Why this name is on the tape
Planet Labs PBC (NYSE: PL) is a San Francisco public-benefit company founded in 2010 by three NASA scientists. Search boxes often stop at Planet or Planet.com. The product is a daily picture of Earth, delivered as data and software — not a phone link and not home broadband. SuperDove / PlanetScope is the wide, daily layer. SkySat and Pelican are the high-resolution tasking layer. Tanager is hyperspectral. Customers sit in agriculture, civil government, insurance, energy, and defense.
The tape prints PL when a sovereign satellite-services headline lands or when “space AI” is in the news. Those are different clocks. Imagery subscriptions and billed satellite-services work have printed. Fiscal Q2 2027, which ended 31 July 2026, has not. Google’s space-compute collaboration is a research demonstration. This article keeps the printed book apart from the outlook. It is not a ranking of the stock and not a trade instruction.
What has actually printed
Planet’s fiscal year ends 31 January. For the year ended 31 January 2026 the company reported $307.7 million of revenue, up 26% from $244.4 million. Fourth-quarter revenue was $86.8 million, up 41% year over year. Full-year GAAP net loss was $246.9 million, versus $123.2 million a year earlier. About $161.4 million of that year’s loss was a non-cash revaluation of warrant liabilities as the share price rose. Adjusted EBITDA for the year was a $15.5 million profit, versus a $10.6 million loss. Operating cash flow was $134.4 million. Free cash flow was $52.9 million. Cash, cash equivalents, and short-term investments were $640.1 million at year-end. Recurring annual-contract-value share was 98%.
For the quarter ended 30 April 2026 — fiscal Q1 2027 — Planet reported $94.2 million of revenue, up 42% from $66.3 million. GAAP gross margin was 54%. GAAP net loss was $138.9 million, or $(0.40) a share, versus $12.6 million a year earlier. About $106.5 million of that quarter’s loss was another warrant-liability revaluation. Planet redeemed the public warrants in the quarter and took in about $107.8 million of cash from exercises; remaining private-placement warrants were exercised cashless. The company said those public-warrant revaluations will not repeat. Adjusted EBITDA was a $1.0 million loss. Operating cash flow was $15.4 million. Free cash flow was a $2.5 million use. Cash, cash equivalents, and short-term investments were $730.8 million. Recurring ACV share was 99%.
Fiscal Q2 2027 ended 31 July 2026. As of 31 August 2026 that quarter has not been reported. On 4 June the company said it expected Q2 revenue of about $102–$107 million and full-year fiscal 2027 revenue of about $425–$441 million, with adjusted EBITDA profit of $0–$10 million. Those are company targets, not a print.
What is in orbit — and what is still on the pad
Planet designs and flies its own small satellites. The daily PlanetScope archive comes from a large SuperDove fleet. High-resolution tasking has been SkySat plus the newer Pelican line. Hyperspectral is Tanager-1, flown with the Carbon Mapper Coalition and NASA JPL. “In orbit” is not the same as “commissioned and selling that bird’s capacity.”
- Pelican: after a May 2026 SpaceX launch of three AI-enabled Pelicans, Planet said nine high-resolution Pelicans were on orbit. That batch included the Swedish Armed Forces’ first sovereign reconnaissance satellite, launched a little over four months after the contract was signed. Earlier Pelicans (including Pelican-3 and -4 in August 2025) went through contact and commissioning first.
- Pelican-11: in early June 2026 Planet said it had shipped the first Gen-2 Pelican to Vandenberg for SpaceX Transporter-17. Gen-2 is described as a path toward 30-centimeter-class imagery. A technology demonstration on the pad is not a commercial 30 cm product.
- Tanager-1: still the flying hyperspectral bird. Carbon Mapper has used it to detect thousands of methane and CO2 plumes. In Q1 Planet announced an agreement with Carbon Mapper and JPL to design a shortwave-infrared-only Tanager with a wider swath. That is a design agreement, not a second satellite on orbit.
