Planet Labs PBC Q3 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
December 7, 2023

There are 11 speakers on the call.

Operator

Everyone. Thank you for attending today's Planet Labs PBC Third Quarter of Fiscal 2024 Earnings Call. My name is Sierra, and I'll be your moderator today. All lines will be muted during the presentation portion of the call with an opportunity for questions and answers at the end. I would now like to pass the conference over to our host, Chris Giannuali, VP of Investor Relations with Planet Labs PBC.

Operator

Please proceed.

Speaker 1

Thanks, operator, and hello, everyone. Welcome to Planet's Q3 of 2024 earnings call. Before we begin today's call, we like to remind everyone that we may make forward looking statements related to future events or our financial outlook. We also reference Qualified Pipeline, which represents potential sales Leads that have not yet executed contracts. Any forward looking statements are based on management's current outlook, plans, estimates, expectations and projections.

Speaker 1

The inclusion of such forward looking information should not be regarded as a representation by Planet that future plans, estimates or expectations will be achieved. Such forward looking statements are subject to various risks and uncertainties and assumptions as detailed in our SEC filings, which can be found at www.sec.gov. Our actual results or performance may differ materially from those indicated by such forward looking statements, and we undertake no responsibility to update such forward looking statements to reflect events or circumstances after the date on which the statement is made or to reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events. During the call, we will also discuss non GAAP financial measures. We use these non GAAP financial measures for financial and operational decision making and as a means to evaluate period to period comparisons.

Speaker 1

We believe that these measures provide useful information about operating results, enhance the overall understanding of past financial performance and future prospects, And allow for greater transparency with respect to key metrics used by management in its financial and operational decision making. For more information on the non GAAP financial measures, please see the reconciliation tables provided in our press release issued earlier this afternoon. Further, throughout this call, we provide a number of key performance indicators used by management and often used by competitors in our industry. These and other key performance indicators are discussed in more detail in our press release. Before we jump in, I'd like to encourage everyone to reference the slides we have posted on our Investor Relations website, which are intended to accompany Finally, for each of the customer contracts referenced during this call, please note that the revenue figures we cite will generally be recognized over the term of the contract, which can last multiple years.

Speaker 1

Further, the terms of these contracts can vary, and we may not realize all expected revenue. At this time, I'd now like to turn the call over to Will Marshall, Planet's CEO, Chairperson and Co Founder.

Speaker 2

Over to you, Will. Thanks, Chris, and hello, everyone. Thanks for joining the call today. For the Q3 of fiscal year 2024, we generated a record $55,400,000 in revenue, representing 11% year on year growth. Non GAAP gross margins was 51.5%, is above the midpoint of our expected range.

Speaker 2

Our adjusted EBITDA loss for the quarter was $12,000,000 $1,000,000 Better than our guidance range, driven by cost discipline and reflecting our commitment to reaching adjusted EBITDA profitability by Q4 of next year. Growth in the Q3 was driven by strength in the civil government and defense and intelligence markets, both of which saw revenue increase more than 20% year over year, Partially offset by continued macro headwinds in the commercial sector, we've continued to add large seven and eight government opportunities across civil government and defense and intelligence markets to our qualified sales pipeline. And while they take longer to close, Large government contracts can provide a reliable foundation of long term revenue streams with significant potential for expansion. As our business mix shifts towards government opportunities, our average sales cycles overall have naturally extended. This is just the nature of government procurement processes.

Speaker 2

In response, we have recently refocused our go to market strategy around those large opportunities and made additional improvements to support Sales execution. Let's quickly revisit the go to market improvements that we're implementing, which align with what we outlined in our prior earnings call and Investor Day. These include: 1, focusing our sales force on our largest opportunities in our core markets 2, shifting smaller commercial opportunities in other market segments to our partner network and low touch channels, including our newly acquired SentinelHub platform and 3, streamlining and simplifying our sales processes. These go to market improvements are aimed at supporting faster sales cycles, customer adoption and expansions over time. Expanding further on our growth plan, in the near time we see opportunities with several U.

Speaker 2

S. Government entities as one of our primary near term growth drivers. It's worth noting that in our view, our relationship with the U. S. Government has never been stronger, and we believe we're well positioned to significantly expand our work with this important customer In this next fiscal year.

Speaker 2

In addition, we are encouraged by the diverse global pipeline opportunities that we've been cultivating, particularly with civil government customers. We've seen solid year over year growth in the civil government vertical throughout this year. These opportunities span all of our data sets and include additional services from our planetary variables, including our new carbon solutions incremental capabilities provided by our acquisition of Synergize. Finally, in spite of the current macroeconomic headwinds, We continue to see the market opportunity in the commercial sector as a significant growth driver over the longer term. Our strategy for the commercial sector is focused around Partner led opportunities and efficient low touch sales motions.

