% year over year; 37% applies to the next twelve months and 67% over twenty-four months.
• Remaining Performance Obligations (RPOs) -- $852.4 million, up 106% year over year, with 34% due in the next twelve months.
• Customer Count -- 897 at period end, sequentially lower due to a focus on large clients and a transition toward self-serve for smaller customers.
• Net Dollar Retention Rate -- 116%, or 118% with winbacks, at year end.
• Recurring ACV Share -- Recurring ACV represented 98% of total end-of-period ACV; 85% of contracts are annual or multiyear, lower than prior periods due to shorter-term government agreements.
• Rule of 40 Achievement -- Met for the second consecutive quarter, and Rule of 30 reached on an annual basis one year ahead of plan.
• Capital Expenditures -- $81.5 million for the year, with Q4 CapEx of $23 million; guidance of $17 million to $23 million for Q1 fiscal 2027 and $80 million to $95 million for the full year.
• Cash, Cash Equivalents, and Short-Term Investments -- Ended the fiscal year at $640 million, up $418 million primarily from convertible debt issuance and free cash flow.
• Q1 Fiscal 2027 Revenue Outlook -- Management expects $87 million to $91 million, at a midpoint of 34% year-over-year growth.
• Q1 Fiscal 2027 Adjusted EBITDA Guidance -- Between minus $6 million and minus $3 million, driven by investments for growth.
• Q1 Fiscal 2027 Non-GAAP Gross Margin Guidance -- Projected between 49% and 51%, a step down attributed to deal mix and continued investment.
• Fiscal 2027 Revenue Guidance -- $415 million to $440 million, or 39% growth at the midpoint.
• Fiscal 2027 Adjusted EBITDA Guidance -- Targeting breakeven to $10 million profit, while sustaining investment priorities.
• Fiscal 2027 Non-GAAP Gross Margin Outlook -- Anticipated between 50% and 52%, consistent with prior expectations.
• Rule of 40 Target -- Management aims to maintain Rule of 40 performance in the coming fiscal year.
• Satellite Services Contract Wins -- Signed a €240 million multi-year deal with Germany and a nine-figure agreement with Sweden; NATO and U.S. Missile Defense Agency awards further expanded the backlog.
• Defense Innovation Unit -- Secured two awards, including a seven-figure Indo-Pacific Command extension and an option exercised for Hybrid Space utilizing Pelican satellites.
• AI Technology Investment -- Launched partnerships with Google and NVIDIA to develop in-space compute and accelerate data processing; cited AI as a pivotal growth driver for 2027.

SUMMARY

Planet Labs PBC (NYSE:PL) reported its first full year of adjusted EBITDA profitability and positive free cash flow, supported by record revenue and substantial backlog expansion. Management noted that the shift toward large government contracts and major Satellite Services deals underpinned both financial outperformance and significantly enhanced revenue visibility. The company highlighted rapid advances in AI-enabled analytics, new technology and manufacturing investments, and the aim to unlock broader commercial and civil markets in the year ahead.

• Management said, "We are doubling our satellite manufacturing capacity," and referenced launches of new Pelican, Owl, and SunCatcher spacecraft to address market expansion.
• CEO Marshall described the customer pipeline for sovereign deals as both increasing in "number and the average size of those deals," setting expectations for continued backlog growth.
• Partnerships with NVIDIA and Google were characterized as research collaborations expected to accelerate processing and AI model development, with "100x" speedup claimed on certain data processing tasks.
• Management confirmed that supply chain challenges were not material, with ongoing efforts to diversify sources.
• Ashley Johnson stated, "Approximately 85% of our end-of-period ACV book of business consists of annual or multiyear contracts, lower than prior periods, as we have seen a higher proportion of large, shorter-term government contracts signed in recent quarters."
• Discontinuation of customer-count reporting was announced for FY 2027, reflecting a move to prioritize recurring contract metrics.
• AI-powered solutions, especially in Defense and Intelligence, were described as near-term growth drivers, with expansion into broader markets called out as a strategic 2027 priority.

INDUSTRY GLOSSARY

• Pelican satellites: Planet Labs PBC's next-generation, high-resolution Earth observation satellites, designed for rapid imaging and advanced analytics.
• Bedrock Research: An acquired entity within Planet Labs PBC delivering scalable AI-based monitoring and analytics solutions.
• Satellite Services: Planet Labs PBC's offering for sovereign customers, involving dedicated satellite deployment and data as a service.
• Rule of 40: A SaaS industry metric defined as revenue growth rate plus adjusted EBITDA margin; commonly used to gauge combined growth and profitability.
• Recurring ACV: Value of annually recurring contracts, excluding one-time professional and engineering services.
• Insight platform: Planet Labs PBC's self-service data analytics platform enabling long-tail customer access without direct sales engagement.
• SHIELD IDIQ: A multi-award U.S. Missile Defense Agency contract vehicle allowing selected vendors to compete for future task orders involving missile defense technology development.
• SunCatcher spacecraft: Planet Labs PBC spacecraft featuring in-orbit AI and specialized compute capabilities, developed in collaboration with Google.
• Hybrid Space pilot: Defense Innovation Unit program utilizing Planet Labs PBC's satellites to demonstrate hybrid, next-generation space-based capabilities for government customers.

Full Conference Call Transcript

Will Marshall and Ashley Johnson, who will provide a recap of our results and discuss our current outlook. We encourage everyone to please reference the earnings release and earnings update presentation for today's call, which are available on our Investor Relations website. Before we begin, we would like to remind everyone that we will make forward-looking statements related to future events or our financial outlook. Any forward-looking statements are based on management's current outlook, plans, estimates, expectations, and projections. Inclusion of such forward-looking information should not be regarded as a representation by Planet Labs PBC that future plans, estimates, or expectations will be achieved.

Such forward-looking statements are subject to various risks and uncertainties and assumptions as detailed in our SEC filings, which can be found at www.sec.gov. Our actual results or performance may differ materially from those indicated by such forward-looking statements, and we undertake no responsibility to update such forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances after the date on which the statement is made or to reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events. During the call, we will also discuss historic and forward-looking non-GAAP financial measures. We use these non-GAAP financial measures for financial and operational decision making and as a means to evaluate period-to-period comparisons.

