After jumping 14% in sympathy with a powerful earnings report from Rocket Lab(NASDAQ: RKLB) yesterday, shares of fellow space stock Planet Labs(NYSE: PL) maintained its upward momentum in early-Thursday trading, rising another 3.2% through 11:35 a.m. ET.
Strange as it may sound, if you own Planet Labs stock, you have France to thank for that.
Planet Labs' new contract
This morning, Planet announced an "expansion" of its relationship with French "digital farming company" Abelio. As Planet explained, it has been providing agricultural data and products to Abelio since 2018, but this new agreement will triple the amount of Planet data available to its customer, covering "agricultural data across France."
Abelio uses data and images from Planet's constellation of satellites as inputs for its AI models and algorithms, yielding "time-sensitive insights for precision farming." (That's right, investors. Planet Labs is an artificial intelligence stock now).
With this data in hand, Abelio can better advise its customers as to which fields need more nitrogen fertilizer, for example, and how much, reducing nitrogen consumption by 5% to 10% on average -- and saving farmers money. Expanding the data available should enable Abelio to generate similar insights into "irrigation management, crop monitoring, disease detection, and weed detection," at the same time as it generates more revenue for Planet Labs.
What this means for Planet Labs
Planet Labs did not reveal the value of the contract expansion, nor how much money it was getting from Abelio before the expansion. Presumably, this means the value of this single contract is not material to the company.
Still, with Planet Labs' annual revenue growth rate having sharply decelerated in recent years, falling from a 25% average over the last three years to just half that over the last year, every little bit of incremental growth helps. Today's small share price gain is probably justified for that reason alone. But with most analysts predicting Planet Labs is still years away from profitability, investors should still be careful about investing in this particular space stock.
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Rich Smith has positions in Planet Labs Pbc and Rocket Lab USA. The Motley Fool recommends Rocket Lab USA. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