Speaker 2

We see partners as in a highly effective way of shortening sales cycles And speeding customer time to value with solutions and services tailored to a specific geographic market or commercial use case. And as mentioned, our SentinelHub platform enables smaller customers to purchase data from Planet through a low touch channel. Taking a step back, our go to market strategy is built around our core value proposition, enabling broad area management At a global scale, not possible before. The ability to understand change taking place in broader areas of our planet is what differentiates us and fuels adoption of our solutions. As we walk through our recent customer highlights, you'll hear how this is a common thread between customers across industries.

Speaker 2

Let's turn now to some recent customer highlights, starting with the civil government sector. During the quarter, we closed a 7 figure ACV contract with IGAC, The Cartographic Agency of Columbia. The agency is a new customer and is using PlanetScope and SkySat data for a range of applications, including Geographic studies, professional training as well as improved land use planning and risk management across Colombia. We expanded our contract with Australian based partner, NGIS, who uses Planet data to provide critical geospatial services to Australian civil governments, Supporting resource management and natural disaster response from wildfires and floods. Turning to the defense and intelligence market.

Speaker 2

During the quarter, we saw a 7 figure ACV expansion with an Asian Ministry of Defense customer for our high resolution SkySat task and capabilities. It was great to see the customers' data consumption grow as we had expected. In Latin America, We've added a government intelligence agency as a new customer. They're using our PlanetScope and SkySat data for broad area monitoring. We also closed a new contract with SI Analytics, a South Korean based AI company who are using our solutions to do anomaly detection in North Korea.

Speaker 2

SI Analytics originally started as a Planet partner is now a customer as well. SI Analytics uses PlanetScope to run analytics for defense and intelligence customers. More broadly, we're seeing growing interest from defense and intelligence customers globally for the capabilities unlocked when combining our deep data archive with artificial intelligence. We think of this combination as an incredibly powerful tool to scan, search and monitor. We enable them to rapidly find new threats, Monitor them on an ongoing basis and act as a powerful time machine for forensics of what happened in the past, all over large geographic areas of land or sea.

Speaker 2

Turning to Agricultural Solutions. We recently renewed and expanded our 7 figure contract with BASF Digital Farming, the European based multinational chemical producer. They're using PlanetScope and our planetary variable solutions for broad area management to deliver targeted and timely agronomic advice for their customers. We also signed a new contract with USDA's Foreign Agriculture Service. FAS links U.

Speaker 2

S. Agriculture to the world to enhance opportunities and global food security. They plan to use our broad area management solutions to support the production of crop type maps And area estimates overseas. Also in the commercial vertical, we recently announced the addition of OnX Maps as a new customer. They're using Planet's base maps to provide outdoor enthusiasts with up to date imagery of outdoor recreation landscapes.

Speaker 2

Is a great example of how Planet's data is making its way into the hands of consumers. On X was recognized by Time Magazine for having one of the best inventions of 2023. The recent imagery product, which leverages Planet's data, won the outdoors category. Turning to product updates, Well, we've had 3 key launches. Firstly, on November 11, we successfully launched 36 Superdoves And our first Pelican Tech demo into orbit onboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 Rocket.

Speaker 2

We established contact with all of the satellites within just a few hours of the launch. I'm pleased to report that the on orbit testing we're conducting with the Pelican Tech demo is going well, providing valuable insights and learnings about this new Spacecraft Design. This marks our 33rd successful launch and our 569th satellite successfully launched and deployed. I'd like to note that while we often take these accomplishments for granted, what our team does here is nothing short of remarkable. Planet's ability to rapidly build satellites affordably and at scale is truly exceptional.

Speaker 2

I'd like to thank all of the team at Planet for their hard work and dedication in making This latest launch a success. Secondly, as already mentioned, we launched Planet data and services on the Sentinel Hub platform with transparent pricing and packaging, Enabling low touch or self-service sales for small deals and giving partners what they need to more flexibly and rapidly build solutions on top of our data. Finally, last month, we launched our new Forest Carbon product. Our 10 year data archive of Global Forest Carbon is accurate, affordable and helping to solve long standing challenges associated with measuring forest carbon stocks. We've launched this Forest Carbon solution with open and affordable pricing to support faster customer adoption and early market capture.

Speaker 2

We're pleased with the early demand building for this new product and we were very excited to win our first customer, B0 Carbon. BCO is a carbon ratings agency and they have adopted this ground basing solution to help their clients make more informed carbon credit investments. We're seeing strong interest from the carbon project developers, carbon marketplaces, standard settings bodies and others across the carbon value chain. In summary, during Q3, we saw solid growth in our civil government and defense and intelligence markets. We focused on efficiency in our go to market execution as outlined in our Investor Day.

