Hello and welcome to Planet's Business Momentum Update Press Briefing. On the call today are Will Marshall, CEO; Ashley Johnson, President and CFO; and Martin Polak, Managing Director of Planet Labs GmbH. They will briefly take questions on the webcast console. We encourage everyone to please reference the press releases issued ahead of today's call, which are available on Planet's website. Before we begin, we'd like to remind everyone that the Planet team will make forward-looking statements related to future events or its financial outlook. These forward-looking statements are based on management's current outlook, plans, estimates, expectations, and projections. 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 Planet's SEC filings, which can be found at www.sec.gov.
Planet's actual results or performance may differ materially from those indicated by such forward-looking statements, and Planet undertakes 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. At this point, I'd now like to turn the call over to Will Marshall, Planet's CEO, Chairperson, and Co-founder. Over to you, Will.
Good morning. Thanks for joining. The changing global geopolitical landscape is accelerating the demand for sovereign access to geospatial services, and we are seeing unprecedented interest in our unique solutions. Governments worldwide are recognizing that timely, comprehensive Earth data, coupled with advanced analytics, is critical for security and strategic decision-making. We believe that factual information about global events leads to better decision-making and ultimately increased peace and security. Today, we're proud to announce significant contract wins to underscore this growing demand and validate Planet's strategic direction. The first is a EUR 240 million partnership funded by the German government, aimed at supporting European peace and security. Through this agreement, Planet will provide dedicated capacity and direct downlink services on Pelican Satellites over specific European regions for several years. Separately, the contract includes access to PlanetScope and high-resolution data today, along with AI-enabled solutions for enhanced situational awareness and Maritime Domain Awareness.
While comparable in scope and scale to our deal with our partners in Japan, JSAT, announced in January, this new deal will uniquely leverage satellites that are already in plan and under development. Furthermore, it's our first customer partnership that leverages both our AI-enabled solutions and our new satellite services, demonstrating the complementary nature of these offerings. This capacity is ultimately intelligence needed to act decisively and maintain their strategic edge. We view Planet as uniquely equipped to meet the complex and pressing needs of governments, combining a proven track record of building, launching, and operating hundreds of Earth imaging satellites, far more than any other company, efficient satellite manufacturing, having pioneered agile aerospace, leading to faster delivery as well as lower price points, and trusted partnerships, as many of the countries we've been working with for years in both the case of Japan and Germany over 10 years.
Trust is paramount in these partnerships. We are incredibly proud of this new agreement and hope it can directly support Europe's efforts to rapidly enhance and bolster security for regional peace and stability. Now I am going to hand it over to Martin Polak, the Managing Director of Planet Labs Germany, to speak a little bit more about our collaboration with Germany, and then Ashley Johnson, our President and CFO, to talk to the additional news we are sharing today.
Thanks, Will. With the long history in Germany stretching back to 1998, when we first started our satellite business with the RapidEye satellites, Planet Labs Germany GmbH proudly serves as our European headquarters. Our dedicated team here plays an essential role in Planet's global business, from satellite constellation operations to software development to driving our extensive commercial work across the EMEA region. We've had a long history of partnership with the German government, from the development and operation of the initial RapidEye fleet that Planet came to acquire, to our long-term partnership with the German Federal Cartographic Agency, BKG, that was extended earlier this year. Our new contract that Will spoke to before, supported by the German government, enables broader peace and security efforts inside and around Europe, and it underscores the unique value we offer for Germany's and Europe's long-term security interests.
We are very proud to deliver the information and tools that European governments urgently need at this critical time. Building on Planet's recent landmark award from NATO, this affirms Planet's position as a trust system for their strategic capabilities. This commitment in Europe reflects a global need for enhanced daily monitoring, advanced indicators and warning tools, as well as responsive space capabilities as governments navigate a complex and rapidly evolving geopolitical landscape. Next, I'll pass to Ashley.
