Planet Labs is a good stock to consider based on strong growth metrics (41% Q4 revenue increase, $900M backlog) and operational leverage, despite volatility and high reinvestment costs.

I'm going to talk about another company that isn't a household name but is an interesting business called "Planet Labs". If you haven't heard of this company before, Planet Labs operates the world's largest fleet of Earth imaging satellites.

This includes more than 200 small Dove satellites that collectively image almost the entire land area of the Earth every day with an accuracy of up to about 3.7 meters. Instead of simply selling these images, Planet Labs sells access to this constantly updated archive as a subscription to customers in the agriculture, forestry, insurance, and government sectors, of course.

They pay recurring fees to monitor changes over time in areas such as disaster damage, deforestation, crop health, and infrastructure development. Naturally, since the cost of the satellite constellation is generally fixed regardless of the number of customers using this data, whether they are government agencies or others, the cost of servicing each additional subscriber on Planet Labs is very small.

This gave the company a certain degree of operational strength as it expanded. This is really interesting. I mean, if you consider the fact that what Planet Labs does is sell the ability to detect changes.

You know, a single satellite image of a farm, for example, if you're a farmer, doesn't tell you almost anything useful on its own, but daily images of the same area for years tell you exactly when the crop started to go bad, or whether a competitor has expanded their facility.

So, there is a lot of value here, and of course for government clients in particular, as well as for some of those smaller clients who contract with them.

Now, as is always the case in this field, you will often be dealing with volatile financial data. Planet Labs just achieved its first full year of unadjusted profitability in fiscal year 2026, but it remains a turning point nonetheless.

This is a company that has spent years investing its cash reserves to build its constellation of satellites. Now, as we have pointed out, defense is a big part of the pie here.

Defense and intelligence clients account for approximately 69, sorry, 60% of revenue. This is the largest and fastest growing sector. This includes work such as a contract with a national geographic intelligence agency for AI-based maritime surveillance.

They are already working with the Swedish government to launch its first sovereign reconnaissance satellite. Interestingly, Planet Labs management also had many discussions about artificial intelligence and how it is changing the economics of work.

For example, AI tools are making Planet Labs’ 8-year-old daily photo archive usable on a scale that was not possible even several years ago. So, this is something that can continue to pay a company that owns this huge and valuable archive of images, which is especially important to its defense and government clients who make up 60% of its revenue.

This is something I believe will remain essential to the work in the future.

To add some more figures to this growth story, in the fourth fiscal quarter of 2026, they report their fiscal year slightly differently. Their fiscal year ended in March. They announced revenues of approximately $87 million for that last quarter.

That was a 41% year-on-year increase. Their total revenue for the year was approximately $308 million. That was a 26% year-on-year increase. They also reported that their backlog of work, which of course represents their future contracted revenues, increased by nearly 80% year-on-year to reach $900 million.

Then they raised their guidelines for the entire year. Therefore, the current fiscal year we are in, for Planet Labs, is fiscal year 2027. They are expecting revenues between $425 million and $441 million.

Defensive demand is a key part of that growth story. Now, the thing to note here is that Planet Labs has less than 5% of the total Earth observation market share. That is its share of the space economy.

It is a very small segment of a market that is expanding as governments and businesses increasingly want a daily, not an occasional, view of what is changing on the planet's surface.

The company is also working to double its satellite manufacturing capacity to keep up with demand for its newer satellite programs called "Pelecan" and "Oll," which provide higher-resolution images than their core "Dove" products.

With government and defense spending accounting for roughly half of all global spending on Earth observation, the core industry in which Planet Labs operates, there will continue to be significant long-term demand for what the company offers.

Again, you are looking at a backlog of work that is roughly three times the annual revenue. It gives a real view of future results.

Of course, I should always talk a little bit about the downside (expectations of a price decrease) here. Of course, satellite constellations require ongoing and costly reinvestment.

When a large portion of your revenue comes from government and defense contracts, while that is fundamental to the growth story, it can be volatile. This may be subject to budget cycles.

It may even be geopolitically sensitive in ways that commercial revenues are not usually. We saw this in the shares of Planet Labs and how the share price moved. It was a very volatile stock.

It has seen a significant increase over the past year or two. Sometimes jumps of more than 20% in a single day. So, if you're going to invest in this area, this is something you should keep in mind.

This should represent a very small part of a well-diversified portfolio. However, if you are looking at satellite imaging companies and a company with real demand and long-term contracts with some of the world's most important government clients, I think Planet Labs is definitely a good stock to consider.