Author’s Note: I don’t own PL 0.00%↑ and have never owned it. This deep-dive is the start of my due diligence on the name so that I can continue to watch the name.
All my stock data is from StockAnalysis.com, and if you want to do your own stock research on Planet Labs or any other company, make sure you use check it out here.
Usually I don’t pay much attention to CNBC analysts. But recently, Jim Cramer had some things to say about PL 0.00%↑, so I thought I would go ahead and look at it for posterity's sake.
Leading up to the SPCX 0.00%↑ IPO, space has become the new chic investment area for funds. Launching communication satellites, astronaut-retrieval and even sending data-centers to space has kept this industry in the forefront of the collective conscious.
Interested investors should take a closer look at all the progress these space companies are making.
PL 0.00%↑ is an interesting name in the space industry which could stand to benefit from all the attention that the sector is getting. Anyways let's take a look at the business and how they are structured.
What They Do
PL 0.00%↑ is in the business of designing and constructing a network of satellites which provides continuous geospatial data to their customers. The use cases for this are quite varied as you might imagine. From agriculture patterns to spying on foreign nations, this is a valuable market that has the potential to grow over time.
Let’s take a look at some of their products and what functions they serve. In the table below I have created a list of some of their products, technologies and functions. Of special interest is the planet monitoring that provides near-daily coverage of the Earth.
So who are their customers? They have a wide range of customers spanning governments, national labs and major companies. NASA, NOAA, the Bureau of Reclamation, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and Sandia National Laboratories along with international civil/defense agencies are part of their customer lineup.
In addition, they work with major agricultural and food companies like Bayer, Acron, and Organic Valley as well as companies monitoring utilities and physical assets, such as Bluebell, Kilimo, and various geospatial/IT integration partners like NGIS and SI Analytics.
So it’s clear that they have a nice diverse set of customers for their products and services which is a type of moat in itself.
On their website, they list that they make over $300M in revenue, have a 90% annual contract value,
80% annual+ contracts and that all their data is 100% ML-ready. What’s not listed in these metrics is their EPS or EBITDA. And that’s because they are still not profitable as of the time of this writing.
Even so, they do pose an interesting question to value investors in that, when does a value investor know the right time to invest? Is it before the company is profitable or is it just before so they can capture the true discrepancy between current price and value potential?
The only thing we can do for yet-to-be profitable companies is look at the business model, moat and various other things like price to sales ratios. Let me take a take a look at what the high-level opportunity.
They list unique data first, and in all manners, data is their business. The ability to capture Earth-scale ground data which is continuous, high resolution and hyperspectral (advanced technology that combines digital photography and spectroscopy to capture at many wavelengths).
The business model follows in that it is a scalable model of distribution and that they can operate in so many different markets for this data. But to see if there is this is a good investment, I need to look at the numbers first.
Growing Partnerships and Technology
PL 0.00%↑ has a growing list of partnerships and technology updates that they expressed in the most recent earnings letter. I think it’s important to list them here from their investor letter to show that they growing in many areas at once.
Updates to Partnerships
National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency: In August, Planet received a new $8 million OTA award from the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) to deploy Planet’s Global Monitoring Service (GMS).
German Federal Ministry of the Interior (BMI): German Civil Government: In August, the German government announced that Planet was awarded a tender for dedicated capacity Satellite Services. The tender award includes options and has a maximum possible value of €25 million over 5 years.
European Defense & Intelligence Customer: In August, Planet was awarded a 7-figure, 1-year agreement with a European government customer to supply high-resolution global Mosaics and dedicated professional services support for operational planning.
Rwanda Space Agency: During the quarter, Planet has signed a new contract with the Rwanda Space Agency to provide national high resolution data and analytics to be used in diverse applications across Government Ministries, Departments and Agencies, as well as public universities. The satellite imagery data will be used in policy and decision support on agriculture, urban management, spatial planning, disaster response, amongst other applications. This deal marks Planet’s first national program of its kind in Africa.
New Mexico State Land Office: During the quarter, Planet signed a 1-year contract renewal with the New Mexico State Land Office (NMSLO). Since 2019, this long-standing partnership has evolved into a sophisticated, multiproduct strategy that enables NMSLO to monitor, protect, and manage more than 9 million acres of public trust land.
Data Center Monitoring: In August, Planet signed a renewal with a hyperscaler AI developer for global monitoring of data centers and semiconductor manufacturing facility construction. Planet's Pelican high resolution data is used to track milestones of construction for these facilities, which are strong indicators of supply chain health and computing capacity. FarmQA: Planet partnered with
FarmQA to develop and commercialize AIpowered agronomic intelligence tools for enterprise agriculture. The first application of the collaboration is already in the field: an AI-driven sugar beet yield estimation model, currently being piloted with multiple sugar beet cooperatives during the 2026 growing season.