We believe that these measures provide useful information about operating results, enhance the overall understanding of past financial performance and future prospects, and allow for greater transparency with respect to key metrics used by management in its financial and operational decision making. For more information on the non-GAAP financial measures, please see the reconciliation tables provided in our press release issued earlier today, which is available on our website at investors.planet.com. Further, throughout this call, we will provide a number of key performance indicators used by management and often used by competitors in our industry.

These and other key performance indicators are discussed in more detail in our press release and our earnings update presentation, which are intended to accompany our prepared remarks. I will now turn the call over to Will Marshall, Planet Labs PBC CEO, Chairperson, and Co-Founder. Over to you, Will.

Will Marshall: Thanks, Cleo, and welcome, everyone, joining us today. Last year was transformational for Planet Labs PBC, and I am proud of everything that our team accomplished. We made incredible progress in the Satellite Services market, signing a €240,000,000 agreement funded by Germany, and a nine-figure deal with Sweden, capping off three such deals in twelve months. We launched 40 satellites, including four of our high-resolution Pelican satellites, invested strongly in AI, and announced a cutting-edge partnership with Google to demonstrate satellites for compute in space. We delivered record annual revenue, adjusted EBITDA profitability, positive free cash flow, and accelerated our revenue growth. And we laid out a strong foundation for the year ahead, enabling us to continue that growth acceleration.

So let us dive in. To briefly summarize the full year results, we generated a record $308,000,000 in revenue, representing approximately 26% year-over-year growth. Non-GAAP gross margin was 59% for the year, adjusted EBITDA profit came in at $15,500,000, and free cash flow was $53,000,000, representing our first full fiscal year of non-GAAP profitability, an excellent milestone for the team as we strike a balance between profit and growth. Q4 was also a record for revenue, representing 41% year-over-year growth, and our fifth consecutive quarter of adjusted EBITDA profitability. For the second sequential quarter, we achieved Rule of 40, which is our revenue growth plus adjusted EBITDA margin.

And on an annual basis, we achieved Rule of 30, a full year earlier than we anticipated. End-of-period backlog was over $900,000,000, approximately 79% growth year on year, providing us with excellent visibility to accelerating our revenue growth for the coming fiscal year. Defense and Intelligence was a major area of strength for us in FY 2026, underpinned by global dynamics. Full-year growth was 50% year on year, driven by strong performance in our Data Subscriptions, Solutions, and Satellite Services. To recap our role here, Planet Labs PBC was founded on a core mission of making information about our world visible, accessible, and actionable to help both sustainability and security globally.

As the geopolitical landscape shifts, security is an urgent mandate for governments worldwide, and our customers face mission-critical decisions in an increasingly complex and chaotic world, and this mission is critical to them. We view security as inextricably linked to sustainability. Resource scarcity and climate disasters are not just environmental issues. They are direct threat multipliers or even triggers for conflict. The Defense and Intelligence sector is essential to realizing our mission. Our customers rely on us to help identify unknown unknowns, detect changes and warning signals that they did not know to look for before they escalate into crises. This is a critical part of our purpose.

To highlight a few recent customer wins in this area, during the quarter, we received two awards from the U.S. Defense Innovation Unit. We were awarded a seven-figure extension of our pilot in support of Indo-Pacific Command to deliver vital indications and warnings. The short-term contract demonstrates how customers can leverage Planet Labs PBC data and AI-powered analytics to monitor sites of strategic interest for critical changes and threats. DIU also exercised an option under the existing Hybrid Space pilot with Planet Labs PBC for just under $1,000,000 to demonstrate the cutting-edge capabilities for our high-resolution Pelican satellites.

During the quarter, NATO’s Allied Command Transformation also extended its agreement with Planet Labs PBC to deliver persistent space-based surveillance and enhanced indications and warning capabilities. The award underscores Planet Labs PBC’s position as a trusted and essential partner for customers seeking strategic indications and warnings across broad domains. Finally, last month, the U.S. Missile Defense Agency selected Planet Labs PBC as a prime contractor for the SHIELD IDIQ contract vehicle. Planet Labs PBC will now compete for awards under that program.

Turning to our Civil Government sector, where full-year revenue was flat year over year, to share some recent highlights, during the quarter, Planet Labs PBC was awarded a seven-figure renewal and expansion by the German Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy, or BKG. Under the one-year renewal, BKG will continue its countrywide partnership through which employees of more than 400 German federal institutions gain access to Planet Labs PBC’s data and solutions for a wide variety of uses. As an example, this expansion will allow BKG to track permafrost thawing across the Arctic.

In January, we announced an enterprise-scale agreement with Slovenia’s Surveying and Mapping Authority to provide comprehensive satellite data and high-resolution tasking capabilities across the country’s civil public administration in support of agriculture, urban planning, and disaster management. Shifting to the Commercial sector, where annual revenue was down year on year, while this trend was expected given our increased focus on large government customers and the headwinds in agriculture, we remain confident in the Commercial sector as a significant market opportunity for Planet Labs PBC, especially as we continue to advance our AI-enabled solutions.

To share a few customer highlights from the quarter, specifically around our work in Energy, we were awarded a renewal at San Diego Gas & Electric, which utilizes Planet Labs PBC data and analytics to monitor vegetation health and conditions within their service areas to manage risk of wildfires during the dry season. We also signed a strategic partnership with AiDash, establishing Planet Labs PBC as the preferred provider of daily and weekly fuel monitoring data for utility wildfire risk mitigation across North America.

Through the partnership, leading investor-owned utilities are already using Planet Labs PBC data to identify where and when to deploy fuel treatment resources, reducing ignition risk and targeting high-priority clearance with precision that was not previously possible. Turning to our Satellite Services business, in January, we announced a nine-figure, multiyear deal with the Swedish Armed Forces to rapidly deliver a suite of satellites, space-based data, and solutions to support Sweden’s peace and security operations. In terms of our existing contracts for Satellite Services, our teams are continuing to execute well. We are progressing with the builds for our contract with JSAT and beginning to serve dedicated capacity under the German-funded contract.

