Q4 2026 Earnings Call — March 19, 2026
Colin Canfield (Cantor): Can you perhaps update us on the timing and the scaling of both the Suncatcher opportunity as well as what sounds like a pretty nascent geointelligence platform within 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.
Management: 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, it's going well. It's early days. Just to recap that project, this is about putting their TPUs into space. It's an early tech demo. That is what we're doing right this second for them. It's a lot of interest in that space that you've seen in recent months. It's very exciting. It's heating up. But we're focused on executing towards those research goals. As Sundar put it, I think within 10 years, he expects most compute spending to go into orbit. That's a big amount of money. That's a huge, huge market to go after, but with very early dates. So, you know, it's exciting. We're staying focused on executing on those early missions.
And then to NVIDIA, yeah, that is also exciting. It was great to announce that extension of our partnerships. It's also a research partnership at this stage. You all know about the fact that we've 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 their 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. We've seen some early results that are very promising where big speed ups like 100x on certain parts of our coding base, getting answers to our clients faster is really important. So research collaboration, they're leaning in and we are leaning in too. It's very exciting. But as to the revenue implications, I don't know if you wanted to touch on that. I mean, I would just remind you that the Suncatcher partnership is structured as an R&D partnership, so it's recognized as contra revenue. And with respect to the NVIDIA partnership, that's really just a research collaboration. Yes, R&D.
Colin Canfield (Cantor): Got it. And then as we think about imputing working capital 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, kind of what are the building blocks on working capital that we should consider?
Management: First of all, I just want to correct myself. I made a misstatement on my prior answer. It's not contra revenue. It's 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 procurements 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.
Ryan Coots (Needham & Co.): Great. Thanks for the questions, and congrats on a great quarter outlook. Starting with maybe some of the segment, what your real strength you saw in Europe in the quarter. I wonder if you can maybe unpack that for us. You know, 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's been progressing so well for you.
Management: Yeah, 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. 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. Yeah, I mean, it's back to the geopolitical dynamics, right? That's what's 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 offer both of 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's the sort of demand signal actually towards the breakdown. I don't know if you want to comment at all on that. We provide the breakdown and 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've 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're engaging with governments across both their civil and defense and intelligence needs. And 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 expanded manufacturing for our pelicans, and it lent into the European demand because, of course, that helps connect the dots there.
Ryan Coots (Needham & Co.): Sure, that's great. And just any comments around supply chain right now? Is it getting more difficult to acquire the types of key components you need on the supply chain side?
Management: Not really, no. We're not seeing anything material. Obviously, it's something that we check carefully. Our teams are always seeking to diversify our supply chain sources.
Edison Yu (Dutch Bank): 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's the latest, I guess, 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?
Management: Yeah, I mean, AI in general, as I said, we're moving from this world of LLMs that couldn't tell you about 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 has this stack that's necessary. We're doing these research collaborations that we've mentioned and they're very exciting. What they're really building a foundation towards is we've been building these bespoke solutions, these what we call AI enabled solutions for our board area PlanetScope daily scan. So the maritime domain awareness solution, the global monitoring solution, and the area monitoring solution for civil government. And those are really good and they're starting to take off and that's what's driving a lot of the great growth that you're seeing in the numbers.
AI has the potential of making that more generic, that is that anyone can turn up build their own spoke 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're focused on with those research collaborations is how we can build towards that capability. And that is what, I mean, what's so exciting about that is the ability to unlock all the potential of our data, especially for commercial and civil government markets where we've been less focused of late because of the strong interest on the defense and intelligence side, but our huge markets for planet. So basically, um, that's the direction and leaning of those partnerships is enabling us to build out that capability to expand the town.
Edison Yu (Dutch Bank): Absolutely just to follow up on that yeah yeah just just to follow up on that to try get get there what do you see as the biggest um I don't want a bottleneck or or thing we should look out for is it a question of just Do you need more compute? Is it a question of just, you know, it takes time, more training? Like, how do you think about, like, the path there and the bottlenecks?
Management: Well, it's complex and evolving in that the space is changing so fast. I mean, literally, we are seeing capabilities that just a couple of months ago we weren't able to do because of the advances in especially coding like that 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's nothing really standing in the way per se, we have the data that's the critical ingredient and it's the differentiating ingredient for AI. And as I said briefly, like, I mean, in many ways, AI, it's making the commoditizing more the software layer that's making the AI piece, the data piece most useful for AI. And so that's very differentiating that we have this unique data set coming into it. So there's nothing holding us back there. And it's moving very fast. And that's why I was saying that I think you're going to start to see this come to fruition this year. So watch this space.
Christine Leeweg (Morgan Stanley): 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 14 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?
