Latest / AST SpaceMobile Podcast / Kook's Weekly - March 1 - From Mañana to Hoy: The AST SpaceMobile Inflection Point

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Kook's Weekly - March 1 - From Mañana to Hoy: The AST SpaceMobile Inflection Point · AST SpaceMobile Podcast

0:06
This is the AST Space Mobile Podcast, just basically from the
0:12
phone, be seamless regardless of where you are.
0:15
We don't want the user even to know that it's connected by
0:17
satellite. Listen, the opportunity that we
0:22
have is very, very, very large. OK.
0:28
Good evening, everyone. Certainly an event, an eventful
0:33
week weekend as as I guess is the the way of 2026.
0:38
But as much as the world changed this week, ASTS did not stay
0:45
standing still either. And this week's events to me
0:49
just magnify the importance of what ASTS is doing.
0:53
And this two or three years ago would have been a a catsy
0:57
hypothetical. We would have been thinking
0:59
about the way the world is evolving and surmising is really
1:04
the only appropriate word. Surmising how ASTS could fit
1:09
into this future and the types of use cases and what a what a
1:14
difference a couple years make. And so while guys like Pollock
1:18
at the company know always knew what the dual use capabilities
1:23
of the company are, we didn't for sure.
1:25
And in fact, we were scoffed, scoffed at by experts saying
1:32
that these were just pipe dreams.
1:34
But here we are this week getting a very important SDA
1:39
contract for tactical satellite communication.
1:43
And this is on top of Golden Dome.
1:46
And so before we really got to dig into this week's
1:50
fundamentals, I I thought Ampan Mann's tweet about surely what's
1:57
changed in 1998 was, was relevant.
2:01
So Needless to say, a lot of things have changed since 1998.
2:06
If I recall, I think I was like trying to sneak and watch Beavis
2:09
and Butt Head, which my parents wouldn't let me back then.
2:14
And we had MTV and I think I would wear acid wash jeans.
2:21
And so, you know, you really can't extrapolate from the 90s
2:27
and get to today without really adjusting quite a few
2:31
assumptions. And so and pan man just points
2:34
out back then 300 million Subs for mobile phones today, 6
2:40
billion. You really only use phones for
2:43
voice and SMS was a a budding feature.
2:47
The daily usage of a phone, 3 minutes.
2:51
I remember almost effectively inventing code so that I could
2:56
minimize my minutes used and do bare minimum communication,
3:00
which for me was generally coordinating sort of how I was
3:04
going to get picked up from school or, you know, if my mom
3:07
is running super late, you know, be able to tell me.
3:10
And so you're always against the clock because your, your plan
3:14
only included, you know, 20 minutes a month or something
3:16
crazy. And the reason why cell phones
3:22
were expensive is you just really haven't had the adoption
3:25
curve yet. And so like most things with
3:27
scale, you start to get lots of efficiencies in every possible
3:32
way, whether it's the the device, the network, really
3:36
everything. And so today people are obvious
3:39
phones and the average speed is no longer measured in kilobits
3:43
per second, but in terms of megabits per second.
3:46
And importantly, as as it relates to what we're doing,
3:52
launch costs are the big why now issue.
3:58
And so I have this documented in my DD doc, which is really sort
4:02
of the, the why now. And this is how I would frame
4:04
the question, which I'm really kind of amazed at how easy
4:10
venture investing can be if you just ask yourself why now?
4:18
And that's what I've seen some of the best venture investors
4:21
ask because it's, you know, always have someone come in your
4:24
office and you have this idea, that idea.
4:26
But then you got to ask yourself, well, there's been
4:28
quite a lot of years for humans. And so why now?
4:34
What is the change factor that gives rise to someone being able
4:37
to have this business? What's what, what is it?
4:42
And here there was quite a few actual why now's the necessary 1
4:48
is just simply the global adoption of mobile phones.
4:52
So yeah, everyone understands that, but that doesn't really
4:56
speak to why a ubiquitous satellite network would happen
5:00
now. So the actual then why now for
5:03
an ASTS is that launch costs have plummeted.
5:06
And so thanks to SpaceX, you've had launch costs go from $28,000
5:09
per kilogram to $5000 a kilogram.
5:13
And we have that outlined in the in the DD doc about what it cost
5:19
Iridium to put up that original constellation and things like
5:22
Teledesic. And so I just always reflect on
5:28
this and just feel like we have so many secular trends, many of
5:33
which are new or nascent, that are happening now and
5:37
intersecting, which is why we would have a license to have a
5:43
big company built. So nothing's for a certain in
5:46
this life, but you want to ask yourself, like, why?
5:51
Why do I have a right to win and have a trillion dollar company?
5:58
What is it that it's happening now that other people didn't see
6:01
or couldn't have seen or couldn't have done preceding
6:06
this time? So I like to MPN man's tweet.
6:09
It's a good way to start off and then the theory is all fun and
6:14
well, but ultimately, as everyone knows, we got to launch
6:16
some stuff and so New Glenn 3 looks like it's getting ready.
6:21
And so the landing platforms are going out and practicing their
6:26
recovery exercises. We've seen the fairing go into
6:31
the mating facility, which is pretty crazy.
6:34
You have the engine skirt driving across the freeway and
6:37
it's just wild. You mentioned you just drive
6:40
along the road and you see this thing trolling on top of you.
6:44
Pretty cool. And so it's happening and we
6:48
have to have, if my effects are straight, we have to have a
6:53
static fire test 1st and then hopefully everything goes well.
6:58
If Artemis is any gauge, sometimes you find some things
7:02
and that's good because you'd rather have a rocket that is
7:06
tested then not, but you got to do the static fire and then
7:10
we'll have our launch. And that could be anytime I
7:13
think in the next two weeks. The question is whether the
7:16
company's going to send out invites for this launch.
