Planet Labs ($PL): German contract worth up to €25M

17 The two cases, stated as fairly as possible

The constructive case

Planet has done something rare for a company of its size: it has turned a capital-intensive hardware business into one that generated $134.4 million of operating cash flow and $52.9 million of free cash flow in fiscal 2026, then grew revenue 42% in the first quarter of fiscal 2027 and 58% in the second. The second quarter beat the top of its own revenue guidance by about $9 million, came in four points above the top of the gross margin range and delivered adjusted EBITDA of $13.928 million against a $0–5 million guide. Operating expenses grew 31.4% against revenue growth of 58.1%, which is the first clear evidence of operating leverage this business has produced, and it is the reason management raised the full-year gross margin guide by three points and the adjusted EBITDA floor from zero to $3 million.

The satellite services model solves the two problems that always constrained Earth observation companies at once — it gets a sovereign customer to fund the satellite, and it leaves Planet with licensing rights over the imagery those satellites produce, so the same hardware serves the wider base. European defence budgets are being rebuilt on a multi-year horizon, Planet already has Germany, Sweden and NATO in that market, and its European headquarters, mission control and forthcoming manufacturing line are in Berlin rather than California. Recurring annual contract value is 98%. With $865.4 million of cash and short-term investments against a $460 million convertible struck at $11.95, and the warrant liability finally extinguished, the balance sheet is not the constraint it once was and the reported net loss is no longer distorted by a mark-to-market on the company’s own share price.

The skeptical case

The order book went down in the quarter the revenue went up. Backlog fell to $814.863 million from $906.055 million at April 30, and remaining performance obligations to $753.117 million from $816.008 million, having already fallen from $852.435 million at the start of the year. Revenue is being recognised faster than new contracts are being added to the book, and the guidance says so: third quarter revenue is guided to $101–105 million against $116.052 million just delivered, with adjusted EBITDA guided back to a loss of $6 million to $1 million. Something in the second quarter does not repeat at the same size, and the release does not identify it.

The Form 10-Q filed on September 3, 2026 reports Q2 FY2027 revenue of $80.995M from defense and intelligence, $17.498M from civil government and $17.559M from commercial customers. Defense represents 69.8% of revenue; commercial grew 16.7% and civil government 6.5% year over year. These percentages are Merlintrader calculations on the filed figures. Meanwhile full-year capital expenditure guidance rose to $100–115 million from $80–95 million , about $20 million more at the midpoint, and the company drew $122.4 million gross from the at-the-market program in a quarter that ended with $865.4 million of liquidity. Adjusted EBITDA also excludes $17.060 million of stock-based compensation in the quarter, without which the non-GAAP profit does not exist, and the GAAP result was still a $9.353 million loss. Form 10-Q · 3 September 2026

18 Scenario framework

These are analytical frameworks for organising what the next few reports could look like. They are not forecasts, targets or recommendations.

One structural point cuts across all three, and this quarter illustrated it. Satellite services revenue is recognised against contractual milestones on hardware Planet builds for someone else. It is lumpier than licensing the same imagery to many customers, which is why a 58% quarter can be followed by guidance for a sequential decline without anything having gone wrong. It also cuts the other way: the release attributes the margin beat to non-GAAP gross margin exceeding expectations, and the mix that produces that in one quarter is not guaranteed in the next. Mix, not execution, explains a good deal of both the beat and the guide.

Fifteen more sections on Planet Labs and the full source list, every figure tied to the Form 10-Q, the company releases and the customer contracts, each carrying its reference date.

Float, ownership and short interest

Verified developments

The numbers, in five charts

What Planet actually sells

Government versus commercial

Fiscal 2026 and the second quarter

Capital structure and the convertible

The fleet and the constellation refresh

Merlintrader Bottom Line

03 Float, Ownership And Short Interest

This page does not carry session prices or performance figures. What follows is structural: market capitalisation, share count, float, ownership, short interest and the sell-side consensus target, each with the date of the reading in its label. Float, ownership, short interest and market capitalisation are Finviz Elite fields read on September 3, 2026, after the close of the session but before the earnings release; the consensus target was read on September 1, 2026 and therefore predates this quarter’s results. Share counts are from the Form 10-Q. Company financial figures come from SEC filings and company releases, each carrying its own reference date.

Peer comparison — size and short interest, Finviz, September 3, 2026

The table is sorted by size, and size is most of what it says. Planet is the third-largest of the eight: about six times smaller than Rocket Lab, roughly a quarter of AST SpaceMobile, and several times larger than BlackSky and Satellogic, the two listed companies closest to it on high-revisit tasking and government imagery. The readings were taken on September 3, 2026, after the session that ended a few minutes before Planet published its results, so they describe positioning going into the print rather than after it. Short interest of 9.98% of float is the third-lowest of the group — above only Rocket Lab at 7.53% and MDA Space at 1.41%, and far below AST SpaceMobile at 31.76%, Intuitive Machines at 23.54% and BlackSky at 19.46%. Short interest measures positioning, not the business, and on this reading Planet is one of the less crowded shorts in its own sector.

On analyst coverage the honest position is a narrow one. The consensus target above is a Finviz aggregate of third-party estimates pulled on September 1, 2026, which is before the September 3 release and therefore does not reflect it. Individual houses, ratings and note dates were not verified for this update, so no coverage table is presented. A consensus figure without named notes behind it is a market-data point, not research, and it is neither a company figure nor a Merlintrader forecast.

