Photo: Spire Global.

Spire Global released its first-ever quarterly financials since going public on Wednesday, reporting 33% more revenue in the third quarter of 2021 than the same time period last year. Revenue was $9.6 million for the quarter. 

Spire said it’s year-over-year revenue increase was driven by an increase in annual recurring revenue (ARR), which it defines as a customer that has a contract that is either a binding and renewable agreement, or a binding multi-year contract. In Q3, ARR increased 51% year-over-year to $45.2 million, with a sequential jump of $8.6 million from the prior quarter. Spire added 92 net ARR customers during the quarter and now reports 225 ARR customers. 

Spire collects data from space that is sold in solutions for maritime, aviation, and weather, and also offers space services, in which customers can put virtual or physical payloads on Spire satellites. However, the company did not specify revenue per solution segment. 

Third quarter GAAP net loss was $32.7 million. Third quarter non-GAAP net loss, which excludes stock-based compensation, merger and acquisition related expenses, other unusual one-time costs, change in fair value of warrant liabilities, and other income or expense net was $16.3 million. 

Year to date, Spire reports $28.4 million in revenue, compared to $21.2 million in revenue for the same time period in 2020. 

The company maintained its full year 2021 guidance of revenue between $40 million and $42 million, which was lowered in July from projected revenue of $54 million, partially due to contract delays. 

“I want to reiterate our confidence in Spire on the cusp of an enormous opportunity in the market for space-based data and analytics,” CEO Peter Platzer said on a call with investors on Wednesday. “The market today might be somewhat nascent. The speed of development and the adoption of new applications is accelerating. We believe that we’re years ahead of the competition with our fully deployed constellation of proprietary ground station network, and our integrated data and analytics offering.” 

Spire is also in the midst of acquiring exactEarth, its first acquisition since going public through a special purpose acquisition (SPAC) merger in August. exactEarth sells maritime space data and has a more than 150 customers and more than $18 million in revenue over the past year. Spire expects the transaction to close in the late fourth quarter or no later than the first quarter of 2022. 

Spire stock is trading at $5.51 and was up about 3.3% on Thursday after the results were released Wednesday. 

Cestrian Space Select, a research firm focused on space and technology sectors, called Spire stock a compelling long-term buy and sees “no particular sense in the market’s treatment of Spire stock,” compared to other space SPACs Rocket Lab, Redwire, AST SpaceMobile.

“Spire Global is the space stock most folks have still never heard of. And that’s likely because it is that most boring of things, an actual business selling actual services to actual customers and then collecting actual money for the privilege. Yawn,” Cestrain Space Select wrote of Spire. “No ‘hey mobiles in space, yay!’ per AST SpaceMobile no live-streamed pyrotechnics per Rocket Lab and no will-they-won’t-they per Astra Space. Instead, SPIR is a rather humdrum affair selling Earth Observation data to a mixture of government and enterprise customers.”