On September 3, Planet reported record quarterly revenue of $116.1 million, up 58 percent from a year earlier, with adjusted EBITDA of $13.9 million against $6.4 million in the year-earlier quarter and positive non-GAAP earnings of two cents a share. The GAAP net loss narrowed to $9.4 million from $22.6 million. The executive who reported those numbers takes the Satellite Innovation stage at Silicon Valley Space Week in October, on a panel about Germany.
Ashley Fieglein Johnson is President and Chief Financial Officer of Planet Labs PBC, the San Francisco Earth observation company listed on the New York Stock Exchange as PL. Planet announced her as chief financial officer on March 9, 2020. She holds both titles now: as President she oversees business execution including go-to-market operations, product delivery, legal and regulatory affairs and corporate engineering, and as CFO she works on scaling operational infrastructure and aligning financial strategy with the company’s market goals. She came from Wealthfront, where she was Chief Financial Officer and Chief Operating Officer, and before that ServiceSource, where she was Chief Financial Officer, Chief Customer Officer and interim Chief Executive Officer. She chairs the audit committee on the board of Voltus, Inc., and is a trustee of AnitaB.org. She holds a Master of Arts in International Policy Studies and a Bachelor of Arts in International Relations, both from Stanford University.
Her seat on a German panel follows Planet’s money. On July 1, 2025, Planet Labs Germany GmbH signed a multi-year agreement with the German government worth 240 million euros, covering dedicated capacity and direct downlink on Planet’s Pelican satellites over European regions plus PlanetScope and SkySat data and AI-enabled maritime domain awareness. Revenue recognition was expected to begin in January 2026 and ramp over several years. That September the company said it would begin building Pelican satellites in Berlin, an investment it described as a significant eight figures, lifting its German headcount by nearly half and meant to double Pelican production capacity. The European civil business has grown alongside it, and Planet announced a one-year, multi-million-dollar agricultural data contract with the Scottish government in July. Two questions sit underneath all of it. Whether the demand holds is one, and the company guided third quarter revenue to between $101 million and $105 million, below the $116.1 million it just booked. What a European sovereignty customer actually controls is the other. When Planet restricted Middle East imagery this spring at the request of the U.S. government, the shutter control provision Congress wrote into law in 1992 was never invoked, because the request alone was enough, a point the series took up with Robert Cardillo of Planet Federal.
Johnson joins “Trends and Players in Germany’s New Space Sector: An Insider’s View” on Tuesday, October 27, from 3:05 p.m. to 3:50 p.m. in the Hahn Auditorium at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View. The program lists no moderator. The other panelists are Rainer Mueller, Senior Manager at Germany Trade & Invest, and Dennis Wilkens, Director of USA Investor Consulting at the same agency, which also presents the session. GTAI is the German federal government’s economic development agency, and its mandate covers investor consulting and marketing Germany as a business location. The 45 minutes run on the Satellite Innovation track, following a market brief on Starlink’s dominance in broadband and direct-to-device with Dr. Tim Farrar of TMF Associates, and they are the last item before the afternoon break.
Silicon Valley Space Week runs Tuesday, October 27 through Thursday, October 29 at the Computer History Museum, with Satellite Innovation across the first two days and the MilSat Symposium across the last two. Johnson’s panel comes on the opening afternoon. Revenue on the German contract was due to begin landing in January and to ramp for years past the conference.
Germany Trade & Invest, which presents this session and employs both of its other panelists, is a sponsor of Silicon Valley Space Week, which SatNews produces.
