Earnings Labs

Planet Labs PBC (PL)

Q4 2023 Earnings Call· Wed, Mar 29, 2023

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good afternoon. Thank you for attending today’s Planet Labs PBC Fiscal Year 2023 Earnings Call. My name is Hanna, and I will be your moderator for today’s call. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to pass the conference over to our host, Chris Genualdi, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Chris Genualdi

Analyst

Hello and welcome to Planet's fourth quarter and full fiscal year 2023 earnings call. Before we begin today's call, we'd like to remind everyone that we may make forward-looking statements related to future events or our financial outlook. Any 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 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. 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 our prepared remarks. At this time, I'd now like to turn the call over to Will Marshall, Planet's CEO, Chairperson and Co-Founder. Over to you, Will.

Will Marshall

Analyst

Thanks, Chris, and hi, everyone. I’m excited to share with you our results for the fourth quarter of FY '23 which capped of an incredible year for Planet. We will also share some recent wins, discuss the progress we are making towards building an earth data platform, including our announced acquisition of Sinergise and provide an outlook for FY '24. So let's dive in. During Q4, we generated $53 million in revenue, representing 43% year-over-year growth. For the full year, revenue was $191.3 million, up 46% year-over-year. Our non-GAAP gross margins expanded to 58% for the fourth quarter, an improvement of 16 percentage points year-over-year, demonstrating the positive leverage that we have in our business. For the full year, our non-GAAP gross margins were 53%, an improvement of 15 percentage points year-over-year. We ended the fourth quarter with over 880 unique customers spanning across government and commercial markets. Before I cover our recent commercial wins, let me first summarize the key takeaways for today's call. For fiscal '23, we exceeded the range we laid out at the beginning of the year, nearly tripling our revenue growth rate, as well as expanding gross margins by 15 percentage points. I'm incredibly proud of this growth acceleration as it reflects the execution and dedication from our teams across the entire company. Nearly 2 years ago, as we were going public, we outlined a plan to accelerate growth through systematic investments across product, go-to-market as well as in M&A. And in the last year, we've witnessed the positive effects of those investments in our financial results and KPIs. We are carrying that momentum forward into fiscal 2024. These results tell us three things. First, we believe the market for Planet data remains robust. While the macroeconomic climate remains uncertain, we are fortunate to serve…

Kevin Weil

Analyst

Thanks, Will, and hello, everyone. As we discussed at our Investor Day, Planet's agile aerospace capabilities allow us to generate data with a combination of spectral, temporal and optical resolution the world has never seen before. That's the foundation of the company. And until recently, data generation and distribution was our entire focus. But our strategy has expanded in recent years for the simple reason that making our data easier to work with, allows us to serve more customers and partners enlarging our TAM and the impact that we can make in the world. We're doing this in 2 ways. First, we are moving up the data pyramid from imagery towards more refined data, which is our planetary variable strategy. We already have a range of offerings, including products from VanderSat and Salo as well as our AI-driven products like road and building change detection. Our partners, including start ups like Synthetaic also deliver complementary solutions, as Will just highlighted in the balloon example. Across all of these efforts, we are delivering insights to our customers with focused, relevant and easier-to-use data sets tuned to broad customer needs. The second is where Sinergise fits in. We are making our data easier to work with by enabling customers to analyze data and create applications directly on our platform. Sinergise has long been a Planet partner, and I'm excited that we will be joining forces to support their team, their platform and their substantial user base. Over the last 15 years, Sinergise has developed world-class data access and analysis capabilities, leveraging Planet's data, other commercial data sets, including optical SAR and more and the public data sets from sources like Sentinel and Landsat. Their technology powers a cloud streaming platform called Sentinel Hub that allows customers to process, analyze and extract insights…

