Earnings Labs

Planet Labs PBC (PL)

Q2 2025 Earnings Call· Thu, Sep 5, 2024

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Hello, everyone. Thank you for attending today's Planet Labs PBC Second Quarter of Fiscal 2025 Earnings Call. My name is Sierra and I will be your moderator for today. All lines will be muted during the presentation portion of the call with an opportunity for questions and answers at the end. [Operator Instructions] I’d now like to pass the conference over to our host, Cleo Palmer-Poroner, Investor Relations at Planet Labs PBC. Please proceed.

Cleo Palmer-Poroner

Analyst

Thanks, operator and hello everyone. This is Cleo Palmer-Poroner, Investor Relations at Planet Labs PBC. Welcome to Planet's Second Quarter of Fiscal 2025 Earnings Call. I'm joined today by Will Marshall and Ashley Johnson, who'll provide a recap of our results and discuss our current outlook. We encourage everyone to please reference the earnings press release and earnings update presentation for today's call, which are available on our Investor Relations website. Before we begin, we would like to remind everyone that we may make forward-looking statements related to future events or our financial outlook. We also may 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. 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 historic and forward-looking 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 and our earnings update presentation, 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, Cleo, and hi everyone. Thanks for joining the call today. For the second quarter of fiscal year 2025, we generated a record $61.1 million in revenue representing 14% year-on-year growth. This was driven by continued strength in the government sector. Non-GAAP gross margin for the quarter was 58% and adjusted EBITDA loss was $4.4 million. These results were all in-line with or better than the guidance provided on our last earnings call. Q2 marked our fifth sequential quarter of improvement in adjusted EBITDA, as we persistently marched towards our target of achieving adjusted EBITDA profitability by Q4 of this fiscal year. We also successfully launched our first Tanager satellite along with 36 new SuperDoves last month. All of the satellites have been contacted and are undergoing commissioning. Today, I'll cover a number of topics including recent organizational changes, sales wins, satellite launches and product updates. Ashley will then provide more color on the business and our financials, so let's dive in. Starting with recent organizational changes. In Q2 we took action to align resources to the market opportunity and improve our operational efficiency. We consider which areas of our business are operating most efficiently and which need improvement, as well as the demand trends we are seeing across geographies and sectors. These actions were simultaneously aimed at improving our go-to-market towards accelerating growth as well as reducing costs. We are creating industry aligned business groups focused on specific sectors to help drive both product and sales strategy. As part of these changes, we undertook a headcount reduction that resulted in parting ways with approximately 17% of our Planet’s Earth, a process that was very difficult, but allowed us to meaningfully improve our cost structure. We expect this new, more efficient operating model will support the sustainable long-term growth and…

Ashley Johnson

Analyst

Thanks, Will. The past quarter has been especially busy at Planet with a number of customer events, new technology launches and of course, realigning our business. I'd like to start off by sharing some of my reflections from our explore on the road customer events around the globe. Over the summer, we hosted events in Berlin, Washington, DC and Bogota, where we showcased our Planet Insights platform to help our partners and customers, better understand the capabilities we seek to unlock for them with this new suite of tools. We talked about AI not as magic, but as a practical accelerant to insights and our platform, not as a substitution for the solutions our partners build, but as an enabler for their solutions that can speed time to value for customers. In August, I joined customers and partners in Bogota for a series of talks on topics ranging from law enforcement to forest protection to land management and infrastructure monitoring, all ideal use cases for our broad area management solutions. It was personally energizing to spend time with customers and partners that are using Planet's data and platform, combined with our partners software and services to solve some of the world's most pressing challenges. We heard from representatives from a wide range of partners and customers joining us from all over Latin America. At the event, the Brazilian Federal Police and our partner SCCON spoke about their latest ROI figures from the Brasil MAIS program, which uses Planet data paired with SCCON Solutions to stop illegal deforestation. They shared that they've collected billions of US dollars from fines, seized goods and frozen assets since 2020. They also highlighted the path they took to secure the funds and governmental support for the program in the first place, offering other countries a…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. We will now begin the Q&A session. [Operator Instructions] Our first question today comes from Ryan Koontz with Needham and Company. Your line is now open.