- Google / Project Suncatcher: at the fiscal 2026 year-end update Planet described an R&D partnership with Google to demonstrate satellites for compute in space. That is a research demo. It is not a leased data-center campus and not booked satellite-services revenue.
Named seats: satellite services versus one-year tasking
Satellite services means Planet builds and flies dedicated capacity for a customer — often with a sovereign flavor — instead of only selling a shared archive subscription. Imagery licenses and short government tasking orders still print. They are not the same as a multi-year dedicated constellation.
- SKY Perfect JSAT (January 2025): a multi-year satellite-services agreement for a dedicated ten-Pelican constellation. Planet has said it is still executing the builds. A signed services deal is not ten JSAT birds already on orbit.
- Germany (€240 million, 1 July 2025): Planet Labs Germany GmbH announced a multi-year agreement funded by the German government for dedicated Pelican capacity and direct downlink over specified European regions, plus PlanetScope, SkySat, and AI tools for situational and maritime awareness. Planet said it expected to start recognizing revenue in January 2026 and to ramp over several years. Beginning to serve dedicated capacity is not the same as the full €240 million already in the P&L.
- Sweden (low nine-figure, multi-year, announced with the fiscal 2026 year-end): a suite of satellites, space-based data, and awareness solutions for the Swedish Armed Forces. Planet called it the third satellite-services contract in twelve months. The first Swedish sovereign reconnaissance satellite launched in May 2026. One bird up is not the whole suite delivered.
- Unnamed international defense customer (Q1 FY27): an eight-figure, one-year contract for dedicated capacity from satellites already on orbit, spanning Pelican, SkySat, and PlanetScope plus analytics. One year of dedicated tasking is not a multi-year sovereign fleet.
- U.S. government, Q1 FY27: National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency awarded a $21.9 million, one-year extension for maritime surveillance under Luno B / AAMOR, plus a separate Global Monitoring Service award for crisis response. The U.S. Navy renewed vessel detection in the Pacific for six months at $7.5 million. The Missile Defense Agency’s SHIELD IDIQ named Planet a prime — a seat to compete for task orders, not a funded production run.
- Civil and commercial renewals in the same quarter included a two-year seven-figure Greek National Satellite Space Project award through ESA, a two-year seven-figure Czech agricultural-payments contract, a Scottish agricultural-reform award with Computacenter, a John Deere supplier-sustainability recognition (not a dollar figure), and Watch Duty as a new wildfire-alert customer. Those are named seats. They are not the Germany or Sweden satellite-services books.
How to read backlog versus remaining performance obligations
At 30 April 2026 Planet reported remaining performance obligations of $816 million, up 81% year over year, and backlog of more than $906 million, up 72%. Those are not two spellings of the same pile.
Remaining performance obligations are contracted future revenue that has not yet been recognized — deferred revenue plus non-cancelable contracted amounts still to invoice. Backlog, as Planet defines it, adds the cancelable slice: contracts that let the customer terminate for convenience without a substantive penalty, and written orders where funding has not been appropriated. Backlog does not include unexercised options. U.S. and other government seats often carry termination-for-convenience clauses. Planet has said it may fail to realize the full value of those contracts. The $906 million figure is visibility, not cash in the bank.
What this does not tell you
A $94.2 million quarter and nine Pelicans on orbit are evidence that Planet is billing more imagery and dedicated capacity than a year ago. They are not proof that fiscal Q2 2027 lands inside $102–$107 million, that full-year revenue reaches $425–$441 million, that Gen-2 Pelican delivers 30-centimeter commercial imagery, that the next Tanager flies, or that every cancelable government seat in the $906 million backlog becomes revenue. Warrant-driven GAAP losses in FY26 and Q1 are accounting marks, not a cash burn of the same size. Google’s space-compute work remains a demonstration.
On MarketNeon, PL is a ticker like any other: price, volume, crowd mentions, and headlines can run hot while the next quarter is still a target and the next Pelican is still in checkout. This article is context for those prints. It does not rank the name, and it does not tell anyone to buy or sell.