Planet Labs PBC

Q1 2027 Earnings Call — June 4, 2026

Analyst Colin Canfield (Cantor): Hey, thank you for the question. Maybe if you could talk about the remaining opportunities, like all within the context of, if we go back to September's investor day slides and call it roughly three to $4 billion pipeline, can you maybe rank order the remaining opportunities among intelligence customers and maybe split that out between international and then U.S. And then if you can provide any color on kind of how you think about maybe near-term award opportunities and how it splits within that matrix. Thank you.

Executive Ashley (Title): I mean, obviously, Colin, you know, we're not going to give too much color on the specifics of our pipeline. What we'd say is it continues to be robust. We updated last quarter that it had increased since our analyst day, and we continue to be very well positioned just with the proof points that we actually already have. As you recall, when we signed the opportunity funded by the German government last summer, we were able to get them their first satellite on the next rocket launch. And with Sweden, we similarly just announced that the first satellite for their contract went up on our most recent launch of three Pelicans. So we are very well positioned on the basis that we've got great solutions. We can get these customers up and running on our data and AI-based solutions very quickly, while we also rapidly move them through our pipeline of production or our production line to get their first sovereign satellites into orbit. So strong pipeline continues to be very healthy. It is balanced geographically. And I think Planet's well positioned. Anything you'd add, Will?

Executive Will (Title): No, I mean, I think it's just we're seeing really robust demand here. And we said last time how that had increased in at least qualitative way and both in size and in number of deals. And as Ashley was pointing out, I mean, what we have here is that we can execute really fast. Countries really like that. They can get immediate access to our satellites that are in orbit for both the data and the AI-enabled solutions. Quickly get sovereign satellites up in space and you know the one with Sweden I'd also point out as a great example. They got immediate data services from our satellites and then within four months the first sovereign satellite in orbit. I mean basically we're the only ones that can do that. It's really unheard of. Traditional aerospace industry would take, you know, normally decades to do that sort of capability. And here we are offering that just four months after signing a contract. So that's unprecedented in the sector. It speaks to our differentiation. And that's why governments are coming to Planet for that kind of solution.

Analyst: That's great. I appreciate the color. And maybe pivoting over to data centers, if you could talk about any color on initial discussions that you and Google are having with the chip suppliers. And then maybe talk about kind of what do you think are the key engineering signposts that investors should look for as Planet on-ramps for orbital compute?

Executive Will (Title): Yeah, well, it's a very exciting area. Obviously, what we're doing with Google is an early tech demo, and on the chip side, it's all leveraging their TPU architecture, testing those work in space, which is one of the questions. I'm pretty confident about that side of it. But we're also testing things like inter-satellite links because we reformation flying these sort of satellites together. And now the technologies, the radiation, the radiators for the power, that's one of the other core technologies that we have to develop a little bit here. I mean, stepping back a little bit, what I'd say is that it's very clear to me that this is going to make sense fiscally and from an engineering standpoint. Within 10 years, it will definitely be cheaper to do it in space than on the ground. As to exactly how fast we can do it between now and then, I think that depends on some of these engineering questions that we'll be tackling in these early tech demos. So, you know, again, early days, but a really exciting field. And you see, you know, there's a lot of players going into it. And we think Planet is well positioned because of our history of doing hundreds of satellites before. We're one of the few players that have done that. We've already put fast computers, GPUs, NVIDIA GPUs in space. We already do a lot of stuff with AI, as you're aware. And so we're well positioned for this sector.

Analyst Edison Yu (Deutsche Bank): Great. Thank you for taking our questions. I wanted to first follow up on the Orbital Data Center. In your kind of early work around the engineering, do you have a sense on what kind of compute density is realistic in the next couple of years? And I think the framework has been sort of kilowatts per ton. And so any sense on what you guys are seeing there? Is it realistic to be like 80, 100? What's up there for now?

Executive Will (Title): Well, thanks for the question, Edison. I mean, I'm not getting into those sort of technical specifics at this stage. I mean, remember, this is really, as Google likes to put it, a moonshot at the present time. It's going to be an iterative project that we the capabilities in space. But I will point out that there's several interlaced challenges to do with the radiators and the interconnects between all the different satellites as well as the computers on board any one satellite. And there will be multiple. And that complex trade space, I think a lot of people are focused just on the launch cost. But it is a lot to do with the efficiency of your chips. And because the excess energy you have to give up in heat, you have to radiate out. And so efficiency of chips plays a really important part, as well as the networking of those together and the firmware to optimize all of it. So it's a very complex trade space. And one of the things Planet is really good at is that sort of thing and doing really good systems engineering to bring down costs for that sort of spacecraft system. Again, early days but those are the kind of problems we're tackling.

