Planet Labs (PL): Up 900% in a Year. Is It Still a Buy?

Markets | May 2026

Let’s start with the number that stops you in your tracks: Planet Labs stock is up over 900% in the past 12 months.

You read that right. A company that was trading at $3.47 at its 52-week low is now sitting at approximately $41–$42 per share, giving it a market cap of around $14.4 billion. It’s one of the most extraordinary stock moves of the past year in any sector — and it raises the most important question any investor can ask after a run like this: is there still a story here, or did we miss it?

Let’s look at the numbers. Honestly.

What Planet Labs Actually Does

Before we get into the financials, a quick primer, because a lot of people still don’t fully understand what this company is.

Planet Labs operates the world’s largest commercial Earth observation satellite constellation — 200+ satellites continuously imaging the entire landmass of the Earth, every single day. Their SuperDove satellites capture the planet at 3.5-meter resolution on a daily cadence. Their newer Pelican satellites go further, capturing specific locations multiple times per day at up to 50-centimeter resolution — sharp enough to see a car, a shipping container, or a crop field in detail.

The customers are governments, defense agencies, agricultural companies, insurance firms, forestry operators, financial institutions, and anyone else who needs to know what is happening on the surface of the Earth on a daily basis. Think of it as a subscription service for watching the world change in near real-time.

It sounds like science fiction. It is very much a real business — and the numbers have started to reflect that.

The Financials: Finally Something to Work With

Here’s where it gets interesting. For most of Planet’s public life, the story was “incredible technology, terrible financials.” That narrative is now changing — not completely, but meaningfully.

Revenue:

• FY2026 (ended January 31, 2026): $307.7 million — up 26% year-over-year
• Q4 FY2026 alone: $86.8 million — up 41% year-over-year, beating analyst estimates of ~$78 million by 11%
• FY2027 guidance: $415–$440 million — implying 35–43% growth

Revenue is accelerating, not decelerating. That matters enormously. A 41% Q4 growth rate on a $300M+ revenue base is not trivial. When a company at this scale starts growing faster, not slower, the market takes notice.

Backlog:

• $900 million in backlog — up 79% year-over-year
• Remaining Performance Obligations (RPO): $852 million — up 106% year-over-year

This is perhaps the most bullish data point in the entire report. Backlog is locked-in future revenue. $900 million in backlog against $308 million in annual revenue means the company has nearly three years of revenue already contracted. That is a very different risk profile from a company chasing quarterly sales.

Profitability — the honest picture:

• Full-year adjusted EBITDA: +$15.5 million (first ever profitable year on this metric)
• Full-year free cash flow: +$52.9 million (first ever positive FCF)
• GAAP net loss: -$246.9 million — up 100% from last year’s losses
• GAAP EPS: -$0.48 — impacted by a $122.6 million one-time warrant revaluation loss
• Non-GAAP EPS: $0.00 — break-even

The GAAP numbers look terrible. The non-GAAP numbers look like a company approaching profitability. The difference is largely a one-time warrant revaluation charge — a non-cash accounting item that inflates the reported loss but doesn’t reflect operational performance. This is genuinely important context, not an excuse.

Balance sheet:

• Cash, equivalents, and short-term investments: $640 million — up 188% year-over-year

The company ended its fiscal year with more than two years of operating runway in cash, and is now generating positive free cash flow. The existential risk of running out of money — which haunted Planet in its early public years — is no longer a realistic concern.

The Valuation Problem

Here’s where we have to pump the brakes and think clearly.

At $41 per share and a $14.4 billion market cap, Planet Labs is trading at approximately 33x forward revenue based on the midpoint of FY2027 guidance ($427 million). That is an extremely high multiple. For context:

• Palantir, another high-growth government data company, trades at roughly 40x revenue
• Figma, before its IPO correction, peaked at similar multiples
• The median SaaS company trades at 6-8x revenue

Planet Labs is being priced as a category-defining, winner-take-most platform in an emerging market — and that is not a crazy argument given its constellation scale and data moat. But it leaves zero room for error.

The P/E ratio is -52.80 — negative, because the company still reports GAAP losses. Traditional P/E analysis doesn’t really apply here, which is both normal for high-growth companies and a reminder that you’re betting on a future earnings stream that doesn’t yet exist.

The Price-to-Book ratio is 81.3x versus an industry average of 7.9x. The market is pricing in extraordinary future value creation.