04 Verified developments up to September 3, 2026

Checked against Planet’s own investor news feed and its EDGAR file. The most recent company release is the second quarter fiscal 2027 earnings release of September 3, 2026, filed the same day as exhibit 99.1 to a Form 8-K accepted by EDGAR at 16:05 Eastern Time. Before it, the most recent filing was a Form 4 dated August 7, 2026, an insider notice rather than a company event.

September 3, 2026 — second quarter fiscal 2027 results

Revenue of $116.052 million, up 58% year on year and above the $102–107 million guided in June. Non-GAAP gross margin of 59%, against 52–55% guided and 61% a year earlier. Adjusted EBITDA of $13.928 million against $0–5 million guided and $6.406 million a year earlier. GAAP net loss of $9.353 million, or $0.03 per share, against $22.592 million a year earlier; non-GAAP net income of $8.265 million, or $0.02 per diluted share. Recurring annual contract value of 98%. Remaining performance obligations of $753.117 million and backlog of $814.863 million, both down from the previous readings. In the six months to July 31, 2026, net cash from operations of $68.388 million, free cash flow of $21.297 million and adjusted free cash flow of $28.827 million. Cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments of $865.4 million, up 219% year on year. Management describes the quarter as the fourth consecutive one at or above the Rule of 40.

September 3, 2026 — guidance raised at the floor, third quarter guided lower

For the third quarter of fiscal 2027, ending October 31, 2026, Planet guides revenue of $101 million to $105 million, non-GAAP gross margin of 56–58%, adjusted EBITDA of negative $6 million to negative $1 million and capital expenditure of $30–37 million. For the full fiscal year it guides revenue of $430 million to $441 million against $425–441 million previously, non-GAAP gross margin of 55–57% against 52–54%, adjusted EBITDA of $3–10 million against $0–10 million, and capital expenditure of $100–115 million against $80–95 million. The third quarter range sits below the quarter just reported, and the capital expenditure increase is about $20 million at the midpoint, a Merlintrader calculation on the two ranges.

August 2026 — new government awards disclosed with the results

The release records an $8 million other transaction award from the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency to deploy Planet’s Global Monitoring Service. It also records that the German government announced Planet had been awarded a tender for dedicated capacity satellite services, an award that includes options and has a maximum possible value of €25 million over five years — a ceiling, not an order. A European defence and intelligence customer signed a seven-figure, one-year agreement for high-resolution global mosaics and professional services, and a hyperscaler artificial-intelligence developer renewed a contract for global monitoring of data centre and semiconductor construction. Within the quarter, Planet signed a national programme with the Rwanda Space Agency, its first of that kind in Africa, and renewed a one-year contract with the New Mexico State Land Office. No value was disclosed for any of the last four.

September 1, 2026 — the Berlin facility begins set-up

Planet states that as of September 1 it has begun initial facility set-up and operational readiness activities at its expanded Berlin site, with manufacturing scheduled to begin this year. The facility is intended to double next-generation Pelican production capacity.

Second quarter fiscal 2027 — the AI application moves to open beta

The agentic artificial-intelligence application that makes Planet’s archive queryable in natural language has progressed from private beta to open beta. No pricing or contracted revenue is disclosed for it.

August 31, 2026 — Tanager-2 and 18 SuperDoves shipped for Transporter-18

Planet announced that its Tanager-2 satellite and the 18 SuperDoves of Flock 4J have arrived at Vandenberg Space Force Base ahead of the SpaceX Transporter-18 rideshare mission. The company describes it as its third launch of the year. Tanager-2 carries the same hyperspectral payload class as Tanager-1 — 426 contiguous bands at roughly 5 nanometre spectral and 30 metre spatial resolution — and is designed to double hyperspectral capacity and halve revisit times for methane detection under the Carbon Mapper partnership, with at least three further Tanager satellites planned after it. The SuperDoves supplement the daily PlanetScope scan. No launch date, contract value or revenue figure was attached to the announcement, and a shipment is not an on-orbit asset.

August 10, 2026 — a national satellite data programme with the Government of Rwanda

Planet and the Government of Rwanda announced a national programme, managed by the Rwanda Space Agency, that puts Planet’s near-daily archive in the hands of government agencies, public universities and selected startups. The stated uses are agriculture and food security, forest health, urban planning and zoning, and disaster planning and response; imagery also goes to public universities for undergraduate teaching and Earth-observation research. Planet describes it as its first national programme of this kind in Africa. No contract value, duration or order figure was disclosed.

August 6, 2026 — the Q2 FY2027 reporting date is set

Results for the quarter ended July 31, 2026 will be released after market close on Thursday, September 3, 2026, with a conference call the same day at 5:00 p.m. ET / 2:00 p.m. PT, webcast live and archived for replay.

July 20, 2026 — a London office opens

Planet opened an office in London, which the company presented as an expansion of its European footprint. No financial term, headcount or contract was attached to the announcement.

July 31, 2026 — the second quarter of fiscal 2027 closed

Planet’s fiscal quarter ended. It was reported on September 3, 2026 and beat every line of the measuring stick set on June 4: revenue of $116.052 million against $102 million to $107 million, non-GAAP gross margin of 59% against 52% to 55%, and adjusted EBITDA of $13.928 million against $0 to $5 million.

July 30, 2026 — a seven-figure award from the Scottish Government

Planet Labs Germany publicly announced a seven-figure award from the Scottish Government’s Agricultural and Rural Economy Directorate. The award itself is not new: the first-quarter release of June 4, 2026 already recorded that Planet had received it in January 2026, so this is the disclosure catching up with the contract rather than a fresh signing. The agreement runs for one year and covers PlanetScope data and analytics supporting Scotland’s Agricultural Reform Route Map. It was secured through Planet’s reseller Computacenter rather than sold direct. Planet frames it as an extension of existing United Kingdom work alongside the Welsh government and England’s Rural Payments Agency. The exact value was not disclosed, and a seven-figure one-year civil-government contract is immaterial to a company guiding to $430–441 million of revenue.

