Sales and Marketing: A Strategic Growth Engine for Planet Labs?

For Planet Labs PL, the sales and marketing expenses are an important driver determining profitability, operational efficiency and long-term growth. Planet Labs operates in a technologically complex and mission-critical segment that remains early in its adoption curve across both commercial and government customers. Thus, sales and marketing are not just an expense but a strategic investment required to educate the market, accelerate adoption and fully monetize customer lifetime value.

Being a leading provider of Earth-imaging data and geospatial analytics, operating the largest fleet of Earth-observation satellites globally, sales and marketing expenses make the company’s existence relevant. Sales and marketing play a foundational role in expanding Planet Labs’ total addressable market. Many potential customers are still shifting from static or episodic imagery toward real-time monitoring and analytics-based decision-making. Marketing initiatives help position Planet Labs not merely as an imagery vendor, but as a long-term strategic data partner.

For PL, sales and marketing expenses primarily include costs incurred to market and distribute products.  It accounts for about 30% of the total expense. The company intends to increase its selling and marketing capabilities as it looks to upsell new product features and expand into new market verticals.  Enhanced sales and marketing help increase sales to new and existing customers.

While elevated S&M spending may pressure margins in the near term, these investments are expected to improve sales efficiency, strengthen customer relationships and generate operating leverage over time.

What About Peers?

Like P&L, sales and marketing are central to the growth stories of Rocket Lab RKLB and BlackSky Technology BKSY.

For Rocket Lab, S&M supports long government and commercial sales cycles while enabling cross-selling across launch, spacecraft, and space systems, scaling contracts, and diversifying customers to lift lifetime value. Rocket Lab also relies on S&M to deepen national security relationships. 

For BlackSky Technology, S&M drives customer education and adoption of real-time geospatial intelligence, underpinning contract wins and renewals. BlackSky Technology uses S&M to accelerate the shift toward recurring, analytics-led revenues.

PL’s Price Performance

PL has gained 331.9% in a year, outperforming the industry.

PL’s Expensive Valuation

The stock is overvalued compared with its industry. It is currently trading at a price-to-sales multiple of 21.94, higher than the industry average of 2.32.  

No Estimate Movement for PL

The Zacks Consensus Estimate for PL’s fiscal fourth-quarter 2026 and fiscal first-quarter 2027 EPS witnessed no movement in the last 30 days. The same holds true for fiscal 2026 and 2027.

The consensus estimates for PL’s 2026 and 2027 revenues and EPS indicate year-over-year increases. 

PL stock currently carries a Zacks Rank #5 (Strong Sell). 

You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

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This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).

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