Speaker 2

We also had a great product quarter, launching 37 satellites, Bringing our new Forest Carbon product to market and enabling low touch access to Planet data via Sentinel Hub. The pace of innovation and development of Planet is truly incredible. And we're doing all this while maintaining disciplined spending to support our path to adjusted EBITDA profitability. Overall, our conviction in the significant opportunity for our solutions remains firm. The ability to understand change taking place in broad areas of our planet is what differentiates us Fuel's adoption of our solutions.

Speaker 2

We continue to see the market for our solutions as enormous, driven by the tailwinds of Security, sustainability and digitalization worldwide. I'll now turn to Ashley for a review of our financials and our outlook. Over to you, Ashley.

Speaker 3

Thanks, Will, and thanks, everyone, for joining today. As Will mentioned, our revenue for the Q3 of fiscal 2024 ending October 31st came in at a record $55,400,000 which represents 11% year over year growth. This was driven by the From a geographic perspective, we continue to see a strong diversification of our customer base. EMEA revenue growth was especially strong in Q3, up almost 70% year over year, while revenue in both Asia Pacific and Latin America grew more than 20% year over year. North American revenue decreased by 11% on a year over year basis, primarily impacted by the discontinuation of the legacy contract we've discussed previously.

Speaker 3

As Will mentioned, we see multiple significant growth opportunities with various U. S. Government entities in the near term, And we continue to build out our partner ecosystem to address the longer term opportunity we see in the commercial markets. As of the end of Q3, our end of period customer count was 976. This count does not include customers who are exclusively self serve users on our SentinelHub platform, which we acquired with the Synergize business.

Speaker 3

Recurring ACV or annual contract value was 94% of our book of business and over 90% of our ACV book of business consists of annual or multi year contracts. Our average contract length continues to be approximately 2 years weighted on an ACV basis. Year to date, net dollar retention rate was 104% and net dollar retention rate with win backs was 105%, both up slightly from the prior quarter. Increases in net retention rate are typically driven by the timing of large expansion contracts with existing customers. And as we mentioned on the last call, we've seen longer sales cycles with some of our larger expansion opportunities.

Speaker 3

These opportunities remain active and our go to market changes are focused on capturing this business and improving our sales cycles. Just as a reminder, as detailed in our quarterly earnings investor presentation, Our net dollar retention rate starts on day 1 of each fiscal year at 100% then develops through the course of the year towards our final full year results. Turning to gross margin, our non GAAP gross margin for the Q3 of fiscal 2024 was 51.5%. Similar to the prior quarter, non GAAP gross margin during Q3 was impacted by the accelerated depreciation of 2 SkySat satellites. This impacted Q3 non GAAP gross margin by approximately 6 percentage points.

Speaker 3

This accelerated depreciation expense will continue at a lower level in Q4 and reach completion by the end of this fiscal year. Adjusted EBITDA loss was $12,000,000 for the quarter, Better than our guidance and marking another consecutive quarter of narrowing losses driven by cost management and our commitment to reaching adjusted EBITDA profitability by Q4 of next fiscal year. During Q3, we incurred a non recurring restructuring charge of approximately $7,300,000 offset by a $1,500,000 benefit in stock based compensation, all related to our headcount reduction in August. In addition, we incurred a $2,300,000 non recurring charge in the quarter, primarily impacting R and D related to the acquisition of Cynergize. These expenses are excluded from adjusted EBITDA.

Speaker 3

Capital expenditures, including capitalized software development, were $8,600,000 for the quarter or approximately 16% of revenue. Turning to the balance sheet, We ended the quarter with $315,000,000 of cash, cash equivalents and short term investments, which we continue to believe provides us with sufficient capital to invest behind our core growth accelerating initiatives and achieve cash flow breakeven without needing to raise additional capital and we still have no debt outstanding. At the end of Q3, our remaining performance obligations, or RPOs, were approximately $153,000,000 of which approximately 82% applied to the next 12 months and 97% to the next 2 years. Please keep in mind that RPOs can fluctuate quarter to quarter as multi year contracts come up for renewal. Also remember that our reported RPOs exclude the value associated with the EOCL contract as well as other contracts that include a termination for convenience clause, which is common in our U.

Speaker 3

S. Federal contracts and occasionally found in other customer contracts as well. For the Q4 of fiscal 2024, we're expecting revenue to be between $56,000,000 $59,000,000 which represents growth of approximately 6% to 11% year over year. We expect non GAAP gross margin for Q4 to be between We are planning for capital expenditures of approximately $14,000,000 to $16,000,000 For the full fiscal year ending January 31, 2024, we expect revenue to be between $218,000,000 $221,000,000 or Growth of 14% to 16% year over year. We expect our non GAAP gross margin to be between 53% 54%.