July 24, 2026 — chief financial officer files a Form 4 sale

Ashley Johnson, President and Chief Financial Officer, reported the sale of 110,028 shares for about $2.43 million. The filing states the transaction was executed under a Rule 10b5-1 trading plan adopted on April 23, 2026.

July 13, 2026 — founders report sales under pre-existing plans

Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder Will Marshall reported the sale of 200,000 shares for about $5.18 million at prices between $25.33 and $27.17, under a Rule 10b5-1 plan adopted on July 12, 2025. Co-founder Robert Schingler Jr. reported 89,593 shares for about $2.32 million under a plan adopted on July 14, 2025.

July 9, 2026 — annual meeting of stockholders

Shareholders re-elected Vijaya Gadde, General John W. Raymond and Scott Reese as Class II directors for three-year terms, ratified KPMG LLP as auditor for the fiscal year ending January 31, 2027, and approved executive compensation on an advisory basis. The vote count is a reminder of how the share classes work: 332,899,400 Class A shares carrying one vote each and 23,493,796 Class B shares carrying twenty votes each were entitled to vote, and the 278,499,924 shares represented at the meeting cast 724,882,048 votes.

July 7, 2026 — Pelican-11 launched, and it is a pathfinder, not a revenue satellite

Planet announced the successful launch of Pelican-11, the technology demonstration satellite (TD2) and, in the company’s own words, the first of the Generation 2 Pelicans, aboard the SpaceX Transporter-17 rideshare mission from Vandenberg Space Force Base. The September 3, 2026 release states that the launch brought the total number of high-resolution Pelicans on orbit to ten. Initial contact was made and commissioning began. Generation 1 Pelicans capture up to 50 centimeter class imagery; Generation 2 are designed for up to 30 centimeter class. The company stated explicitly that Pelican-11 is not anticipated to produce commercially available data.

July 6, 2026 — a former head of the German Chancellery joins the European advisory board

Planet announced that Wolfgang Schmidt, former Head of the German Chancellery and Federal Minister for Special Affairs, had joined its European Advisory Board. It is a governance and access appointment in the market that has produced Planet’s largest disclosed contract; no compensation, contract or revenue figure is attached to it, and an advisory board seat is not a commercial commitment.

July 2, 2026 — launch agreement with Isar Aerospace

Planet Labs Germany and Isar Aerospace announced a strategic launch agreement under which Isar will launch one of Planet’s next-generation Pelican satellites on its Spectrum vehicle from Andøya Space, scheduled as early as late 2026, with additional satellites planned for future launches and options for further flights. The satellite is to be assembled in Planet’s forthcoming Berlin manufacturing facility, which the companies describe as doubling next-generation Pelican production capacity, with up to 70 new employees added to the roughly 150 already in Berlin. No contract value was disclosed by either party, and Spectrum is a vehicle that has not yet reached orbit.

June 5, 2026 — the $1.5 billion at-the-market program

Planet filed an automatic shelf registration statement and a prospectus supplement covering an equity distribution agreement for the sale of Class A common stock with an aggregate offering price of up to $1,500,000,000, through a syndicate of sales agents that also allows for range forward sale agreements. The prospectus supplement records the last reported sale price on June 4, 2026 as $43.53, which is the figure the document itself uses to size the offering. Filing the registration one day after a record quarter and raised guidance is the sequence that made this the most argued-over event of Planet’s year.

June 4, 2026 — first quarter fiscal 2027 results and raised guidance

Record revenue of $94.2 million, up 42% year on year. Backlog above $906 million, up 72%. Remaining performance obligations of $816.0 million, up 81%. Cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments of $730.8 million. Adjusted EBITDA of negative $1.0 million. Full-year fiscal 2027 revenue guidance raised to $425 million to $441 million from $415 million to $440 million, and non-GAAP gross margin guidance raised to 52% to 54% from 50% to 52%.

June 4, 2026 — two National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency awards

Planet Labs Federal was awarded an Option Year 1 extension under the Luno B indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity contract for Advanced Analytics for Maritime Operations and Reconnaissance, described in the earnings release as a one-year, $21.9 million extension and in the standalone announcement as a $22 million extension. A separate new award covers the Global Monitoring Service for crisis response. Luno B is an IDIQ vehicle: the option exercised is the funded part, the vehicle itself is a ceiling.

May 2026 — three Pelicans launched, including Sweden’s first sovereign reconnaissance satellite

Planet launched three additional Pelican satellites on a SpaceX vehicle, taking the number of high-resolution Pelicans on orbit to nine. One of them was the Swedish Armed Forces’ first sovereign reconnaissance satellite, launched just over four months after the contract was signed.

April 27 to May 4, 2026 — public warrants redeemed

Planet completed the redemption of the public warrants issued in the 2021 business combination. During the quarter ended April 30, 2026 it issued 9,374,075 shares from warrant exercises at $11.50, producing $107.8 million of gross proceeds. Only 71,310 warrants went unexercised and were redeemed at $0.01 each. As of April 30, 2026 there were no public or private placement warrants outstanding, which also means the quarterly warrant revaluation that has distorted the reported net loss for two years will not recur.

March 19, 2026 — fiscal 2026 results

Record annual revenue of $307.7 million, up 26%. First full fiscal year of positive adjusted EBITDA at $15.5 million and positive free cash flow at $52.9 million. Remaining performance obligations of $852.4 million, up 106%. Backlog above $900 million, up 79%. Cash and short-term investments of $640.1 million.