Analyst Edison Yu (Deutsche Bank): Understood. And then I wanted to ask you about the essay you put out very recently on planetary intelligence.

Executive Will (Title): Yes, and you know, obviously I think some very profound and thought-provoking ideas. I guess in a more operational sense, what do you think is kind of the next call it two or three years? How do we see that sort of manifest either in the business or in the industry? Like what are some paths you could envision to see that manifest more like commercial operational basis?

Executive Will (Title): Well, I mean, that's very much the first part of what I was talking to in that planetary intelligence essay, which is the merger of earth imaging data with AI and the large language models that are really unlocking the value latent in Earth imaging data in new ways and lowering the barriers to entry. And I think that's what is most exciting. It doesn't depend on the future phases of compute in space or something. I think that that sort of supercharges this when we get to that phase. It's natural that sensing at a planetary level is done in space. We've done that for years. The compute is going to follow, and they'll lead into this new planetary intelligence era. But way before that, like right now, Earth imaging data and other sort of space data sets and AI enabling us to do more real-world models, more real-world models, open up real-world applications on the ground today in farming, in energy, in insurance, and so on. Entities that we serve today are big governments, big enterprise commercial players. And this, in principle, can enable that to be lowered, right? And I think that's the most exciting thing now. And so that's what we're mostly focused on. But it's cool to do the tech damage for computing space as well, because in the long term, that could be very exciting, too.

Analyst: Thank you very much.

Analyst Jeff Van Ree (Craig Hallam Capital Group): Great. Thanks for taking the questions. Will, on the AI side, interesting, exciting. You've got the beta program now up with a natural language query. Can you just talk about the scope of the trial? How many participants? Thoughts on when that goes GA? And I'd love to hear maybe in your mind what are a couple of more compelling use cases you're seeing people playing with right now?

Executive Will (Title): Well, firstly, it's very early days. So let me just say, I mean, we're in a beta testing mode, as I mentioned in the prepared remarks. And again, just like the answer to the prior question, this is about unlocking the latent value in our data more easily and more simply, especially expanding the number of users that could get value out of that really fast speed, scale, and simplicity, basically, all in one. But it's early days in the testing, so I'm not going to get into the specific numbers, but we have a cohort of beta testers just so that we can find where are the best value use cases that we could dive into and how do we improve that product so that it's better able to serve those use cases. So very early days, but what's tantalizing about it is that Planet historically has faced this solution gap. That is that our data in principle can answer a lot of questions. In practice, it's difficult. You have to build these solutions. We've been focused on these AI-powered solutions, especially the defense and intelligence, MDA, GMS.

In principle, this direction can help a lot of others by enabling people to be able to build bespoke solutions on top of our data leveraging this kind of technology which can unlock that for a lot more players. And we know that value is there and AI is ready to help us to get to that quicker, I think. So that's the exciting thing and it's also where Planet is so uniquely positioned because all of this is because of our daily scan. Our daily scan is really so unique because no one else in the Earth observation sector really is doing that sort of daily scan, at least not commercially. And that is the basis for all these applications across wider areas where you don't have to task a satellite, but it already covers all the land you're interested, whether it's for agriculture, energy, and so on. And that's really great for these AI models.

Analyst: Yeah, I mean, I think it certainly has potential to break open the commercial and civil TAMs for you. Maybe one last quick one for you. On the Pelican 1s up and ramping nicely 50 centimeters, you talked about the tech demo on Pelican 2 going to 30 centimeters. Just any crew swags on kind of based on prior experience, how long you would expect a tech demo for and broad brush sort of strokes on when you think those Pelican 2s start going up commercially?

Executive Will (Title): I don't comment on that specifically, but we have got a bunch more launches this year. We are ramped and at pace on the Pelican Gen 1s, as you're aware. We already launched three of those earlier this year, including that first one for Sweden. And we're excited about that Gen 2 launch. But it is a tech demo at this stage. So a couple of technologies that it has on it, you know, it's got a bit of a bigger telescope to enable it to get to that 30 centimeters, and it also has satellite-to-satellite communications as well as the NVIDIA chips that we're flying with the other ones. And that in combination is what enables the more real-time insights going from hours, latency for getting analysis after you take a picture to minutes. And so that's the biggest improvement. It's even more important, I would say, than the resolution improvement, although both are important. But we'll get back to you once we get that in orbit, start seeing how it performs. But we're ready to scale that fleet, too, and excited about the program.