Speaker 3

We expect adjusted EBITDA loss to be between negative $58,000,000 and negative $55,000,000 and we expect capital expenditures to range between 40 $48,000,000 In summary, we are in a period of transition as we focus our go to market resources around the largest opportunities in front of us, which we expect in the near term to be predominantly in the government sectors on a dollar weighted basis. We are expanding our partner ecosystem Continue to see new opportunities for our data and analytics each day. We are aligning our investments to drive growth in the near term, While carefully managing expenses and continuously exploring opportunities for greater internal efficiencies that we believe will make it easier to work with As always, I want to thank our planeteers around the globe for their continued execution and commitment. Operator, that concludes our comments. We can now take questions.

Operator

Absolutely. We will now begin the Q and A session. We will pause briefly as questions are registered. Our first question today comes from Jason Gerske with Citi. Please proceed.

Speaker 4

Great. Good afternoon, everybody.

Speaker 5

I just want to dive a little bit more into the go to market strategy and have you discuss a little bit about This idea of whale on donut and going after really, really large contracts, just kind of curious if there are any you've talked about 7 Figure potential contracts out there, but are there any 8 or 9 figure contracts that you have the opportunity to go And maybe just talk a little bit about where you're seeing the greatest opportunities from a geographic perspective. Thank you.

Speaker 2

Yes, great question. Yes, we have a number of 8 figure deals. I think we have previously mentioned about 8. We continue to bring in more 8 figure deals and 7 figure deals through the year. What we're mainly seeing then is in Defense and Intelligence, but also civil government.

Speaker 2

We've got real opportunities both. And geographically, I would say a lot of it's in the U. S, but we do have a number of these big deals in the rest of the world as well. And so it's primarily in those two sectors.

Operator

Our next question comes from Trevor Walsh with JMP Securities. Please proceed.

Speaker 6

Great. Hi, team. Thanks for taking my questions and congrats on a solid set of results. Will, I'll start with you if I can. Congrats on the successful launch Pelican, it sounds like the initial demo data is helping you guys give some good lessons learned.

Speaker 6

Just curious if I know in the last earnings call you reiterated or confirmed that there's not necessarily a revenue opportunity kind of driving from this Pelican 1 satellite, but can you maybe help us understand a little bit better as to what the uplift potential within current accounts might be from the new set of Spacecraft just being that they are in fact have just higher res, higher revisit, all the kind of technical abilities that are added or With Pelican and then also the low cost, like just kind of how from the top line perspective that might how you guys are looking at it, will prices increase Potentially there around those capabilities, how will customers kind of feel that, I guess, in terms of what they're paying currently versus later? Thanks.

Speaker 2

Yes, great question. So firstly, we're very, very happy with the telecom spacecraft. It's going really well. All of the commissioning is going well and we're learning a huge amount. Very, very good so far.

Speaker 2

And It is a tech demo. So yes, this is not going to be revenue producing, just to confirm what you said. To the capabilities, yes, so it's going to be better on multiple It's a higher resolution. We talked about 30 centimeters, higher revisit rates. When we ultimately get our full fleet, it would be higher revisit rates than our 10s per day going up towards 30 per day.

Speaker 2

But probably the biggest substantive increase is the fact that as we Add satellite to satellite communications on these vehicles, it enables us to lower latency. And to your final point, Lower latency is something very differentiated and high value. And so you can definitely charge more. So you can charge more for higher resolution, you can charge more for lower latency. And I think that the lower latency is almost a 10x improvement on our current system.

Speaker 2

So That is a big deal, getting a sub hour latency. Does that answer your question? Well, did you have another one?

Speaker 6

Yes, absolutely. I appreciate the color. And then if I could just do one follow-up maybe for Ashley, although we'll feel free to chime in too. Good work on new customer count accelerating kind of in the quarter. We Just at least as we look at it in our model, it looked like the revenues for average number of customers may have ticked down.

Speaker 6

And just wondering if That's a result of maybe a larger number of smaller customers kind of entering the cohort this quarter. And And if that is the right way to look at it, is that kind of a signal of some of your go to market improvement efforts around whether it's the self serve platform or some of the partner led Motion is kind of bearing fruit and bringing some smaller group of smaller customers into the mix this quarter. Thanks.

Speaker 3

Yes. Thanks for the questions. I'd have to look at it a little bit more closely to answer The revenue per customer question more specifically, but I'd say, yes, we do have more customers Coming on board through the SentinelHub platform now that the synergies acquisition is closed and that is an opportunity for us to really scale up low touch Customer onboarding and also enable partners to create on top of our data more easily through those APIs. So in terms of deal sizes, that's actually consistent. So I would suspect, if I were to dig into the details behind the average revenue per customer, what we're probably seeing is a little bit of the impact from bringing on The synergized customers.