January 12, 2026 — the Swedish Armed Forces agreement

A multi-year low nine-figure commercial agreement under which Planet builds and operates a constellation of high-resolution Pelicans that Sweden will own, while Planet retains licensing rights over certain imagery from those satellites for its own customers. The announcement recorded that Planet had signed over half a billion dollars across three satellite services contracts in twelve months, supporting Japan via JSAT and in collaboration with Germany. It also introduced the forthcoming Owl constellation, designed for near-daily one-meter class imagery.

September 12, 2025 — the convertible

Planet issued $460.0 million of 0.50% convertible senior notes due October 15, 2030, with an initial conversion price of approximately $11.95 per share and capped call transactions costing $39.6 million that raise the effective cap to $18.04. That conversion price sits far below the reference prices recorded in Planet’s own 2026 filings, which is why the notes matter to the share count.

July 1, 2025 — the German agreement

Planet Labs Germany announced a multi-year €240 million agreement funded by the German government, providing dedicated capacity and direct downlink services on Pelican satellites over specific European regions, plus access to PlanetScope and SkySat data and AI-enabled situational and maritime domain awareness solutions. Revenue recognition was expected to begin in January 2026 and to ramp over several years. This is the single largest disclosed contract value in the company’s history.

05 The numbers, in five charts

Every bar below is drawn from a figure Planet has reported in an SEC filing or a press release, and every chart carries its source, its reference dates and a note on what it does not show. Percentages are calculated against the largest value in each chart.

06 What Planet actually sells

Planet designs, builds and operates its own satellites, then licenses what they capture. The 10-K describes a business that collects hundreds of millions of square kilometers of Earth data every day, added to an archive of imagery going back to 2009 and daily Earth scanning going back to 2017. That archive cannot be recreated after the fact, which is the clearest structural advantage the company has.

The offering splits into four things:

• Monitoring. The SuperDove fleet works as an always-on scanner of the planet, imaging at up to 3.5 meter ground sampling distance. This is the backbone of what the company calls its one-to-many model: the same image can be licensed to an unlimited number of customers, which is what separates Planet from legacy providers that sold single images exclusively.
• High-resolution tasking. SkySat and Pelican satellites can be pointed at a specified location several times a day, reaching up to 50 centimeter class resolution after processing on Generation 1 Pelicans. They support points, long strips, stereo collects and video, all through an API.
• Hyperspectral. Tanager captures over 400 spectral bands across the visible and shortwave infrared at 30 meter resolution, developed with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and sponsored by Carbon Mapper to detect methane and carbon dioxide super-emitters.
• Satellite services. The newest and most consequential line. Planet builds and operates satellites that the customer owns, invoicing against contractual milestones, and typically retains licensing rights over some of the imagery those satellites produce so it can resell capacity to its wider base. Sweden, Germany and Japan via JSAT are the three disclosed examples.

On top of that sits the software layer: the Planet Insights Platform, which absorbed the former Sentinel Hub product, plus analytics products and, from the first quarter of fiscal 2027, a private beta of an AI application that makes the archive queryable in natural language. Planet also announced SuperRes in May 2026, a technique for upscaling PlanetScope data toward a two-meter class visual product.

As of January 31, 2026 the company had approximately 1,000 employees, of whom about 945 were full time, working across 29 countries. The corporate headquarters in San Francisco is roughly 71,280 square feet and houses all satellite manufacturing, testing and research and development. European offices are in Berlin, Haarlem, Ljubljana and Graz, and the Washington D.C. office is the headquarters of the federal subsidiary, Planet Labs Federal, Inc.

07 Government versus commercial: the mix that explains the story

Planet reports revenue in three customer types. The fiscal 2026 split, from the 10-K, is the single most informative table the company publishes.

Two facts fall out of that table and neither is in the headline of any press release. First, defense and intelligence delivered more than 100% of the group’s revenue growth in fiscal 2026: the segment added $63.951 million while the other two together shrank by $0.576 million. Second, commercial revenue has now declined in each of the last two fiscal years and is smaller in absolute dollars than it was in fiscal 2024, when it was the largest of the three categories at $65.5 million.

The first quarter of fiscal 2027 pushed the concentration further. Defense and intelligence was $61.386 million of $94.150 million, or 65.2% of revenue, up 67.5% year on year. Civil government was $16.169 million, marginally below the $16.280 million of a year earlier. Commercial was $16.595 million, up 24.4% from $13.338 million — the first quarterly increase in that line for some time, though from a low base and off a single quarter.

Geography tells the same story from another angle. In fiscal 2026, North America was $132.010 million, Europe, Middle East and Africa $103.674 million, Asia Pacific and Japan $59.813 million, and Latin America $12.230 million. Within those, the United States contributed $123.9 million, Japan $38.0 million and Ukraine $35.9 million — enough on its own to exceed 10% of group revenue and to be broken out in the notes. In the first quarter of fiscal 2027, EMEA grew 86.0% year on year to $35.053 million against North America’s 25.4% to $37.037 million, so Europe is close to overtaking the home market.

Customer concentration is the counterweight to that growth. For fiscal 2026, two customers accounted for 13% and 12% of revenue, and at January 31, 2026 one customer accounted for 33% of accounts receivable. Planet does not name them. The concentration is a direct consequence of the satellite services model: a handful of sovereign contracts are large enough individually to move the group.

