Planet Labs' 2026 Outlook: Government Contracts Power Revenue Growth

A soldier in a remote theater of operation pulls up a tablet to view a high-resolution, time-stamped map of a supply route. He isn't looking at a static archive. He is watching movement captured by Planet Labs (NYSE:PL) earlier that same morning.

The company operates the world's largest commercial fleet of Earth-observation satellites, effectively functioning as a real-time scanning utility for the planet. While the stock has seen a 75% gain over the last year, it remains a volatile asset, trading at $16.95 as of September 11, 2026, as the market weighs its high capital demands against its growing importance to national security agencies.

Our proprietary Hidden Gems scoring system assigns Planet Labs PBC an overall Superscore of 73 out of 100, placing it in the Above Average category. The Superscore is an AI-powered score that evaluates a company's overall strength by combining financial performance, product market position, technological capabilities, leadership quality, and relative valuation.

It represents the unification of all our scores into a single score for public companies, with five rating bands: Exceptional (90-100), Strong (75-89), Above Average (60-74), Average (40-59), and Cautious (0-39). This 73 Superscore places Planet Labs in the Top ~24% of all public companies we track, indicating a performance profile ahead of roughly 76 out of every 100 companies we score. This analysis serves as a research input to help you weigh the company's defensive moat against its operational risks before making your own determination.

IMAGE SOURCE: GETTY IMAGES.

Why PL Has a 73 Superscore

• Revenue growth momentum: Planet Labs achieved 26% year-over-year revenue growth in fiscal 2026, demonstrating that its pivot toward high-value defense and intelligence contracts is successfully scaling.

• Sovereign contract wins: The company secured a major 9-figure agreement with the Swedish Armed Forces, providing durable, multi-year revenue visibility that validates its shift into essential geospatial infrastructure.

• Operational inflection: Achieving positive operating cash flow of $134 million in fiscal 2026 marks a structural shift for the company, proving it can fund its own growth after years of heavy cash burn.

• AI data leadership: The company's massive, proprietary, and non-replicable historical archive of daily Earth imagery creates a formidable competitive barrier that software-only AI rivals cannot retroactively assemble.

• Recurring revenue model: With 98% of its annual contract value being recurring as of Q2 fiscal 2027, which ended July 31, the business provides the stability required to withstand unpredictable shifts in government procurement cycles.