Speaker 3

But I'd have to get back to you or to look into that more specifically.

Speaker 2

And if I can just add a tiny thing on the prior question I forgot to mention, of course, it wasn't just Palacom that we launched. Also launched 36 SuperDoves. And although we take that sort of for granted because that's primarily continuing operations of that daily scan fleet, Firstly, that's our Bedrock fleet and because the daily scam, which is so differentiated. And secondly, yes, we take for granted being able to Rapidly build and launch and operate large numbers of satellites like this, but basically that's one of the Very few companies in the world can do that and really that's an incredibly strong differentiator that we sort of take for granted sometimes.

Speaker 6

Great. Thank you both so much. Appreciate it.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Michael Latimore with Northland. Please proceed.

Speaker 6

Great. Yes. Thanks very much. What are you thinking about in terms of the NDR number for the 4th quarter?

Speaker 3

Yes. Obviously, that's driven by the timing of when some of these larger expansions land That will impact where we end up landing on that number for the year. As I said in the prepared remarks, we've ticked up quarter over quarter. I feel very good about where we are on overall retention rates. It's just a matter of that NDRR ultimately depends on some of the larger expansion

Speaker 6

And then you seem Positive on the U. S. Government opportunities in the pipeline. Can you mention a use case or 2 that might be in the mix there?

Speaker 2

Yes. Actually, there's several. I mean, so we've got multiple opportunities, both on the civil government side, Expansions and new partnerships there. And on the Defense and Intelligence side, and There, it's also both expansion and new parties. If you get that U.

Speaker 2

S. Government is not a monolith. There's really multiple agencies in both sectors that need our data. We are also and in addition seeing a lot so there's a lot of pull from the mainstream mainstay products, But we are also seeing a lot of new and heightened interest both from the U. S.

Speaker 2

Government and international governments for AI on top of our PlanetScope imagery that enables you to Search and scan large areas for new threats or emerging changes, and That is proving to be a very strong pull as well. And that's something that's only been possible very lately because of the large language models on top of the PlanetScope imagery. And so that's providing an extra pull as well. But yes, the use cases vary a lot by those different agencies. I can't speak to all of them at a second, but it's strong pull in both sides.

Speaker 6

Okay, great. Thanks very much.

Operator

The next question comes from Ryan Kuntz with Needham and Company. Please proceed.

Speaker 4

Thanks for the question. I'll start with Ashley. Can you impact the step down in commercial we're seeing here? You've mentioned the legacy contract churn there. Is that the prime reason here behind the step down?

Speaker 4

Are there other things going on? And is this does this quarter mark The kind of the end of that impact or is it going to continue to linger on for future quarters on that impact? Thanks.

Speaker 3

Yes. Thanks, Ryan. The primary driver on the revenue year over year comparison commercial is that Legacy contract that came to an end in Q1 really and that was just a small tail. So really As you point out, Q4 is the end of that year over year compare headwind. We did see Softness in some of the renewals a year ago we talked about in the commercial market, that also was a secondary headwind coming into the year.

Speaker 3

And commercial is continuing to see headwinds in terms of expanding those businesses. So We do anticipate a lot of the growth in the next year coming from the commercial government sector. But that said, we still are very big believers in the opportunity in the commercial space and just view it as an opportunity that we will Be pursuing with our partner ecosystem.

Speaker 5

Got it. That's great.

Speaker 4

And just a couple of quick product questions for Will on The Forest Carbon product, can you kind of walk us through that business model and how you productize that for these Sort of customers, that would be really helpful. Thanks.

Speaker 2

Yes, absolutely. So that's one of our new planetary variables for Benefit the it basically enables us to measure I mean, we've been doing deforestation monitoring and helping countries with that for a long time, But this actually gets at quantifying the amount of carbon stock in Forest and initially at a 30 meter level And next year, we'll be launching a 3 meter level, which is almost an individual tree level. Very excited by that. We've seen a lot of interest. The hope is that this will help underpin carbon markets.

Speaker 2

We've been very pleasantly surprised by the amount of initial demand amongst both The sort of regulation side of this, the so the people that are checking the math, if you like, on everyone's carbon trading as well as the Marketplaces that are trying to match make between buyers and sellers of carbon, which, of course, both sides want to check the math as well. And so on Both fronts that we've seen demand and we were of course, I mentioned in my prepared remarks, we had our first customer there, B0 Carbon, which is a marketplace And we are very proud to be seeing that interest so early in that new product. Sorry, BZERO is a carbon rating agency, I should say. It's in the form category.

Speaker 5

Got it. Really helpful.

Speaker 4

Thanks so much. That's all I have.

Speaker 2

Thank you.

Operator

Our next question comes from Noah Poponak with Goldman Sachs. Please proceed.