Thanks, Martin. I'd like to take a few minutes to highlight the strong demand for Planet's data and AI-enabled products. Since our most recent earnings call, Planet has secured four major awards for our new customers, of the two by Germany. Two other contracts today: an expansion of our contract with the Defense Innovation Unit at the US DO D in support of INDOPACOM for our global monitoring services capability, and an expansion of our contract with the US Navy for MDA. These add to our landmark award from NATO, which we announced a few weeks ago, and our large win with a European defense customer, which was announced on our last quarterly call. This momentum is a direct result of our focused strategy on delivering not just data, but AI-enabled solutions that transform that data into immediate, actionable intelligence for better decision-making.
In a world where threats evolve rapidly and often unexpectedly, our customers need a complete picture, a so-called peripheral vision that allows them to identify, understand, and anticipate patterns of life and emerging threats across entire countries or regions. Our approach moves beyond traditional reconnaissance, which often focuses on known threats, to help uncover the unknown unknowns. We're enabling proactive vigilance through automated anomaly detection and change analysis at an unprecedented scale. That is critical in this new world. Let me tell you a bit more about two of the solutions that we're providing: Maritime Domain Awareness, or MDA, and our Global Monitoring Service, or GMS. MDA offers high-frequency, broad-area coverage, powered by partner-enabled analytics for vessel identification and classification. Four of the five contracts I listed include MDA, which is seeing rapid adoption by our users. Customers can monitor vast open ocean areas every day.
We partner with companies like Cinmax to deliver to defense customers capabilities that previously didn't exist: comprehensive visibility across immense open ocean territories, enabling them to detect, classify, and track the activities of all vessels. This provides the critical situational awareness necessary to address piracy, smuggling, and other serious maritime safety and security risks. The other solution that we're providing that I want to highlight today is our Global Monitoring Service. This solution is designed to deliver critical intelligence to senior leaders of the armed forces responsible for strategic planning and decision-making. This high-impact monitoring service provides comprehensive daily insights into strategic locations worldwide. GMS is the foundation of our new award from NATO and the deal with the US Defense Innovation Unit.
GMS leverages Planet's Daily Scan, vast archive, analytics, and partners to enable customers to detect, analyze, and respond to critical changes across infrastructure, objects of interest, and precursor activities. It's built on our PlanetScope data, enabling the high-frequency, complete coverage of entire countries or regions. When combined with advanced AI models, this creates a unique indications and warning service that is currently unparalleled in the market. GMS is designed to help customers look left of an event. In other words, identifying changes that happened prior to a significant event, empowering them to anticipate threats and respond proactively. We're excited to highlight that two of our customer wins featured today include this innovative capability. These AI-enabled solutions reinforce our position as an essential partner for governments seeking to modernize their defense capabilities and gain crucial awareness in their region.
We are proud to provide these services to our defense and intelligence customers around the globe, furthering our mission to help advance peace and security on our planet. I'm now going to hand it back to Will to close before Q&A.
Thanks, Ashley. I just want to add that these announcements highlight the strong demand for AI-enabled solutions and the value that that unlocks. To give a sense of scale, all five contracts Ashley discussed are either eight figures of annual contract value today, or if they were to extend at current levels to annual or multi-year contracts, would be eight-figure relationships. With our announcement today, with the support of Germany, we now have two nine-figure scale multi-year satellite services partnerships. We're committed to delivering exceptional value to these customers, as well as going systematically after these markets. Last year, we focused our attention on two strategic business areas. First was AI-enabled solutions that are part of our Daily Scan, in particular MDA and GMS. The second was satellite services for dedicated satellites for countries. Today's news shows strong momentum in both validating those strategic decisions.
As I said at the start, the changing global geopolitical landscape has accelerated the demand for sovereign access to unique solutions like ours. Governments worldwide are recognizing that timely, comprehensive Earth data are critical to peace and security, and Planet stands ready to support their mission. Thank you for your attention. We'll now take a few questions.