7:18
It's a little bit of a riskier ordeal because the time you can
7:20
slip day here, day there versus SpaceX is sort of giving someone
7:25
an invitation for the bullet train.
7:27
You know, you know exactly when it's going to happen.
7:30
So we'll see what they choose to do.
7:33
But in any respect, things must be going pretty well because
7:38
ASTS this week put out a deal with the SDA Satellite
7:42
Development Agency for a $30 million contract as a prime
7:46
contractor. And it's very exciting.
7:50
It's a contract to test and demonstrate the capabilities.
7:55
But one has to think that some things are going well with FM
8:01
one for these deals to start to percolate and it's not
8:05
necessarily the case. I don't know for sure that
8:07
that's true, but you start to add up the timing and FM 1
8:12
unfurled is communicating, FM 2 is sealed in the fairing
8:19
government is really interested. The interesting part about this
8:24
deal is it was a total of $50 million for the budget and ASTS
8:30
took 30 million of the 50 that was available to 18 other
8:35
companies. And so I know how I process that
8:40
information. I start to go, we swept it, 18
8:46
other players and we took 60% of the available budget for this
8:50
test. We must have something special.
8:54
That's the inescapable conclusion that I had and it's
8:58
just very exciting. And this is again, not part of
9:02
Golden Dome. This is for tactical satellite
9:04
communications for the government, which is very
9:09
important. And I'm, I'm sure I speak for a
9:11
lot of people on this call, but it seems like a lifetime ago
9:14
where we had the State of the Union address, which actually
9:16
didn't didn't listen to. But I mean, the number of times
9:20
I was brought to tears thinking about the chief foreign officer.
9:24
Eric, this is lover by the way. I had no idea what CW5 meant.
9:27
So the Internet going crazy on this about like, oh, we saw
9:29
Bigfoot and I'm like, what the hell is it Chief Warrant Officer
9:33
in #5 And then I obviously like every other dude coming off
9:38
their history of Rome and you know, peptide research.
9:43
It's like immediately we all have to go and figure out the
9:47
titling system in the US Army and everyone's now just totally
9:52
man crushing on this idea that there's like a Chief Warrant
9:55
Officer 5, which certainly made me feel like a complete failure
9:58
in life when I see what this guy did.
10:00
It's thank God there's people that ate their Wheaties when
10:03
they were kids and and turned into servicemen and heroes like
10:08
that. But I just couldn't help but
10:11
think all week and even as we speak now, you, you take people
10:14
like that and his his lovely wife doing what he does for our
10:18
country. And could you imagine if you had
10:22
a communication failure, you know, as, as you just got shot
10:26
to pieces in your helicopter and, and still figure out a way
10:29
to deposit the team? And then what we're seeing going
10:31
on in Iran right now. Needless to say, there's been a
10:35
lot of people that have been tracking where those Bluebirds
10:37
were. I don't want to speculate, but
10:38
just goes without saying that they were over Iran.
10:42
And there seemed to be a lot of fancy things happening that
10:45
allowed the US to know quite a few things that apparently the
10:49
Iranians didn't think Israel and the US knew.
10:53
But I get just so motivated when I realized that our work sharing
10:59
due diligence with with everyone on this company, which which has
11:02
a purpose of reducing the cost of capital.
11:04
It's super fun. But if you actually were to say,
11:07
you know, what's the functional output of of all this work, it's
11:12
reduction of cost of capital. And so people like Katzie and
11:16
Pin man, Tanner, Kevin, the whole lot people doing research
11:21
and sharing that research, that's reducing uncertainty.
11:25
And so that drives down discount rate that allows funding that
11:30
allows companies like ASTS to exist.
11:33
And I am really proud that this company does exist.
11:38
And I believe in large part because of this community and
11:41
that I, I really hope it can impact people's lives, For
11:45
example, saving soldiers from from harm's way wherever
11:51
possible. And this is an important goal of
11:55
the military as well. Duh.
11:57
And so when we look at the numbers associated with these
12:01
contracts, they're astonishing. And so there's a table by at
12:07
space Grammys that sums up just sort of what other companies
12:13
have received and, and ASTS, which is blank so far in here.
12:17
But these are big numbers, billion dollars at a clip, which
12:21
brings us to another interesting thing I was talking about with
12:25
with someone on my DMS is just how the stock market is
12:32
increasingly comfortable with very high concentration of U.S.
12:36
government revenues. And now I think that U.S.
12:39
government revenues are going to be a very small minority of the
12:41
St. S S revenues, but they're sure
12:44
pretty important for Palantir. They're definitely really
12:47
important for Starlink and SpaceX.
12:51
And we're going to get the benefit of that.
12:55
People's eyes are going to be really opened if not peeled back
12:58
because of Wall Street's insistence on looking at the
13:01
SpaceX deal. People are going to realize the
13:04
magnitude of these government revenue streams for both
13:09
communication use cases and non communication use cases for
13:12
these next generation Leo satellite constellations.
13:15
I think it's going to be a really big deal.
13:19
And I believe that ASTS, along with SpaceX is absolutely front
13:24
and center in the type of way that an Anderol, at least in
13:29
perception, I actually don't know Anderol's true commercial
13:33
success versus how much I hope they're successful because
13:35
Palmer Luckey seems cool. But certainly in terms of the
13:38
glossy, shiny new thing, ASES is right in the vanguard of this.
13:45
And I think the market's going to eat it up because the demand
13:48
from the government and the military and all the allies is
13:51
going to be damn near infinite in in my belief.
