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Planet Labs (NYSE: PL): Daily Earth Imaging & Geospatial Intelligence
Planet Labs operates the largest commercial Earth observation constellation in orbit — roughly 200 Dove satellites imaging the planet's entire landmass every 24 hours, plus the higher-resolution Pelican and hyperspectral Tanager fleets — and sells the output as a subscription to governments, defense agencies, and agriculture and insurance customers. In fiscal 2026 it became one of the few Earth observation companies to reach full-year profitability on an adjusted basis.
Who they are
Planet was founded in 2010 by three former NASA scientists — Will Marshall, Robbie Schingler, and Chris Boshuizen — around a heretical idea. The satellite industry's instinct had always been to build one exquisite spacecraft that would last fifteen years. Planet proposed building hundreds of cheap ones the size of a loaf of bread, replacing them constantly, and accepting worse resolution in exchange for imaging everywhere every day. The company calls this "agile aerospace"; the rest of the industry initially called it something less polite.
It worked. Planet listed on the NYSE in 2021 via a SPAC merger and spent the following years doing the unglamorous half of the job: building the software stack to store, index, and serve petabytes of daily imagery, which turns out to be the part customers actually pay for. Will Marshall remains co-founder, CEO, and chairperson; Ashley Johnson is president and CFO.
Fiscal 2026, which ended 31 January 2026, was the year the model proved out financially — record revenue, the company's first full year of adjusted EBITDA profitability, and positive free cash flow. Planet also launched 40 satellites during the year and signed an R&D partnership with Google to explore data centres in space, which is either a footnote or a very large story depending on how the next decade goes.
What they do
Three constellations, each answering a different question.
- PlanetScope — roughly 200 Dove and SuperDove satellites imaging the Earth's entire landmass daily at about 3.7-metre resolution. The point is not detail; it is the archive. If you want to know what a piece of ground looked like on an arbitrary Tuesday four years ago, Planet is one of the only places that can tell you.
- SkySat and Pelican — high-resolution tasking. You point these at a specific place when you need detail rather than coverage. Pelican is the next-generation replacement, with a second-generation technology demonstrator (Pelican-11) launched on a SpaceX Transporter rideshare.
- Tanager — hyperspectral imaging, built with Carbon Mapper and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Tanager-1 downlinks roughly 300,000 square kilometres of hyperspectral data daily and detects things ordinary cameras cannot, most notably methane and CO₂ plumes. During Q1 FY2027 Planet announced a shortwave-infrared-only Tanager variant with a wider swath, aimed at atmospheric gas detection and fire-fuel monitoring.
Layered on top is the strategic pivot management calls "Planetary Intelligence" — running AI over the imagery so customers receive detected anomalies rather than pictures to interpret. A defense analyst does not want 40 terabytes of imagery; they want a note saying something moved at a specific coordinate.
The other growth vector is satellite services — building and operating dedicated satellites for sovereign customers. In Q1 FY2027 Planet launched three Pelican satellites including Sweden's first sovereign reconnaissance satellite, delivered roughly four months after contract signing, which is an unusual cadence for a national security asset.
How they make money
Planet sells data as a subscription, and the recurring share is unusually high for a hardware-heavy company: 99% of annual contract value was recurring as of Q1 FY2027. Customers span defense and intelligence, civil government, agriculture, forestry, energy, insurance, and finance.
Fiscal 2026 (ended January 2026): revenue of $307.7 million, up 26%, with Q4 growing 41% year over year to $86.8 million. Remaining performance obligations rose 106% to $852 million and backlog rose 79% to over $900 million. Adjusted EBITDA was positive for the full year at $15.5 million — a first — and free cash flow was $52.9 million. Cash and short-term investments closed at $640 million, up 188%.
The first quarter of fiscal 2027 (ended 30 April 2026) accelerated further: record revenue of $94.2 million, up 42%, backlog over $906 million, and cash and short-term investments of $730.8 million. Gross margin was 54% (56% non-GAAP), slightly below the prior year as satellite investment ramped.
One line needs reading carefully. Q1 FY2027 GAAP net loss was $138.9 million — but roughly $106.5 million of that was a non-cash revaluation loss on warrant liabilities caused by the share price rising during the quarter. Non-GAAP net loss for the same quarter was $8.8 million. This is a recurring feature of SPAC-era balance sheets and says more about the stock than the business.
Guidance for fiscal 2027 is revenue of $425 million to $441 million with adjusted EBITDA between breakeven and $10 million, reflecting deliberate reinvestment into the Pelican ramp and AI.
