Planet Labs PBC (NYSE:PL) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Edison Yu: Understood. And just a follow-up actually several questions on the financials, obviously very, very strong flow through. I know you said, you mentioned that part of it was kind of a onetime upside, I think bringing early renewal or something. Could you maybe just give us a sense of, I guess, what happened there? Why would it kind of repeat? And then I think you also mentioned that there was a deal that kind of slipped after the quarter and any sense of what the rates would have looked like, if that actually fell in the quarter? Thanks.

Ashley Fieglein Johnson: Yes. So in terms of the one-time revenue that I referenced in my remarks, that was a four-year deal that had a couple of renewal options after year two and year three. And just based on the accounting treatment, as it relates to the contract that required analyzing the revenue recognition over the term and understanding where we are on that revenue recognition versus the full contract size. So I’m not an accountant by background, but the team worked with the auditors to do an analysis on where we are in that, it resulted in a one-time revenue recognition in the quarter on a net basis, it was about $1.5 million impact to revenue. So obviously that is significant. So I wanted to make sure to call that out.

Even without that, obviously, we would have come in at the high end or just above the high end of our range. So – but that was – that’s what I was referencing in that part of the remarks with respect to the delayed renewal and that also as you know, had the opposite impact in the quarter where – when renewal comes in late and that’s revenue that we miss out on. So had that come in on time, obviously, net dollar retention rate would have been higher in the quarter. RPOs would have been higher and revenues would have been higher. And so that underscores the importance of on-time renewals and it’s something that we’re very focused on internally.

Edison Yu: Awesome. Thanks for the color.

Operator: Thank you, Mr. Yu. The next question is from the line of Josh Sullivan with The Benchmark Company. You may proceed.

Josh Sullivan: Good evening. Nice quarter here.

Will Marshall: Thank you.

Ashley Fieglein Johnson: Thank you.

Josh Sullivan: As far as the net dollar retention, just given the comments on more customers scrutiny of spend. Do you think you’ll be able to sustain this kind of level or do you think you might see some of those newer renewables extend more often?

Ashley Fieglein Johnson: Yes. I think across the Board, the broader customer success team and the investments we have made have given us really good visibility into both the renewals and the ability to drive expansion. And we aim to be a business that operates in kind of the best-in-class net dollar retention rate levels north of 120%. Right now, we’re on track for that. And we think that the investments that we’ve been making both in the product and usability of our products as well as with the teams that are working with our customers to drive that value proposition is having that impact and it should be sustainable. In terms of the cautionary note about the headwinds basically I could say, we’re not immune to the macroeconomic environment.

And so we are working with our customers to understand whether there is other ways to scope our relationships with them to continue to drive value. But the relationships remain strong and obviously the results in the quarter are speaking for themselves.

Will Marshall: Yes, I could just add that, yes, that’s why we’re seeing a little bit more budget tightening. But also at the same time in some of our commercial side is, but at the same time we just highlighted a bunch of new commercial sign-ups. So it’s a mixed story there. But overall, we’re continuing to grow even on the commercial side year-on-year. And if I step back a little bit more, there is still the secular tailwinds of digital transformation and sustainability transformation are really driving excitement here. And so I remain bullish on the commercial potential in the long-term, no matter what. And you can see by these three strategic partners leaning in another example of again they wouldn’t do that if this was a small example, a small opportunity, they’re only leaning with us a significant one. So I think that’s a recognition of the opportunity from them as well. So we remain bullish on this in the long-run.

Josh Sullivan: Great. And then just the comment on the timing of procurement in the quarter, how should we think of the cadence of those layering back-end?

Ashley Fieglein Johnson: You’re asking about on the spend side?

Josh Sullivan: Yes, I believe you made a comment just on there was some timing of procurements in the quarter. Just curious how we should expect those coming back?

Ashley Fieglein Johnson: Yes. As I said, I anticipate that we will catch-up over the next couple of quarters. We are working closely with the teams to understand which are the – we’ve talked about this a bit at our Analyst Day, which are those long lead-time items where we see there could be risks. And so we want to mitigate any risks in the future and which are those where we’re actually feeling quite comfortable that procurement will not be problematic when we need it. We prefer to operate very agile as it relates to procurement. So that we can be judicious with our spend and our vertical integration actually gives us a lot of flexibility on that front. But the lower spend in the quarter we do anticipate will catch up in the next couple of quarters.

Josh Sullivan: Got it. Thank you for the time.

Ashley Fieglein Johnson: Thank you.