Management: Yeah, I mean, the short answer is nothing material. Look, what we're 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're 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 don't put people in harm's way and it's very genuine needs. At the same time, our transparency and accountability mission that we care about and ensuring all of our actors get access eventually. So it's a carefully thought through decision and we're just trying to do our best to help the people that need it.
Christine Leeweg (Morgan Stanley): Thank you. Super helpful color. And if I can ask a quick follow up, I mean, you announced the satellite services agreement with Sweden in January. Can you just talk about how you're 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?
Management: Yeah, I mean, as I've 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. It is a strong market demand right now, even stronger than we had said then. And, you know, it's a bit too early to talk about sort of average deal length because it's just these are very few in number, right? So I haven't got any comments to that effect. But overall, the demand is very strong.
Jeff Benry (Craig Hallum Capital Group): Great thanks for taking the questions guys and congrats. A lot here to love let me start um first with civil civil commercial about 40 a little less than that of uh as percent of revenues what do you think you know when you look at those markets obviously dni is killing it you've got a lot of sovereign deals flowing through and and it makes sense to be pursuing those deals I'm wondering how you think about civil and commercial and what dynamics have to play out for those markets to re-accelerate.
Management: Well, as I said, see earlier answer to Edison about the AI piece, because that's what unlocks these things and enables it. And we're just on the precipice of that. And so, yeah, 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's a long and sustaining and really great market. But the civil government market is huge. The commercial market is huge. There's so many, but it's been lacking those critical solutions. Here we have a generic way of crossing that chasm to the fuller solution that enables us to unlock that market. And so we know those capabilities, 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's back to my earlier point. AI is going to enable it, and I think we're going to see the beginnings of that really take off this year.
Jeff Benry (Craig Hallum Capital Group): Yep. And over to the sovereign deals for a second. I mean, obviously, what, three mega deals here roughly trailing 12 months, give or take. You know, it sounds like the pipeline is expanded. It sounds like you're thinking, you know, 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 90 days.
Management: No, I didn't want to quantify that, but just give you a sense that it is really growing and it's very strong. And, yeah, that's it. And 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 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 didn't 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's 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 Benry (Craig Hallum Capital Group): That's a great color. Last one, if I could, just on the OWLs, any updates there that you could share?
Management: Yeah, I mean, we're building that tech demo, as we announced last year, towards that improved daily scan capability. The team's working hard on it. It's quite an incredible capability that we're obviously building there. Just to remind everyone that we're moving towards one-meter scan rather than three-meter, and that's 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 telecoms 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's really a significant improvement on that system. And yeah, we're looking forward to launching a demo.
John Gooden (Citibank): Justin Capposian, 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 don't get me wrong, but even so it just seems like there's upside to it, based on a 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 doesn't seem like the revenue guide is particularly large percentage versus maybe how you've set guidance in the past.
Management: Yeah, it's obviously a good question, John. We're in a really favorable position right now in terms of the level of visibility that we have. Obviously, there's 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've seen from us, particularly in recent periods, is we try to give ourselves room for the fact that 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 front and center around execution. Similarly, we have a great pipeline of opportunity, but when those deals land, given how big they can be, can really impact revenue in the year. And so we tend to assume that new signings are back half loaded, which give us opportunity to deliver upside if that doesn't end up being the case, if it ends up landing sooner, but doesn't put us in a position where we're out over our skis in terms of the numbers we've given you.
John Gooden (Citibank): Okay. That makes a lot of sense. It sounds like there are some layers of conservatism in there, which is appropriate, and we'll 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 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 as sort of a recent event?
Management: Well, obviously there's a huge amount of focus in that, and we are, but again, as I said earlier, we're just focused on delivering pieces. We're doing mission critical things. We're trying to focus on that, but we'll see. It's early, early days. Yeah, 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's 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.
Trevor Walsh (Citizens): Great. Hale, thanks for taking my questions. Will, you called out the SHIELD IDIQ in your prepared remarks. Can you maybe just give us a sense? early days on this very large project and a lot of it's sensitive, but can you give us a sense of how you're thinking about that opportunity? Is that something where it's just kind of bread and butter Planet Labs 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 of akin to satellite services where you might even just building spacecraft that are fairly non-traditional for you guys, but just being used for all the things that are part of that project?
Management: Well, yeah, as you say, it's early days. It's obviously a big opportunity. There's a 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're still working on many of those aspects. There are, of course, ways in which our present data sets could fit into that early warning of certain things, strategic analysis across board areas. That obviously makes sense. But right now, that is merely a vehicle. And when we will compete on awards within that, and that's the same for all the people that have got awards under that system. So, yeah, but obviously finding unknown unknowns, you know, there could be specific missions, but it's very early days to be thinking about that. What I will say is that we're continuing to lean into specific opportunities that are very live right now, like with Luno, with our Navy customers and others. So, you know, we're seeing a lot of interest in COCOMs around the world. So there's, you know, the department has a lot of interest across the board, and we're leaning into it.