Ryan Koontz

Analyst

Hi, thanks for the question. With regards to some housekeeping first on numbers, I see North America down in the quarter sequentially as well as RPO down the last couple quarters. Can you actually kind of unpack what's going on there in terms of some of the puts and takes across different segments? Appreciate that.

Ashley Johnson

Analyst

Yeah, I think the simplest answer is just to remind you that we have a number of larger opportunities, particularly with government entities, many of whom cannot sign more than one year at a time. There's just a baked-in renewal, and so that can create some lumpiness in terms of timing of new business. And I think that's generally what is driving RPOs and backlog this quarter. In terms of the geographic growth rates in North America, specifically the US, the performance by commercial is what's impacting that growth rate.

Ryan Koontz

Analyst

Right. Okay, great. And in terms of the gross margin there, a nice gross margin improvement in the quarter, really strong, and nice to see it reflected in the guide as well. Can you unpack that for us a little bit, in terms of what some of the drivers there? I recall that some packaging of partner products were weighing that down in past quarters, as well as some of the write-offs from the solar storm. Is that [Technical Difficulty] a lot of that in the rearview mirror now?

Ashley Johnson

Analyst

It's getting into the rearview mirror. That actually continued into Q2 and there is a bit of a tail of that into Q3, which I referenced. The gross margins benefited, one from the performance of our software engineering teams and the efficiencies that they've been driving in our cloud infrastructure. Another driver is mix of business. So, as you referenced, depending on the mix of new business in the quarter that includes partners, we can see cost of goods sold fluctuate as a result of that. So, that is another one of the drivers versus the guidance that we had previously given. And then, again in our core business, as we continue to sell data deals with our one-to-many model, bringing new customers on allows gross margins to expand. So, it is a combination of all those factors that drove the upside in the quarter.

Ryan Koontz

Analyst

Great. Thanks so much. That's all I have.

Ashley Johnson

Analyst

Great. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Michael Latimore with Northland. Your line is now open.

Mike Latimore

Analyst · Northland. Your line is now open.

All right, great, thanks. Yeah, I guess just sticking with gross margin, you've guided for that to be in the sort of 59% to 61% range, I think, in the third quarter here. Is that a good new kind of baseline to think about that it should be at least that level going forward?

Ashley Johnson

Analyst · Northland. Your line is now open.

I mean, that's certainly how we're targeting it. Again, the only caution I’d give is depending on mix of business that we sign, we could see pressure if we were to sign a larger deal that included for which we were prime and includes other partners. But yes, as we move forward, obviously the more business we are bringing onto the platform. That's a very scalable model. So, that helps us balance out other times where we might see partner costs weighing it down. So that's certainly our ambition is to sustain and improve from here.

Mike Latimore

Analyst · Northland. Your line is now open.

Great. And then can you just give an update on the pilots that you've been working on? How many did you have in the second quarter? Do you have any in the third quarter? Just update on that would be great.

Will Marshall

Analyst · Northland. Your line is now open.

Yeah, I'm happy to speak to that a little bit. Yeah, so as you know, we've been doing these pilots with AI on top of our PlanetScope daily scan, and we've done a couple this year already. We expect to have more later this year. And then we are most importantly building the foundations to build those into operational vehicles, which doesn't happen overnight, but we are definitely making good progress on that.

Mike Latimore

Analyst · Northland. Your line is now open.

Great. And I guess just last on the ag sector, bit headwinds there. Do you feel like -- does that stabilize on a sequential basis third or fourth quarter this year?

Ashley Johnson

Analyst · Northland. Your line is now open.

I mean, we certainly are hearing more positivity from our ag partners and customers. So, I'm optimistic about that as a market that can certainly get a lot of benefit from Planet's products and solutions. And we've got a number of really good customers in that space, some of whom were referenced on this call.

Will Marshall

Analyst · Northland. Your line is now open.

Yeah, the BASF xarvio. And look, as I mentioned, we are moving towards the right sort of incentive model and that's important. And the overall optimism that Ashley and I share there is that the sector fundamentally can benefit from our data and farmers can improve yields, decrease costs, and therefore increase profitability. And all of that sense remains. And as these customers like BASF leverage the tools in a way that's where we have business alignment like this beginning to do, I think we begin to see that turn around. So, we very much believe in the long term in that market still.

Mike Latimore

Analyst · Northland. Your line is now open.