We continue to find that our Satellite Services contracts are a win-win-win. The customer guarantees their sovereign space capabilities in their desired area of interest; our other clients will benefit from increased capacity and revisit rates in the rest of the world; and Planet Labs PBC receives capital to forward fund our fleet buildouts. They also bolster our Data and Solutions as countries want both the speed and scale of our Data and Solutions and the sovereignty of our Satellite Services technology. Through our AI-enabled solutions, we accelerate time to value, become more deeply embedded in our customer operations, and gain more direct visibility to our customers’ operational needs. We are leaning into these synergies across our product offerings.

We are continuing to see demand from around the world for Satellite Services, driven by the current geopolitical landscape and the demand for sovereign space systems. Our competitive edge here is twofold. Firstly, our proven track record, having launched over 650 Earth imaging satellites, by far the most of any commercial company. Our second is speed. We are able to launch the first satellites within a few months of contract signing, as shown with the partnership funded by Germany, far faster than traditional aerospace. The demand is significant, and reflected in our pipeline which has grown appreciably in both number of deals and average deal size since we spoke about this at our Investor Day in October.

We are leaning into this demand by expanding our manufacturing capacity in San Francisco and building out our second manufacturing location in Berlin. On the Solutions side, I am pleased to report that our integration of Bedrock Research is going very well. The team is helping us scale rapidly and deliver AI-based solutions, notably standing up 600 new monitoring sites within three hours compared to a weeks-long process when we first launched the service. This deep domain area expertise, paired with our ongoing advancements in AI, has allowed us to expand the number of sites we are monitoring around the world, drastically reduce the time needed to implement, and enable our customers to scale across broader geographic areas.

During the quarter, Planet Labs PBC expanded its technology collaboration with NVIDIA on multiple fronts. With Planet Labs PBC’s proprietary dataset and NVIDIA’s compute, we can enable significant new capabilities. This includes exploring the use of NVIDIA’s accelerated GPU-based computing platform for Planet Labs PBC data processing, enabling faster, more efficient processing for all of our customers; testing NVIDIA’s new Thor processor for in-space use, enhancing super-resolution and other AI processing capabilities; and more. As announced earlier this week, we are collaborating to build the world’s first scaled GPU-native AI engine for satellite data and drive huge advances in efficiency and latency. More generally, we anticipate that AI will be transformational to our business this year.

Let me give a bit of broader context. While LLMs offer users the incredible ability to have conversations with the text of the Internet, they know very little about the physical world. Real-world models need real-world data, and Planet Labs PBC has it. Our deep data archive, averaging over 3,000 collections for every point in the Earth’s landmass, represents a treasure trove for indexing the physical world and training next-generation models. As Wikipedia was the foundation dataset for LLMs, we believe that Planet Labs PBC’s Daily Scan is foundational to real-world models. Furthermore, AI itself is commoditizing software development, making data the key differentiation in AI. And why does this matter?

Because it has the potential to unlock a huge market. While Planet Labs PBC is currently seeing tremendous traction for AI-based solutions in Defense and Intelligence, these developments are making border area monitoring scalable and accessible for other applications and sectors. Ultimately, we believe this will result in generic applications democratizing access to Earth intelligence and unlocking markets far faster. Specifically, we think that more generic AI solutions will soon empower nontechnical users to go from a concept to a bespoke application in under an hour. We expect expanding these capabilities will benefit our current customers and drive new opportunities in markets such as agriculture, insurance, energy, supply chain, and finance.

For the year ahead, our top priorities are executing against our current contracts across both Data and Solutions and Satellite Services, and scaling up to capture the massive opportunity before us. We see strong demand, so we are investing into our growth, including the technology roadmap. We are doubling our satellite manufacturing capacity. We are scaling our Pelican fleet with multiple launches scheduled this year. We are launching demos of our Owl and SunCatcher spacecraft. And we are investing in AI for existing solutions and the aforementioned more generic capabilities. In sum, last year we saw the start of returns on our investments into Satellite Services.

This year, we expect to see the start of returns on our investments in AI. We sit uniquely at the intersection of space and AI revolutions, and Planet Labs PBC is the first space-and-AI company. By year’s end, we believe Planet Labs PBC’s Earth intelligence will deliver transformational global impact as our customers leverage space and AI to transform data into action. We are leaning in to meet the moment, and we are playing to win. With that, I will turn it over to Ashley to discuss our financials. Over to Ash.

Ashley Johnson: Thanks, Will. It was indeed a fantastic year, underpinned by strong execution and key wins in Satellite Services. I would like now to cover the results in more detail. Revenue for the fourth quarter came in at a record $86,800,000, representing approximately 41% year-over-year growth. Full-year revenue was $307,700,000, representing approximately 26% year-over-year growth. Outperformance in the quarter was driven primarily by strong usage from our Defense and Intelligence and Civil Government customers as well as new wins that came in during the quarter. During fiscal 2026, our Defense and Intelligence sector revenue grew more than 50% year on year.

The Commercial sector was down modestly year on year, and the Civil Government revenue was flat, driven in large part by the end of our contract with Norway for their NICFI program. Turning to our regional revenue breakdown, growth was distributed across the globe in fiscal 2026 with approximate revenue growth of 41% year over year in Asia Pacific, 48% in EMEA, 11% in North America, and down about 2% in Latin America. As of the end of fiscal year 2026, end-of-period customer count was 897 customers, slightly down on a sequential basis, reflecting our direct sales team’s intentional shift to focus on large customer opportunities and leveraging our self-serve platform to provide access to our data for other customers.

As a reminder, Planet Labs PBC Insight platform customers are not included in our end-of-period customer count. Given our focus on larger customers and the shift to a self-serve model for the long tail of the market, we believe this metric has become less relevant for investors and is not proactively monitored by management. We believe our retention rates on ACV are far more constructive measures of our business health and opportunity. Therefore, we plan to discontinue this metric beginning with the 2027 fiscal year. We continue to see strong revenue growth and thus a solid increase in revenue per customer as a positive indicator that our sales team’s focus on landing and expanding high-value accounts is yielding results.

