Latest / AST SpaceMobile Podcast / Ryan O'Connor, Toan Tran and Anpanman Getting Ready for Launch

Transcript

Ryan O'Connor, Toan Tran and Anpanman Getting Ready for Launch · AST SpaceMobile Podcast

• 0:06
  This is the AST Space Mobile podcast.
• 0:10
  Where we just basically turn your phone be seamless
• 0:14
  regardless of where you are. We don't want the user even to
• 0:16
  know that it's connected by satellite.
• 0:21
  Listen, the opportunity that we have is very, very, very large.
• 0:24
  Large. Everyone, thanks for joining on
• 0:33
  a Friday evening. I guess this is how baseball
• 0:37
  their their weekends hanging out on Twitter with anonymous
• 0:43
  accounts, bread man instead of going out and having drinks.
• 0:47
  I guess like if some of you are suggesting perhaps we do maybe
• 0:51
  defer this to another day or time, but this is a day and time
• 0:54
  that worked for all three of us. So So this is it.
• 0:58
  But but yeah, hopefully everyone can hear me.
• 1:01
  We've got, we got Tone and also Ryan on as well.
• 1:06
  Are you guys on? Yeah.
• 1:09
  Yeah, yeah. Can you hear me?
• 1:11
  Yeah, yeah, I can hear you. Fantastic.
• 1:14
  Yeah. So, so yeah, we, we, the three
• 1:17
  of us figured we would just get together and just have a
• 1:19
  discussion. Obviously there's been a lot of
• 1:22
  a lot of things that have been going on, a lot of things to
• 1:24
  look forward to in regards to AC Space Mobile and then of course
• 1:28
  as well. Wanted to talk about Ryan's new
• 1:32
  home is is big research piece that he put out this week.
• 1:36
  But but yeah, how are you guys doing?
• 1:39
  Good, good, all things considered.
• 1:43
  Yeah, good, good over here too. I'm watching the World Series
• 1:46
  out of the corner of my eye. What's oh what?
• 1:50
  2/2 right? Yeah, 2 two, yeah.
• 1:55
  I I totally forgot that that's going on right now.
• 1:58
  Yeah, not a baseball fan, Ampam. Well, you know, I used to, I
• 2:03
  used to follow baseball. I used to play as well but then
• 2:06
  I just stopped watching until of course show hey started playing
• 2:10
  and then I just watch his highlights all the time which is
• 2:13
  great. Incredible someone that you
• 2:16
  know, watched Bo Jackson, you know, growing up with season
• 2:20
  tickets to the Royals. He's the only player I think.
• 2:24
  I mean, I think he's even more impressive that has that crazy
• 2:29
  magic. It's it's pretty insane.
• 2:32
  I never thought we'd see a a combination of living and
• 2:35
  pitching, you know, the proverbial Babe Ruth of the 20s
• 2:40
  in the modern era. So it's certainly fun.
• 2:45
  Yeah, but. Thanks for thanks for having us
• 2:47
  on. Yeah, no, thanks.
• 2:49
  Thanks for for joining. And yeah, I will say that you
• 2:53
  guys prompted this discussion or, you know, this space.
• 2:55
  And so I think maybe we'll, we'll kind of shift into the,
• 3:01
  the, the meat of it. Yeah.
• 3:03
  I, I, I think for those who haven't had a chance, Ryan did
• 3:08
  put out his research piece and I, I tweeted it out for, I think
• 3:11
  as TS investors has also added it to the library of research.
• 3:17
  But, but yeah, maybe, maybe we can just start off by discussing
• 3:22
  the genesis of it. Like what, what?
• 3:24
  What kind of what made? What made you decide to put
• 3:28
  together this massive research piece on ASD Space Mobile?
• 3:32
  Oh, well, that's a great question.
• 3:35
  You know, to the huge annoyance of of some of my partners, you
• 3:40
  know, operationally who prefer I'd be a little bit less verbose
• 3:44
  and lengthy, you know, it's I guess high level.
• 3:51
  It is such a incredible story and probably of all the kind of
• 4:00
  great ideas and the attached investment thesis that I have
• 4:05
  gone through or you know, kind of discovered over the years.