Okay, great. Thanks a lot.

Ashley Johnson

Analyst · Northland. Your line is now open.

Thank you. Our next question comes from Kristine Liwag with Morgan Stanley. Your line is now open.

Kristine Liwag

Analyst · Northland. Your line is now open.

Hey, good afternoon, guys. Just wanted to follow up on the NATO contract that you won, the NATO apps contract. Can you provide a little bit more color around the program structure and the size of that opportunity? I think NATO had said that the overall program could be worth like a combined billion dollars over five years, like what's addressable to you?

Will Marshall

Analyst · Northland. Your line is now open.

Yeah, it is a great question. Firstly, we're very excited about this introductory partnership. It is very exciting what value proposition I think NATO can gain from our data. Broad assessment of threats across wide areas of interest that they have and also a common operating picture between allies with our data being unclassified and shareable, it means they can share this information between different countries. And, of course, NATO, as an alliance can really benefit from that sort of common operating and understanding. To your point about the size, yeah, I mean, that's right. The governments have committed up to a billion dollars to that program over five years. We are at the beginning end of that. So, it will ramp. But we think it's a significant opportunity for Planet to support. So, we're very excited about it.

Kristine Liwag

Analyst · Northland. Your line is now open.

Great. That's helpful. And then when we -- I guess, we had with the first satellite now launched, do you peel back the curtain a little bit on Tanager? I mean, what sort of early contributions are you expecting from this first satellite and what's your latest thinking about launching the second one?

Will Marshall

Analyst · Northland. Your line is now open.

Great. Yeah, I mean -- firstly, I mean the teams have worked incredibly to build and now starting to commission that first satellite. It's really fantastic to see the progress there and hard work. And that satellite, as I mentioned, is an early part of its commissioning. As to the revenue opportunities, we are very excited about the number of vertical markets with that and use cases with that hyperspectral imagery opens up. And I think we've mentioned before that we've already got two customers there, one in the form of carbon method, the people that helped fund the program, looking at the environmental use case of methane data. And we also have the NRO, National Reconnaissance Office, that buys our data. And we have a small contracting vehicle for that -- that is can expand as we get operational data, which is exciting. But also, we have been working with multiple other entities. We've about a dozen oil and gas operators, two large ag companies and others where mining companies and so on that we are doing early product work, developing the use cases such that when we start producing operational data, we can start building those markets. It is a nascent market, but we believe that this is our first foray into it and it's an exciting opportunity.

Kristine Liwag

Analyst · Northland. Your line is now open.

Great. Thanks, Will. And if I could squeeze the last question in, I mean, the NGA announced plans to spend $700 million over the next five years to improve AI labeling of space imagery. I guess for something like that, that seems like exactly in your wheelhouse. So can you talk about how you're positioned for this contract? And is this a winner takes-all type of pursuit? Or do you see this carrying multiple vendors? How do you think about timing and any sort of perspective on the sizable opportunity for you would be really helpful? And I promise this is my last question.

Will Marshall

Analyst · Northland. Your line is now open.

Yeah. No, it's all good. I was just being silly. Yeah, absolutely. We track that. Obviously, we work closely with the NGA. That particular opportunity is more focused on labeling of data, which is not what we do. We don't do labeling, right? Generally, the technology is moving away from that kind of method more towards the sort of automatic. These large language models and foundation models are able to be more zero-shot or one-shot learning, which is very different where you don't have to mass scale labeling of data. So, I think the better place for us to be able to be contributing is where we combine these foundation models, with our data set to do profound things like look over large areas for new threats and so on, which fits more into other opportunities.

Kristine Liwag

Analyst · Northland. Your line is now open.

Great. Thanks for the color.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Trevor Walsh with JMP. Your line is now open.

Trevor Walsh

Analyst · JMP. Your line is now open.

Great. Hi, team. Thanks for taking my questions. Ashley or Will, just a question around the go-to-market changes kind of at the top level that you had mentioned. I understand you've got new leadership at kind of at each of the primary vertical areas. Just curious kind of maybe just diving in a little deeper, what exactly those new leaders will be focusing on that's maybe different or in addition to kind of how each of those business units were kind of being run before and sort of what the kind of 30, 60, 90 kind of day plan is for those folks?