As a reminder, if you would like to submit a question today, please do so using the text Q&A feature on the webcast console. Also joining us today from Planet's DC office is Robert Cardillo, Chief Strategist and Chairman of the Board for Planet Federal. I'll now read the first question. The first question comes from Kimberly Burke with Quality Space. Given the scale and timing of the new EUR 240 million German government contract, can you elaborate on how Planet is ramping up its satellite manufacturing capacity? Are you relying on in-house production, external partners, or a combination? Do you anticipate any significant changes in your supply chain, manufacturing footprint, or CapEx to meet these obligations and timelines?
Sorry, firstly, for some of the choppiness in the initial bit of the call there. Seems like a lot of people have dialed in. I'm going to go off video for a second, but yeah, I mean, just on the satellites, we're building them in-house, relying entirely on in-house production. Obviously, Planet has a long history of building and launching large numbers of Earth imaging satellites. We've launched over 600 to date on over 30 launches. That's our kind of bread and butter, scaling up satellites to large numbers of fleets for large fleet size for these customers. That's our skill set. That's very much why I think these sort of deals we're uniquely positioned for, because of the scale and speed that we can deliver these kinds of satellites, because we build them in-house. Very no major changes.
We're continuing to build them in-house here in San Francisco. Next question.
Your next question comes from Kristine T. Liwag with Morgan Stanley. Congratulations on the contracts you've won since the last earnings call. For international customers, particularly from NATO customers, can you discuss what their decision tree was to arrive to contracting with Planet Labs? What were their other options, and what was your value proposition?
Yeah, great question. Let me see if I can go on video now. Let's see. Hopefully, it won't break anything. There was a competitive process with NATO just to start off. I mean, again, what their situation here is that they're trying to look at broad areas to try and find new threats. Our Daily Scan is pretty much unique. We're the only company that has a Daily Scan of the Earth's landmass and certain important waters. What they're leaning into is both Maritime Domain Awareness in certain key water areas, as well as land surveillance for new threats. I guess Planet was really the only solution that can do that. Robert, have you got anything to add to that?
Yeah, I think it's useful if I frame it with my context in the U.S. government. When I was running the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, if I wanted to create new accesses from remote sensing, broadly speaking, it's a 10-year proposition, or it was a 10-year proposition. Today, because of the history and the pedigree of performance that Will and Ashley have discussed, Planet Labs can create that agile technology much, much more quickly. It's one of the reasons why I think the deal came together so quickly, because we were able to respond to that demand signal, given the insecurity that everyone has spoken about. I think Planet is just here at the right time, at the right place to deliver the security that the world needs.
Your next question is from Kimberly Burke with Quality Space. Can you break down how much of the EUR 240 million is for new satellites or infrastructure versus recurring data services? Will any German or European partners be involved in manufacturing, operations, or data delivery under this agreement?
Ashley, do you want to take this?
Sure. As Will mentioned earlier, we're leveraging our existing in-plan satellites for this current contract, for this new contract. There is also a portion of the contract, as I mentioned, that is for data and AI-enabled solutions. We are working with a number of partners for those AI-enabled solutions, some of which are European-based. We aren't breaking down the specifics on the different components on the contract at this time.
Your next question comes from Tim Fernholz with Payload Space. Will this new contract and other recent international defense and intelligence contracts make up for the revenue that could be lost due to reported cuts to the NRO's EOCL program?
Maybe I can start on Ashley Johnson, but basically, look, firstly, we're proud to continue to support NRO with EOCL. As we announced also as part of this announcement today, we have extended that partnership at the levels that we had before through the end of October. Of course, we're proud of these new contracts as well. They just add in. Ashley, anything to add?
No, I would just say, as we mentioned on our prior earnings call, it's a fluid budget environment in D.C. at this time. We were very pleased to see the extension of our existing contract. We continue to be proud to serve the NRO and the U.S. government more broadly. As the circumstances evolve with FY 2026 budget, we'll be sharing more information about how that program continues with Planet.