Will Marshall

Analyst

Thanks, Kevin. Before I hand over to Ashley to go through more details on our financial results and guidance for FY '24, I want to touch on our outlook for the year ahead, especially the core levers that drive sustained top line growth and the priorities we are investing behind. First, our sales force is really focused in on proven use cases in core industries with solutions that can drive the highest ROI for our customers where we can deliver proven economic outcomes. This approach has enhanced our sales teams win ratio, which improved year-over-year in every quarter last year. We also continue to hire top notch sales talent. Second, we are also accelerating our go-to-market strategy with partners that help us to extend our global market reach. Our aim is to power our customers with the tools they need to get value from the data as exemplified by Sinergise. Third, we are investing in R&D to develop the solutions that customers need. You've heard from Kevin how we continue to build our software platform, enabling customers to reduce time to value and expand TAM. We are also investing behind our next-generation satellite fleets, which will help power our platform for the next decade. With three deals signed last year with over $10 million in ACV anchored by our high-resolution SkySat data, we are feeling the market's pull. Development for our high resolution Pelican Satellites is ramping up this year, and we are excited to be launching our first tech demos. We will also launch the first of our tech demos of our hyperspectral fleet Tanager, which supports our partnership with Carbon Mapper and NASA's JPL. Finally, we are doing all of this while staying focused on driving efficiency and profitability. As you know, since our founding, we've always practiced a faster, cheaper, better approach to aerospace. And so efficiency is in our DNA. As an example, we recently became more streamlined with our SuperDove monitoring mission, resulting in greater efficiencies in fleet operations, data downlink to earth and even in data storage without any degradation in global coverage for our customers. Overall, I want to emphasize that efficiency and driving to profitability are critical focus areas for this year, particularly against the current economic backdrop. We remain thoughtful and disciplined with capital allocation as always. Ashley will speak to this in more detail shortly, but I want to underscore that we are fully committed to our path to profitability. To briefly summarize, we successfully executed against our plan for FY '23, nearly tripling our revenue growth rate year-over-year. Market demand for our solutions remains robust despite the broader and macroeconomic environment. And our strong finish to FY '23 as well as the secular tailwinds driving demand sets us up well for the year ahead. I'm excited for the year and confident in the team's ability to execute. Over to you, Ashley.

Ashley Fieglein Johnson

Analyst

Thank you, Will, and thanks, everyone, for joining us today. I will start with a quick recap of our most recent results. As Will mentioned, our revenue for the fourth quarter of fiscal '23 ending January 31 came in at $53 million, which represents 43% year-over-year growth. For the full fiscal year, revenue came in at $191.3 million, representing 46% year-over-year growth. Our end-of-period customer count grew to 882 customers, representing 15% year-over-year growth. Customers representing over $100,000 in ACV was our fastest-growing customer segment last year, growing 31% year-over-year. As you've heard today and on prior calls, our sales teams are prioritizing higher value account with the opportunity to expand over time. We've seen the average annual contract value of our customers grow year-over-year during each of the last 4 quarters. As of the end of Q4, over 95% of our book of business consisted of annual or multiyear contracts. Our average contract length continues to be approximately 2 years weighted on an annual contract value basis. This provides us with high visibility to future revenue. Net dollar retention rate at the end of fiscal year '23 was 131%, and net dollar retention rate with win backs was 134% compared to 108% and 116%, respectively, in fiscal year '22. We are very proud of the progress we've made in our retention rate, which has been directly correlated with high customer satisfaction as reflected in an NPS score of 63 in our last reporting period. Continued investments in our customer success and product teams have made this improvement possible and will remain a key area of focus for us. Turning to gross margin. We expanded our non-GAAP gross margin to 58% for the fourth quarter of fiscal '23 compared to 42% in the prior year. We consistently expanded our gross…

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] The first question of Michael Latimore with Northland. You may proceed.

Michael Latimore

Analyst

Thank you and congrats on the strong year. In terms of the Sinergise acquisitions, I guess did you say that the upper end of guidance assumes -- closes on time? And maybe can you talk a little bit about how much revenue you would expect from Sinergise, any guidance?

