Planet Labs PBC heads into its fiscal Q2 earnings release — scheduled for September 3 — after losing more than 10% in a single week, yet options traders are betting on a bounce rather than bracing for further pain.
The clearest signal is in the options market, and it runs against the price action. Call demand has surged relative to puts, pushing the put/call ratio to just 0.28 — nearly two and a half standard deviations below its 20-day average of 0.33. That is close to the 52-week low of 0.17, making this one of the most call-skewed setups of the past year. With the stock falling 11% on the week to close at $19.26, the gap between what options traders are pricing and what the tape is doing is the most interesting tension heading into the print.
Short positioning adds another layer to that contrast. Bears are building, but not aggressively. Short interest edged up 3.4% on the week to 9.1% of the free float — roughly 26.1 million shares. That is down from peaks above 10% seen in late July, a sign that the earlier short squeeze that drove the stock to its highs has already played out. The lending market is relaxed: cost to borrow has fallen sharply, dropping more than 30% on the week to just 0.31%. Availability is exceptionally loose at over 1,000%, meaning there is abundant capacity for new shorts to enter if the print disappoints. ORTEX's short score sits at a benign 47 — mid-range, neither crowded nor a squeeze candidate.
The Street remains firmly bullish in aggregate, though the picture is more nuanced up close. Seven analysts carry buy-equivalent ratings, with a mean price target around $38.70 — implying roughly 100% upside from current levels, a gap that reflects either deep conviction or stale assumptions. Goldman Sachs is the notable outlier, holding a Neutral with a $25 target set in July — close to where the stock actually trades today. Bulls at Wedbush and Needham carried targets of $50-$53 after last quarter's earnings blowout in June, when the stock initially jumped before selling off more than 25% over the following week. That prior reaction is worth noting: the June 4 print produced a brutal five-day move of -21%, despite what appeared to be strong initial news flow. Alphabet holds nearly 10% of shares outstanding as a strategic investor — a meaningful anchor, but one that has not added to its position recently.
The earnings history here is unambiguous on one point: the stock moves violently after results. The last three prints produced next-day moves of -6%, +1.4%, and -25%. The five-day patterns were uniformly negative — down 20%, 8%, and 21% respectively. The backlog of $906 million (up 72% year-over-year) and deepening US Defense and Intelligence relationships give bulls their narrative. Bears point to ongoing losses — the EV/EBITDA multiple at 169x reflects a company still burning cash while investing in next-generation satellites — and the market's persistent scepticism about how much commercial buyers will pay for geospatial data. Closest peer BlackSky Technology fell nearly 15% on the week, and Spire Global dropped 12%, so the weakness is sector-wide rather than Planet Labs-specific — but that context offers limited comfort heading into a binary event.
With options traders positioned for a recovery and the earnings tape overwhelmingly negative over the past year, the September 3 print is less about whether the backlog is growing and more about whether management can show a credible path to profitability that justifies a stock trading at a 100% discount to the median analyst target.
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