The Form 10-Q filed on September 3, 2026 reports Q2 FY2027 revenue of $80.995M from defense and intelligence, $17.498M from civil government and $17.559M from commercial customers. Defense represents 69.8% of revenue; commercial grew 16.7% and civil government 6.5% year over year. These percentages are Merlintrader calculations on the filed figures. Form 10-Q · 3 September 2026

08 Fiscal 2026: the year the model worked

The year ended January 31, 2026 is the one that changed the argument about this company, and it is worth setting out in full because the fiscal calendar makes it easy to compare the wrong periods.

The headline net loss of $246.9 million looks catastrophic next to $15.5 million of adjusted EBITDA and $52.9 million of free cash flow. Most of the gap is the warrant liability: as the share price rose, the fair value of the warrants Planet had to carry as a liability rose with it, and the increase was booked as a loss. The company quantified it at $161.4 million for the year, equivalent to $0.52 of the $0.80 loss per share. That mechanism is now dead, and the second quarter of fiscal 2027 is the proof: the change in fair value of warrant liabilities was zero in the three months to July 31, 2026, against a $5.679 million charge in the same quarter a year earlier, and the warrant liability line on the balance sheet went from $173.308 million at January 31, 2026 to nil. The reported net loss is no longer dragged around by the share price.

The customer count deserves a note because it went the wrong way and the company retired the metric in the same breath. End-of-period customers fell from 976 to 897, which Planet attributes to a deliberate shift of the direct sales force toward large opportunities while smaller users are pushed to the self-service Planet Insights Platform, whose users are excluded from the count. Planet stated that the metric had become less meaningful and that it would stop reporting it from the first quarter of fiscal 2027. That reasoning is coherent. It also removes the one published series that showed the breadth of the customer base narrowing while the revenue concentrated.

09 The second quarter of fiscal 2027, line by line

The quarter ended July 31, 2026 and was reported after the close on September 3, 2026. It beat every line of the guidance the company set on June 4, and the size of the beat is the first thing to establish before anything else in the release is interpreted.

The income statement. Revenue of $116.052 million against $73.386 million a year earlier is growth of 58.1%, a Merlintrader calculation that matches the 58% the company states. Cost of revenue was $50.420 million, so gross profit was $65.632 million and the GAAP gross margin 56.6%, which the company rounds to 57% against 58% a year earlier. Operating expenses of $79.141 million grew 31.4% against revenue growth of 58.1% — the first quarter in some time in which the top line grew faster than the cost base, and the arithmetic behind the whole of the adjusted EBITDA beat.

Two of those lines deserve a second reading. The non-GAAP net income of $8.265 million is arrived at by adding back $17.060 million of stock-based compensation and $0.969 million of intangible amortisation to a GAAP loss of $9.353 million, then subtracting $0.411 million of certain litigation items that reversed in the quarter: without the stock compensation add-back there is no non-GAAP profit. And the diluted share count used for the non-GAAP figure is 431,394,299 against 359,594,052 for the GAAP loss per share, because the GAAP calculation excludes potentially dilutive shares that are anti-dilutive against a loss. The two per-share figures are therefore not calculated on the same base, which the company states in its own footnotes.

Cash and the order book. Cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments ended at $865.418 million, the sum of $415.130 million and $450.288 million on the balance sheet, up 219% year on year as the company states. For the six months, net cash from operations was $68.388 million, free cash flow $21.297 million and adjusted free cash flow $28.827 million, the difference being $7.530 million of litigation settlement payments added back. Against that, the order book went the other way.

Read against the most recent prior reading rather than against the start of the year, the direction is unambiguous: backlog fell $91.2 million and remaining performance obligations $62.9 million over the three months, and remaining performance obligations had already fallen from $852.435 million to $816.008 million in the first quarter. The one line that moved the right way is the cancelable portion, down from $90.047 million to $61.746 million, so the part of the book a government customer can walk away from is smaller than it was in April. Two consecutive declines in contracted future revenue, in a period when reported revenue grew 58%, is the single most important tension in this release: revenue is being recognised faster than new contracts are being signed, or at least faster than they are being signed at a size that shows up in the book.

What changed in the guidance. Three of the four full-year lines moved up and one moved up in a way that costs money.

And the quarter now running is guided below the quarter just reported. Third quarter revenue of $101 million to $105 million compares with $116.052 million delivered, a sequential decline of about 11% at the midpoint, which is a Merlintrader calculation. Non-GAAP gross margin is guided to 56–58%, adjusted EBITDA to a loss of $6 million to $1 million, and capital expenditure to $30–37 million for the quarter alone. Taking the six months already reported and the third quarter range together, the implied fourth quarter sits between about $115 million and about $130 million: another Merlintrader calculation, on the company’s own figures, and one that shows the full-year range still requires a strong final quarter.

The Form 10-Q filed on September 3, 2026 reports Q2 FY2027 revenue of $80.995M from defense and intelligence, $17.498M from civil government and $17.559M from commercial customers. Defense represents 69.8% of revenue; commercial grew 16.7% and civil government 6.5% year over year. These percentages are Merlintrader calculations on the filed figures. Form 10-Q · 3 September 2026

What the filed 10-Q adds

Q2 FY2027 customer mix: defense and intelligence $80.995M, civil government $17.498M, commercial $17.559M. All three lines grew year over year; defense accounted for 69.8% of revenue.

The August 27 cover count is 363,847,989 Class A and B shares combined. ATM issuance alone was 3,782,460 shares in Q2, disclosed in Note 10.

Convertible notes: the 10-Q reports $460.0M of principal outstanding at July 31, 2026. The price condition triggered a new holder conversion window from August 1 through October 31, 2026. Eligibility to convert does not mean a conversion has occurred.