As we shift to some of our ACV metrics, I want to remind you that our Satellite Services contracts are not included in ACV, although they are included in our RPOs and backlog, which we will discuss in a moment. Recurring ACV was 98% of our end-of-period ACV book of business, reflecting our continued focus on selling subscription data contracts and solutions as opposed to one-time professional or engineering services. Approximately 85% of our end-of-period ACV book of business consists of annual or multiyear contracts, lower than prior periods, as we have seen a higher proportion of large, shorter-term government contracts signed in recent quarters.

Net dollar retention rate at the end of fiscal year 2026 was 116%, and net dollar retention rate with winbacks was 118%. Our non-GAAP gross margin for fiscal year 2026 was 59%, compared to 60% in fiscal year 2025. For Q4, our non-GAAP gross margin was 57%, compared to 65% in 2025, reflecting investments in support of our Satellite Services contracts and a mix of contracts including AI-enabled partner solutions. Our gross margins came in better than expected for the quarter and the year, primarily driven by the revenue outperformance in the quarter. Adjusted EBITDA profit was $15,500,000 for fiscal year 2026, better than expected, primarily driven by revenue outperformance and disciplined OpEx spend.

Fiscal year 2026 marks our first year of delivering adjusted EBITDA profitability on an annual basis, a milestone we are incredibly proud of. Adjusted EBITDA profit for Q4 was $2,300,000, also better than expected, marking our fifth sequential quarter of adjusted EBITDA profitability. Capital expenditures in FY 2026, which include our capitalized software development, were approximately $81,500,000. Capital expenditures in Q4 were approximately $23,000,000. To echo Will’s remarks, we are currently in a growth CapEx investment cycle as we lean into market demand, scale up our manufacturing capacity in Berlin, and build out our next-generation fleets. Turning to the balance sheet.

We ended the year with approximately $640,000,000 of cash, cash equivalents, and short-term investments, an increase of approximately $418,000,000 year on year, driven by our issuance of convertible debt and free cash flow profitability. In fiscal year 2026, we generated approximately $134,400,000 in net cash from operating activities and $52,900,000 in free cash flow, representing our first year of achieving positive free cash flow on an annual basis. Our focus remains on managing the business to enable sustainable cash flow generation through efficient growth across our Data, Solutions, and Satellite Services revenue streams.

At the end of FY 2026, our remaining performance obligations, or RPOs, were approximately $852,400,000, up about 106% year over year, of which approximately 34% apply to the next twelve months and 65% to the next twenty-four months. We estimate our backlog, which includes contracts with a termination-for-convenience clause, to be approximately $900,000,000, up approximately 79% year over year. Approximately 37% of our backlog applies to the next twelve months, 67% to the next twenty-four months. Let me now turn to our guidance for the first quarter and full fiscal year 2027. For Q1, we are expecting revenue to be between $87,000,000 and $91,000,000, which represents approximately 34% year-on-year growth at the midpoint.

We expect non-GAAP gross margin for the quarter to be between 49% and 51%. The step-down is driven by our Satellite Services contracts, the mix of deals with AI-enabled partner solutions, and investments in our next-generation fleets. Our range for adjusted EBITDA in the quarter is expected to be between minus $6,000,000 and minus $3,000,000, reflecting our investments to drive sustained growth. We are planning for capital expenditures of approximately $17,000,000 to $23,000,000 in the quarter. For the full fiscal year 2027, we expect revenue to be between $415,000,000 and $440,000,000, representing approximately 39% growth at the midpoint.

We believe our backlog provides us with strong visibility to our revenue, which is enabling us to raise our growth expectations for the year. Our non-GAAP gross margin for the year is projected to be between 50% and 52%, in line with our prior expectations and driven by the forecasted mix of business. We anticipate margins will expand as we realize returns on our growth investments in subsequent years. We are targeting adjusted EBITDA profit for fiscal 2027 of between breakeven and $10,000,000, reflecting our desire to maintain EBITDA profitability on an annual basis even as we continue to invest in our space systems capabilities, AI-powered solutions, and our global sales and marketing organization.

We also aim to deliver Rule of 40 for this fiscal year, where Rule of 40 is our revenue growth rate plus adjusted EBITDA margin. We are planning for approximately $80,000,000 to $95,000,000 in capital expenditures for the year, reflecting the necessary investments in our next-generation satellites to meet accelerating market demand. Even with these operating and capital expenditures, we expect to be free cash flow positive on an annual basis again in fiscal year 2027, with a focus on sustaining and expanding free cash flow generation into the future.

As a reminder, while cash flow can vary quite significantly quarter to quarter, based on the timing of cash collections and capital outlays for procurements, our ultimate objective is generating sustainable annual positive cash flow. To close, the incredible momentum we generated in fiscal year 2026 provides us with a strong foundation for the future. Given the strength of our backlog and our robust pipeline, we have significant visibility into our continued revenue growth. As our revenue scales, we anticipate non-GAAP gross margin expansion as well as Rule of 40 for fiscal year 2028 and beyond.

This gives us the confidence to invest into the massive market opportunity unfolding in front of us, and as Will mentioned, we are leaning into these trends and playing to win. As always, Will and I are incredibly grateful for the outstanding dedication and teamwork of our Planeteers around the globe. Fiscal year 2026 was a standout year because of you. And we are excited for the year ahead. Operator, that concludes our comments. We can now take questions.

Operator: Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. Please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. If you would like to ask a question, press star 1 on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, press star 1 again. Your first question comes from the line of Colin Canfield from Cantor. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Colin Canfield: Can you perhaps update us on the timing and the scaling of both the SunCatcher opportunity as well as sounds like a pretty nascent geo-intelligence platform with NVIDIA? And then if you could maybe talk about how much of that was included in the set of opportunities from the Investor Day. Thank you.