• 4:10
  The unique combination of just kind of recoiling from the idea,
• 4:16
  at least initially, you know, talk about base rates with the
• 4:21
  success of of Leo based constellations in the past SPAC,
• 4:26
  you know, an active ATMI mean, you know, in many ways it's kind
• 4:30
  of tailor made to make most kind of intelligent investors, at
• 4:34
  least intuitively at the very beginning, kind of puke in their
• 4:37
  mouth a bit. You know, I know that was
• 4:42
  somewhat my own reaction when I was first kind of with the idea
• 4:46
  was broached with me, You know, in just the fact that this kind
• 4:51
  of odyssey of of learning, you know, over the last year and a
• 4:55
  half has, you know, that element of it, I think is kind of
• 5:01
  remarkable in in what, you know, it's easy to see the optics has
• 5:04
  one way, but as you kind of peel the onion back to say it is so
• 5:09
  much more than that, you know, really doesn't do it justice.
• 5:13
  So there was the fact that, you know, it's a it's an idea that
• 5:17
  was kind of easy to dismiss or hate kind of reflexively.
• 5:22
  And then, you know, the second element is just kind of the the
• 5:27
  majesty of the business model, you know, the inherent economic
• 5:30
  leverage that the partnerships with the M and OS, you know,
• 5:33
  drive to the business and the kind of tech enabled hyper
• 5:37
  scalability of it. And you know, how that kind of
• 5:41
  fits in so many ways with, you know, someone that's been
• 5:45
  studying kind of great businesses for 25 years, you
• 5:48
  know, in in Tawanus, you know, talked about this in the past,
• 5:52
  you know, very eloquently. But it is in so many ways, you
• 5:56
  know, kind of a representative example of of everything I've
• 5:59
  learned in this business over the years to appreciate kind of
• 6:05
  with a, a veiled cover that, you know, you just got to, you know,
• 6:09
  as as Twan said in his letter, you just kind of got to squint a
• 6:12
  little bit to kind of see it. But you know, when you look a
• 6:16
  little bit closer and you do the work, you know, the dots
• 6:18
  connect. And then I guess, you know, in
• 6:21
  terms of like the practical ability to kind of talk about a
• 6:25
  name that is so easy, at least, you know, optically to dismiss
• 6:32
  that has a very kind of technologically complex angle to
• 6:35
  the thesis. And, you know, so much kind of
• 6:39
  foundational work that kind of needs to be done kind of ahead
• 6:43
  of time to, you know, see clearly it was, you know, quite
• 6:49
  the, it was ambitious. And so, you know, I guess the
• 6:53
  way I would, you know, describe how the process of it was, you
• 6:57
  know, there's kind of three quotes that come to mind.
• 6:59
  There's the pretty famous quote from Nick Sleep about, you know,
• 7:04
  how over time, you know, most of their alpha was, you know,
• 7:08
  essentially a function of their understanding of of the deep
• 7:11
  reality of a business. I mean, Costco is kind of one of
• 7:14
  the more famous examples with this fund.
• 7:17
  But you know, the goal was to do exactly that, to kind of
• 7:20
  explain, you know, the deep reality of business and help
• 7:22
  people, you know, connect the dots and see things clearly.
• 7:27
  The second quote I would kind of fall back on to make it at least
• 7:31
  easily understandable. What I was trying to do is the
• 7:34
  Druckenmiller quote. You know, that goes something
• 7:37
  along the lines of having to visualize the situation 18
• 7:41
  months from today, you know, and whatever it is, then you know,
• 7:44
  kind of that's where the price will be, not, you know, the
• 7:46
  price today. But you know, it's that's kind
• 7:50
  of it's in this case in particular, doing that was a
• 7:54
  little bit tricky, you know, in the sense that and then this
• 7:57
  goes into the third quote, you know, jobs quote about, you
• 8:00
  know, how you can't connect the dots looking forward, you can
• 8:03
  Only Connect them looking backwards.