Executive Will (Title): Yeah, I think it's important just to highlight that across our satellite fleets, as you know, we tend to repurpose a lot of the components. So there's a lot of commonalities, even as we iterate on various aspects, whether that's improving latency, improving the payload for resolution. So that enables us to have a much faster pace of iteration than you might typically see in hardware iterations, especially in space. So I would say stay tuned. There's a lot of fun stuff coming.

Analyst Mike Lattimore (Northland Capital Markets): All right, great. Yeah, thank you. Congrats on the quarter. You know, over the last several quarters, you've highlighted Europe as being an area of urgency and increasing demand. I guess, is that still kind of the most hot spot within the pipeline or is the pipeline urgency broadening?

Executive Will (Title): I'd say it's very global. I mean, we have a strong interest in Asia, US as well, North America. It's strong. But I think you're right. Europe is probably our strongest area. EMEA is strong, as you saw in the breakdown, very strong growth in that region. And obviously, all of the global interest is driven by a lot of this geopolitical trend. It's driving demand because of political uncertainty. And in this uncertainty, people want their own sovereign space capabilities, their own access to information about threats in their neighborhood. And we can provide that relatively quickly and affordably. So countries are coming to us. Europe is perhaps most stressed by that kind of situation. So obviously that is driving strong demand there. And of course, we also have a very strong European base. We have hundreds of employees in Europe and a lot of facilities, mission control center in Berlin. And as you're aware, we now have opening and manufacturing site for our Pelican, our most advanced Pelican spacecraft in Berlin as well, approximately doubling our manufacturing capacity. So we're really leaning into that market opportunity, planets well positioned there as well.

Analyst Mike Lattimore (Northland Capital Markets): Great. And then on the commercial side, nice change in the trajectory there this quarter. Yes. Are the drivers of that change, you know, sustainable or was there some, you know, one-offs this quarter? How do you think about commercial?

Executive Ashley (Title): I think it's very sustainable. And, you know, one of the things about the agriculture partnerships that we mentioned is that we've really turned it around to a point where we really aligned that business model with the agricultural partners that we're doing with, like the John Deere piece that we announced yesterday. As they do well, we do well. And that, so, you know, we took a reset in that area, but now we're growing it, and so we feel good. I'm very happy about that growth as well. Ashley, anything to add?

Executive Ashley (Title): Yeah, I would just say, you know, the comments that we made earlier, both around the AI solutions that we have, like things like GMS or MDA, as well as, you know, this beta of a new natural language-based interface, is really enabling us to engage with customers that haven't historically really thought about how they might integrate GIS into or GIS data sets into their modeling and analysis. So even in financial services sector, when you think about what things like GMS or MDA can do, it's really unlocking kind of a view into changes in global supply chains and patterns and understanding when a change in pattern could lead to some type of economic indicator of change or market impact. So we're excited. It's, you know, we are early days in, certainly in the AI application, but also even in exploring how the solutions that we've, you know, initially explored primarily in defense and intelligence are unlocking opportunities for us in the commercial sector. So we remain very optimistic about how the commercial sector can be a major growth factor for us in the years to come.

Analyst Christine Leeweg (Morgan Stanley): Hi, this is Gabby Nosselman on for Christine. Thanks for taking the question, and congratulations on the quarter. Since last quarter, Planet moved from a 14-day delay in Middle East imagery access to an indefinite restriction for imagery in the conflict region. Have you seen any change in customer behavior as a result? And since the news came out in early April and with recent ceasefire talks, is there any anticipated timeline or framework for restoring satellite imagery access in the Middle East?

Executive Will (Title): Yeah, thanks for the question, Christine. When there are conflicts around the world, we always have to balance operational security needs for civilians or military personnel in the area with public interest. And I just noticed something that's, I think, been confused a little bit in media reporting on this is that all of our core customers continue to have access in that area straight away. It's really about publication that could lead to operational security challenges that folks are worried about legitimately and that we're putting a delay in place for. So most of our core customers continue to have data access. And of course, the intent is to unwind that as the conflict resolves. And so our stakeholders, obviously around the board, care about this and we do too. And I think that the strong demand we've seen in the region is excellent despite that. And just so you're aware, we do have a managed access program for media clients as well. It's just moved to a push model, which is rather more similar to other folks in the Earth observation sector, where we provide imagery on an as-needed basis where we can, where it's not going to hurt security operations in the region. And that means that articles continue to happen in the press as well.