The filed Q2 customer concentration is 17%, 11% and 10% of revenue for three customers; two customers accounted for 25% and 11% of receivables at July 31. These percentages refer to Q2 and quarter end, respectively.

Form 10-Q — filed September 3, 2026

10 Capital structure: the convertible, the warrants and the $1.5 billion shelf

Planet’s balance sheet at July 31, 2026 shows $1,430.964 million of total assets, $866.613 million of total liabilities and $564.351 million of stockholders’ equity, against $1,145.686 million, $957.255 million and $188.431 million at January 31, 2026. Equity tripled over six months for two reasons that have nothing to do with earnings: the warrant liability of $173.308 million was extinguished, and additional paid-in capital rose by $527.133 million on warrant exercises, at-the-market sales and stock compensation. The liability side is now dominated by two items: $298.579 million of deferred revenue, which is customer money already collected, and $448.255 million of convertible notes. The accumulated deficit stands at $1,598.086 million.

The 2030 convertible notes

On September 12, 2025 Planet issued $460.0 million of 0.50% convertible senior notes due October 15, 2030. The initial conversion rate is 83.6715 shares per $1,000 of principal, equivalent to a conversion price of about $11.95 per share. Alongside the issue the company bought capped call transactions for $39.6 million with a strike of about $11.95 and a cap of $18.04.

Planet’s own 2026 filings record reference prices well above both numbers. Two consequences follow. First, the notes are deep in the money: the 10-Q records their estimated fair value at April 30, 2026 as $1,442.9 million against a $460.0 million principal. Second, the conversion condition was met. As of May 1, 2026 the conditional conversion feature was triggered, and the notes became convertible at holders’ option from May 1 through July 31, 2026. Planet can settle in cash, in stock, or in a combination, at its election. If the full $460.0 million were converted into shares at the initial rate, that is 38,488,890 shares, about 10.8% of the 356.4 million outstanding at June 1, 2026, against which the capped calls offset dilution only up to $18.04.

The Q2 Form 10-Q is now available. Note 10 is the reference for conversion terms and the notes; the balance sheet reports a $448.255M carrying value at July 31, 2026. A change in carrying value alone is not a measure of shares issued. Form 10-Q · 3 September 2026 Principal outstanding was $460M and the new conversion window is August 1–October 31, 2026 (Note 10).

The warrants, now closed out

The warrant line is now closed and the balance sheet shows it: the public and private placement warrant liability went from $173.308 million at January 31, 2026 to nil at July 31, 2026, and the change in fair value of warrant liabilities in the second quarter was zero. Planet announced the redemption of its public warrants on March 27, 2026 and completed it on May 4, 2026. During the quarter ended April 30, 2026 it issued 9,374,075 shares on exercise at $11.50, raising $107.8 million in gross proceeds. Only 71,310 warrants went unredeemed, and were bought back at a cent each. The private placement warrants were exercised on a cashless basis. Separately, 1,065,594 warrants to purchase Class A stock at a weighted average exercise price of $9.38 remain outstanding with a weighted average remaining term of 3.9 years.

The $1.5 billion at-the-market program, now drawn on for the first time

On June 5, 2026, the day after results, Planet filed an automatic shelf registration statement and a prospectus supplement for an equity distribution agreement covering Class A common stock with an aggregate offering price of up to $1,500,000,000. The syndicate is unusually broad — Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Barclays, Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, BofA Securities, Cantor Fitzgerald, Citizens JMP, Craig-Hallum, Needham, Northland, Wedbush, Clear Street and JonesTrading are all named — and the agreement allows not only ordinary agency sales but also range forward sale agreements, under which a forward purchaser borrows and sells shares now and Planet settles later.

The cover reports 340,354,193 Class A and 23,493,796 Class B shares at August 27, 2026: 363,847,989 in total. Note 10 reports 3,782,460 Class A shares sold under the ATM during the quarter. The total outstanding count also reflects other equity movements and is not the ATM issuance count. Gross ATM proceeds were $122.398M; the cash flow statement reports $2.012M of issuance-cost payments. The share count is disclosed directly in Note 10 and should not be inferred by dividing rounded net proceeds by a rounded sale price. Form 10-Q · 3 September 2026

Share count

The cover reports 340,354,193 Class A and 23,493,796 Class B shares at August 27, 2026: 363,847,989 in total. Note 10 reports 3,782,460 Class A shares sold under the ATM during the quarter. The total outstanding count also reflects other equity movements and is not the ATM issuance count. Gross ATM proceeds were $122.398M; the cash flow statement reports $2.012M of issuance-cost payments. The share count is disclosed directly in Note 10 and should not be inferred by dividing rounded net proceeds by a rounded sale price. Form 10-Q · 3 September 2026

11 Contracts, catalysts, and the difference between a funded order and a ceiling

Planet’s announcements fall into categories with very different economic weight. Sorting them is most of the analytical work.

The pattern is consistent. What is contracted and funded is European and Asian sovereign demand plus a growing but individually modest set of U.S. government awards. What is unquantified is the American headline risk and the American optionality at the same time: SHIELD is a vehicle Planet has to win work under, and the Google partnership is research. Both are real. Neither is in the backlog.

12 The satellite fleet and the constellation refresh

The fleet is in the middle of a generational change, and the economics of the next two years depend on how cleanly it happens.