Speaker 7

Hello, everyone.

Speaker 6

Hi.

Speaker 7

With the Expanding defense and intel and civil government opportunity set that you're referencing, Are there contract names you can cite that we can follow? Or is it some combination of Small or classified or extension or reprogram dollars or something that we can't follow?

Speaker 2

I mean most of them are public procurement mechanisms you can follow. I would just say that it takes a lot to follow them. I mean there's a lot of different Agencies that you have to track, but no, mostly public procurement. There's no huge one outstanding to just point out like EOCL is of course Our mainstay contract with the NRO and there is opportunities for expansion there and you can watch that. But There's no big other one to just pull out and identify for you right this second.

Speaker 2

But We certainly continue to monitor all of those, of course. That's our job.

Speaker 7

Will, can you name the 1 or 2 largest even understanding it's maybe a pool of With no single one that's much larger than the others, but whether it's size or just

Speaker 2

what's

Speaker 7

most exciting to you because of what it means for your future, just Something we could track, I think, would be helpful.

Speaker 2

Yes. I mean, the 2 biggest ones that we presently have are the NROs EOCL and there's lots of expansion opportunity there. The relationship is very good. And the other is on the civil side with NASA, which is called CSDA, and you can track that and the budgets are very healthy going into that. So those are the 2 biggest ones that I can name off the cuff.

Speaker 2

We could try and get back to you if you want further details on that.

Speaker 7

Okay, great. On the commercial side, Ashley, you made a comment about Working with your partner network kind of like while you wait for the end market to come back to you Or the set of end markets to come back to you or I guess maybe the macro to come back. Can you expand on that? Like what are you actually doing? Why are the partner networks willing to do that?

Speaker 7

How does that help you once demand comes back?

Speaker 3

I think it's more about the fact that the market on the commercial side is still relatively immature, especially when you think about the broader market opportunity. And they will require solutions that incorporate our data and extract the value from the data for them because they're unlikely, for example, to have geo So really it's about making it easier for our partners to develop those solutions That will effectively drive the value to the end customer. So that's effectively what I meant by really leaning in to that partner ecosystem To drive that ultimate value to the end customer in the commercial market to really get that market off the ground.

Speaker 2

And if I can just add To keep sales reps focused on the big deal opportunities, which are primarily right this second in civil, government and Defense and Intelligence. So we see a huge future in commercial. I continue to see that and we continue to do deals. I mentioned a few in my prepared remarks, right? But the biggest ones are in Defense and Intelligence and Civil Government, and so we want to focus our energies on that.

Speaker 2

So it's both because they need solutions, as Ashley But also because we want to focus our attention on the type of opportunities and progressing them through to close and that's more in civil government and defense and intelligence.

Speaker 3

But there are commercial markets that are more advanced and we'll obviously continue to sell into them, including agriculture and insurance, for example.

Speaker 7

Okay. Okay, great. Thank you so much. I appreciate it.

Speaker 3

Great. Thank you.

Operator

Our next question comes from Edison Yu with Deutsche Bank. Please proceed.

Speaker 8

Thanks for taking my questions. Wanted to ask about the cadence of growth in 4Q, the implied is 6% to 11%. Do you think that represents perhaps a bottom given that some of the headwinds go away In the Q1, can we see that sort of a bottom in terms of year over year growth?

Speaker 3

I think it's important to understand that one of the biggest headwinds that we had coming into this year was the legacy contract that came to an end. So Q4 will mark the end of that headwind. We're obviously leaning into a lot of opportunity that we see and especially with Large expansions with existing customers leaning into the opportunity in the government sector and the timing of when that business Lands, obviously, will determine ultimately how our growth accelerates going beyond Q4. We remain very optimistic about the ability of Our teams to execute in the market that's there for us just based on the continued pull that we feel. And we've had Challenges this year with timing of bringing that new business in and the longer sales cycles, but still remain very optimistic in our ability to reaccelerate growth.

Speaker 3

Anything to add there, Will?

Speaker 2

Yes. I mean, I would only say, of course, we're not satisfied with that sort of growth rate. We want to continue to drive towards higher growth rates. We think that is possible. I firmly convinced That's possible.

Speaker 2

And we've got this huge pipeline that we're working on. We can we're pleased to tell you that it's progressing in stage. We're Moving things along and we're closing some deals. It is still taking a bit too long and with our job to go close it, you heard how we're focused Our efforts are really focused right now to improve the execution, focusing on the big deals, trying to automate the small deals, making Easy to work at Planet. Just trying to reduce the time to value for customers so that we can land and expand them.

Speaker 2

We're very focused on those efforts The areas that are in our control to improve win rates and so on on that pipe, but that's where we're heading down and focused. We certainly think it's possible to accelerate growth.