Ashley Johnson

Analyst · JMP. Your line is now open.

Yeah, thanks for the question. Again, it is really more of taking the work that we started last year and actually just moving a bit deeper and more aggressively towards aligning around our customers. So, a year ago, we talked about the fact that we were aligning our sales teams to these customer verticals. So, that was really kind of focused on our AEs and kind of how our balance of investment was on that line. What we've done is that really we should be looking at a broader commercial organization and alignment as well as our product teams and how we are thinking about the alignment of those resources behind the demands that are going to serve the broadest array of customers and meet the needs of these customers very directly. So, that's really the nature of the organizational model changes. And in terms of the leadership, so these are all people that existed in the company and were strong leaders already in their own right, partnering sales and product to lead these initiatives to really focus on accelerating the growth of the book of business. And so that means really thinking about the renewals of existing accounts, the opportunities to expand them, and where the most robust pipeline is that we can be targeting both our sales execution and our product development strategies too. So, that's the nature of the organizational changes. And with that, quite honestly, we were able to drive a lot of efficiencies and frankly achieve upside on those efficiencies versus what we had expected coming into the quarter.

Will Marshall

Analyst · JMP. Your line is now open.

And if I can only add that I think the teams have got going really quickly and with a singular focus of growing the book of business for their vertical across sales and product, as Ashley was just saying, they've really got going quite quickly. And I think it will, as I said both lead to better growth and to operational efficiency that we've seen.

Trevor Walsh

Analyst · JMP. Your line is now open.

Great. Thanks, both. And just one last one for me -- yeah, just one last one for me. So, Ashley, just around the guidance for 3Q and kind of beyond, I know you've talked previously about just challenges around especially the larger government contracts and getting the timing of those. I'm just -- you've talked about the pipeline as well, but then in this quarter, you actually -- it looks like between the NATO deal and some of the other seven-figure contracts that you mentioned, it looks like some of those are actually coming to fruition. So, as you think about the guidance, is it now kind of a -- is it the rev-rec around just getting those completed contracts operational and that's what kind of the lack of visibility on that front is kind of gumming up the works a little bit to kind of give a little bit broader kind of full-year guide. I'm just curious kind of where the kind of the challenges remain as far as kind of the outlook on the top line.

Ashley Johnson

Analyst · JMP. Your line is now open.

Yeah, it's actually consistent with what I spoke about even at the beginning of the year in terms of having a lot of different ways that we can kind of get to the number and the balance of those opportunities then drive different outcomes in terms of specifically what you referenced. So, revenue recognition, but also the mix of partners and therefore the impact on gross margin and obviously that flows through the rest of the P&L. So, we’re obviously progressing through the year and getting a better sense for how these deals are coming together and what we need to do to close them. But until we are in a position where we know exactly what the mix of business is going to be driving revenue in the quarter, it just makes it challenging to give that full year guidance. But as you noted, we had a number of really great wins in the quarter. We continue to have really strong pipeline for Q3. So, we remain very optimistic, especially with these new business leaders and being able to re-accelerate the growth. But at this point, kind of taking it a quarter at a time until we've got a bit more predictability and ability to call with confidence the full year number all the way through the P&L.

Trevor Walsh

Analyst · JMP. Your line is now open.

Great. Appreciate the questions and thanks.

Ashley Johnson

Analyst · JMP. Your line is now open.

Yeah.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Jason Gursky with Citi. Your line is now open.

Jason Gursky

Analyst · Citi. Your line is now open.

Yeah. Good afternoon. Hi, Will, you talk a little bit more about the pilots that you were doing for the US government, the D&I customers there? I know you, I gave some comments in response to a question earlier, but I think some more detail might be helpful. How did those pilots go? What did you learn? What did your customers learn, and how does this become a larger opportunity for you and when might that happen?

Will Marshall

Analyst · Citi. Your line is now open.