• SuperDove. The daily-scan workhorses at up to 3.5 meter resolution. They are small, cheap and replaced continuously; the archive they feed is the asset.
• SkySat. The older high-resolution tasking fleet, still in service and still sold as part of the dedicated capacity packages, but the generation the Pelicans are replacing.
• Pelican Generation 1. The replacement for SkySat, up to 50 centimeter class after processing. Nine were on orbit after the May 2026 launch of three, one of which is the Swedish Armed Forces’ first sovereign reconnaissance satellite; the September 3, 2026 release states that the July launch of Pelican-11 took the total number of high-resolution Pelicans on orbit to ten. These are also the satellites underpinning the German dedicated-capacity contract.
• Pelican Generation 2. Designed for up to 30 centimeter class imagery. Pelican-11, launched on July 7, 2026 on Transporter-17, is the technology demonstrator (TD2) and the first Generation 2 spacecraft on orbit and explicitly is not expected to produce commercially available data. It is an engineering pathfinder whose job is to de-risk the production fleet.
• Tanager. The hyperspectral line built with JPL and sponsored by Carbon Mapper: 426 contiguous bands at roughly 5 nanometre spectral resolution and 30 metre spatial resolution. Tanager-1 launched in August 2024. Tanager-2 shipped to Vandenberg on August 31, 2026 for the Transporter-18 rideshare, and is designed to double hyperspectral capacity and halve methane revisit times; Planet has said at least three more Tanagers are planned after it. A shortwave-infrared-only variant with a wider swath is in design. None of this carries a disclosed contract value.
• Owl. Announced alongside the Swedish contract in January 2026, designed to deliver near-daily one-meter class imagery. No launch schedule has been published.

Planet has launched over 600 satellites since inception, which is the number the company uses when it argues that its manufacturing line is the moat rather than any single spacecraft. The Berlin facility, announced in September 2025 and recalled in the Isar agreement, is intended to double next-generation Pelican production capacity, adding up to 70 employees to about 150 already there.

The capital cost of all this is visible in the guidance, and on September 3, 2026 it went up: capital expenditure guidance for fiscal 2027 was raised to $100 million to $115 million from the $80 million to $95 million set in June, against $81.5 million spent in fiscal 2026 and $49.6 million in fiscal 2025. The third quarter alone is guided to $30 million to $37 million. In the six months to July 31, 2026 the company spent $44.656 million on property and equipment and $2.435 million on capitalised internal-use software, $47.091 million together on a Merlintrader addition of two filed lines. Capital expenditure was 26% of revenue in fiscal 2026 against 20% in fiscal 2025, and the raised full-year guidance is about 25% of the midpoint of the revenue range, a Merlintrader calculation. A constellation refresh is a period of elevated spending that produces no incremental revenue until the new satellites are commissioned and sold against, which is precisely the phase Planet is in.

13 AI and the Planet Insights Platform

Planet’s AI story has three distinct layers and they are frequently discussed as one.

What is selling. AI-enabled analytics are already inside contracted work. The NGA maritime domain awareness contract is explicitly for automated detection of ship-to-ship transfers and dark fleet activity. The German and Swedish agreements both include AI-enabled situational awareness solutions in their scope. Planetary Variables such as soil moisture and biomass proxy are sold into agriculture through partners including Nave Analytics, and the AiDash partnership makes Planet the preferred provider of fuel monitoring data for North American utility wildfire risk mitigation. This layer is inside the backlog, which stood at $814.863 million at July 31, 2026.

What is in beta. During the first quarter of fiscal 2027 Planet launched the private beta of an AI application designed to make its global archive queryable in natural language, combining daily imagery with large language models so non-technical users can run time-series analysis and generate automated reports. In May 2026 it announced SuperRes, which uses AI to upscale PlanetScope data toward a two-meter class visual product. Neither has disclosed pricing or contracted revenue.

What is research. The Google partnership on Project Suncatcher explores whether machine-learning compute can run on solar-powered satellite clusters in orbit. Planet’s role is the spacecraft. It is an R&D collaboration with no disclosed economics, and the timelines discussed publicly run to 2027 for prototypes and considerably further for anything at scale.

The Planet Insights Platform, which absorbed the Sentinel Hub product acquired in 2023, is the self-service channel. It matters more than its revenue suggests because its users are deliberately excluded from the customer count and from the ACV book of business, which is part of why the reported customer number fell while revenue grew.

14 Management, governance and the vote that is worth reading

Will Marshall is Co-Founder, Chief Executive Officer and Chairperson. Robert Schingler Jr. is Co-Founder and Chief Strategy Officer. Ashley Johnson is President and Chief Financial Officer and signs the company’s filings. The board, following the July 9, 2026 annual meeting, includes Carl Bass, Ita M. Brennan, Vijaya Gadde, General John W. Raymond, Scott Reese, Kristen Robinson and Gary B. Smith. KPMG LLP was ratified as auditor for the fiscal year ending January 31, 2027.

The share structure concentrates control. Class B shares carry twenty votes each and are held entirely by the two founders, who consequently control over approximately 62% of the voting power of the capital stock. Planet is also a Delaware public benefit corporation, which obliges the board to balance shareholder pecuniary interests against the public benefit identified in its charter and the interests of others materially affected by the company’s conduct. Both features are disclosed as risk factors in the 10-Q, and both reduce the practical influence of outside shareholders on major decisions.

The annual meeting results carry one detail worth noting. Scott Reese was re-elected with 665,275,602 votes for and 1,018,386 withheld. General Raymond drew 41,706,354 withheld votes. Vijaya Gadde drew 72,107,314 withheld votes against 594,186,674 for — roughly 10.8% of votes cast on her election, and far above the other two nominees. Withhold votes are not binding and the director was re-elected, but the dispersion is a signal about how some institutional holders view specific board seats.