Ashley Fieglein Johnson

Analyst

Yes. Great. Thanks for the question. And in terms of the guidance, basically, we have given ourselves flexibility in terms of how much revenue once we have a chance for getting to the closing balance sheet on the day of actual close and understanding the deferred revenue balance is remaining as well as the timing of that revenue recognition. So we can achieve the midpoint of our guidance assuming no close. Obviously, the amount of upside from there really depends on a lot of different factors, including timing of new business outside of Sinergise as well as the timing of closing that transaction.

Michael Latimore

Analyst

Okay, great. Makes sense. And then in the past, you talked a little bit about fully ramped sales headcount. Kind of where does that stand now? And where might you expect that to be -- by year-end?

Ashley Fieglein Johnson

Analyst

We are obviously very pleased with the hiring that the team has been doing across the board. We are above the numbers that we had set for ourselves as the goal of the year and continue to bring, so we are over 50% and continue to bring new team members on because we continue to see strong market opportunity that we want to set the teams out to capture.

Will Marshall

Analyst

Yes, if I can just add. I mean the strong execution of the go-to-market team has been fantastic. You're seeing that in the NPS Score that Ashley mentioned, win rates increasing. It's really great to see the execution. It's not just obviously about the number of [indiscernible] across the board.

Michael Latimore

Analyst

Great. Thanks. Thanks so much.

Will Marshall

Analyst

[Indiscernible].

Ashley Fieglein Johnson

Analyst

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you, Mr. Latimore. The next question is from the line of Ryan Koontz with Needham. You may proceed.

Ryan Koontz

Analyst

Hi. Thanks for the question. Yes, congrats on a great year, particularly on the gross margin expansion. It's really great to see that the one that many really working out. On the guidance, it looks like Q1 is a little light in terms of the linearity there in the year. And actually, I think you mentioned there was a renewal there that was kind of hanging the balance. Can you give me more color on that? Or I might have missed some of the detail that you shared there in your prepared comments.

Ashley Fieglein Johnson

Analyst

Yes. Thanks for the question, Ryan. And yes, Q1 seasonality is impacted, in particular, by legacy contracts for many years back that reached its completion in early Q1. So just to provide a little bit of color, this contract contributed approximately $3 million per quarter in fiscal '23. We remain engaged in continued conversations with them and still have a very positive relationship. But given that we have not renewed that contract and really I'm not anticipating it renewing at that same magnitude, we've only included the tail of the contract in our guidance for the year, which was relatively small.

Ryan Koontz

Analyst

Right. Okay. Thank you. And on the net dollar retention rate, really great to see that popping up. So any color you can share there and what’s driving the inflection up the sides, the major customer belongs there. In terms of sales execution, your customer success team [indiscernible] contribution to the NRR.

Ashley Fieglein Johnson

Analyst

Yes, so we’ve obviously factored that customer into the NDDR. And it's a combination of what we talked about of investing in the customer success team and investments in the product, really driving stronger gross renewal rates. And then our focus on landing those customers, we receive strong opportunity to expand and see significant expansions in some of the larger contracts that Will referenced in his prepared remarks were expansion contracts. So that obviously has a tremendous effect on our NDRR. So it's across the board, both the sourcing that we are doing upfront and focusing our sales team around customers where we know we can drive value and then the execution of the teams on the back end on delivering that value.

Will Marshall

Analyst

And if I could just add to the very first point you brought up about the gross margin expansion. We're very, very pleased with that as well. 15 percentage points year-on-year is really meaningful. And we sell a long-term sort of ideal financial profile, which looks like a SaaS company or the space company, and we're really getting meaningfully towards that, and I hope people can see that progress as being real positive.

Ryan Koontz

Analyst

Absolutely. That’s really great. That’s all I have. Thank you.

Ashley Fieglein Johnson

Analyst

Great. Thank you.

Will Marshall

Analyst

Yes.

Operator

Operator

Thank you, Mr. Koontz. The next question is a question from the line of Jeff Van Rhee with Craig-Hallum. You may proceed.

