BlackSky Technology announces upcoming 2026 Investor Day

The road to Investor Day

The fourth quarter of 2024 to the third quarter of 2026 · latest results November 5, 2026

Quarter by quarter

Revenue and EPS link to the filing they come from. Growth is against the same quarter a year earlier; growth and gross margin are calculated by Opportunity Dispatch from the filed figures. ^† Worked out from the 10-K, less the first three quarters. ^‡ From the results release. — Not available from the filings.

Scroll sideways for every column.

A long climb and a sharp pullback

BlackSky Technology holds its investor day in New York on December 2, 2026, after reporting on November 5 the strongest quarter in its history. The shares closed at $4.46 on September 23, 2024, and at $51.63 on May 28, 2026. On November 6, 2026, the day after the third-quarter results, they closed at $21.33. That was far above the 2024 level but less than half the May close.

Three threads explain where the company stands. Gen-3, its third generation of satellites, takes 35-centimeter images and has turned the subscription business around. Share and debt sales have rebuilt the balance sheet. And mission solutions, the business of building satellites that governments own, is drawing larger customers.

How Gen-3 turned the results

2025 was uneven. Growth early in the year came from progress on a new contract to build up India's commercial Earth observation capabilities. By the third quarter, revenue reflected an expected cut in BlackSky's Electro-Optical Commercial Layer contract with the National Reconnaissance Office, the U.S. spy satellite agency, as well as other uncertainty over U.S. government budgets. In July 2025 BlackSky lowered its revenue guidance for the year to between $105 million and $130 million. Revenue for the year came in at $106.6 million. Backlog, the value of contracted work not yet booked as revenue, ended the year at $345 million, up 32%.

The first quarter of 2026 was measured against a period that included $9.0 million from a mission solutions milestone, which explains the dip in the table. From the second quarter, revenue grew quickly. The lead came from space-based intelligence and AI services, the subscription imagery and analytics business, which reached a record $32.7 million in the third quarter. BlackSky put the gain down to faster customer demand for Gen-3. It said lower costs as a share of revenue reflected the operating leverage of that high-margin business. Adjusted EBITDA, a non-GAAP measure of earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, amortization and certain other items, was a record $12.8 million, a 29.9% margin. Net income was $18.5 million. The release credits strong operating results and changes in the value of derivatives tied to the company's warrants and other equity instruments.

The balance sheet changed alongside the results. In July 2025 BlackSky completed an upsized $185 million offering of convertible notes. In the second quarter of 2026 it raised $150 million by selling 3.6 million shares through its at-the-market program, and gross proceeds from those share sales reached $165.0 million over the first nine months of the year. Cash, cash equivalents, restricted cash and short-term investments stood at $231.1 million on September 30.

Rivals, budgets and sovereign buyers

The U.S. government market was the weak spot. SpaceNews reported in November 2025 that the administration's fiscal 2026 budget proposal cut the agency's commercial imagery buying by a third. Defense One reported that under that imagery program, Maxar holds the largest share, with BlackSky and Planet smaller.

Rivals are growing in both government and sovereign markets. Planet Labs, which images most of the Earth's land every day at lower resolution, reported record revenue and new contracts with the NGA and Germany in September 2026; the NGA is the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. Earlier in the year Planet had launched Sweden's first sovereign reconnaissance satellite four months after signing the contract. Vantor, the former Maxar Intelligence, has all six of its WorldView Legion satellites in orbit, and in July it launched a 3D imagery service refreshed daily. In radar imaging, ICEYE handed Poland a four-satellite constellation in under a year. Its joint venture with Rheinmetall won a large German military reconnaissance contract.

What management says now

Brian O'Toole, the chief executive, said on the third-quarter call that the company “delivered record financial performance and achieved a major inflection point in our business.” He said the subscription business had passed an annual run rate of $100 million. He also said BlackSky is tracking several billion dollars of potential sales in subscriptions and mission solutions. He described a pilot with SkyFi, an online imagery marketplace, that will supply facility-monitoring insights to Robinhood users.

BlackSky was named exclusive provider of very-high-resolution optical satellites for a $1 billion consortium investment in a 50-satellite constellation serving Europe and the UAE. On the call, the company said only a small initial contract had been signed while definitive agreements were negotiated. Henry Dubois, the chief financial officer, said: “We believe our liquidity and cash position is sufficient to complete our baseline Gen-3 constellation in 2027 with ample cash available to pursue other strategic growth initiatives.”

The latest quarter, the guidance and what to watch

All three businesses grew in the third quarter. Dubois said on the call that mission solutions contributed $4.7 million and advanced technology programs $5.4 million. He said the advanced technology revenue came mainly from government-funded work on AROS, a planned satellite line for wide-area mapping. BlackSky raised its full-year guidance for the second time. It now expects revenue of $140 million to $150 million and adjusted EBITDA of $18 million to $24 million. It kept its guidance for capital spending at $50 million to $60 million. The year began with revenue guidance of $120 million to $145 million, which was raised in May to $130 million to $150 million. Dubois said on the call that total backlog was $355 million, with about $45 million of it expected in the fourth quarter.

Analysts asked why the guidance points to flat or lower adjusted EBITDA in the fourth quarter. O'Toole said satellite deliveries would shift the revenue mix and that pilot programs make subscription revenue lumpy. BlackSky said it will give 2027 guidance in the first quarter. At the investor day, watch for the scope and timing of the consortium program; the partners have not said how the investment will be split. Also watch the pace of Gen-3 launches: on the call, the company said it plans two more this year and an eighth in early 2027. A third question is how much of the services growth comes from recurring subscriptions rather than pilots.