Planet Labs (PL) Stock Rises As Defense Push and AI Satellites Drive Momentum

TLDR

• Planet Labs (PL) rose 1.2% on Wednesday, trading as high as $35.17 before closing around $34.35
• Q results showed revenue up 41.1% YoY to $86.82M, but EPS badly missed estimates at ($0.48) vs ($0.05) expected
• The company’s backlog hit a record $900M, up nearly 80% year-over-year, driven by government and defense demand
• On-orbit AI object detection was successfully tested on its Pelican-4 satellite, achieving ~80% accuracy
• Institutions including Vanguard, Barclays, and Invesco significantly increased their positions, while insiders sold

Planet Labs (PL) moved up 1.2% on Wednesday, with the stock hitting an intraday high of $35.17 before settling around $34.35. Volume came in at roughly 10.9 million, about 22% below its average session.

Planet Labs PBC, PL

The stock has had a strong run. Its 50-day moving average sits at $27.48 and its 200-day at $20.78, meaning Wednesday’s price is well above both levels.

Planet’s most recent earnings, reported March 19th, told two stories at once. Revenue hit $86.82M for the quarter, beating the $78.17M estimate and growing 41.1% year-over-year. That’s the good news.

The bad news: EPS came in at ($0.48), badly missing the ($0.05) consensus estimate. The company carries a negative net margin of 80.22% and a negative return on equity of 69.61%. It is not profitable, and it doesn’t expect to be anytime soon.

Yet the market has been willing to look past that. Revenue growth has accelerated sharply — from 11% in Fiscal 2025 to 26% in Fiscal 2026, then to 41% last quarter. That kind of trajectory gets attention.

Record Backlog Fueled by Defense Demand

The number that stands out most is the backlog. Planet ended the quarter with a record $900 million in backlog, up nearly 80% year-over-year. That figure points to growing demand from government and intelligence customers.

A key driver is Planet’s push into what it calls Orbital Intelligence. The company successfully tested AI-based object detection directly on its Pelican-4 satellite over Alice Springs, Australia, achieving roughly 80% accuracy on raw imagery.

That matters because it cuts the time between capture and insight. Instead of sending raw images to the ground for processing, the satellite can flag targets in orbit and reduce latency from hours to minutes.

For defense customers, that shift is the whole game. A real-time alert about aircraft movement on a runway is worth far more than a raw image file sitting in a download queue.

Planet also has an R&D partnership with Google on space-based data infrastructure, and recently landed a sovereign contract in Sweden. Its recurring annual contract value stands at 98%, which is not the profile of a commodity business.

Analyst Targets and Institutional Moves

Analyst sentiment is mixed but leaning positive. Citigroup raised its target to $35 and rates it a Buy. Cantor Fitzgerald went to $40 with an Overweight rating. Morgan Stanley bumped its target to $35 but kept an Equal Weight. Northland set a $28 target, and Weiss maintains a Sell. The consensus sits at Hold with an average target of $29.61 — well below where the stock currently trades.

Institutions have been buying. VanEck raised its position by 320%, Barclays by 758%, and Invesco by 265% in recent quarters. Vanguard increased its stake by 9.7% and now holds 18.5 million shares. Institutions collectively own 41.7% of the stock.

On the other side, insiders sold roughly 492,249 shares last quarter. CFO Ashley Johnson sold 200,000 shares on April 2nd at $35.10 each, reducing her position by 9.55%.

The forward price-to-sales multiple is around 30x — expensive by most measures for a company still running losses. Analysts expect full-year EPS of ($0.37).

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