If you’ve been watching the Planet Labs stock price lately, you’ve probably noticed things are getting a little... vertical. As of mid-January 2026, the stock has been tearing through previous resistance levels, recently hitting an all-time high of $29.73. Honestly, if you told a retail investor back in 2024—when the shares were languishing near $2—that Planet would be an $8.8 billion company today, they’d have probably laughed you out of the room.
But here we are. The narrative has shifted.
It isn't just about "pretty pictures from space" anymore. The market is finally starting to treat Planet Labs like a data utility company rather than a speculative rocket startup. You’ve seen the numbers: the stock has surged over 600% in the last year. That kind of growth is rare, even in the "new space" sector.
Why the Planet Labs Stock Price is Breaking Out
Basically, the "space SPAC" stigma is dead. For a long time, investors grouped Planet with every other company that went public via a blank-check firm, assuming they’d all eventually burn through their cash and vanish. Planet did the opposite. They tightened their belts, focused on government contracts, and started winning big.
The real catalyst? A massive, "low nine-figure" multi-year contract with the Swedish Armed Forces announced just days ago. This follows similar monster deals with Japan and Germany. When you’re stacking half a billion dollars in sovereign satellite service contracts in less than a year, the market stops worrying about your "burn rate" and starts looking at your "moat."
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The Revenue Engine is Actually Working
- Q3 2026 Revenue: $81.3 million (up 33% year-over-year).
- Backlog: A staggering $734.5 million. That’s a 216% jump.
- EBITDA: Four consecutive quarters of positive adjusted EBITDA.
Most people get this wrong: they think Planet is just a hardware company. It’s not. It’s a subscription business. They reported that 97% of their annual contract value is recurring. You don't see that in many industrial sectors. It’s much more like a SaaS (Software as a Service) model, but instead of hosting your spreadsheets, they’re hosting a digital twin of the entire Earth.
The "Owl" and "Pelican" Factor
You can't talk about the Planet Labs stock price without looking at the hardware refresh. The old "SuperDoves" were great for broad-area monitoring, but the new Pelican and Tanager satellites are the real game-changers.
Pelican offers high-resolution, rapid-tasking capabilities. If a customer wants to see a specific port or a moving convoy every few hours, Pelican can do that. Then there's the Owl constellation, which is slated for its first tech demo in late 2026. Owl is designed to bring 1-meter resolution imagery to a near-daily cadence.
Investors are betting that as these new constellations come online, Planet’s margins will expand. Right now, the non-GAAP gross margin is sitting around 60% to 61%. That's healthy, but as they automate more of the "data-to-insight" pipeline using AI, that number could creep higher.
Is the Stock Overvalued Right Now?
Let's be real. A 100% gain in 90 days usually smells like a bubble. Some analysts, including those at InvestingPro, have recently flagged the stock as being in "overbought" territory. The Relative Strength Index (RSI) is screaming, and the gap between the current price ($29.73) and some older analyst targets (like Morgan Stanley’s $20 or Clear Street’s $22) is wide.
However, many of those targets were set before the Swedish deal and the revenue guidance hike. Planet recently bumped its full-year 2026 revenue outlook to $297–$301 million.
If you’re a value investor, the price-to-book ratio of 24.0 might make you wince. But in a world where AI needs massive datasets to train on, Planet’s archive of daily Earth imagery since 2014 is basically liquid gold. You can't "scrape" the last ten years of Earth’s history from the internet; you have to own the satellites that took the photos.
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Risk Factors You Should Sorta Care About
- Concentration Risk: A huge chunk of revenue comes from government and defense. If geopolitical tensions cool (unlikely, but possible), those budgets might shift.
- Execution: Launching satellites is still hard. A single Falcon 9 failure could set back a constellation deployment by six months.
- Competition: Maxar is still the big dog in high-res, and agile players like BlackSky are fighting for the same defense intelligence dollars.
What Most People Miss: The AI Integration
The secret sauce for the Planet Labs stock price in 2026 is actually AI. Most users don't want to look at a picture of a cornfield; they want a spreadsheet that tells them exactly how many bushels that field will produce.
Planet has been integrating machine learning tools that automatically detect "change." If a new building starts construction in a remote part of the world, Planet’s system flags it without a human ever looking at the pixel. This "automated planetary intelligence" is what's driving the 361% jump in Remaining Performance Obligations (RPOs).
Actionable Insights for Investors
If you’re looking at Planet Labs today, don't just chase the ticker. The stock is volatile.
Watch the $25 level. That was a previous area of consolidation, and if the current rally cools off, that’s where you’ll likely see the "buy the dip" crowd step in.
Keep an eye on the March 19, 2026, earnings call. This will be the big one. It’s where management will likely give their first real look at Fiscal Year 2027 guidance. If they forecast positive free cash flow for the full year 2027, the current $30 ceiling might become a floor.
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Diversify your space exposure. Don't put everything into one bucket. While Planet is the leader in EO (Earth Observation), companies like Intuitive Machines (LUNR) are capturing the lunar infrastructure side of the house.
The bottom line is that Planet Labs has finally moved out of the "hope and a prayer" phase of its life cycle. It's an infrastructure play now. It’s boring, it’s profitable (on an EBITDA basis), and it’s deeply embedded in the national security apparatus of the West. That’s usually a recipe for a stock that stays relevant long after the initial hype fades.
Next Steps for Tracking Planet Labs (PL):
- Monitor the 50-day Moving Average: As long as the stock stays above its 50-day MA (currently trending upward), the momentum remains bullish.
- Check SEC Filings for Insider Selling: With the stock at all-time highs, keep an eye on Form 4 filings. Co-founder Will Marshall sold shares worth $1.4 million in early January; if more executives follow suit, it might signal a short-term top.
- Track NRO Contract Renewals: The National Reconnaissance Office is Planet's "whale." Any news regarding the Electro-Optical Commercial Layer (EOCL) program updates in mid-2026 will be a major price mover.