13:55
And again, we just see, I'm sure everyone's reading the same
13:58
stuff I am, but just more as we learn about how the Iranian epic
14:04
fury operation came to pass, all of the electronic warfare which
14:11
just renders the the opposing air defense systems useless.
14:17
Clearly there's a lot of things we don't know, but also clearly
14:23
there is near infinite demand for this.
14:25
And to be on the cutting edge of what's possible is where you
14:29
want to be. But let's also just remember how
14:32
the experts were so wrong on this.
14:35
And so, as Nomad Bets points out, whenever ASTS does
14:39
something good, there's always a tweet by Tim Ferrar that said
14:44
that that thing would not have ever happened.
14:47
And so Tim, not to outdo himself as truly one of the worst
14:55
telecom predictors of all time, comes up again with pocket aces
15:03
of cluelessness. Which is ironic, since he calls
15:07
us clueless. But he says, what excuses will
15:09
the clueless cult come up with when they find out that Lynx DoD
15:12
contract is going to award link orders of magnitude more money
15:15
then ASTS is paltry $500,000 in government revenues.
15:20
Oh Tim, I don't think we have to come up with any excuses.
15:25
But you know you might when your clients all wonder why they're
15:30
bankrupt for listening to your advice.
15:32
But the reason why it's useful to go back and point out the
15:35
FUD? Never mind my absolute visceral
15:39
disdain for Tim Farrar that's etched into the core of my soul
15:43
for which I will never forgive him, nor will I ever cease to
15:47
use my animosity toward him to drive me to do everything I do.
15:55
Really just for blood sport at this point, because this is a a
15:59
mean spirited individual to this Tim Farrar.
16:02
But it is important to see just how wrong these experts are so
16:07
that tomorrow, whatever FUD the experts will spill, whatever
16:14
sort of SpaceX manipulated headline will hit, you can go
16:17
back and realize we've seen this before.
16:21
And it's amazing journey that the space mob has had.
16:24
Because it's, to me, it's really like Neo in the Matrix where all
16:32
of a sudden Agent Tim unloads a clip and we just slow it down.
16:37
And then the bulls just dropped to the floor and we just
16:39
realized we've done our work. And by the way, now we have AI.
16:44
So go to hell, asshole. Like we can actually Fact Check
16:47
every everything you do instantaneously.
16:50
But now you can see that the degree of panic and
16:54
misinformation is going down and down.
16:56
Even we have these declines from hundred $130.00 to 80, which
17:01
really sucks. You're, you are seeing some
17:03
Reddit crash out, which I don't really follow.
17:06
I don't really spent a lot of time on Reddit, but in general,
17:09
you're really not seeing the doubt anymore.
17:11
You're seeing the general frustration of people being
17:13
upset about the stock going down, but you're no longer
17:16
seeing the sort of boogeyman in the closet and and people kind
17:21
of wondering what monsters under their bed.
17:23
And that's because there's been a lot of learning here.
17:27
And for anyone that's newer to this, I would just really
17:30
suggest, you know, the, the quote that I'm famous or
17:35
infamous for, of know what you own.
17:36
And so read the PIM DD doc, immerse yourself so you can see
17:41
in, in a way, some of the prior controversies and then how these
17:44
were navigated. And not everything has been
17:47
great. This company definitely does not
17:48
wear a white dress in a, in a Billy Idol song.
17:53
They, they've had delays. You know, space is hard and
17:57
we've lived it, but you have a great team.
17:59
And that's where my confidence always comes back to is we have
18:04
a a classic owner operator that is very well equipped to guide
18:08
the company through the difficulties of doing something
18:11
that was thought to be impossible.
18:14
And what a great segue for talking about what was thought
18:20
to be impossible, but now shown to be possible.
18:24
And so Anshul Bot who is with Rakatan said I made a phone call
18:31
and video call over WhatsApp. It works Florida State on my
18:34
normal handset. Let's chat and exchange notes at
18:38
Mobile World Congress. There's a lot to unpack.
18:42
Cool, it works Florida State videos.
18:51
They said it was impossible. And so we've seen the demos.
18:54
We always get the third party validation from these MN OS and
18:56
not just one MNO and not some crappy MNO, the big ones.
19:00
And the tech works and that's the foundation point clearly for
19:04
everything that follows. And we haven't even begun to see
19:08
what's possible. And so what's cool.
19:11
And Peter Lindmark always, I call him our European
19:14
correspondent. Over to you, Peter reporting
19:16
live from Liechtenstein. I always imagine if, if, if he's
19:20
not walking around with like a fine espresso at all times and
19:25
he's totally failed to live up to my stereotypes of of everyone
19:30
in Europe. But but Peter is on it.
19:34
And so he found a cool quote from Jennifer Manor Spectrum MA
19:39
at ASE Space Mobile. And she says, and when I talk
19:43
about that 5G LTE data rates, we've tested with even our
19:48
smaller satellites and gotten speeds up to 120 megabits.
19:51
That's a pretty nice speed on a small handset.
19:55
Well, it's a pretty nice speed on small satellites too.
19:59
And now we have our really big satellites coming.
20:01
So they were already doing the impossible on BW3 and then Block
20:07
1 and now the game goes non linear.
20:12
So it's going to be really exciting to see what the test
20:15
results are on FM 1 and FM 2. And then that's not all.
20:20
Wait until we get the ASICS spun up.
20:23
And so that tech road map, that first principles architecture.
20:26
Is what it's all about and so one of our kind of newer space
20:33
mob friends at for future 100 investor for the future is a
20:37
really great account worth following and he found a really
20:41
cool LinkedIn article from the editor of the mobile network.
20:46
And this guy Keith Dyer was at a technical briefing from Vodafone
20:51
and the technical team was quote, very firm on the
20:55
rightness of its technical choice.