Yeah, happy to speak a little bit more. Obviously, I gave a little bit of color on this. Firstly, the pilots earlier this year were broadly successful and we expect more to come. As I mentioned, I think one way to think about what they are getting value at is actually an example we gave in our slides with the New York Times article that came out where investigative journalists, often we come to [quote to the] (ph) specific use cases with the DOD and intelligence, Defence intelligence customers. But actually, what the New York Times did with an investigative journalist is somewhat analogous. They are looking at China and found these new settlements, villages that China has put sometimes in disputed territory between China and India, China and Bhutan and other countries, and exposed a new threat that the world didn't know about. So that is exactly using AI on top of our broad area scan to find new threats. And that's what these are pilots are doing. The potential is a peripheral vision to help find unknown, unknowns for the intelligence community. And that's a big thing. That's why we have very strong demand signal, but also new programs and budgets, as you're aware, Jason take time to establish and that's what we are working on with them.

Jason Gursky

Analyst · Citi. Your line is now open.

Okay, So this is, you know, multiple quarter, multiple year kind of process to bring this to a meaningful contract value. I'm just trying to get a little bit better understanding. And then, Ashley I think it'd be helpful, if you don't mind maybe providing some insight on what revenue level you think the company needs to achieve in order to get to cash flow. Breakeven thanks.

Will Marshall

Analyst · Citi. Your line is now open.

Yeah, I mean, I would say it is a multiple quarter effort. That is the sort of time frame we can expect to see ramp actually on the --.

Ashley Johnson

Analyst · Citi. Your line is now open.

Yeah, I mean, my color on cash flow breakeven will be consistent with what I’ve said in prior quarters. So, you know, obviously, first order priority is making sure that we are maintaining a cost structure such that regardless of the top-line, we are always in a position of maintaining a healthy balance sheet. So as we think about, you know, moving first to the objective of EBITDA profitability and then bringing down cash burn by expanding EBITDA profitability to offset capex and then managing Capex, either by kind of being in more of a maintenance CapEx mode, as opposed to right now we're in an investing CapEx mode to ensure that we're preserving cash and not putting ourselves in a situation where we need to raise outside capital. So it is a combination of continuing to drive operation efficiencies, focusing on revenue acceleration, and pacing our CapEx investments so that we are existing with the cash that we've got on our balance sheet today. Any follow up questions? Jason?

Jason Gursky

Analyst · Citi. Your line is now open.

Oh, no, sorry. I had thanked you for the two and thought you were limiting it there. So, all set. Thank you.

Ashley Johnson

Analyst · Citi. Your line is now open.

Great. Thanks, Jason.

Operator

Operator

Our next question today comes from Jeff Van Rhee with Craig-Hallum. Your line is now open.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Hi, This is Daniel on for Jeff. Thanks for taking the questions I wanted to ask on the [RIF] (ph) and how to model that. So the 10% RIF last year, just because of other expenses coming in overall, OpEx stayed pretty flat this year. Obviously a bigger RIF with the 17% or the $35 million. Just any thoughts on how much other expense will be coming in offsetting that, or just sort of on a net basis, how to think about what we should be modeling taking out?

Ashley Johnson

Analyst

Yeah, really good question, Daniel. So we're seeing most of the savings in salary and payroll, as I outlined, and we'll see the majority of that, you know, most of that in Q3, and obviously Q4 is when that should be pretty clean. This will be partially offset by less contra R&D expenses, as the Tanager program is coming to completion. So that funded R&D offset will decrease pretty substantially. But there is also some seasonality in some other expenses, in particular sales and marketing in G&A, as you know, depending on the timing of new bookings and certain key renewals that can impact the timing of commission expense and then audit timing can impact the recognition of those fees. The other factor, just to keep in mind, is the mix of partner revenue. So, as I mentioned, that drove upside for us in the quarter where we saw less partner expenses in the quarter relative to other business that was closed and revenue recognized. And as that flexes quarter-to-quarter, that can cause some changes. But the savings were realized across largely sales and marketing and R&D, with a little bit in COGS and G&A as well.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Okay. And then just maybe, as you talk about partners, to stick on the partner theme, gross margin is great to see them coming in at 57%. I think the expectation was around 52%. Just, I take it, on the driver of that, if that's the partner revenue, that that would be sort of a several million dollars revenue delta between what was expected from partners and what came in. So if that didn't come in, just what was some of the strength this quarter that you saw that filled that?