Speaker 8

Understood. Longer term question, In terms of the commercial market, do you have a view on when that might kind of Turnarounds, I understand it's probably not anytime in the near term, but is this a couple of years? Is this 5 years? Just When do you think that can kind of reaccelerate meaningfully in the future?

Speaker 2

I would Say a few things. Some of the headwinds we saw are macro driven like in the agriculture market, which is where we saw some headwinds that is macro driven. And so when that ends, but I also think that we are continuing to see deals. I mentioned Some of the deals that we did on the commercial side. And as Ashley mentioned, we have a lot of opportunities to make Tooling and simplified ability to access that.

Speaker 2

We launched the Sentinel Hub, our platform that enables low touch access So that people have and tools so that they can start building products and services. And we're working closely with partners that have good solutions for specific vertical market. I'll just add finally that just like in the I mentioned earlier in the government sector, AI is a strong tailwind. Think the same is true here. It's going to help a lot and it's because AI helps skip a bunch of steps in getting to answers.

Speaker 2

So you can clear it's getting us closer to the vision that I had launched in the TED Talk now 2018, 6 years ago 5 or 6 years ago, which We spoke about this queryable earth and that's a bit of an ultimate vision here that any commercial client Could ask any question of the data, just like you can now ask questions about text to the Internet with GPT-four, That Quebrilov vision is becoming closer to reality with these large language models, and we're really seeing that tick up. You'll note that a number of big companies from Microsoft to Google to others are releasing these multimodal large language models. It's a step from Then treating just text on the Internet to also treating images and videos and audio track. And that Plays to our strength enormously because we have this massive proprietary archive of imagery data. So as those models get better at dealing with imagery and understanding the context in those images, the faster we can leverage that To then provide answers to commercial clients who don't have big geospatial expertise.

Speaker 2

So we really Again, believe overall in the long term in the commercial market, it's a huge opportunity to go after.

Speaker 8

Got it. And just one last one for me, housekeeping. Can you tell us what the or remind us what is the contribution from Synergize In the full year number at this point?

Speaker 3

I think last quarter we said we expected it It'd be somewhere between $4,000,000 $6,000,000 on the year, and I think we're in line with that expectation. It's small enough that we aren't breaking it out, But generally it's performing in line with our expectations.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Jeff Van Rhee with Craig Hallum. Please proceed.

Speaker 9

Great, thanks. Just a couple remaining here. On the sales changes, Any measurable evidence you can share with respect to the sales changes working either concrete improvements In cycles or other measurables, I know you're focusing on the big deals, automation, making it easier to work with you, but any even if they're green shoots, any concrete evidence that

Speaker 3

still early days. I'd say the good news is we've seen a lot of those metrics really stabilize. We're not seeing sales cycles Go longer than what we talked about before. And obviously, we're focused on now bringing them in shorter. Similarly, I talked about the fact that deal sizes have generally Stabilized and as we lean into the larger deal opportunities, we would expect those to expand as well.

Speaker 3

So we're looking at the same types of metrics that you would expect us to be Focused on making sure that

Operator

we close the businesses in

Speaker 3

front of us, shorten the sales cycles going forward and as Will said, really make sure we drive that time to value for the customers so that we continue to land and expand. So That's where we're focused. We're in a transition, but we feel really good about what we've implemented so far and the early results we're seeing.

Speaker 9

Okay. And then one brief one on synergize.

Speaker 8

I know you just touched on

Speaker 9

at the 4% to 6% for the year. Just curious if you'd expand or if there's any other color to provide there, any behavioral clues That have been provided by the existing synergized base, the way they've reacted thus far, any other indications of either upside or downside to what you thought you bought there?

Speaker 2

John here? We feel very positive about the acquisition and how the team is performing. We do see a lot of opportunities coming in related to the tools that they have there. A lot of it's things like automating the onboarding of those sorts of new capabilities so that we can scale to more With any given solution. So that's goodness as far as I'm concerned because that means that the demand in full.

Operator

Yes. I'd

Speaker 3

say that very pleased so far. Obviously, it's an incredible talent pool and a great platform. We moved very quickly on the integration side to enable our customers to leverage those tools and their customers to access Planet data through the platform. And now we're continuing that integration process to create a more seamless experience across the user base And to really push the new capabilities out through our sales teams.

Speaker 6

Okay, fair enough. Thank you.

Operator

Thanks, Jeff. Our last question today comes from Chris Quilty with Quilty Space. Please proceed.

Speaker 10

Thank you. I just wanted to follow-up just a little bit on the Pelican. Congrats on that initial launch. And obviously beyond the normal first light and Calibration of the satellite, you've also got a different element to it, which is the altitude and altitude maintenance. Do you have an idea of how long you expect To go through validation before you can sort of make the decision to pull the trigger on the bigger commitment to the fleet?