Analyst targets tell an interesting story about the disagreement:

• Wedbush (Daniel Ives): $50 — raised from $40 in May 2026, Outperform
• Goldman Sachs: $20 — Neutral
• Simply Wall St consensus: ~$34
• New Street Research: Sell — initiated coverage with a negative view in May 2026

A range from $20 to $50 on the same stock tells you that serious, informed people disagree fundamentally about what this company is worth. That kind of dispersion is not unusual for high-growth space/tech companies, but it is a warning that the consensus is fragile.

The Bull Case

Defense and intelligence is the growth engine. Planet’s Defense & Intelligence segment grew over 20% year-over-year and is accelerating. Governments — particularly in Europe and the US — are dramatically increasing spending on sovereign satellite data capabilities. Planet Labs Germany recently closed a seven-figure deal with the Czech government. The Swedish Armed Forces commissioned their first-ever sovereign satellite through Planet. This is a structural trend, not a one-time event, and Planet is positioned at the center of it.

The most recent catalyst came on May 15, 2026, when PL surged 22.1% in a single session. The trigger: Planet successfully launched three additional AI-enabled Pelican satellites, including Sweden’s first-ever sovereign military satellite under a satellite services agreement, alongside ESA-backed, seven-figure multi-year contracts with both Greece and the Czech Republic. That kind of single-day move on government contract news tells you exactly what the market is pricing — every new sovereign deal is treated as validation of the entire thesis.

The AI collaboration is real. Planet announced a research collaboration with NVIDIA that accelerates satellite imagery processing from hours to seconds using AI. They have also executed AI-driven object detection directly onboard their Pelican-4 satellite — processing data in orbit rather than transmitting raw imagery to the ground. This is genuinely impressive and reduces the operational cost per insight over time.

The data moat is substantial. Planet’s constellation imagery archive spans years of daily global data. Competitors cannot replicate that historical dataset regardless of how many satellites they launch today. For applications like agricultural trend analysis, climate monitoring, and change detection, the historical archive is a core part of the value proposition.

$900 million backlog provides visibility. Unlike most high-growth tech companies whose quarterly revenue is highly uncertain, Planet enters FY2027 with nearly three years of contracted revenue locked in. That de-risks execution significantly.

The Bear Case

The valuation prices in perfection. At 33x forward revenue, any miss — a contract delay, a satellite failure, a government budget cut — will be punished severely. The stock moved from $3.47 to $45.78 in 12 months. It can move back with similar speed.

GAAP losses are still enormous. $246.9 million in net losses in a year with $307.7 million in revenue means the company is still consuming significant capital. The adjusted EBITDA profit is real, but thin ($15.5 million). The path from thin EBITDA profitability to meaningful GAAP earnings is still long.

Competition is intensifying. SpaceX’s Starshield program, Maxar (now part of Radiant), BlackSky, and a wave of international competitors are all building or expanding Earth observation capabilities. The market is growing, but so is the competitive field.

New Street Research initiated with a Sell. It’s worth noting that a serious institutional research firm looked at the same numbers everyone else is looking at and reached the opposite conclusion from the Buy consensus. Their concern, broadly, is that the valuation already prices in the best-case scenario, leaving no margin of safety.

The Verdict

Planet Labs is one of the genuinely interesting companies in public markets right now — and one of the more difficult ones to value. The business is real, the growth is real, the backlog is real, and the technology moat is real. The company has crossed two critical milestones in FY2026 that it had never crossed before: adjusted EBITDA profitability and positive free cash flow. Those are not small achievements for a company that was burning cash and questioning its survival two years ago.

But at $41 per share and a $14.4 billion market cap against $308 million in revenue, you are paying a significant premium for a future that hasn’t been fully delivered yet.

Our view: Planet Labs is a Hold at current prices, with a long-term Buy case for investors who can stomach the volatility.

The stock has had its 900% moment. The next leg up requires execution on FY2027’s $415–$440 million revenue guide, continued Defense & Intelligence growth, and tangible progress toward GAAP profitability. If all three materialize, the current price could look cheap in two years. If execution stumbles or macro conditions turn risk-off, the premium multiple compresses quickly and you revisit the $20–$25 range without much warning.

For anyone who missed the initial run: patience is not a defeat. A pullback to the $28–$32 range would offer a materially better entry point with a more manageable risk/reward. The story is good enough to be worth waiting for the right price.

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial or investment advice. All investments involve risk. Always conduct your own research before making investment decisions.