Will Marshall: Well, both are very exciting opportunities, and in a way both involve both a space component and an AI component. Let me talk to the Google one first since you brought that up. SunCatcher is going well. It is early days. Just to recap that project, you know, this is about putting their TPUs into space. It is an early tech demo that is what we are doing right this second for them. There is a lot of interest in that space that you have seen in recent months. It is very exciting. It is heating up. But we are focused on executing towards those research goals. And there is a big potential market there long term.

As Sundar put it, I think within ten years, he expects most compute spending to go into orbit, and that is a big amount of money. That is a huge, huge market to go after, but we are at very early days. So, you know, it is exciting. We are staying focused on executing on those early missions. And then to NVIDIA, yes, that is also exciting. It was great to announce that extension of our partnership. It is also a research partnership at this stage. You all know about the fact that we have been putting those NVIDIA GPUs into orbit on our Pelican spacecraft, which is pretty cool.

This is actually more focused on the compute on the ground, how we leverage the GPUs in particular to speed up our data processing pipeline. In an increasingly fast-changing world, people want those answers really quickly. And GPUs have the potential to really speed things up. And we have seen some early results that are very promising, with big speedups like 100x on certain parts of our codebase. Getting answers to our clients faster is really important. So research collaboration, they are leaning in, and we are leaning in too. It is very exciting. But as to the revenue implications, I do not know if you wanted to touch on that.

Colin Canfield: Actually. I mean, I would just remind you that the—

Ashley Johnson: SunCatcher partnership is structured as an R&D partnership, so it is recognized as contra R&D expense. And with respect to the NVIDIA partnership, that is really just a research collaboration.

Colin Canfield: Got it. And then as we think about imputing working capital tailwind or tailwinds for 2027, is there a right framework to think about it maybe as like a percentage of the backlog increase or kind of high level, what are the building blocks on working capital that we should consider?

Ashley Johnson: First of all, I just want to correct myself. I made a misstatement on my prior answer. It is not contra revenue. It is contra R&D expense. Thanks for letting me clarify that. As for your second question in terms of the building blocks for working capital, obviously, as I said, as we are acquiring investments to execute on our backlog, that includes all of the capital expenditures we need to make to build out the Pelicans for our customers. That obviously will weigh into the procurement quarter to quarter. The nice thing about the way these contracts are structured is they typically provide us upfront capital to match the timing of those expenses, at least on an annual basis.

There may be differentials quarter to quarter as to when we make procurements and when we receive milestone payments. So as I said in the prepared remarks, cash flow is expected to vary quarter to quarter, but on an annualized basis, these contracts really enable us to operate the business in a free cash flow positive way.

Colin Canfield: Got it. Thank you for the color. Appreciate it.

Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Ryan Koontz from Needham & Company. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Ryan Koontz: Great. Thanks for the questions, and congrats on a great quarter and outlook. Starting with maybe some of the segment—your real strength you saw in Europe in the quarter. I wonder if you can maybe unpack that for us, what were some of the drivers behind that? Obviously, a lot of Defense work there, but any kind of color you can give us on the European market and how that has been progressing so well for you?

Will Marshall: Yes. Well, maybe I can kick it off. I spent quite a big fraction of the quarter in Europe going to a number of capitals, speaking to a lot of our customers there. The demand is off the charts, and we are leaning into it as best we can both for our data and AI solutions and Constellation Services. We talked about the interest in that going up. Yes. I mean, it is back to the geopolitical dynamics. Right? That is what is underneath this and driving a lot of this demand. They need their own sovereign systems. They need it quickly. They need speed and sovereignty, and we can provide both those things.

Speed: immediate access to our present satellites. Sovereignty: building satellites dedicated for them. And even that, we can do very swiftly compared with anyone else, and our history of having launched hundreds of satellites really puts us in a great position to do that. So that is the sort of demand signal. Ashley, towards the breakdown, I do not know if you want to comment at all on that.

Ashley Johnson: We provide the breakdown in the materials. I would just say, you know, we have historically had a very strong presence in Europe, and have a strong team in Berlin foundationally, and we have built on that with acquisitions that have given us presence in the Netherlands as well as in Slovenia, and that really helps us when we are engaging with governments across both their Civil and Defense and Intelligence needs.

Will Marshall: If I could just add one final thing, of course, our commitment to building satellites there in Berlin adds to that interest. I mean, we both needed it for expansion and it lent into the European demand because, of course, that helps connect the dots there.

Ryan Koontz: Sure. That is great. And just any comments around supply chain right now? Is it getting more difficult to acquire the types of kind of key components you need on the supply chain side?

Will Marshall: Not really. No. We are not seeing anything material.

Ashley Johnson: Obviously, it is something that we track carefully. Our teams are always seeking to diversify our supply chain sources.

Ryan Koontz: Got it. Thanks so much, guys.

Ashley Johnson: Thank you.

Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Edison Yu from Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.

Edison Yu: Thank you very much, and congratulations on the quarter. I want to come back to the AI element. You talked a little bit about LLMs. What is the latest status on the Anthropic partnership, and have we kind of progressed further from kind of just testing or early testing the models or the training?

Will Marshall: Yes. I mean, in AI in general, as I said, we are moving from this world of LLMs that can tell you things about the text of the Internet to how models are increasingly trying to move towards real-world models. And real-world models needing real-world data. I have this stack that is necessary. We are doing these research collaborations that we have mentioned, and they are very exciting. What they are really building a foundation towards is, you know, we have been building these bespoke solutions, these what we call AI-based enabled solutions for our broad area PlanetScope Daily Scan—so Maritime Domain Awareness solution, the Global Monitoring solution, and the Area Monitoring solution for Civil Government.

And those are really good, and they are starting to take off. And that is what is driving a lot of great growth that you are seeing in the numbers. But AI has this potential of making that more generic. That is, anyone can turn up, build their own bespoke application of equivalent fidelity in short order, like maybe within an hour, and, you know, in a completely bespoke way for their needs. That is just on the horizon.