Speaker 2

I see. Yes, I mean, it takes normally of order a month to fully understand these spacecraft in orbit, and We're feeling very good about where we're at on that right now, as I mentioned earlier. Yes. And then as you say that helps determine sort of key decision points to then build the rest of the fleet. We are already, by the way, ongoing in building a bunch of those.

Speaker 2

The exact timing and we then pull in learnings Into that as we build that out. So of course, we don't of course, send them to the launch site before we've really understood how that first one is working. So But that construction process is already ongoing for the next set, the 1st Block 1, as we call it, spacecraft set. Overall, I feel very good about the pace of that program right now.

Speaker 10

Got you. And Sorry, I had to have a phone problem. Are you still taking in new customers on the early access program? And have you seen any Growth in that pipeline?

Speaker 2

You mean for Tanager, I presume?

Speaker 8

Yes.

Speaker 2

Do you mean for the hyperspectral mission? Yes. I think it was a limited cohort, maybe there's 1 or 2 that were added, But we have they have been progressing use cases and showing early demand. There are real deals There. And yes, so we feel good about that Program as well.

Speaker 2

And it's great that we've we had this JPL instrument in the lab and integrated into the spacecraft. It's very can see the developments downstairs there as well. So yes, feeling good about that program as well.

Speaker 10

And did you provide expected CapEx on that program and over what time frame and looking for first launch?

Speaker 3

So that program is categorized as an R and D program because it's the first time we've launched a hyperspectral satellite. And that has been in partnership with And the team over at CarbonMAP are in NASAJPL. We have funds that we've received for that program and those get recognized not as revenue, but Excellent. Actually an offset to that contra R and D. So you don't really see that show up as CapEx on our balance sheet.

Speaker 3

And As a company that does agile aerospace, we're very different in that respect from what you might see from others where you see a lot more CIP sitting on the balance sheet For a program like this. In terms of the overall size of that fleet and that program and the timing, we haven't given a lot of specifics because we are still in the R and D phase. As we get closer to the launch of that fleet, we'll share more details.

Speaker 2

If I could just add one more thing. Just like the carbon plan to be variable I mentioned earlier, there's interest on both the regulatory side as well as the users that would use it to Stop and get ahead of regulations to the commercial side, if you like. And on that point, We've made a couple of announcements at COP, the meeting that's ongoing right now in Dubai relating to this because as we get better at measuring of all of these Emissions and we're getting it indirectly right now and helping this organization Climate TRACE, which tracks Over 350,000,000 facilities globally, renewable energy facilities emitters with our visual data. This will then add to that to be able to have more quantified emission amounts data, which is all feeds into, if you like, the Transparency and accountability and as we transition to a sustainable economy, it's a massive transition, Many, many tens of $1,000,000,000,000 as we transition to a sustainable economy, but there's no way that is going to be possible without the careful measurement, we've discussed before, whether that's the forest carbon piece or the emission piece that we just talked about here. So We really care about it from a pure sustainability point of view.

Speaker 2

It fits our mission, but there's a massive market opportunity as well And so we're going after that.

Speaker 10

Great. And final question, just you talked about the latency with the RF cross links On the Pelican, I think that was announced as a C band SES, but you also had an announcement with Telesat and Ka. Can you just give any color on how that's proceeding? And do you need any specific FCC licenses to operate those cross links?

Speaker 2

Yes. We are pursuing 2 programs there, 1 with ViaSat, 1 with Telesat. They're both supported by NASA, NASA CSP program that helps Fund that R and D. They're both proceeding according to plan as far as I'm aware. I think they're more in the Ka band than the C band, but I may You should it makes me stand corrected there.

Speaker 2

I don't know if we can check for you and confirm the details.

Speaker 10

Great. Thanks so much guys.

Speaker 3

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you all for your questions. There are no questions waiting at this time. So I'll turn the conference over to Will Marshall, CEO for closing remarks.

Speaker 2

Well, look, overall, I feel that we had solid growth In both our civil and defense markets as we've been talking to. We're very focused as a team on the go to market execution To close the opportunities in front of us, to close faster and make the customers successful, to land and expand them. We feel good about the multiple product milestones we mentioned, including the 37 satellites, the Pelican we've been speaking a fair bit about, forest carbon and Getting low touch access to plants data via the Sentinel Hub system, the new platform that we acquired from Synergize over the summer. We're also all doing all of this while keeping a disciplined spending on our path to adjusted EBITDA profitability by Q4 of next year. Overall, I would say our conviction remains high in the opportunity in front of us.

Speaker 2

And so with that, We'll look forward to seeing you next time.

Operator

That will conclude today's conference call. Thank you all for your participation. You may now disconnect your line.

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Earnings Conference Call
Planet Labs PBC Q3 2024
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