20:58
They want to provide broadband services to users and they this
21:02
is actually a crazy quote. It was prepared to lose first
21:05
mover advantage and wait for the tech to be right to achieve
21:09
that. What a sentence, because
21:13
basically the short thesis was always that ASTS, even if it had
21:20
a first mover advantage, it wouldn't be long.
21:23
And then as Starlink retrofitted all of their swarm satellites,
21:29
well, all of a sudden the five second DDD guys said ASCs isn't
21:35
a first mover advantage at all. Wow, What a, what a change.
21:40
And then ASCs has had delays and things like that.
21:44
And so what's important is getting it right.
21:48
And so it's like Apple, Apple didn't invent the mobile phone.
21:52
They've been almost first to nothing.
21:56
But when they enter, they get it right and you can see what the
22:01
result has been. And so ASCs tried to be the
22:04
first mover and certainly is the first mover based on my
22:09
definition of the market in terms of providing true seamless
22:12
next generation network connectivity from space, because
22:16
that's actually what Starlink does, does not do.
22:18
And so I still think that we are the first mover.
22:20
There's just a murky little cloud of thud coming from
22:27
Starling that got some, you know, Jerry rigged IoT system to
22:30
work. But Vodafone talks about the
22:33
size, but really about how it is a transparent payload and, and
22:40
bent pipe. And so keeping the base station
22:44
in a ground station and just having the Radiohead antennas up
22:47
in the satellite. And so that leads to a lot of
22:51
things. It makes it comply with three
22:53
GPP standards, it protects for data sovereignty, it's backwards
22:58
compatible, all sorts of fun stuff.
23:01
And it's a great article. And here I'm just looking at
23:08
some of these data points, but it's a good article to read and
23:12
it's it's linked out. So I'll let anyone that wants to
23:15
follow that later can do it. And then you just say, well, we
23:20
have the right tack. We've seen enough of that to to
23:23
be reasonably confident of that. And then it goes back to the why
23:26
now questions that I asked like a true Socrates at the time when
23:32
we launched this space. And so another big why now that
23:38
we didn't really have on our our radar back when we made the
23:42
investment, I say we, but like just kind of all the people that
23:46
spent their life talking to me about this AI.
23:52
And so it became very clear to quite a few of us that AI is
23:57
going to be a massive expander of opportunity for the need for
24:01
connectivity. If you believe that everything
24:04
is going to be AI enabled, then I don't know why it wouldn't.
24:08
All that stuff needs to be connected.
24:11
But importantly, here's here's the quote.
24:14
Samsung expects smartphones to be the main vehicle for
24:17
consumers to access AI. Of course, you know, as I say
24:21
here, I've got my Mac mini sit on my desk.
24:24
I haven't yet booted it up, but I'm going to set up my open
24:27
claw. I've got my perplexity computer.
24:29
I've got literally any AI tool that comes out.
24:32
I just buy and pay for it so I can not be obsolete and not be
24:37
accused of being old. But you know, in in as much as
24:41
I've now kind of gotten hooked on vibe coding, which is pretty
24:43
fun, that's not how most people are going to interact with AI.
24:47
It's going to be on their phone and I think it's going to be
24:50
also IoT driven. And so you are going to have
24:55
this increased demand for connectivity, increased demand
24:59
for data. And zooming out, ASDS obviously
25:03
provides this additional network layer, but also an increasingly
25:07
it provides this additional way to operationalize spectrum,
25:12
which is which is needed. And so as ASTS does all this
25:17
great stuff, the petulant little child who must always get
25:21
mommy's attention, SpaceX puts out some stuff.
25:25
And so Zero Hedge Bros seemingly were just like pounding the
25:29
stock in advance of putting out this tweet.
25:32
And that's kind of what we're seeing in the market and they
25:35
come out with what their goals are for their product when
25:40
they're utilizing their S band. So you know great, they have a
25:45
lot of work to do to get that, but they have the spectrum.
25:49
They paid $20 billion for it. And the question is just what
25:53
type of beam forming are they going to be able to achieve and
25:56
also importantly, how are they going to access the customers?
25:59
And so the beamforming in the first instance is a problem.
26:05
What we've seen is the MN OS specifically actually tested it
26:09
and then blocked it because it was interfering with their
26:13
terrestrial spectrum. So that's a problem.
26:15
But then the MN OS are also not suffering from end stage brain
26:21
damage and they know that partnering with SpaceX is truly
26:26
leading the wolf into the hen house.
26:28
So you do not have to be that smart to realize that SpaceX is
26:33
not the ideal partner because they are not carrier neutral.
26:36
They are in it for themselves. And so never mind that they
26:40
don't have the tack, the carrier neutrality should drive the
26:46
entire equation in my view. And thus far seems like it in
26:50
fact really has. And that's just going to
26:54
perpetuate in my view. And so we have Satellite Connect
27:00
to Europe announced. So the JV formerly known as
27:05
SATCO turns into Satellite Connect Europe.
27:10
Exciting. I don't know how they could have
27:12
thought of such a creative name. I'm sure they paid some
27:16
marketing firm a lot of money to come up with that one, but
27:21
they're at it and they're reminding the EU regulators
27:24
every day that they're there. They're going after the two
27:28
gigahertz spectrum. They have kept announcing how
27:33
many M and OS are signing LO is and getting momentum.
27:38
And again, Europe just can't sit there and watch the US replace
27:44
dictators in a day with all of our fancy stuff and not invest
27:52
in these types of capabilities. It's crazy to think that Europe
27:57
is not going to figure out a way to do this.