And so what we are focused on with those research collaborations is how we can build towards that capability, and that is what—I mean, what is so exciting about that is the ability to unlock all the potential of our data, especially for Commercial and Civil Government markets where we have been less focused of late because of the strong interest on the Defense and Intelligence side, but are huge markets for Planet Labs PBC. So, basically, that is the direction and leaning of those partnerships. It is enabling us to build out that capability to expand the TAM.

Edison Yu: Absolutely. And just a follow-up on that, to get there, what do you see as the biggest—I do not know if you want to say bottleneck or thing we should look out for. Is it a question of just needing more compute? Is it a question of just, you know, it takes time—more training? How do you think about the path there and the bottlenecks?

Will Marshall: Oh, it is complex and evolving in that the space is changing so fast. I mean, literally, we are seeing capabilities that just a couple months ago we were not able to do because of the advances in especially coding. Like, that makes it now that you can even build whole applications very quickly. So we are just seeing that potentially take off much faster than we thought. There is nothing really standing in the way per se. We have the data. That is the critical ingredient, and it is the differentiating ingredient for AI.

And as I said briefly, like, I mean, in many ways, AI is commoditizing more the software layer that is making the AI piece—the data piece—most useful for AI, you know, and so that is very differentiating that we have such a unique dataset coming into it. So there is nothing holding us back there, and it is moving very fast. And that is why I was saying that I think you are going to start to see this come to fruition this year. And so watch this space.

Edison Yu: Amazing. Thank you.

Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Christine Lee Weg from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Christine Lee Weg: Hi. This is Gabby on for Christine. Congratulations on the quarter. Given your recent decision to extend the satellite imagery delay in the Middle East to fourteen days as a result of the ongoing conflict, have you seen any changes in customer behavior, and are there any potential contractual implications that we should maybe be aware of?

Will Marshall: Yes. I mean, the short answer is nothing material. Look, what we are focused on there is helping our critical customers in the region do the things they need, which is get critical answers fast, and trying to help them through that. We are focused and mainly heads down on supporting those customers in this critical time as best we can. The delay is a lot to do with the balance of thinking about those operational needs and making sure we do not put people in harm’s way and very genuine needs, at the same time as the transparency and accountability mission that we care about and ensuring all of our actors get access eventually.

So it is a carefully thought through decision and we are just trying to do our best to help the people that need it.

Christine Lee Weg: Great. Thank you. Super helpful color. And if I could have a quick follow-up. I mean, you announced the Satellite Services agreement with Sweden in January. Can you just talk about how you are seeing the pipeline for similar deals progressing relative to what you had laid out at the Investor Day? And what are you seeing in terms of conversion timelines and potential scale of upcoming opportunities?

Will Marshall: Yes. I mean, as I have mentioned in my prepared remarks, since that October Investor Day, both the number and the average size of those deals has been increasing. And so, I mean, just to give you a sense that it is a strong market demand right now, even stronger than we had said then. And, you know, it is a bit too early to talk about sort of average deal length because these are very few in number. Right? So I have not got any comments to that effect, but overall, the demand is very strong.

Christine Lee Weg: Great. Thanks so much.

Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Jeff Van Rhee from Craig-Hallum Capital Group. Please go ahead.

Jeff Van Rhee: Great. Thanks for taking the questions, guys, and congrats—a lot here to love. Let me start first with Civil/Commercial—about 40%, a little less than that as a percent of revenues. What do you think when you look at those markets—obviously, D&I is killing it. You have got a lot of sovereign deals flowing through, it makes sense to be pursuing those deals. I am wondering how you think about Civil and Commercial and what dynamics have to play out for those markets to reaccelerate?

Will Marshall: Well, as I said—see earlier answer to Edison about the AI piece—because that is what unlocks these things and enables that. And we are just on the precipice of that. And so yes, I see that beginning to come this year. And just to be clear, in my opinion, the biggest markets are those two segments, not Defense and Intelligence. And we think that is a long and sustaining and really great market. But the Civil Government market is huge. The Commercial market is huge. There are so many, but it has been lacking those critical solutions. Here, we have a generic way of crossing that chasm to the follow-on solution that enables us to unlock that market.

And so we know those capabilities—that those answers—are latent in our data, and this gives the bridge to the actual solution that the customers need. So, I mean, you know, it is back to my earlier point: AI is going to enable it, and I think we are going to see beginnings of that really take off this year.

Jeff Van Rhee: Yes. And over to the sovereign deals for a second. I mean, obviously, what—three mega deals here roughly trailing twelve months, give or take. It sounds like the pipeline has expanded. It sounds like you are thinking deal count there should improve. I mean, just any other observations on those sovereign deals—on the magnitude of the growth in the pipeline? Sounds like it really accelerated even further potentially in the last ninety days.

Will Marshall: No. I did not want to quantify that, but I just give you a sense that it is really growing and it is very strong. And, yes, that is it.

Ashley Johnson: The only other thing that I would add, Jeff, which I think is an important point, is that when we are selling these sovereign capabilities, we are coupling with that our Data and Solutions. And it actually is the synergies across that is a competitive differentiator because we can drive value to these customers out of the gate. We can give them visibility and intelligence that they did not have before as we work with them over the longer-term contract to build out what their sovereign capabilities will ultimately be. And so it is worth pointing out that actually a lot of our backlog growth is in Data and Solutions.

In fact, that part of the backlog has almost doubled year over year.

Jeff Van Rhee: Wow. That is great color. Last one if I could, just on the Owls. Any updates there that you could share?

Will Marshall: Yes. I mean, we are building that tech demo as we announced last year towards that improved Daily Scan capability. The team is working hard on it. It is going well. It is quite an incredible capability that we are obviously building there. Just to remind everyone that we are moving towards one-meter scan rather than three-meter, and that is roughly 10 times more data per unit area of the ground. And roughly a 10x improvement in latency as well because they will be equipped with both onboard compute systems as well as satellite-to-satellite comms so that we can get the data back as well. So those things are all going to be faster as well.

So much lower latency—at 10x there too. So it is really a significant improvement on that system. And, yes, we are looking forward to launching a demo.