Ashley Johnson

Analyst

Again, it just depends on whether we sign as the prime, and so therefore we're taking gross revenue and recognizing the partner expense, or whether we are coming in as not prime and delivering just a pure data deal. Sometimes it is some of the core business that we just have direct relationships with expanding. So again, the mix of business in our pipeline is quite varied. And then the nature of how we close that business can also change mid deal depending on what makes sense for the end customer and for our partners. That's why it is a little bit hard to predict. And so we try to make sure as we are providing guidance, that we're doing so with an eye to what those range of outcomes can be.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

And then last for me, just one question for you, Will, on Pelican, just any thoughts on it sounds like some pretty significant changes being made to Pelican 2. That program still early stages and undergoing R&D. Any thoughts on how we should peg our anticipations for that? In terms of this becoming commercially viable, is this sort of more of a ‘25 or a ‘26 thing? Just what's sort of the timetable for that program to mature?

Will Marshall

Analyst

Great question. I mean, look, Pelican 2, which we're excited to be shipping to launch pad here in a couple of months, is. Yeah, it is -- first, an R&D satellite, but we do hope to convert that to an operational satellite that would be able to start producing real data for customers, and so -- and then going on from beyond that, we have a rapid deployment of future Pelicans that enable us to then carry on the SkySat work, but then make all these improvements that I've mentioned, the better resolution being one of them. But also the improved capacity per satellite, the improved agility, and then most of all, this faster time to get the data down, all of which we think can improve customer value.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Thanks for that, Will. Thanks, guys.

Ashley Johnson

Analyst

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Noah Poponak with Goldman Sachs. Your line is now open.

Anthony Valentini

Analyst · Goldman Sachs. Your line is now open.

Hey, guys. We got Anthony Valentini on for Noah. Thanks for taking my question.

Ashley Johnson

Analyst · Goldman Sachs. Your line is now open.

No problem. Hi, Anthony.

Anthony Valentini

Analyst · Goldman Sachs. Your line is now open.

I'm curious if you guys do any work on the economic indicator monitoring program with the NGA that was awarded a few years ago.

Will Marshall

Analyst · Goldman Sachs. Your line is now open.

So, we’re applying with the various work with the NGA in the area that is EIM is the previous one. Luno is the next vehicle that will go into that direction of using analytics on top of satellite data. And that is a whole suite of opportunities and we're applying for the ones that are best fit for our differentiation. And by the way, both some direct and some subcontractor, there is a lot of opportunities there, especially for PlanetScope with AI on top. But I think Luno is now the new place, which took over from EIM.

Anthony Valentini

Analyst · Goldman Sachs. Your line is now open.

Okay. Yeah. And I guess I'm curious if Tanager the capabilities there, if Luno, that program that's going to be replacing EIM, if that opens up capabilities for you guys and for the customer, that makes your bid more competitive.

Will Marshall

Analyst · Goldman Sachs. Your line is now open.

Well, 100% it opens up capabilities. I mean, in fact, stepping back a bit, when we first launched the SuperDove Satellites, the reason we moved to [eight] (ph) spectral band is and then called that fleet, the first machine learning first fleet is that -- as you add more spectral bands, there's different ways of pulling out what's going on -- on the ground, even if you can't see it in the visual RGB imagery. Hyperspectral is that [plus] (ph) with 400 spectral bands. But I would also say it's early days. And I think Luno is more focused on the more classical, let's say few band or multi-spectral, as we call it, imagery than hyperspectral imagery. But in the longer-term or medium to longer term, I certainly think it's a machine learning field actually that dataset.

Anthony Valentini

Analyst · Goldman Sachs. Your line is now open.

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

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Caleb Henry with Quilty Space. Your line is now open.

Caleb Henry

Analyst · Quilty Space. Your line is now open.

Hi. Thanks for taking the questions. One just about growth internationally. I think you had mentioned earlier that growth is going faster in Latin America and Asia Pacific, kind of outside of North America. Can you talk any about the reasons for that, why you're seeing that growth? And does that look mainly like pilots or are you seeing kind of longer contractual commitments?

Will Marshall

Analyst · Quilty Space. Your line is now open.