28:00
And the bazillion dollar question is Iris 2, Iris
28:06
squared. And so I believe that that is
28:08
past the point of return. But how this all jives with
28:13
satellite connect Europe is remaining to be seen.
28:16
But you could rest assured that Vodafone is going to be very
28:19
active at creating a big opportunity for that JV.
28:22
And one that well, I don't know the specifics of exactly how
28:25
that's going to play out. I do believe in my head that the
28:29
European JV is going to be something that's going to be
28:31
producing billions of dollars of revenue out one way or another.
28:36
It's a massive market. It is a market that can only
28:39
really be served by ASTS because of the beamforming.
28:43
In my DD doc, I show just, you know, a little geography lesson
28:48
for people that aren't as familiar with Europe.
28:51
And when you start to draw 100 kilometer buffers around
28:54
countries, you actually delete entire countries.
28:57
And so the 100 kilometer buffer is what's needed for SpaceX to
29:02
operate without impinging on adjacent spectrum.
29:06
ASES can do it. SpaceX cannot, which means that
29:09
it cannot cover very large chunks of Europe because of this
29:14
interference interference problem.
29:18
So switching back to what Europe is watching in envy, but the US
29:23
is, I mean, the the resolve for Golden Dome, although already
29:30
high could not be higher. And So what we're seeing right
29:34
now with how the Aegis systems are working where not a hit came
29:40
into the USS Abraham Lincoln, which is just remarkable.
29:45
These missile defense systems are the most important thing.
29:51
It's seems as simple as that. And So what the US is showing
29:57
and demonstrating is just how important these systems are.
30:02
And I really can't imagine as much as the threat seems like on
30:06
a daily basis is is going down in terms of the numerosity of
30:09
the threat. The, you know, there will be no
30:13
Iran by the end of next week as we currently know it, but
30:16
they're still in North Korea and, you know, and who else you
30:22
know. And so we're in a great spot for
30:26
this. And the powers that be keep
30:30
talking about the requirement for this unprecedented
30:34
coordination in the command structure, but also just how
30:38
they're putting together this proliferated system of
30:44
commercial technologies. They can be dual use capable for
30:50
the military. And as Heg says said, quote, I
30:55
ultimately don't care what company name is on the side of
30:57
the satellite's engines or space case or space planes.
31:01
The question is, can it scale and can we scale it fast enough?
31:06
And that's the challenge that I really believe ASTS is going to
31:10
rise to. But the why now question, once
31:15
again cropping its head, couldn't be more obvious when
31:21
thinking about what's happening with military technology.
31:24
If you can stop the missiles, you have free reign.
31:31
And that's exactly what we saw this this weekend.
31:33
And so the US government is funding this up.
31:36
And so we have a tweet from Nuke to Spacktrack and it's outlining
31:45
the Pentagon's plans for 2026, $7.2 billion for space based
31:51
sensors. Let's go back to the 14 of the
31:56
Iranian missiles on the aircraft carrier group.
32:00
So when I was reading the Wall Street Journal is all of those
32:04
ballistic missiles were detected in the launch phase.
32:08
And so this is where they had an E WAC flying over the carrier
32:12
group to help provide increased fidelity for detection.
32:17
Well, great, it works. Imagine when they replace the
32:21
Ewok with AST space mobile, which is going to happen.
32:24
That's why they didn't order more of those plain radar
32:28
systems as as good as they are. Once we have this in Leo, it's
32:34
it's going to be more reliable, provide more coverage and it's
32:42
going to be better. So exciting stuff and the
32:47
government's excited and we are really, you know, at the
32:50
intersection of so many great trends and we're going to be
32:55
hearing a lot about that this week, I think.
32:57
And so now marks the 5th year where I have forecast that we
33:02
are going to get some splashy announcements out of Mobile
33:04
World Congress. And one of these times I will be
33:08
right. And I think it's probably this
33:10
time in hindsight, every time I'm disappointed, which is often
33:14
that we didn't get a bunch of lashy headlines in Barcelona.
33:19
It's then clear to me that the time was premature because we
33:24
know we weren't in the inflecting part of our
33:27
constellation. It was still an R&D phase.
33:29
If I were Scott, I wouldn't sign anything until it's really go
33:33
time to operationalize the constellation, things like that.
33:37
Because if if you're right, which he seems to have been, as
33:42
you demonstrate, the system and the world just evolves, the
33:47
value and the perceived value of it would go up.
33:50
And that was always their thesis.
33:52
Well, my God, was that right? And so could you imagine what
33:56
would have happened if we'd actually signed a bunch of DAS
33:59
two years ago or even a year ago?
34:01
We might have cheered it at the time, but imagine how the
34:06
commercial terms must have shifted in our favor since then.
34:13
It it must just be staggering. Every company in the world
34:16
clamoring because companies are made of people and people are
34:20
generally pretty predictable and not that smart because there is
34:24
not, they're not that smart, but they're political.
34:26
They're captive to to politics. And so if you're, you know, that
34:30
guy at an MNO, how do you really make your case to go to your
34:34
board or your CEO and sign a big deal?
34:36
The thing hasn't worked yet. And they're like, well, don't we
34:38
have time? You know, yeah, sure, the
34:40
Constitution is not launched until 2025, but it will be
34:43
delayed. And here we are, 2026.
34:45
There wasn't really a a need to be aggressive.
34:49
And when you think about the agency principal costs for all
34:52
these people, it's quite high. And So what?
34:57
So this year, though, it is a little bit of pooper.
35:01
Get off the pot for these M and OS because we're about to have a
35:04
few Salat of satellites go up if if our guessing is right in
35:09
terms of batch 1, batch 2 and and all of those that follow.
35:14
And so we're going to have ASCs and Vodafone at Mobile World
35:18
Congress in Barcelona. Again, the big industry confab.