• 8:05
  And so if I was going to succeed and you know, the hope of
• 8:09
  helping others visualize the world and ASTS place within it
• 8:12
  18 to 24 months from now, I needed to highlight how and why
• 8:17
  we kind of arrived at this moment in history, you know, if
• 8:20
  we were going to have any hope of helping people properly
• 8:22
  connect the dots, if you will. So, you know, and that just gets
• 8:26
  into like without any understanding with respect to
• 8:29
  the simultaneous transformation of the space sector for us for a
• 8:33
  wireless and its evolution over time, you know, in the
• 8:36
  underlying economics of satellite production and launch.
• 8:39
  Recognizing that fact, you know, or or you know, put in a
• 8:43
  different way the fact that we're kind of standing at the
• 8:46
  precipice of the third grade communications revolution of the
• 8:50
  modern era. And I would define that as, you
• 8:53
  know, the transformation from a partially connected world to a
• 8:56
  universally connected world wasn't easy.
• 8:59
  So, you know, if you're going to make, you know, kind of bold
• 9:02
  claims, you know, like AST is the final bridge to a
• 9:05
  universally connected world, you really got to do some work to
• 9:08
  kind of paint the picture and provide a foundational
• 9:12
  understanding of how we got here today.
• 9:13
  So that's kind of just how it started and began.
• 9:18
  And it was a hell of a lot of work.
• 9:20
  But hopefully I did it. You know, if I did it, maybe,
• 9:24
  you know, 10% of the justice that I think it really deserves.
• 9:30
  I think, you know, hopefully people will like it and it
• 9:34
  accomplished that goal. But you know that that's
• 9:37
  basically kind of the quick and dirty of how I was thinking
• 9:39
  about it. Well, I guess that ends the
• 9:41
  podcast. You know, I know it's, it's, I
• 9:46
  really enjoyed reading it. I mean, it's a lot to go
• 9:49
  through. And I think what's great is that
• 9:52
  you tell a story, you you talk about different examples
• 9:56
  throughout history and how we got to this point and go into
• 10:00
  detail, which draws on, you know, some other work as well.
• 10:04
  For example, you know, eccentric orbits, right?
• 10:06
  Yeah. Learning from mistakes that
• 10:09
  others have made. And, and then you, you talk
• 10:13
  about why, which is part, part of the, like, when I remember
• 10:16
  talking to about back in 2020, in 2021, he would kind of go
• 10:21
  through this in a pretty quick fashion about how Leon launch
• 10:25
  became really cheap and consumerization of, of
• 10:28
  electronics, which then they leverage to, to make their
• 10:31
  satellites. And, you know, obviously it's
• 10:33
  kind of interesting, like you, you see all the primes today
• 10:36
  getting disrupted by companies like Anderel and others who, who
• 10:40
  are innovating and, and they, they kind of have a Silicon
• 10:44
  Valley mindset of, of, you know, building products that are, that
• 10:50
  are take advantage of scale and, and consumerization of
• 10:53
  electronics and all those things versus all the old primes do it,
• 10:56
  which is cost plus, right? And there's no, there, there's
• 10:59
  no, they don't make trade-offs and, you know, get to market
• 11:03
  quickly. They, they just over engineer
• 11:04
  stuff. And so I, I think it's, I think
• 11:07
  when you, when you did the research piece, of course,
• 11:10
  that's like liberally, you know, quoted from it.
• 11:14
  Can there's so many great, you know, you have a way with words.
• 11:17
  There's so many great quotes out of out of it.
• 11:18
  But but but yeah, it's, it was a very thoughtful research piece
• 11:23
  and I hope people take the time to, to read it or, you know, one
• 11:26
  of the things I did immediately was just feed it into notebook
• 11:29
  LM so I could listen to it as well.
• 11:32
  Just kind of at a high level. But but yeah, it's, and going
• 11:36
  back to what you were saying before, in my own journey with
• 11:39
  AST Space Mobile, initially when I read it, a lot of it was kind
• 11:42
  of a leap of faith where it was like, OK, these like strategic
• 11:46
  partners are they have, they're putting their chips find it,
• 11:50
  they're they're developing the technology with them.
• 11:52
  And then it was that was like initial investment in 2021.