Jeff Van Rhee: Sounds great. Thanks, guys.

Ashley Johnson: Thanks, Jeff.

Operator: Your next question comes from the line of John Gooden from Citibank. Please go ahead.

John Gooden: Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my question. Really appreciate it. I just wanted to square off the backlog strength and all of the positive commentary with revenue guidance. The revenue guidance is fantastic. Do not get me wrong. But even so, it just seems like there is upside to it based on the commentary of, you know, incredibly strong demand signals, particularly in Europe, as well as the fact that as a percentage of the backlog that you guys have right now, it does not seem like the revenue guide is a particularly large percentage versus maybe how you set guidance in the past.

Ashley Johnson: Yes. It is obviously a good question, John. We are in a really favorable position right now in terms of the level of visibility that we have. Obviously, there is a lot of execution that goes into turning backlog into revenue, and we are laser focused on that.

And in terms of setting guidance, I think what you have seen from us, particularly in recent periods, is we try to give ourselves room for the fact that, you know, on these big mission-critical types of transactions and contracts, there are things that can shift from quarter to quarter, and we want to give room in our guidance for that to happen so that we can keep our customers, you know, front and center around execution. Similarly, we have a great pipeline, but when those deals land, given how big they can be, they can really impact revenue in the year.

And so we tend to assume that new signings are back half-loaded, which gives us opportunity to deliver upside if that does not end up being the case, if it ends up landing sooner, but does not put us in a position where we are out over our skis in terms of the numbers we have given you.

John Gooden: That makes a lot of sense. It sounds like, you know, that there are some layers of conservatism in there, which is appropriate, and we will see how that plays out throughout the year. If I could ask one more, just in terms of the activities in the Middle East, the conflict there, do you feel that has additionally kind of turbocharged the demand for your product in any way? I know the backdrop is strong, but has that had an obvious impact, you know, as sort of a recent event?

Will Marshall: Well, obviously, there is a huge amount of focus in that, and we are—but, again, as I said earlier, we are just focused on delivering pieces—doing mission-critical things. We are trying to focus on that, but we will see. It is early days.

Ashley Johnson: Yes. I think, you know, one of the things that we have seen in these types of situations is you do see an increase in usage as there is just more urgency in getting as much data as possible around the situation. You know, but ultimately, as Will said, situations like this can be very dynamic.

John Gooden: Got it. Thank you.

Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Trevor Walsh from Citizens. Please go ahead.

Trevor Walsh: Great. Hey, all. Thanks for taking my questions. Will, you called out the SHIELD IDIQ in your prepared remarks. Can you maybe just give us a sense—I know early days on this, very large project and a lot of it is TBD—but can you give us a sense of how you are thinking about that opportunity?

Is that something where it is just kind of bread-and-butter Planet Labs PBC Earth observation data that you would be providing for that as you go after contracts and opportunities there, or might it even look like something more akin to Satellite Services where you might be building spacecraft that are fairly nontraditional for you guys, but just being used for all the things that are part of that project?

Will Marshall: Well, yes, as you say, it is early days. It is obviously a big opportunity. There is, you know, huge budget behind it. But the specific ways in which we fit in will have to be figured out as we understand the architecture, and they are still working on many of those aspects. There are, of course, ways in which our present datasets could fit into that—early warning of certain things, strategic analysis across broad areas. That obviously makes sense. But right now, that is merely a vehicle, and we will compete on awards within that, and that is the same for all the people that have got awards under that system. So, yes.

But obviously, finding unknown unknowns—there could be specific missions, but it is very early days to be thinking about that. What I will say is that we are continuing to lean into specific opportunities that are very live right now, like with LUNO, with our Navy, and others. So, you know, we are seeing a lot of interest in cislunar awareness around the world. So the department has a lot of interest across the board, and we are leaning into it.

Trevor Walsh: Great. Awesome. Appreciate that. Ashley, maybe just one follow-up for you. I appreciate the color you gave around free cash flow. I know you guys are not giving an official guide, but just given how strong you guys ended this current fiscal year and we think about 2027, there is obviously—there can be a bit of a step down from just going $50,000,000 to something that is just generally positive. So just want to make sure we do not get—just given the CapEx spend and everything else, could you just give us a little bit of maybe guardrails to how we think about that for 2027? Would be great.

Ashley Johnson: Yes. I mean, first, I will just reiterate the point that I made. We definitely expect there to be pretty significant fluctuations quarter to quarter. Just like I said, timing of procurement versus timing of milestone payments can cause, you know, one quarter to be much more positive and another quarter to be, you know, significantly negative. So that is one caution that I would provide, and that makes it a little bit harder to give, you know, very precise guidance around it, which is why I have not.

And to your point, you know, depending on how much more of this opportunity we continue to realize, it would not make sense for us to optimize expanding free cash flow on the year versus setting ourselves up to both deliver against the contracts we have and to bring more on. So if that offers enough color to you without giving specific guidance, which I am really not in a position to do, we are not focused on, you know, kind of sustaining or expanding free cash flow from last year, but really focused on balancing it quarter to quarter and leaning into the market.

Trevor Walsh: That makes sense. That is helpful. Thanks, Ashley.

Will Marshall: Thank you.

Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Greg Pendy from Clear Street. Please go ahead.

Greg Pendy: Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my question. Just one quick one—just so that I understand kind of the approach on this year of leaning in, in terms of the Commercial and Civil side. I mean, it is hard to think back, but, you know, you did have a cost rationalization program at one time, and your Sales and Marketing is down around 15% from fiscal 2024, yet your revenues are up roughly 40%.

So is it kind of that the customers through Anthropic will figure out how to use the data and how valuable it is into their daily workflows, or do you think that, you know, you will need some boots on the ground to educate the Civil and Commercial markets? Thanks.

Ashley Johnson: Yes, Greg, it is a very good callout. We did, you know, realign the team across the board to really focus on where we had the largest account opportunities, which I think did disproportionately impact, you know, how much resource we were putting behind going after a more distributed Commercial market. And as we said, we were building out the platform to enable smaller customers to really access the data on a self-serve basis. I think as we are growing those markets and leaning into the AI that Will highlighted, we will be making some targeted investments in those markets where we are seeing the most traction out of the gate.