35:24
And I would not be surprised if we had a bunch of DAS and and a
35:31
lot of great coverage in terms of testing updates and things
35:36
like that. But MMWC is one thing, but the
35:42
big event that I've accepted as important is the SpaceX IPO.
35:49
And so they surprisingly are considering filing an IPO as
35:55
early as next month. So I really thought this was
35:57
going to be like AQ3Q4 thing. Filing an IPO does not mean
36:02
execute the IPO. So I could still be right on the
36:04
actual timing of the pricing of the IPO, but they're looking for
36:08
now a valuation in excess of 1.75 trillion.
36:15
These are pretty big numbers. And so when we dig into that, we
36:20
have a, a tweet by Akash Gupta and just spelling it out, you
36:27
have $1.75 trillion. It's $15 billion of revenue.
36:31
That's a spicy 116X revenue. We're talking like Snowflake
36:36
Part 2, you know, crazy. I'd be remiss at saying that
36:42
there was a lot of hype at the Snowflake IPO, which turned out
36:46
to be a miserable time to invested in that stock.
36:51
But that's a long longer debate. And so the numbers that are
36:57
being put on this are just staggering.
37:00
And he concludes correctly, that the number that justifies that
37:04
valuation is Starling. And so 2/3 of the revenue come
37:08
from the satellite business. And it's exciting.
37:12
And he goes, this is an orbital telecom monopoly bundled with a
37:16
government contractor, $22 billion of federal contracts.
37:21
Now, it obviously has the AI angle to it, But when you kind
37:26
of take a step back, Asts should benefit from this.
37:32
It's going to open people's eyes and realize the nature of the
37:35
opportunity with the Leo constellations.
37:39
And it's going to be an exciting time.
37:42
What what will ultimately happen to the share price?
37:45
Anyone's guess, but this is going to be the event that's
37:48
going to grip Wall Street. This is the big deal and it's
37:54
happening and just be ready for it.
37:57
So the rest of the world is getting ready for it.
38:01
And so as SpaceX readies itself for an IPOA, lot of people are
38:06
going to own ASTS without even knowing it.
38:08
And so on Friday, Morgan Stanley, the world index added
38:14
ASTS Space Mobile and that just gives us some more liquidity.
38:17
Ultimately, it just stops up shares.
38:20
And so not going to have a price impact tomorrow because Arbs
38:24
would have set that trade up. And by the end of the day, you
38:28
had another, you know, 2% of the shares kind of locked up in an
38:31
index. And that's just supply and and
38:33
demand. But now let's move where am I
38:37
going over here? And let's go back a little bit
38:40
to some of the industry commentary.
38:43
And I thought this was kind of cool where Doctor Mike was was
38:48
commenting on the American tower quarterly call that AMPAM man
38:53
extracted. And interesting in the American
38:57
Tower says 6G is likely to be designed with satellites being
39:00
an integral part of an integrated network.
39:04
So this is starting to be a departure from the initial
39:06
thesis of dead zones and sort of this niche thing.
39:10
It's increasingly talked about and thought about as an integral
39:15
part of the overall telecom network.
39:22
I had always believed that what is viewed initially as a
39:27
supplement will get better and ultimately grab market share in
39:33
in sneaky ways and being much bigger.
39:35
And so we've talked about this many times about how all of a
39:39
sudden it's fast enough. We can start decommissioning
39:41
some towers, all of a sudden use the guard band.
39:44
And you know, it's a way just to light up more spectrum.
39:46
And boy, that means it's being used everywhere, not just on
39:49
niche markets. All of these things as a tech
39:53
tech platform gets more mature is bigger things like that.
39:57
They it's snowballs in momentum and that's the path.
40:01
To the very big outcome that some of us hope for in this
40:07
stock is, is that type of snowballing dynamic that we've
40:11
seen, you know, in some examples that come off the top of my head
40:15
with cloud compute, AI chips, things like that.
40:21
And so I think we're front and center to an analogue that could
40:26
could unfold or unfurl like that, if you will.
40:29
But the other thing that's going to happen is the use cases are
40:33
just going to keep going higher. And so Archer, which is I
40:36
believe King Tut's favorite stock, I think he has a really
40:40
high appreciation of this company is partnering with Star
40:44
Link. And so they were able to put out
40:46
a Star Link tweet to pump their stock and talking about how Star
40:52
Link will help them integrate high speed connectivity to its
40:55
air taxis. And that's going to be
40:57
Starling's entry into urban mobility.
41:00
It supports passenger Internet and real time flight
41:03
communications. Cool.
41:05
OK, well for those who know King Tut, he abhors Archer.
41:12
He is a joby guy through and through.
41:14
But as someone who doesn't have to insert myself in air taxi
41:18
wars, I would just point out that this is just another use
41:22
case. And so you're going to need
41:25
connectivity on these things. You're going to want positive
41:28
control. You're not going to be able to
41:30
accept the possibility that you don't have data.
41:34
And that's going to be true of many things.
41:35
So air taxis being one, but then vehicles being another.
41:39
And we've talked about that quite a few times.
41:41
And then the IoT applications I think are are going to go wild.
41:46
And this is the intersection to the atomic economy.
41:50
And so as the electron economy like software gets beaten to
41:56
dead, beaten to death with a club every day, the atoms of the
42:01
world are thus far the things that are holding up.
42:05
And that's, you know, it's very interesting part of where
42:08
innovation is happening, both aided by AI, but certainly not
42:15
in in spite of it. And that's where I believe that
42:18
the connectivity applications are going to surprise people to
42:22
the upside, especially when we learned that drones, for
42:24
example, require positive control.