• 11:57
  And then and then it was like over the period, over the course
• 12:01
  of the number of years, it was really digging in and learning
• 12:04
  about the company because, you know, Adele would tell you, hey,
• 12:07
  it's just math, you know, like you can, you can the link, if
• 12:11
  you have a large phased array that's very powerful, you can
• 12:15
  you can basically close the link budget with a regular mobile
• 12:18
  phone. And as you hear that and you're
• 12:20
  like, OK, that makes sense. But then how do I verify that?
• 12:24
  And so, but over the years, over and of course, like tone of he
• 12:29
  actually like learned engineering and he's like, Oh
• 12:31
  yeah, it's true. But then over the years, as, as
• 12:36
  you follow this company and do due diligence, then you
• 12:39
  actually, like you were saying, connect the dots and it's like,
• 12:42
  oh wow, this actually this whole idea of the business model
• 12:48
  that's optimized for it and the technology and now's the time
• 12:51
  because launch is really cheap or, or cheap, cheaper than it
• 12:54
  used to be. It all makes sense.
• 12:56
  And so I, I and, and I think getting over that hump it, it's
• 13:01
  tough for a lot of investors. So I think putting together
• 13:03
  research like this or like the piece that coop put together or,
• 13:06
  you know, we have weekly spaces, things like that, it kind of
• 13:08
  helps get people over that. And it, it's funny because like
• 13:11
  in your introduction, there was this part where it really stood
• 13:15
  out where you mentioned ATM, right?
• 13:17
  And so like, I think it's like this company goes against
• 13:23
  convention and and there's like there's a history that probably
• 13:28
  most people don't know, right? Like it's a very unique thing.
• 13:31
  The reason why I mentioned ATM is that I remember when you
• 13:33
  joined as an investor and when the company would put out ATM,
• 13:37
  you're like, there would be this visceral reaction of like, oh,
• 13:40
  how are you doing this? This is bad.
• 13:41
  Yeah. And we and you would, we'd be
• 13:43
  like, Ryan, calm down, calm down.
• 13:45
  Like there's, there's a there's a reason for this.
• 13:47
  And, and we talked about this, you know, it's like back, back
• 13:52
  in the day when the company did a few marketed offerings and
• 13:55
  obviously they got, you know, hedge funds entered into the
• 13:58
  stock and they shorted it or whatever.
• 14:00
  And they'd have to price these offering like a 30% discount to
• 14:04
  house closing price. And the Bell's head, he was
• 14:07
  like, you know what, we're not doing this anymore.
• 14:10
  We're going to utilize ATMs because, you know, I'm going to
• 14:12
  make this pact, this this unsent pack with retail shoulders that
• 14:16
  we're going to when we need capital, we're just going to do
• 14:19
  it judiciously as kind of things progress because they learned, I
• 14:23
  think what the company did a total of two or three market
• 14:27
  offerings and they were all really bad, right?
• 14:29
  And so and so they're like, we're not going to bail out for
• 14:32
  sellers. We're just going to do these
• 14:33
  ATMs and yeah, people and you'll hear like smarty pants hedge
• 14:37
  fund guys like, oh, ATMs are a sign of bad things.
• 14:40
  But in reality, the ATMs have changed quite a bit in terms of
• 14:44
  their use and and the types of companies that use them.
• 14:46
  But but yeah, I, I mean, and I'll, I'll let you respond, but
• 14:51
  I think like this company does things that are different and,
• 14:55
  and for those that are from the outside looking in, it probably
• 14:57
  take some time to get a custom and, and understand why they're
• 15:01
  doing these things, right. 100% I mean, that is the kind of the
• 15:07
  underlying impetus is was basically to tell that story
• 15:11
  where, you know, we can go down the line and look at all of
• 15:15
  these things that, you know, in general or maybe on average
• 15:18
  imply one thing. And AST in just this kind of
• 15:23
  magnificent way kind of flips conventional knowledge, you
• 15:26
  know, opinion on his head, you know, right on down the line and
• 15:31
  in so many different ways. So it was essential to kind of
• 15:33
  create a, a document for the people out there that, you know,
• 15:37
  really like the fire hose information like I do that
• 15:41
  someone could sit down and read in a single sitting, even if it
• 15:45
  is a bit lengthy for a single sitting and get what I would,
• 15:49
  you know, call a completed picture.