Jeff Van Rhee

Analyst

Great. Thanks for taking my questions. I've got several. I want to circle back a second to Sinergise, just a few more questions there. Customer count, number of users, price paid, cash deal, can you fill in a few more gaps there? And then if you would just spend a second longer on the cross-sell, maybe a little clear example of an existing customer and how you're going to come into them why they would want these products and what they're using now.

Will Marshall

Analyst

Maybe I can just kick it off by saying that there are thousands of users on this platform already, and it really helps us to get to that longer tail of smaller users, easing the ability and speed to get your first application. Ashley, maybe you can talk to the financial pieces, and Kevin here, maybe you can talk a little bit to the other pieces, too.

Ashley Fieglein Johnson

Analyst

Yes. Just -- so financially, it's a roughly approximately $45 million deal with a mix of cash and stock. We expect it, as I mentioned, to be neutral to EPS in fiscal '24 and accretive next year.

Kevin Weil

Analyst

Yes, as far as customers attaching to Sinergise, we see a meaningful opportunity for Sinergise to speed time to value for our customers in general as well as make Planet products stickier. I gave the example of the agriculture customer in my prepared remarks that is currently having to devote meaningful engineering resources to building their own pipeline to leverage the work they're doing with Planet data. And in the combined Planet plus Sinergise world, they would be able to do all of that and stream it directly into their platform, just using Sinergise's AVI's. So our plan is to offer Sinergise solutions to both new and renewing customers. We will be looking to drive a high attach rate of their high-margin compute solutions alongside Planet's data, and there are already a number of joint customers. So I'm looking forward to seeing that expand as we join forces.

Jeff Van Rhee

Analyst

Okay. And two other questions, if I could. The -- it sounds like you guys reflecting on what you're going to do here with Pelican, you talked about a tasking constrained world. Ex what's going on in Ukraine, I guess I would ask how broad is the constraint? Clearly, everybody that can get imagery over Ukraine is probably very busy right now, but talk about like the breadth of the constraints on tasking right now.

Will Marshall

Analyst

Well, broadly, that system, we are building it more and more to be a one-to-many system. So yes, it's a tire satellite system, but we've now got a tasking aggregated such that when there's many users in one area, actually, they take one strip of images that covers many of those tasks in one go. And then actually concentration becomes back to our advantage again. So it's a [indiscernible]. Obviously, Pelican is aiming to relieve and add more capacity to that. But presently, we still have the potential in many regions, and we are seeing a lot of demand for that. As I mentioned in my prepared remarks, we did three deals last year, over $10 million in ACV each, which were driven by SkySat. And that just gives you a sense of the pull that we're feeling. And many of our customers, of course, are using both SkySat and the plant scope data. I don't know if anyone's got anything to add to that. Does that answer your question?

Jeff Van Rhee

Analyst

It does. I guess just last one, pipeline. Just you touched on the number of seven figure deals. If you could, maybe just contrast kind of what the pipe looks like now maybe 6 or 12 months ago in terms of just the vertical sort of target markets that are seeing the most uptake or improvement and those that might be fading?

Will Marshall

Analyst

I would say the quick answer is stronger and more robust, bigger. I mean you mentioned the seven figure deals, that's right. We've got 45 of those, and they're all qualified deals. I'm really excited about that and across commercial, civil government and Defense and Intelligence. Kevin, you've been around the world, anything to add to that.

Kevin Weil

Analyst

Yes. Just to add briefly, I've spent a bunch of time on the road this year. I've been in Asia. I've been in Europe twice. I've been in D.C. a number of times, around the U.S. We're seeing broad-based demand in our core verticals in areas like agriculture, civil gov, defense and intelligence because of the unique data we have. But as we go off the data pyramid, as we provide planetary variables, we are opening up new verticals. And with insurance, as an example, we have both AXA and Swiss Re now using our [indiscernible] content planetary variable to create a drought insurance product for farmers. Will talked about PG&E now using the Vegetation Encroachment, planetary variable. So that's new demand. And those kind of products aren't just for new customers. They're also -- they also open up new opportunities with existing customers. Just imagine Defense and Intelligence, for example, monitoring large areas that you can't do without artificial intelligence. And so now with the advent and the acceleration of AI, we are seeing expansion opportunities with existing customers and existing verticals [indiscernible].