Analyst: Guys, that's super helpful, Culler. Thank you for the clarity. And a quick follow-up. Defense and intelligence is clearly becoming a larger portion of revenue and has been the fastest grower for quite some time now. We also highlighted some nice civil, government, and commercial wins during the quarter. I mean, as we look ahead, how should we think about the size and growth of civil and commercial relative to defense and intelligence?

Executive Will (Title): Well, I think that's an excellent question. And the way I view it is long term, I believe the civil and commercial sectors will be bigger than defense intelligence. We're obviously leaning into defense intelligence right now because there is such strong demand and it makes sense for us to lean in there. We're very needed. But as we were just talking about AI, that helps us unlock these other areas. I think that's the right way to think about it. It helps us to accelerate that. And yeah, I mean, just the breadth of use cases in commercial, all the sectors we've talked about before, we believe that many tens of billion dollars of TAM to go after in commercial and civil. And so we're going to go after those. But I think for the immediate focus, defense and intelligence is the best place to focus because there's such strong demand. And also a very sophisticated customer that provides us with feedback that helps make our solutions even stronger and we think ultimately much more broadly applicable.

Analyst Jeremy Jason (Citi): Hi, this is Jeremy Jason on for John Godden. Congrats on the quarter. I just kind of wanted to ask, what are the upcoming milestones for the key programs that you're looking forward to, just for clarity's sake, and can you provide any color on, like, the timeline for those?

Executive Will (Title): Which key programs are you referring to? Involvement in, for example, OWL. You guys mentioned that in the remarks.

Executive Will (Title): Oh, like the tech demos, yeah. So there we're building our first tech demo spacecraft scheduled for the end of this year. It's a lot of synergy with the Suncatcher. So we're using the same bus as the Suncatcher. That's the project with Google for compute in space. Same bus, different payload, just like we did with Tanager and Pelican. Same bus, different payload. And so we're building that. And we're very pleased with how that's progressing. It's still being built right now. It's early days. So we'll let you know when there's updates.

Analyst Trevor Walsh (Citizens): Great. Hale, thanks for taking the question. Will, and maybe Ashley, if you want to add as well, there was a smaller competitor, but a competitor that announced a win in late April, kind of end of year quarter, of their own satellite sovereign deal, much smaller than anything you guys have booked. But I was just curious if you're seeing just based on your own success and that being pretty widely known and publicized, if you're seeing more competition specifically in that space kind of working for government agencies, international, et cetera. And then kind of relatedly is there a minimum deal size that you all would entertain as far as structuring more where the sovereign or the entity owns the actual satellite so something more in a jset kind of realm?

Executive Will (Title): Good question. So I mean, look, I don't think competitive landscape has changed very much. I don't know which deal you're referring to, but obviously, there are other players that can build Earth imaging satellites for countries, but really our differentiator, as I mentioned, is proven track record, having launched hundreds of satellites doing Earth imaging before, and the speed of delivery. The speed of delivery in months rather than years, sometimes decades, for these systems. And also cost performance, I would add, having had that long track record, we've got the cost down of our satellites a lot, so sometimes, you know, these things are radically lower cost. We might be launching 10 satellites for the same cost as people were before or companies were before launching just one or more. And so, you know, that is all those differentiators make us strong in the market. And we haven't had too many cases where we see others competing with us. We feel pretty strong.

Executive Ashley (Title): And I would just add, you know, we're able to compete on all of the points that Will just made in terms of speed and performance and cost effectiveness. We also are the only ones that can enable these customers to get up and running immediately on the network of satellites that we have, a combination of the daily scan and the analytics on top, which help inform them where to look and how to best optimize the sovereign capabilities as they're building them out, including how they want those in orbit so that they can get the best performance ultimately out of the fleet that we would build for them. And we can very cost-effectively get them up and running through a dedicated capacity service or tasking credits so that they immediately are getting the eyes that they need to understand what's going on around them. So it's not just the ability to be best in class in delivering satellites, which obviously we are, but it's also the fact that we have the network of satellites and capabilities, the daily scan and the analytic solutions on top of it that bring value on day one.

Analyst Ryan Coons (Needham & Co.): Great, thanks. Question for Ashley on gross margins. Surprised again to the upside here. Maybe give us a bridge or unpack what the upside was on mix. Obviously, satellite services, deals, are those lower margins not contributing as much? Maybe help unpack the mix a little bit for us. Thank you.