• 15:51
  So, you know, I'll give you an example.
• 15:53
  When I dive into a company and I'm new to it, you know, a lot
• 15:58
  of people will think through or they'll, they'll read, you know,
• 16:01
  five years worth of annual reports And, you know, maybe
• 16:03
  they read 1, you know, the first year or five years ago on Monday
• 16:09
  and then Tuesday after launch, they read, you know, four years
• 16:12
  ago and three years ago. And then, you know, the
• 16:14
  following Friday, they, you know, knock down another and
• 16:17
  then maybe the beginning of next week, you know, the next.
• 16:20
  Well, personally, I've always hated that.
• 16:24
  And I always thought that was kind of a way to, it was a
• 16:26
  really hard way to see things clearly because when you read
• 16:31
  them all in a single setting, you really get a completed
• 16:35
  picture, for lack of a better term, in a way that you don't
• 16:38
  quite get if you chop them up piece meal.
• 16:41
  So I guess it was an apologetic, if you will, or an apologia to
• 16:47
  explain to, you know, especially our LP's why we have, you know,
• 16:52
  taken a large position, you know, where our conviction comes
• 16:54
  from, you know, call it golden rule investing where I basically
• 17:00
  write what I'd want to know if our situations were reversed.
• 17:04
  You know, in terms of the ATMI will say this despite all the
• 17:10
  the scars and I just come off another investment that had
• 17:16
  basically blown up their stock price from what I thought at the
• 17:20
  time I was, you know, still do was a kind of a thoughtless
• 17:23
  introduction of an ATM without any real awareness of capital
• 17:26
  markets and the dynamics that that brings about.
• 17:29
  But when I took a step back and you think about space, space is
• 17:34
  hard, timing is extraordinarily hard.
• 17:37
  You know, just getting getting a feel of the industry and its
• 17:40
  history. For example, you know, if you
• 17:42
  were in any other industry and you were evaluating management
• 17:46
  and they had missed timelines consistently, you would kind of
• 17:51
  immediately discount, you know, everything they say in space.
• 17:56
  When you understand, you know, all of the historical kind of
• 17:59
  case studies or the relevant ones and, and you know, the, you
• 18:02
  know, the history here, you realize that it's par for the
• 18:05
  course and it's just the nature of the beast.
• 18:08
  And you guys were wonderful and, and kind of connecting those
• 18:12
  dots for me and helping me see, you know, the grandmaster plan
• 18:17
  in this respect and in the context of everything they were
• 18:19
  trying to execute against. And that was helpful.
• 18:24
  But it I I would just say this and I'll pass it back to to you
• 18:27
  or Twan when you have ACEO that eats his own cooking that
• 18:32
  doesn't have any, you know, bullshit Rs us or, you know,
• 18:35
  performance comp type things that truly, you know, is aligned
• 18:41
  in every fundamental way and is being kind of diluted alongside
• 18:46
  you quote UN quote. It makes it a lot easier to kind
• 18:50
  of calm down and, you know, think through the the issue
• 18:56
  intelligently. And, you know, a bell and you
• 19:00
  know, so many unique aspects of this story.
• 19:03
  I think it's kind of fitting that they kind of turn
• 19:05
  convention on their head in so many different ways as you kind
• 19:08
  of try, you know, go down the various thesis points and, and
• 19:12
  what the the handful of variables that I think in the
• 19:14
  end are going to, you know, or what this business and what this
• 19:18
  idea are going to kind of turn on.
• 19:21
  So that's my A. Yeah, I think, I think Ryan, you
• 19:26
  touch on important point and you know, this is maybe something we
• 19:30
  haven't talked about so much in the space mob, but about company
• 19:33
  culture. I think, at least for me, like
• 19:36
  trying to understand culture and its effects was probably one of
• 19:40
  the last things I learned as an investor.
• 19:43
  And maybe it takes like the longest to learn, right?
