Planet has entered into an agreement to acquire VanderSat, a provider of advanced Earth data and analytics.
Under the agreement, Planet is set to acquire VanderSat for approximately $28 million, which consists of $18 million in shares of Class A common stock of Planet Labs PBC, valued at a per share price equal to the closing price of Class A common stock of Planet Labs PBC on the NYSE on the last trading day prior to the consummation of the acquisition of VanderSat, and approximately $10 million in cash.
Vandersat’s products help customers better measure and understand water management and crop health in major markets. Planet intends to leverage VanderSat’s technologies and products in further pursuit of bringing to market next-generation solutions that combine the best of commercial and public satellite data to provide clear and actionable information to help industries, non-profits, and governments around the world.
VanderSat has expertise in providing insights to customers by drawing from NASA, ESA and JAXA satellite data and has built a suite of products that report on key conditions on the Earth’s surface, such as soil moisture, land surface temperature, vegetation optical depth, and biomass. VanderSat’s unique algorithms deliver daily, global data products with great accuracy, unhindered by changing cloud-cover and atmospheric conditions.
At Planet, one of the company’s goals is to bridge the gap between real-world problems and the complexity of remote-sensing science. VanderSat is another step toward that goal with their advanced analytics. Planet believes their products will accelerate and expand the firm’s position in one of the company’s most important verticals – agriculture – and help mature the offerings for other,s such as insurance, civil government and finance. For example, easier-to-consume data can enable modeling to help financial institutions and insurers quantify climate impacts on water availability and crop production.
This transaction is expected to close in Q4 2021 and is subject to customary closing conditions, as well as the closing of Planet’s business combination with dMY Technology Group, Inc. IV (“dMY IV”). This will be Planet’s fourth acquisition (BlackBridge ‘15, Terra Bella ‘17 and Boundless ‘19).
The VanderSat team is based in Haarlem, Netherlands, and will further increase Planet’s commitment to the European ecosystem. The entire team, including their founder, Dr. Richard de Jeu and CEO Dr. van Leeuwen, will be joining Planet.
“VanderSat is a mission-driven company with the goal to serve one billion hectares of land in 2024. By joining Planet, our mission and impact will be dramatically accelerated and together, we aim to reach that goal in 2022,” said Dr. Thijs van Leeuwen, CEO of VanderSat.
“We’re thrilled to be welcoming the VanderSat team to Planet. We expect VanderSat’s analytics and industry expertise will help Planet provide solutions ‘up the stack’ to bridge the gap from complex remote-sensing science to products that offer improved data to the ecosystem and our customers. And when one combines their new data with Planet’s, the value is far greater than the sum of its parts,” said Will Marshall, CEO and Co-Founder of Planet. “We believe VanderSat’s products will add value in Planet’s core verticals of agriculture, and civil government, and will help us open up to others such as insurance and banking, to help grow our business.”