Executive Ashley (Title): Yeah, it's my favorite kind of upside. It's sales performance. As you know, we typically... For the purposes of our own planning, you know, assume pre-back half-weighted sales execution that just gives us, you know, headroom on that front. And when they bring in something like a figure international deal early and that drives, you know, data and solutions revenue. That's very high margin upside in the quarter. So I really attribute this to the excellent performance of our sales team and the delivery teams that get those customers up and running so that we're going from contract to revenue very, very, very quickly. The business model that we have where delivering data comes at relatively low marginal cost means that when we drive upside on revenue, you see that fall to the bottom line, and in this case, it definitely stopped by a gross margin along the way and drove upside.

Analyst: And, Ashley, that was for your deal you signed in this quarter?

Executive Ashley (Title): That's right.

Analyst Steven Varhaftig (Wedbush Securities): Thanks for taking the question. Congrats on the quarter, everybody. So, Ashley, just a question for you, because it seems like there's a lot of different focuses for capital investments. You're thinking about the R&D for new AI-enabled solutions. You're thinking about the CapEx ramp. I mean, you really do have a strong balance sheet. So what would you say is the priority from a capital allocation perspective? And then if I can add just one more on to that, is the company still looking at M&A opportunities? I know that you haven't shied away from it, but want to get a little more color on that opportunity. Thanks.

Executive Ashley (Title): Thank you for the question. We're obviously very proud of our balance sheet, and it's a great asset, especially when we're delivering such a mission-critical service to really important customers. It gives them a lot of comfort to see that we have both a strong business and a strong balance sheet to go with it. When we think about capital allocation, as you might imagine, we are a very innovative company, and we are never short on ideas. But we always have the customer at the center of what we do and our understanding what do customers need that can really unlock market opportunity for us. So I'd say the investments that we're making are really prioritizing growth and market capture. So how can we sustain or even expand our growth rates and then continue to drive high margins? And we gave the rule of 40 framework, revenue growth rate plus EBITDA margin, as one way that we think about making sure that we're balancing making these investments, but also running a good business that generates profits, that generates free cash flow, and always has an eye to how we scale our profit margins and free cash flow margins can expand.

So a lot of exciting things, incredibly innovative teams, but also really doing it in service of market capture and delivering value to customers. And on the M&A side that you brought up, we're mainly focused on execution and have most of what we need. We will do things like the Bedrock acquisition that we did that enhances our AI-powered solutions in really good ways. And that team's working really well, by the way, and very integrated into our AI-powered solutions, especially in the defense intelligence space. We'll continue to look out for things that could be accretive, especially to the core business product or business synergies. But again, I think we have most of what we need and so we're many heads down focused on executing the deals we have.

Analyst Greg Pendy (Clear Street): Hey guys, thanks for taking my question. Just a real quick one. As you have so many things that's going on, especially later in this year with the first owl and then subsequent launches to fall in 2027. Are there any stress areas in either the supply chain or launch that could move things around?

Executive Will (Title): Yeah, we're seeing launch be a little bit more competitive than it used to be. But, you know, Planet has used to working with a lot of different players. We've launched 40 rockets, I think, on 10 different launch vehicles. And so we know how to do that and we have a long history in relationships with various launch providers. And I would also say, despite a little bit of extra competition for the space right now, there's a lot of new players coming onto the floor right now, and so we're excited about them. We're excited about what they can offer as well and increase competitiveness in the launch sector. As for the supply chain, nothing material to point out, but one of the things we look at is buying down risk in supply chain by buying components. And that's one of the reasons that we're focused more on growth than profitability where we need to do that to show up risk.

Executive Will (Title): No, I just say, you know, in some of our prior quarters, we've talked about the fact that, you know, we've taken up our CapEx capital expenditures specifically to make sure we're looking at those areas where we can buy in advance to de-risk any supply chain but also get better pricing by buying more up front. So it is something that we keep an eye on and manage, I think, quite successfully. And generally speaking, the team has a very resilient supply chain.

Analyst: That's very helpful. Thanks a lot.

Executive Will (Title): Thank you. That's 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.

Executive Will (Title): Thanks, everyone. Well, we feel like we had an excellent start to the year, really good momentum. Obviously, on the financial side, it was great that we got to 42% growth, hitting all of 40, the third consecutive quarter, 900 million in backlog. We feel very solid about the finances. And obviously, it was great on the space side to have our first launch, to send our first Gen 2 tech demo to the launch site, launch Sweden's first sovereign satellite.

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.