Your next question comes from Kristine T. Liwag with Morgan Stanley. European countries have highlighted their lack of space capabilities. This lack of indigenous capabilities in space is mirrored in the gap in defense as well. There is push to invest and buy more from European companies. How do you think about your long-term sustaining power in keeping European customers?
European countries are in a situation where the U.S. is pushing them to spend more on defense. They have a real security situation. They are responding and investing more in defense. Some of them are turning to some of the new technologies that can really enable them with this peripheral vision with the kind of urgency and speed that they need. As I mentioned in my earlier answer to the question, Planet has an unprecedented history of launching over 600 satellites, more than anyone else has in Earth observation, and can do it quickly with the kind of speed that these countries need to match their urgency. Planet is uniquely positioned. Adding to that, we have a long history of working with the German government in particular.
We have our European headquarters there, as Martin mentioned, enabling us to do real substantive work there in Europe. A significant fraction of our teams, our processes, our satellite components, and our constellation, a lot of our ground stations and many other things are in Europe. We have a significant presence. We are a German company as well. We are looking forward to supporting this partnership in collaboration with Germany in this new phase.
Your next question comes from Colin Michael Canfield with Cantor. How should we think about the potential for growth as a marquee provider of long-term intelligence structures for US allies? Is it fair to assume a potential land and expand strategy of satellite services where Planet Labs can scale with Japan and Germany and other allies? How should investors think about the pricing mechanism versus refresh rate?
Ashley, do you want to take that?
Sure. Obviously, a core part of our strategy is always to land and expand by delivering incredible service and value to our customers. As we embark on these new kinds of engagements, that gives us an opportunity to deepen our footprint and continue to add even greater value to the partnerships that we already have with these countries. We look at expanding in similar ways with other government customers that we have. In terms of the pricing mechanism versus refresh rate, obviously, there are multiple components to the contracts that we've been signing. As we add more value around things like AI-enabled solutions, it gives us an opportunity to have a nice mix of services that we offer. All of these are priced according to the value that we deliver.
Your next question comes from Bal Krishna from India Today. How do you think AI is going to impact the analysis of sat images?
I mean, frankly, I think it's totally changing the game. AI is enabling the ability to extract value from geospatial data at a scale and a speed we've never seen. In particular, with Planet's Daily Scan, we have this daily scan of the whole Earth landmass, which is the only daily scan. It's a wicked combination with AI because it enables, and in this case in particular, these countries, a peripheral vision of their region that is frankly unprecedented. AI is unlocking that value. It is speeding time to value. It is scaling up what's possible. I think in the long term, it will also democratize access to these capabilities to far more players.
Planet is in a unique position because of its Daily Scan, not only that it's the widest scan of any system, but also we have the 3,000 layers of imagery in our archive to train AI. I mean, frankly, I think it's just this wicked combination between satellite data and AI. We feel in the middle of it. I mentioned on previous earnings, we're actually a few blocks from OpenAI and Anthropic and Google Gemini team. We feel in the middle of it, and we're literally in the middle of it with our unique data set. I think that's partly what's behind some of this pull that we're feeling in the market is because AI is helping us to unlock that value.
Your next question comes from Christine Loag with Morgan Stanley. With Germany committing to Planet Labs, how should we think about the pipeline of contracts from other NATO countries this year?
I'm not going to speculate about future deals, but I mean, we have a solid pipeline of partnerships like those. We're incredibly proud of the momentum that we are announcing today with this second release on the four major AI-enabled solutions deals. It just shows that and validates Planet's strategy in going into AI-enabled solutions that tap into this wide scan. NATO, it was really impressive, as Robert was just saying, how quickly they were able to see and get value and see that value and then turn that into an operational contract with Planet.