Two legal matters are disclosed. The Delaware class action brought in August 2024 against former officers and directors of the SPAC and the company reached a mediator’s proposal to settle following a May 7, 2026 mediation, subject to definitive documents and court approval; claims against the company itself were dismissed in January 2025, but Planet remains obliged to indemnify the former officers and directors. An acquisition-related arbitration demand filed in November 2025 was settled by formal agreement on May 11, 2026. Accruals for both sit in accrued and other current liabilities, and $6.211 million of related expense ran through general and administrative in the first quarter of fiscal 2027.

15 Ownership, Insiders And Retail Sentiment

Google is both a large shareholder and a large supplier. It held 35,248,893 Class A shares at April 30, 2026, up from 34,422,330 at January 31, 2026, and more than 10% of the Class A stock. Planet buys hosting and other services from Google: $7.8 million of expense in the first quarter of fiscal 2027, of which $7.0 million sat in cost of revenue, and aggregate purchase commitments of $193.0 million under a hosting agreement running through January 31, 2028. That relationship is disclosed as a related-party transaction and is a meaningful part of the cost base.

Insider selling in July 2026 was heavy in absolute terms and pre-programmed in structure. Six Form 4 filings between July 2 and July 24 report sales of roughly $11.4 million in aggregate: Will Marshall 200,000 shares for about $5.18 million at prices between $25.33 and $27.17, Ashley Johnson 110,028 shares for about $2.43 million, Robert Schingler Jr. 89,593 shares for about $2.32 million, Kristen Robinson about $0.93 million, Ita M. Brennan about $0.38 million and General Raymond about $0.17 million. Every one of those filings carries the Rule 10b5-1 affirmation, with plans adopted between July 2025 and April 2026 — that is, months before the June results and the June 5 equity program. Separately, seven directors received routine restricted stock unit grants on July 10, 2026.

Retail discussion of $PL through the summer concentrated on the June 5 registration statement, the size of the at-the-market program relative to the cash already on the balance sheet, and the argument that European sovereign demand is a multi-year structural change rather than a 2026 event. In the minutes after the September 3 release the stream turned to two things at once: the size of the revenue beat, and the third quarter guidance sitting below the quarter reported. Those are non-professional opinions, they are not research, and they are recorded here only as a description of positioning and sentiment. Nothing in them is a source for any figure on this page.

The block below is a snapshot of the Stocktwits flow, taken on September 3, 2026 in the half hour after the results were released, and carrying that date. These are opinions of retail traders and non-professional investors, not analyst research, and they measure attention and how one-sided positioning has become rather than anything about the business.

16 Catalyst table

19 Merlintrader bottom line

Planet came into this report with a question it had set itself in June, and the second quarter of fiscal 2027 answered it in the affirmative on every line the company had guided. Revenue of $116.052 million against $102–107 million. Non-GAAP gross margin of 59% against 52–55%. Adjusted EBITDA of $13.928 million against $0–5 million. Operating expenses growing 31.4% while revenue grew 58.1%, which is what operating leverage looks like the first time a company of this kind produces it. Cash and short-term investments of $865.4 million, and a net loss line finally free of the warrant revaluation that made it unreadable for two years.

The same document contains three things that pull the other way, and none of them is buried. Contracted future revenue fell: backlog to $814.9 million from $906.1 million at April 30, remaining performance obligations to $753.1 million from $816.0 million, and recurring annual contract value down a point to 98%. The third quarter is guided below the quarter just reported, $101–105 million against $116.052 million, with adjusted EBITDA back to a loss. And the cost of the fleet went up: full-year capital expenditure guidance raised to $100–115 million from $80–95 million, about $20 million more at the midpoint.

The hierarchy of evidence here is unusually clean, and it is the same hierarchy that applied before the print. Revenue of $116.052 million, gross profit of $65.632 million, adjusted EBITDA of $13.928 million and cash of $865.4 million are figures in a filed exhibit. The €240 million German agreement and the low nine-figure Swedish agreement are quantified, signed contracts with satellites already flying against them. The €25 million German civil tender announced in August is a maximum possible value with options attached, which is a ceiling and not an order, and the $8 million NGA award is a funded exercise. SHIELD is a vehicle Planet must still win work under. Project Suncatcher is research. Anyone reading the next release should sort the new information into those same buckets before deciding what it changed.

The Form 10-Q filed on September 3, 2026 reports Q2 FY2027 revenue of $80.995M from defense and intelligence, $17.498M from civil government and $17.559M from commercial customers. Defense represents 69.8% of revenue; commercial grew 16.7% and civil government 6.5% year over year. These percentages are Merlintrader calculations on the filed figures. The cover reports 340,354,193 Class A and 23,493,796 Class B shares at August 27, 2026: 363,847,989 in total. Note 10 reports 3,782,460 Class A shares sold under the ATM during the quarter. The total outstanding count also reflects other equity movements and is not the ATM issuance count. Form 10-Q · 3 September 2026

For broader catalyst tracking across the space, defense and AI complex, the Merlintrader Free Catalyst Calendar lists the dated events for the sector.

Related Research On Merlintrader

• Space, Defense & AI Stock Hubs 2026: the new infrastructure race — the full index of company hubs in this sector.
• BlackSky Technology ($BKSY) Stock Hub — the closest listed comparison on high-revisit tasking and government imagery contracts.
• Satellogic ($SATL) Stock Hub — another operator selling sovereign constellation access rather than only imagery.
• Rocket Lab ($RKLB) Stock Hub — the launch and space systems side of the same demand cycle.
• Redwire ($RDW) Stock Hub — space infrastructure and defense technology, with a comparable equity-funded growth profile.
• Dilution, ATMs and PIPEs: how equity funding actually works — background for the capital-structure section above.
• Weekly Market Pulse — the week ahead across catalysts and earnings.