Will Marshall

Analyst

If I could just add to that. [Indiscernible] caution in the commercial business, we're still seeing a lot of those deals come in at pace. And the couple of areas that Kevin was just mentioning a really strong one. AXA, the CEO was here just this week, and we were talking about this drought insurance and expanding our partnership there. And we mentioned PG&E. We did mention that we signed another Fortune 500 utility company up this year. this quarter, sorry. So we are expanding to that sector. So yes, as Kevin saying, as we go up the stack, we start to open up these vertical [ph] markets outside our core one.

Jeff Van Rhee

Analyst

Very helpful. Thank you.

Ashley Fieglein Johnson

Analyst

Thanks, Jeff.

Operator

Operator

Thank you, Mr. Van Rhee. [Operator Instructions] The next question is from the line of Noah Poponak with Goldman Sachs. You may proceed.

Noah Poponak

Analyst

Hello, everyone.

Will Marshall

Analyst

Hey.

Ashley Fieglein Johnson

Analyst

Hey, Noah.

Noah Poponak

Analyst

Ashley, what -- can you speak to the customer count growth that you are anticipating or embedding in your outlook for this year?

Ashley Fieglein Johnson

Analyst

Yes. That's a tough one to predict. And obviously, Sinergise brings a different element in terms of our ability to service smaller customers at greater scale or with greater efficiency. What really, I think, the relevant question is, how do we think about the -- what part of our business is going to be coming from expansions within our base versus new business. Because I think in that sense, it's really less about how many logos we are adding, but are we adding the right logos with the right opportunity to expand to set us up for continued growth next year. So I would expect the same type of growth where a lot of the growth is coming from expansion from these very large multimillion dollar deals from our existing customer base, complemented by continuing to bring on new customers that have this potential in some of -- both the existing core markets like Cisco [ph] and events and intelligence as well as all these new commercial markets that Kevin outlined and then seeing those accounts just grow quarter after quarter. Kevin, anything to add?

Kevin Weil

Analyst

Yes, I agree with all of that. Just to maybe build on it for a second. At our last Analyst Day, Charlie Candy is our CRO, spent some time talking about how we are really trying to focus the use cases where we can deliver great ROI, improve economic outcomes, opportunities that we are going to then renew and expand. So there's a lot of focus within the commercial team on saying no to good leads in order to say yes to the best leads. And that's reflected in the pipeline numbers that you see here with 45 deals over $1 million in size.

Noah Poponak

Analyst

I guess, I appreciate all of that, and that all makes a lot of sense. You want the right customers. You want sticky long-term, profitable, recurring customers, customers that can expand the wallet over time. But I guess on the other hand, just given where you are in the life cycle of the company and relative to the aspirations for longer term size of revenue base, why should I not be concerned with the somewhat slower customer count growth last year versus total revenue growth if I agree with everything you just said, but you need to have -- still we need to have significant customer growth to get much better.

Will Marshall

Analyst

Yes. No, I mean there's no question that we need to continue that expansion of a number of customers. But again, we are focusing on the use cases that really work and expanding deals within the ones that we have, and that's working really solidly. No doubt in the long-term, we have to get that. Yes, [indiscernible] we believe that a lot of that sort of growth expansion will come from -- with this as we get better and better on our platform side as well. So it's really about focus as opposed to, I mean there's a lot of opportunities, but we are now focusing on the ones that really makes most sense for now because we can get some really strong growth from them.

Ashley Fieglein Johnson

Analyst

And I think we've also been very disciplined in our marketing spend. So we -- as we talked to before, a lot of our pipeline is inbound. And we are just shifting this year to more leading and more into what we are seeing as market opportunity and investing more in our marketing. We've obviously got our Explore conference coming up where we will have a number of prospects. So it's -- that leading into the opportunity set that we see, but also making sure that we are always being very prudent with the amount that we are spending.