42:27
And not to steal his Thunder, but I was talking to another
42:30
space mobber this week who has a telecom background.
42:34
And he was explaining to me, you know, some of his experiences
42:38
with IoT contracts. And I was floored at the size of
42:43
some of these numbers in the past and, and the actual quirky
42:49
use cases that people had been trying to get done as a result,
42:54
you know, that resulted in these massive numbers.
42:56
And so to not steal his Thunder, I will say no more.
43:01
But I'm really hoping that this individual writes up the
43:04
observations we had in our conversation because it was eye
43:07
opening to me both the numbers involved, the use cases
43:13
involved, but then also why it didn't happen 10 years ago.
43:16
For example, what was it commercially and
43:20
technologically, but, but usually commercially that 'cause
43:24
these ideas to die on the vine. And then here we go again.
43:29
Why now? And there's a good answer for
43:33
why now. And I'm going to let him tell
43:36
it. But when he writes this, I will
43:39
retweet it and I will verbalize it on whatever spaces that is.
43:45
But the IoT opportunity is something that would not take
43:48
your not take your eye off of. And we have battery commodities
43:55
sharing this really cool chart as well of just the total number
44:00
of IoT enabled devices. And it's just skyrocketing.
44:04
And I think this is this is just going to multiply.
44:08
I literally just air tagged everything in my house and air
44:12
tagged my wife and everything she owns because just losing
44:17
stuff is no fun. And the other day, of course,
44:21
she left her purse, you know, at the terminal when we got off an
44:24
airplane. We only figured it out right
44:26
when we were getting on the rental car van.
44:30
And luckily I air tagged her because I'm smart and so I can
44:34
see that the purse was still at the terminal.
44:36
Never mind that TSA doesn't really like adrenalize people
44:40
running back into the terminal. So that was a totally separate
44:44
question, but being able to see where your stuff is and locate
44:48
it is pretty valuable. And it's cool.
44:52
What Apple did is creating this mesh network, if if I understand
44:55
how it works correctly. But you know, as I've kind of
44:58
made-up on the spot a while ago, having an ASTS air tag that's
45:03
satellite powered is going to be a game changer when everyone can
45:07
sort of asset track all the things that that matter to them
45:11
and probably for a very, very low cost.
45:15
And so when I just look at how many air tags I have, I mean, I
45:18
must have 15 to 20 things now tagged all my luggage, all of my
45:23
keys, put it on my remote. I mean, you want to talk about
45:26
like quality of life improvement is instead of wondering what my
45:31
kids could have possibly done with a remote control and like
45:34
why it is that they decided to move it to the other side of the
45:37
house and bury it for reasons known only to them.
45:41
When you put an air tag on a remote control, you're you're
45:46
just alive. And so when you think about all
45:50
the things that should be connected, it's going to be
45:55
everything. And that's where the IoT
45:57
opportunity is really going to come in.
45:59
And then we will end today just on this thesis review from
46:03
Michael Sickhand might not have said his last name correctly,
46:07
but he's a he's a crackhead. If for those who know Kraken the
46:12
investment, he's not an actual crackhead and so based on his
46:16
cohesive and cogent logic, it seems like an individual who is
46:20
in fact stayed off drugs. But he is a he is into future
46:26
technologies and he has boosted his conviction in ASTS which is
46:30
his decision alone. But if you are interested in
46:33
understanding his decision, the last tweet I included quote.
46:37
Nice thesis review is his thesis and just goes through the
46:41
enormity of the numbers and some kind of a little reminders of,
46:47
you know, why a lot of us own the stock.
46:50
So that's what I have. I can't move my neck.
46:54
I'm broken physically because I have brought it upon myself to
46:58
try to catch up on 1211 push ups that I had a deficit on because
47:05
of my peptide disaster. And so now I've traded the
47:11
deferred push ups because of one source of pain into another
47:16
debilitating type of pain because evidently my body was
47:18
not built to do. Let's see.
47:21
In the past four days I've done a lot of push ups. 750 push ups.
47:28
So I don't know if I'm going to be able to close the deficit.
47:30
I might do some more tonight, but that means that tomorrow we
47:33
might be down. So I just want to let people
47:34
know in advance, but I'll try to have cleaned up my push up mess
47:37
by Tuesday so that after earnings call we can go up.
47:40
That will be my my goal for for everyone and I'll keep you
47:45
posted with my chart. Have a great night everyone.
47:48
Thanks for joining and I'm I'm really excited for the Monday
47:52
earnings call. Maybe I should actually talk
47:53
about that. It's kind of an obvious thing to
47:54
opine on. So earnings call I think is
47:56
going to be a swinging event. I think that they are going to
48:01
come out swinging because they have quite a lot of interesting
48:04
things to talk about. They're going to be able to talk
48:06
about New Glen, not New Glen 3. They're going to talk about FM 1
48:11
and initial testing results. They're going to be able to talk
48:15
about the regulatory pathways that are unfolding.
48:18
They are probably not going to talk a whole lot about Legato
48:22
because that right now is just active bankruptcy case and
48:26
working its way through the system.
48:27
But they will be able to talk about how they file the FCC
48:32
stuff. They will then talk about New
48:35
Glenn three launch, which which will potentially have a little
48:40
bit more visibility, but it'll be a little bit, you know
48:42
sliding around because of things outside of your control.
48:45
But then I suspect that they're going to say that the Batch 1 is
48:49
ready and you know, the Panakins are going to go back to what
48:54
happened in August where they said, you know, FM 1 is ready to
48:57
ship and then it ultimately didn't ship till October.
49:01
And you know the reasons for that.
49:04
Who knows? Who cares?