There's many things going on. I mean, we've got a number of large deals in defense and intelligence around the world. We mentioned the new international defense intelligence expansion, civil government work. And I mentioned a number in my prepared remarks. We had Bahrain doing that urban monitoring, INRA from Bolivia, IGAC from Colombia. And I can mention a few more. I mean, we've got -- the government of New South Wales has been doing some new work with us, establishing new use cases along the line of urban housing and protecting wildlife. We are doing some work with Kazakhstan, which is also the civil government doing some work in disaster response. There's a lot of different use cases emerging in civil government around the world, and they're quite pioneering. They're pushing the boundaries. And then some of that is really repeatable in other governments as well. So the opportunity there in the civil government space is also really huge and pulling us.

Ashley Johnson

Analyst · Quilty Space. Your line is now open.

Yeah. If I could just add on just from, as I mentioned, my experience down in Colombia, the product to market fit is incredibly strong in a lot of these regions that are, quite frankly, much more focused on sustainability initiatives than we might be here in North America in terms of wanting to be able to account for natural capital in places like South America, Latin America, Africa, et cetera. Some of the sustainability initiatives that you see European governments implementing, wanting to both enforce -- implement incentives and enforce penalties. These are a direct fit with our broad area management solutions. The need to be able to cover these broad areas, identify anomalies, identify changes and put programs in place that are supported by the solutions that we have. So, I do think that that is one of the drivers of the success we're seeing in our international markets.

Caleb Henry

Analyst · Quilty Space. Your line is now open.

Okay, thanks. I think maybe one clarification on that is just looking at the Planet backlog and it looks like it's down a little bit. I was wondering if that's because of the influx of kind of new players from around the world that are like trialing the service before going on to longer-term programs. Is there a connection between those two or no?

Ashley Johnson

Analyst · Quilty Space. Your line is now open.

Not really. When I look under the covers at backlog, it's a combination of timing of renewals, some larger multi-year contracts that are just burning their way down. So not up for renewal yet. It is truly a mix of things that factor into that. If you look at backlog on a next 12 month basis, it is relatively flat quarter-to-quarter. So, it is not indicative of anything competitive or otherwise. That's certainly worth calling out.

Caleb Henry

Analyst · Quilty Space. Your line is now open.

Okay. And then if I can do just one more on Pelican. Has Planet settled on a size for the Pelican fleet? I want to say in an FCC filing, it was 30 or 32 satellites, but I realized that it's not always. That's usually an upper limit. So is that the target, or have you settled on a different number?

Will Marshall

Analyst · Quilty Space. Your line is now open.

That's what -- you understand exactly right. I mean, we did the filings up to 32 satellites. The great thing of having this in house is the ability to throttle that to demand. First and foremost, it's getting to the SkySat replenishment as that fleet comes to the end of its life. And the second thing is adding all these new capabilities that I listed earlier. And the third thing is expanding to more frequency and coverage that would be enabled by satellites beyond that. So that's how we think about it. And the other exciting aspect of that fleet, if I can just throw it in there, is we constantly iterate our technology in space. And so, as I mentioned, we're flying the NVIDIA processor on this Pelican-2 next mission. That enables AI edge compute. And that shows the ability of us to take the latest capability and put it into a space, that will continue through the mission. Even just the 36 SuperDoves that we launched, we included a tech demo that's looking at next generation sensors for that Medium Res fleet. So, we're constantly iterating to get better and better data.

Caleb Henry

Analyst · Quilty Space. Your line is now open.

Okay, thank you.

Ashley Johnson

Analyst · Quilty Space. Your line is now open.

Thanks, Caleb.

Operator

Operator

Thank you all for your questions. That will conclude the Q&A session. So I will pass the conference over to Will Marshall, CEO, for closing remarks.

Will Marshall

Analyst

Well, just to close up, we're really pleased with the progress in Q2. If I could just summarize, firstly, we saw the strong growth with government customers, with some exciting new customers during the quarter. Secondly, we restructured the business towards our industry-aligned operating model, which we expect to better support growth. Thirdly, we delivered solid financials, including the strong expansion in gross margin, the strong progress in EBITDA as we marched towards our adjusted EBITDA profitability goal for Q4. And finally, we are excited about the launch, of course, of 36 SuperDoves and our first Tanager spacecraft, marking our foray into the hyperspectral market. We see a fair bit of growth potential in the near-term via large government deals and in the medium term via the commercial sector with our Planet Insights Platform and our partner ecosystem. So overall, we're excited by the progress we're making and executing against our plan, against these growth catalysts. So thanks all for tuning in.

Operator

Operator

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