Noah Poponak

Analyst

Okay. Ashley, is the -- is your forecast now to be breakeven or positive EBITDA in fiscal '25 for the year or just on a quarterly basis exiting the year?

Ashley Fieglein Johnson

Analyst

The focus is on ensuring that we get to it at least on a quarterly basis in fiscal '25.

Will Marshall

Analyst

But as Ashley often says, we've got a lot of levers in here pushing the Pelican program faster or slower and things like this. And so a lot of that is in our control.

Noah Poponak

Analyst

Okay. And I guess what's the bridge between that or even the '24 EBITDA and what the plan was during the SPAC process or is it really just that there's kind of just a fine line at that tipping point of positive based on exactly where the revenue and margin lands in a given year?

Ashley Fieglein Johnson

Analyst

Yes, I mean, obviously, the world is dramatically different than it was 2 years ago when we put our model out there. And I think we're proud of the fact that we've been executing very well against those numbers. At this point, we are looking at both, the economic environment that's in front of us. The really strong execution that we are seeing from the team, the opportunities to invest in new market opportunities and giving you the guidance that we have high confidence in.

Will Marshall

Analyst

That's right. I really, really believe Planet as a team is executing really well. And we continue to see this strong demand even on the commercial side, despite a little , of course in there and certainly on the government side as well. And so that's why we are putting what we think is a very strong growth forecast, which we feel confident in delivering on this year.

Noah Poponak

Analyst

Okay. And just one last one. Are there a lot of inorganic opportunities on the data analytics platform side within that effort? Or are those hard to find?

Will Marshall

Analyst

Well, look, we said we would look always diligently around, and we will continue to be open to new acquisitions, but we are going to be very selective and very diligent and, frankly, mainly focused on our internal work for the time being.

Noah Poponak

Analyst

Okay. Okay, thanks very much.

Will Marshall

Analyst

Thanks, Noah.

Ashley Fieglein Johnson

Analyst

Thank you, Noah.

Operator

Operator

Thank you, Mr. Poponak. The next question is from the line of Edison Yu with Deutsche Bank. You may proceed.

Edison Yu

Analyst

Thank you for taking our questions. First off, I want to ask about some industry developments. Obviously, we've had a bit of time to digest the Maxar [ph] to private. And I'm wondering from what you're seeing, have you witnessed any changes in the competitive dynamics and the customer feedback? Just kind of curious what you've seen kind of 3 or 4 months after now that's been out there for a while.

Will Marshall

Analyst

I don't think that has changed the microscopic opportunities we are seeing. We have been seeing continued improvement in our win rates where we have head-to-head competition. But the main thing is that we offer something completely different, right, which is our Planet Scope provides the daily scan of the Earth. I think we estimated it's about 100x more collection areas than any of the other commercial providers. So 100x, right? It's a totally different system. It's the scan of the Earth versus a task model. We also had a task system. But that scan is what is enabling a lot of these AI applications, a lot of the defense and intelligence applications we're seeing looking around the corner. It's allowing the board's scale -- agricultural applications, it's allowing the [indiscernible] scale civil response to disasters and things like that. So a lot of the use cases, including the exciting new ones with AI, are backed off the daily scan, which is completely unique store. Does that answer your question?

Edison Yu

Analyst

Understood. Yes, yes. So in relation, we've also seen, I think, several pretty prominent EO satellites, basically just not be deployed properly, right? You had Airbus that's too high res ones. I think Japan lost a $200 million plus one. Does that perhaps give you some more incentive to deploy a Pelican investor? Or do you think -- or is the time line still kind of what you initially thought?