So we do have feet on the street going and meeting with customers and demonstrating for them. And that is a really exciting part of these new capabilities that we have, as we can really show, not tell, in these customer meetings, all the things that you can—all the insights you can extract—from the data to answer their specific questions. So we did a lot of training with our sales team earlier this year, really showing them how to use these tools and demo environments. Obviously, the world has changed a lot in the last six years. You can do a lot of that without putting people on airplanes, but it will require some investment across Sales and Marketing.

And I did highlight that as one of the investment areas for us this year.

Greg Pendy: That is very helpful. Thanks a lot.

Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Alex Latimore from Northland. Please go ahead.

Alex Latimore: Hey, guys. Excellent quarter. Alex Latimore on here for Mike Latimore. I had one question—I just wanted to hit on guidance one more time. Good raise on guidance. I was wondering if you could talk about what assumptions are factored into that raise on guidance. Does this assume any new eight-plus-figure wins or any commentary there?

Ashley Johnson: Yes. Thanks, Alex. I would say we are very balanced in terms of how we think about those types of opportunities that may be in our pipeline, because, obviously, those could swing outcomes based on whether they come in or not. So typically, what we will look at is a pipeline of opportunity where, if an eight-figure deal were to fall out of the pipeline, what type of backup we have for that opportunity, and then probability-adjusted.

So we are definitely looking at active opportunities, probabilities, and then giving ourselves room for those deals where maybe we do not have enough pipeline to make up for that one landing on time or in the year, which gives us opportunity to outperform. And, like I said earlier, it does not put us in a position where we feel over our skis.

Alex Latimore: Awesome. And then one more—I just wanted to hear if there are any footholds in the Golden Dome initiative. I understand there was a $10,000,000,000 incremental add to the Golden Dome initiative for space-based capabilities. I am not sure if you are seeing any demand there for Planet Labs PBC systems, but any commentary around Golden Dome would be helpful.

Will Marshall: Yes. I sort of said all that I can on that at the minute. It is very early days as they are architecting that system, and potentially that is—you know, the SHIELD IDIQ, just to be clear, is going down that path. And so that answer was about that. And, again, it is a framework that we have, and now we will bid for actual awards under that program. But we do not know what they are exactly yet. Then when we do, we will respond. But per my earlier answer, the general thing is giving domain awareness and other things that could be useful for that. But we obviously have to wait and see what comes through that.

Alex Latimore: Awesome. Excellent quarter. Thanks, guys.

Ashley Johnson: Thank you.

Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Caleb Henry from Quilty Space. Please go ahead.

Caleb Henry: Hi, guys. Thanks for the call. Couple of questions on satellite manufacturing. Actually, first one—sorry—on Pelican. I have noticed that you guys lowered one of the Pelican satellites a little past 400 kilometers recently. Is that part of a larger fleet migration to a very low Earth orbit? Or is there another way that we should think about that?

Will Marshall: Yes. We lower spacecraft, of course, to the operational ~30-centimeter ultimate resolution target for those missions. But no changes to the plan. Those were just operational adjustments, as we will start with the satellites in a slightly higher orbit and bring them down to operational orbits as we progress. By the way, on Pelican, you may want to look in the associated deck with this earnings. There are a few really cool pictures of some of the fast timelines that we had—three pictures in about an hour. It is very exciting to see and a great performance of that system. So it is very exciting, and we have got multiple launches for more of those systems going up this year.

So it is exciting times. And was there a broader question about the manufacturing?

Caleb Henry: Yes. I definitely have to look through these pictures. But looking at the contract for Sweden and tying that into manufacturing, can you give a sense of when those satellites are supposed to be delivered and how many satellites? Is that sort of the reason for the ramp-up in manufacturing space in California?

Will Marshall: Nothing specific I am going to say specifically to that customer, but we are ramping up because of the demand overall. Right? And we are building fleets for multiple customers as well as for our own system, and that demand is obviously already clear such that we are expanding here in San Francisco and in Berlin.

Caleb Henry: Okay. And then last question. Just curious if you could shed more light on what makes 2026 the year you first anticipate seeing a return on investment on AI. Was there more of an “aha” moment that happened, or is this just the natural evolution of the years of investment and how customers use Planet Labs PBC data?

Will Marshall: Yes. And that is an oversimplification because, I mean, we have had revenue from AI a fair bit before. What I mean is in terms of the big way in which AI can unleash those other market potentials, and I think we are going to really start to see those generic solutions that I mentioned—ways in which anyone can turn up, build an application that is relevant to their needs, and then start getting value. That unlocks other markets that we have been talking about for years latent in our data—energy, insurance, finance, and so on.

And so I think that it is just more that I see that all the pieces are coming together such that will come to fruition this year, and you will start to really see that take off. Just like, you know, the Constellation Service—or Satellite Service—has really started to take off in FY 2026.

Operator: Thank you. That is all the time we have for questions today. I will now turn the call back to Will Marshall, CEO and Co-Founder, for closing remarks.

Will Marshall: Well, I would just say that, obviously, it is great to see the business doing great, both in the Satellite Services and in the AI-powered Solutions side. And we are very proud of the financials that we reported today. Not just beating the revenue expectations, but I am especially proud of the backlog improvement to $900,000,000 and achieving the Rule of 40 again in the quarter. And it really has set us up for a strong foundation for this coming year. And given that backlog and confidence in our pipeline, we have projected quite strong growth again for this year, and even for years that follow, which is why we are investing this year strongly into that market opportunity.

And like I was just saying, this will be the year of AI for Planet Labs PBC, and I think this bridge to the solutions gap will unleash a huge opportunity later in enhanced data. I just want to end by thanking our teams, as we started, around the globe that have enabled all of this to be possible. Thanks again for joining, everyone.

Operator: This concludes today’s call. Thank you all for attending. You may now disconnect.

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