49:04
But it's a little bit of a Bill Clinton deposition at at times
49:09
with this company. In terms of the definition of
49:11
ready to ship, you know, what is the definition of ready to ship?
49:15
And in my definition is a looser one of if the launch vehicle
49:22
could accept your payload at the processing facility, could you
49:27
ship? That's my definition.
49:30
And if the launch vehicle is not ready, then you should not ship.
49:36
In my view as a non-technical armchair quarterback, I would
49:41
keep my satellites in the facility and keep testing,
49:44
testing, testing. That's clearly what this company
49:46
does is they test until they can test no more.
49:49
And so then I believe that we are really primed for some April
49:54
launches. We will miss I believe the the
49:59
five light launch guidance for Q1.
50:02
I mean it's only 30 days left. I just can't see how it's
50:05
possible that they could do that many launch integrations in the
50:11
first instance. And so I believe that it's, it's
50:14
possible that we have a launch, we're going to have a launch in
50:16
March with FM 2 and then we'll have probably a launch in April
50:22
and potentially 2. But then that's when it starts
50:26
to really spin up. That's when all of a sudden the,
50:29
you know, their constellation Constipation that I talk about
50:31
should have really, really start to be working its way through by
50:35
the time we get to the May and June time frame.
50:41
That's when this is going to start to be a very easy and
50:46
predictable launch cadence. And that's what I hope they talk
50:48
about and let people know sort of guys like just hang on three
50:52
more months, three more months and and then we'll be right in
50:55
the middle of the cadence. I believe they're going to talk
50:57
about Golden Dome and the government use cases.
51:01
They have certainly won a lot of contracts.
51:04
I think it'd be really useful for them to explain what is
51:08
different when they're a prime contractor versus non prime.
51:11
What other partners are they working with?
51:12
How do they fit with these other ecosystems?
51:16
Seems like a complex web of relationships but each probably
51:20
has different revenue opportunities.
51:23
I'd love to hear more about the Satellite Connect Europe
51:28
strategy. They probably are not going to
51:30
show all their hands as it relates to spectrum but there's
51:33
some good updates there. Their balance sheet goes out
51:36
saying is, is very strong and they'll be able to talk about
51:40
being fully funded and people sort of lose their mind, I
51:42
believe incorrectly, when the company says fully funded and
51:46
then raises more money. Well, that that is not the right
51:50
thing to be mad at. And so the definition of fully
51:52
funded, again, the Bill Clinton deposition is they define what
51:57
they're fully funded for. But then if there's more
52:00
opportunity and more growth, you're not infinitely fully
52:04
funded for every possible thing you might want to do.
52:07
And so as things drop into their opportunity zone, then there's a
52:14
an opportunity to pursue those things.
52:17
And so for example, I believe that they're going to have a
52:20
separate government shell or things like Golden Dome.
52:24
There's a reason why satellites with the optical inner satellite
52:27
link are different and more complex than the commercial
52:32
birds. It's not clear to me that you're
52:35
going to have dual use on individual satellites as opposed
52:39
to some dedicated shells that make your whole company dual use
52:44
and the technology dual use, but not every individual satellite.
52:49
And then you could ask yourself where are they going to actually
52:51
have separate production facilities for some of these
52:53
things? And I think they will.
52:54
And never mind the dilution impact of some of these deals
52:58
are there's like 2% of the share count is basically nothing.
53:02
And so then they have a company with billions of dollars of cash
53:07
is absolutely the right thing to do if you're playing to win and
53:11
you're playing to create a trillion dollar company, which
53:13
is what I believe Abell is doing.
53:16
And so I think they should, you know, clarify and articulate
53:19
some of those things. And then what else would I do if
53:23
I'm Scott, what would I do? Ultimately, you got to give
53:28
people the update on where we are with the production ramp
53:32
because it it's always a little bit manana with these guys, but
53:36
then they get it done. And soon, sooner rather than
53:41
later, we're going to flip from manana to oy.
53:44
And I believe that in the next again, three months, we're going
53:48
to be an Hoy company Oy, if you know Spanish today as opposed to
53:53
a manana compania. And so that's an important point
53:57
they should have because you'd also want to start to bookmark
54:00
some types of expectations and to sort of bookmark that type of
54:05
inflection and ramp up, if I'm right, sort of at the end of Q2
54:09
that dovetails perfectly with the SpaceX IPO.
54:14
And So what a time to actually hit their numbers.
54:17
That would be cool. And I hope they come out
54:21
swinging. It's it's time to really own
54:23
their success. They have built an incredible
54:25
team. It is people like Tanner and
54:28
Kevin posting the job openings on on the daily and you can see
54:32
this is a company that is just trying to grow as fast as they
54:35
can because of of an opportunity, which is I think
54:39
just just exploding faster than they could have possibly
54:44
imagined. So I'll end there.
54:46
Thank you everyone for joining and I'll see everyone tomorrow
54:52
afternoon for the earnings call, which I am really excited to get
54:57
an update on our company. Talk to everyone.
54:59
Bye. Thanks for listening the AST
55:02
Space Mobile podcast. If you enjoyed this episode and
55:06
you'd like to help support the podcast, please share it with
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others, post about it on social media, or leave a rating and
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review. To catch.
55:13
All the latest news about AST Space Mobile, make sure to
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subscribe. Thanks again and I'll see you
55:19
next time We're doing something very, very big an activity
55:26
technology we can really affect billion lives safety Space
55:29
Global is the only company that has full technology to deliver
55:34
several broadband connectivity directly from state to do
55:38
everyday smartphone. People will just basically turn
55:41
their phone and be Syndex regardless of where you are.
55:44
We don't want the new technique to know that it's connected by
55:47
satellite. Our role is to bring this into
55:51
reality, always in partnership with the MMO.