Will Marshall

Analyst

Well, look, I mean it just reminds us that space is really hard, and these challenges do occur. Our approach is a little bit different than most of those other players in the sense of deploying many more satellites. And so the risk associated with any particular launch tends to be lower. And the broader point is that how we use agile aerospace, which is the sort of release early as often enabling us to get to much better cost or capabilities per dollar on our satellites than others have ever been able to achieve. And this essentially was a really interesting, McKinsey report that just came out today, highlighting where the transition is and point to the fact that, that transition again from satellite is with several 0s, right, it's 100x or 1,000x, whereas very few industries go undergo that sort of transformation. And so Planet has a unique approach to makes us a little bit less dependent on any one particular launch. But yes, I mean we are certainly encouraged to your other point about Pelican and to push that program fast because we are feeling that demand, as I said in my remarks.

Ashley Fieglein Johnson

Analyst

Yes. I think the shift that this is also pointing to is just commercial markets and the availability of this kind of commercial data is the future of the earth observation industry. And the activity -- the events of last year really pointed to that, and I think this just underscores that.

Edison Yu

Analyst

Got it. If I could sneak one financial one in there. I know you mentioned the macro softness having some impact. Any way you can quantify that or drill further into the -- how much is embedded into the outlook as it pertains to that macro uncertainty?

Ashley Fieglein Johnson

Analyst

Here's the way I'd say it, Edison, is what -- we build our model the same way every year. We start with the book of business that's committed. And then we look at what's coming up for renewal. And really, the nature of our business, we can do that almost on an account-by-account basis and get a very strong sense of what are our customers going through? Who is likely to be in those budgetary pressures? Where do we know we've delivered a lot of value and we have an opportunity to upsell? And so that kind of drives our assumptions around our renewal rates and then our expansion opportunities. And then we just try to layer on conservatism around the timing of new business just given that there are a lot of factors out there, even though what we actually see more than anything is what Kevin described the pull from the need for our data but balancing that with the caution of just a generally uncertain macroeconomic environment.

Kevin Weil

Analyst

And maybe just to add a bit from the perspective of the customer, and we talked about commercial deals that we closed like PG&E, AXA, Swiss Re that are leveraging some of our new planetary variables. We see a resilient commercial market even beyond that. So just during Q4, we also won contracts with one of the largest global management consulting firms. Will, mentioned the Fortune 500 energy and utility company above and beyond PG&E. There's also a large multinational technology company in Japan, multiple large customers in the agricultural industry. So I could go on. Certainly, there's some degree of caution, but we see a lot of strength in the commercial market, even despite that.

Edison Yu

Analyst

Great. Appreciate that and thanks.

Operator

Operator

Thank you, Mr. Yu. [Operator Instructions] The next question is from the line of Katherine Knop with B. Riley. You may proceed.

Katherine Knop

Analyst

Hi, there. Thank you for taking my question today. So I don't know if I've missed it, or potentially you may not even give this information. But do you have any percentage breakdown in terms of customer type in your backlog?

Will Marshall

Analyst

Not in the backlog, we do talk about it in the revenue. Slide 17 on the debt that we shared. It gives them up breakdown. Ashley, anything you wanted to highlight on that?

Ashley Fieglein Johnson

Analyst

No, as Will said, we have a lot of [indiscernible] of details in the deck that we shared on our Investor Relations website.

Katherine Knop

Analyst

Okay. And then just nothing in terms of the backlog breakdown?

Ashley Fieglein Johnson

Analyst

No, we do not.

Katherine Knop

Analyst

Okay. [Indiscernible]. Thank you.

Ashley Fieglein Johnson

Analyst

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you, Ms. Knop. That concludes the question-and-answer session. I will now turn the call over to Will Marshall for any closing remarks.

Will Marshall

Analyst

Well, thanks, everyone, for joining. Look, I'm very proud of our achievements this year, a really strong execution by our team, especially the nearly tripling our revenue growth rate and the gross margin expansion that was highlighted. Look, I think mark-to-market Planet data remains strong and robust. The secular tailwinds that we talk about, the digital transformation, sustainability transformation and piece of security is strong. So that's why we are putting forth a strong growth plan this year despite the macro. And I'm confident in the team's ability to execute. Thanks very, very much for tuning in.

Operator

Operator

That concludes today's Planet Labs PBC Fiscal Year 2023 earnings call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect your lines.