Planet Labs Has A Five Year Lead Over Its Nearest Competitor: Analyst

Planet Labs (NYSE:PL) surged on Friday after strong quarterly results and upbeat guidance reinforced confidence in its growth trajectory. Analysts also turned more bullish, pointing to the company’s Earth observation leadership and expanding AI-driven opportunity. Earnings Snapshot The company posted fourth-quarter revenue of $86.82 million, exceeding analyst estimates and rising sharply from the prior year period. Management expects first-quarter revenue between $87 million and $91 million, above consensus projections. For fiscal 2027, Planet forecasts revenue in the range of $415 million to $440 million. Here are the key analysts’ takes on the stock: Needham analyst Ryan Koontz reiterated a Buy rating on the stock, raising the price forecast from $35 to $40. Wedbush analyst Dan Ives reiterated the Outperform rating on Planet Labs, raising the price forecast from $30 to $40 Needham Koontz said Planet Labs leads next-generation Earth observation with a fully operational fleet of about 200 satellites. He added that the fleet can image 350 million square kilometers each day, roughly twice Earth’s landmass. Beyond the satellites, Koontz said the company operates a cloud-native analytics platform for geospatial data. Planet Labs is expanding established verticals while also opening new markets through easier data access. Koontz noted that Planet Labs remains the only company with a daily scan of the entire Earth. That advantage, he said, gives the company about a five-year lead over its nearest competitor. He also pointed to an archive of more than 1,700 images for every point on Earth. Koontz said that the dataset cannot be replicated and plays an important role in training machine learning models. He described Planet Labs as a data subscription business built on top of space infrastructure. Looking ahead, Koontz said he expects the company’s fundamentals to improve through fiscal 2026 and fiscal 2027. He added that growing global demand for Earth observation data and easier AI-driven use should support that trend. Wedbush Ives said Planet Labs again beat expectations across the board in its fiscal fourth-quarter results. He said the company’s execution continued to drive strong remaining performance obligations and backlog growth. Ives added that the Anthropic and Google partnerships aim to build Earth intelligence applications at scale. He noted that EBITDA guidance of breakeven to $10 million fell below Wall Street’s $16.6 million estimate. He also said gross margin guidance of 50% to 52% trails fiscal 2026’s 59.3%. According to Ives, that pressure reflects near-term costs tied to next-generation satellite infrastructure expansion. Ives said Planet continues proving it can deliver advanced satellite data capabilities in a growing space-AI market. PL Price Action: Planet Labs shares were up 23.81% at $33.38 at the time of publication on Friday. The stock is trading at a new 52-week high, according to Benzinga Pro data. Photo by PJ McDonnell via Shutterstock