Trevor Walsh (Citizens): 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 aren't giving an official guide, but just given how strong you guys ended this current fiscal year, and as we think about 2017, there's kind of a, there's obviously a, there can be a bit of a step down from just going from 50 million to something that's just generally positive. So just want to make sure we don't get, just given the CapEx spend and everything else, if you could just give us a little bit of maybe guardrails as to how we think about that for 27, that would be great.
Management: Yeah. I mean, first I'll just reiterate the point that I made. We definitely expect there to be pretty significant fluctuations quarter to quarter. And just like I said timing of procurement versus timing of milestone payments can cause one quarter to be much more positive and another quarter to be significantly negative. So that's one caution that I provide and that makes it a little bit harder to give you know very precise guidance around it, which is why I haven't and to your point, and 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'm really not in a position to do, we're 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.
Greg Pendy (Clear Street): Hey guys, thanks for taking my question. Just one quick one, just that I understand kind of the approach on this year of leaning in, in terms of the commercial and civil side. I mean, it's hard to think back, but 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'll need some boots on the ground to educate the civil and commercial markets?
Management: Yeah, Greg, it's a very good call out. 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're 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 is 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 investments across sales and marketing. And I did highlight that as one of the investment areas for us this year.
Alex Lattimore (Northland): Hey, guys. Excellent quarter. Alex Lattimore on here for Mike Lattimore. 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?
Management: Yes, thanks Alex and I'd say we're 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'll 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 and then probability adjusted so. We are definitely looking at active opportunities, probabilities, and then giving ourselves room for those deals where maybe we don't have enough pipeline and makeup for that one landing on time or in the year, which gives us opportunity to outperform. And like I said earlier, it doesn't put us in a position where we feel over our skis.
Alex Lattimore (Northland): Awesome. And then one more. I just wanted to hear if there's any footholds in the Golden Dome initiative, I understand there was a 10 billion incremental add to the Golden Dome initiative for space-based capabilities. I'm not sure if you're seeing any demand there for planet systems, but any commentary around Golden Dome would be helpful.
Management: Yeah, I sort of said all that I can on that at the minute. It's very early days as they're architecting that system. And there are potentially that's, you know, the shield IDIQ, just to be clear, is the Golden Dome. And so that answer was about that. And again, it's a framework that we have. And now we will bid for actual awards under that program. But we don't know what they are exactly yet. Then when we do, we will respond. But 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.
Caleb Henry (Quilty Space): Hi guys thanks for the call a couple of questions on satellite manufacturing actually first one sorry on pelican I've 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?
Management: Yeah, we lower spacecraft, of course, to operational altitudes. And Pelican, part of the reason we call it Pelican was to fly low. Pelicans fly low to the water. And so we were mimicking that when we were talking about this. And they have ion engines such that they can fly really low. And in time, that is part of the process that gets us to the 30 centimeter ultimate resolution target for those missions. But no changes to the plan. Those were just operational adjustments as we will start always with the satellites in a slightly higher orbit and bring them down to operational orbits as we progress. And by the way, just on Pelicans, you may want to look in the associated deck with this earnings. There's a few really cool pictures of some of the fast response timelines. We had three pictures in about a year. It's very exciting to see in about an hour. And just other great performance of that system. So it's very exciting. And we've got multiple launches for more of those systems going up this year. So it's exciting times.
Caleb Henry (Quilty Space): And was there a broader question about the manufacturing?
Management: Yeah, I definitely kind of looked through these pictures, but looking at the contract for Sweden and tie that into manufacturing, is that, 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?
Management: Uh, no, nothing specific. I'm going to say specifically to that customer, but we're ramping up because of the demand overall. Right. And, and we're building fleets for multiple customers as well as for our own system. And that demand is obviously already clear such that we're expanding here in San Francisco and in Berlin.
Caleb Henry (Quilty Space): Okay. And then last question, I was 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 user investment and how customers use planned data?
Management: Yeah, and that's an oversimplification because, I mean, we've 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 potential, and I think we're going to really start to see those generic solutions that I mentioned, ways in which anyone can turn up, build an application that's relevant to their needs, and then start getting value. That unlocks other markets that we've been talking about for years that are latent in our data, agriculture, energy, insurance, finance, so on. I think that it's just more that I see that all the pieces are coming together such that that will come to fruition this year and you will start to really see that take off. Just like, you know, the Constellation satellite services really started to take off in FY26. Thank you.