Where it sits in the value chain
Fig. — Planet Labs' position in the space value chain
Planet sits at Stage 6: Earth Observation & Geospatial Intelligence — the end of the chain where orbital hardware finally becomes a product someone buys for a business reason rather than a strategic one.
It also builds its own satellites in-house, which pulls it back into Stage 2, and that vertical integration is central to the economics: because a Dove costs a small fraction of a traditional imaging satellite, Planet can treat its constellation as a consumable and iterate the camera every generation instead of every fifteen years. The satellite services business — building sovereign satellites for national customers — makes the Stage 2 overlap explicit and commercial rather than incidental.
The bigger trend
Earth observation spent two decades as a business that sold pictures, and selling pictures is a bad business: the marginal image is nearly free to produce, buyers only want a few, and archives commoditise. The sector's escape route has been to stop selling imagery and start selling answers.
That shift is why AI matters here more than almost anywhere else in space. The bottleneck was never collection; it was that no organisation has enough human analysts to look at a daily image of the entire planet. Automated change detection converts an unmanageable data firehose into a small number of alerts, which is a product with actual pricing power — and it favours whoever owns the deepest historical archive, because "this is different from normal" requires knowing what normal looked like.
The second force is sovereignty. Governments that spent the 2010s buying imagery from allied intelligence services now want their own satellites, their own tasking authority, and their own data residency. That has turned Earth observation companies into part-time satellite manufacturers, and it is currently the highest-value contract type in the segment. Sweden's reconnaissance satellite is the template: a national capability delivered commercially, in months rather than years.
What to watch
A few threads worth following for Planet Labs:
- Pelican fleet ramp — fiscal 2027 adjusted EBITDA guidance is deliberately near breakeven because of Pelican capital spending. Whether that spend translates into high-resolution revenue on schedule is the year's central question.
- Backlog conversion — over $906 million of backlog against roughly $430 million of annual revenue gives unusual visibility, but conversion pace depends on customer programme timing.
- Satellite services versus data subscriptions — sovereign satellite builds are large and lumpy; data subscriptions are recurring. The mix shapes both margin and predictability.
- Warrant-driven GAAP noise — expect GAAP net loss to swing sharply with the share price. Non-GAAP figures are the cleaner read on operations.
- The Google data-centres-in-space partnership — currently an R&D agreement, not a business line. Any move toward on-orbit compute would change what "processing" means for this whole segment.
Related companies
Planet shares its value chain stage with the other operators selling orbital imagery and analytics as a subscription.
FAQ
How often does Planet image the Earth?
Its PlanetScope constellation of roughly 200 Dove and SuperDove satellites images the Earth's entire landmass once every 24 hours at about 3.7-metre resolution. Higher-resolution SkySat and Pelican satellites are tasked at specific targets on demand rather than imaging continuously, and the hyperspectral Tanager fleet collects specialised spectral data over selected areas.
Is Planet Labs profitable?
On an adjusted basis, yes as of fiscal 2026 — the year ended 31 January 2026 delivered $15.5 million of adjusted EBITDA and $52.9 million of free cash flow on revenue of $307.7 million, the company's first full profitable year. On a GAAP basis it still reports net losses, driven substantially by non-cash items including stock-based compensation and warrant revaluation.
What is the difference between PlanetScope, Pelican, and Tanager?
PlanetScope is broad daily coverage at moderate resolution — the always-on archive. Pelican is the high-resolution tasking fleet, used when detail matters more than coverage. Tanager is hyperspectral, built with Carbon Mapper and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and detects chemical signatures such as methane and CO₂ plumes that conventional optical imagery cannot see.
What are Planet's satellite services?
Contracts in which Planet builds and operates dedicated satellites for a specific customer, typically a government wanting sovereign imaging capability with its own tasking authority. In the first quarter of fiscal 2027 Planet launched three Pelican satellites including Sweden's first sovereign reconnaissance satellite, delivered roughly four months after the contract was signed.
Sources referenced
Company filings and investor relations (investors.planet.com) · FY2026 fourth quarter and full year results (SEC Form 8-K) · Q1 FY2027 results (SEC Form 8-K) · SatNews on the FY2026 results and Planetary Intelligence strategy
This page tracks publicly disclosed business activity for informational and educational purposes only. It is not investment advice, and inclusion here is not a recommendation to buy or sell any security. Constellation counts, contract values, and financial figures change quickly — verify current details before making decisions. Last updated: August 2026.