Braga Technologies: Planet partnered with Braga Technologies to integrate Planet’s high-frequency satellite data into Braga Technologies’ Spatial Intelligence platform, enabling automated change detection and near-realtime analytics for natural resource management and civil government applications.
Updates to Technology
Successfully Launched Pelican-11 Satellite: In July, Planet launched the Pelican-11 technical demonstration satellite, bringing the total number of high-resolution Pelicans on orbit to 10.
Shipped Tanager-2 and SuperDoves to Launch Site: Earlier this week, Planet announced that the Tanager-2 satellite and 18 SuperDove satellites (Flock 4J) were shipped to Vandenberg Space Force Base in California ahead of its launch aboard the upcoming Transporter-18 mission with SpaceX. This will be Planet’s third launch this year.
Isar Partnership: Planet announced a strategic launch agreement with European space company Isar Aerospace. Under the agreement, Isar Aerospace will launch one of Planet’s Pelican satellites, with additional satellites planned for future launches. With both the satellite and rocket being built in Germany, this launch will be a national first for the country.
Berlin Manufacturing: Planet is rapidly scaling its European presence with the strategic expansion of its Berlin facility, marking a major milestone in its manufacturing capability. As of September 1, Planet will begin the initial facility set-up and operational readiness activities. Manufacturing is scheduled to begin this year.
London Office: Over the summer, Planet opened a new office in London, serving as a national hub for AI and analytics partnerships. Its strategic location, steps away from Westminster and Whitehall, facilitates deeper engagement with policymakers and key stakeholders in the UK government and NATO alliance representatives.
Planet AI Application: Planet’s agentic AI app has progressed to an open beta phase. This pioneering tool is focused on making Planet’s massive global data archive queryable through natural language. By leveraging Planet’s daily data and integrating LLMs, it can help lower the barriers to entry for non-technical users in emerging markets, allowing teams without geospatial expertise to accelerate their adoption of Planet’s products.
Earnings & Financials
The company posted $116.05 million in revenue which was impressive 58.14% growth YoY in their latest Q2’27 earnings report. Gross profit came in at $64.63 million which was a 55.28% growth rate YoY.
Operating income was -$13.92 million which is due to $44.4 million in SG&A (up 24.06% YoY) as well as $35.16 million in R&D (up 45.54% YoY). This is the crux of the issue of unprofitability for the company.
They seem to have several quarters of increasing SG&A and R&D. The R&D is understandable for a high growth tech company such as PL 0.00%↑, but their SG&A needs to be reigned in. The good news is that the operating expenses are less than half of last quarter’s operating expenses, so smart investors will be looking for a continued trend of declining operating expenses in following quarters.
PL 0.00%↑ reports revenue in three distinct segments which include Civil Government, Commercial and Defense & Intelligence. The civil government segment brought in $17.5 million while the commercial segment brought in $17.56 million.
But the lion share of the revenue was from the defense & intelligence segment at $81 million in the latest quarter. Defense & intelligence grew at a 93.26% rate which is immense growth YoY while the other segments didn’t grow nearly as much.
Looking at the cash & debt for the company we see a healthy picture. They have $366.8 million in net cash and almost double the cash investments over the total debt. Even though the operating income is negative, free cash flow was a positive $25.6 million which can continue to be added to the balance sheet for various purposes.
Finally, margins are looking interesting with a steady gross margin in the mid-50’s while operating and profit margins are still negative but showing improvements in recent quarters.
Valuation & Guidance
Analysts have a consensus buy rating on PL 0.00%↑ with an average price target of $30.27 on the stock which represents a 122.41% upside from here.
High analyst estimates have $50 on the cards and even the lowest estimate of $17 is much higher than current levels.
More importantly, analysts see robust revenue growth into FY 2029 with operating income turning positive in FY2029 and net income to continue improving and moving towards profitability.
They do see negative free cash flow for full year 2027, but this seems to get back to positive in FY 28 and 29. Owning this stock is a conjecture on improving fundamentals as the company continues to execute on partnerships and it's technology.
This would be an interesting business and compelling investment to me if they showed profitability. I need to see a moderation of their SG&A and R&D expenses. I will continue to watch this name on my watchlist as a potential investment in the future.
As always, my content is not financial advice so please do your own due diligence when investing your own money.