Your next question comes from Trevor Walsh with Citizens. As you sign more satellite services contracts, will there ultimately need to be a step function change in the size of constellations, PlanetScope, or Pelican to support these customers? How quickly can the ground control element scale to match those requirements?
I hope so. Yeah. I mean, no. I mean, right now, I think, as I mentioned, and Ashley also, this partnership is supported by Germany is actually going to tap into our existing fleet of Pelicans that we're launching either for ourselves or for our other satellite services partners. We are not building extra Pelicans in this case. We are tapping into the existing fleets. In time, we do hope that it will help expand us. I mean, the Japan deal, JSAT, was adding 10 Pelicans to our plans. Hopefully, in the future, as we do more of these, we will do some that tap into our existing fleets, others that add more. Yeah, we hope that that will expand. In terms of supporting these with ground stations and things like that, that we have already set up.
A lot of that work of ground stations around the world is done. Each of these comes with specific needs, like specific mission control parameters and other things. There is some bespoke work, but much of it will be tapping into the capabilities we already have or have planned.
Your next question comes from Ryan Boyer Koontz with Needham & Co. Do any of these contract wins feature advance payments in advance of revenue recognition?
Yes, there's a short answer. Ashley, do you want to add more?
Yes. I want to speak to generally and not specifics to this contract, but generally, we structure our satellite services contracts in a way that enables us to fund the upfront CapEx required to service those contracts, which certainly is beneficial to us from a working capital perspective. In that sense, the cash will precede the revenue recognition on those contracts.
The next question comes from the line of Shankar Reddy. Please answer this real question. Can you clarify the scope of Planet's collaboration with Anthropic? Specifically, are you jointly developing a geospatial foundation model? If so, how are you protecting the proprietary image archive, both pre and post-training, from model leakage or commoditization? Once the model is trained, what moat remains beyond the delivery of new daily imagery?
Yeah, I'm proud to answer this real question. We don't like fake ones. No. What we're doing with Anthropic is fine-tuning models, leveraging satellite data, because a lot of those large language models or foundation models haven't been exposed to much satellite data. Actually, it's somewhat surprising. Both Dario, the CEO of Anthropic, and I were impressed at how Claude, and we're seeing the same with other models as well, but Claude was able to analyze satellite imagery out of the box, despite the fact that those models have not seen much satellite data. That only adds more confidence that if we train it with more satellite data, that we expose it to far more satellite data, that it actually might get more accurate and able to be able to scalably and accurately analyze the satellite data even better than it does out of the box.
That's the fine-tuning work. It's not involving putting all of our data into those models. It doesn't really involve leakage in that way. It would still require buying access to the satellite imagery at the same time. We're very excited about that. Per my earlier comment, AI and satellite data just is a marriage made in heaven. Planet's data, in particular, the Daily Scan, fits really well into that. We're very much leaning into that. These business deals and momentum show why we're doing that, because it has significant demand in the market as well.
That's all the questions we have time for today. I will now hand the call back over to Will Marshall for closing remarks.
Sure. I've said some of this, but I mean, to quickly recap, the world is in a significant transition, both geopolitically and technologically, with AI. Geopolitically, countries are moving with incredible urgency to enhance their security, including adopting new technologies such as Planet's. They're recognizing that comprehensive Earth data is critical to their peace and security. Meanwhile, we have AI, which is enabling the ability to extract value from geospatial data at a speed and scale we've never seen, in particular on top of the Daily Scan from Planet, which with AI is a wicked combination, enabling this peripheral vision for countries in their region that is pretty much unprecedented. The two releases we did today, the new satellite deal supported by Germany and the four new AI-enabled solutions, I think validates Planet's strategy. The two main pillars of Planet's business growth strategy are humming today.
We're proud to be doing this work to advance global peace and security with these partners. We're focused now on delivering to these important customers and scaling systematically in these markets. Thanks for joining us today and have a great day.
This concludes today's call. You may now disconnect.