• 19:45
  Because you have to, you know, you have to look at a lot of
• 19:48
  companies, see a lot of cultures and see the effect that it has
• 19:52
  over time. And I don't, I don't know who
• 19:55
  said it, but I thought this was a fantastic way to put it.
• 19:58
  Like if you're invested in a company for one year, 2 years,
• 20:01
  three years, culture does not matter.
• 20:03
  Like you're, you're worried about like, you know, more near
• 20:07
  term things. If you want to be invested in a
• 20:10
  company for a decade, culture is the only thing that matters
• 20:13
  because that's, yeah, that's going to what will really drive
• 20:18
  the company's performance and the share price performance over
• 20:22
  a decade. So I think I think we're very
• 20:25
  fortunate here in that, you know, you can't you can't think
• 20:29
  of a better company culture. I think for the tasks they have
• 20:32
  at hand. A bell, you know, clearly is the
• 20:35
  right kind of crazy. And despite all the timeline
• 20:39
  slips and you know, this and that and, you know, soon
• 20:42
  trademark, just think of what this company has accomplished,
• 20:45
  right? What this is.
• 20:47
  Yeah, what this company's accomplished in eight years, it,
• 20:51
  it boggles my mind. It just reminds me of, you know,
• 20:55
  when, you know, back in was it 20/13/2014 when the Model S came
• 21:00
  out for Tesla? That just blew my mind too.
• 21:04
  I was like, Oh my God. Having worked in, you know, kind
• 21:07
  of largest companies with a few 1000 people and understanding
• 21:11
  how bureaucratic things can get that, you know, they were able
• 21:16
  to produce a brand new car from scratch in what was it, 5 years.
• 21:21
  And you know, look what ASC has accomplished.
• 21:24
  You know, we're about to launch a 90 satellite constellation
• 21:28
  that will provide 5G broadband anywhere in the world within,
• 21:34
  you know, a span of a decade. That's just that still blows my
• 21:38
  mind so. For any readers out there that
• 21:40
  haven't read eccentric orbits, if you want to know the what
• 21:47
  they were up against and and also appreciate kind of so many
• 21:51
  of the elegant choices in terms of the business model and and
• 21:54
  how a bell and and and team have kind of danced around or turn
• 21:59
  things that destroyed other companies rather quickly to
• 22:04
  their advantage. It is it's marvelous.
• 22:08
  You know what they've done and what not only what they've
• 22:11
  accomplished, but you know, the the odds, you know, what were
• 22:15
  the odds? I mean, there's the regulatory
• 22:17
  hurdles yours just to, I mean, the time there's, you know, the,
• 22:22
  the fact that, you know, you, you know, most of the, you know,
• 22:26
  other Leo based bankruptcies all kind of boiled down to the fact
• 22:30
  that, you know, one, they weren't vertically integrated.
• 22:33
  So they would, you know, put out for parts and, you know, they
• 22:37
  couldn't even really begin to get going until they had all
• 22:40
  their parts. And so you have different
• 22:42
  timelines on the supply chain. And, and even worse than that,
• 22:45
  you have to put all this money up front and build the
• 22:49
  constellation before you see, you know, day one of revenue.
• 22:53
  And that has been, you know, a hurdle that, you know, almost,
• 22:56
  you know, basically no one with the exception of Starlink has
• 22:59
  been able to kind of work through.
• 23:03
  And, you know, Starlink's ability to do so was largely, I
• 23:07
  mean, there's a lot of kind of factors that come into this,
• 23:10
  but, you know, their ability to help with NASA in the ISSS.
• 23:14
  But you know, you look at, if you understand, you know,
• 23:17
  Spacex's historical fact pattern, you understand the
• 23:20
  industry's fact pattern, you understand how SpaceX was able
• 23:25
  to break the mold. And you really get an idea for
• 23:29
  what it takes realistically to kind of do it again.
• 23:33
  And in this case, take it to the next level and really transform
• 23:37
  the world as far as, you know, human connectivity is concerned.
• 23:42
  And it's just been amazing to to watch.
• 23:45
  And in one point on on that Twan mentions about the right type of
• 23:49
  crazy. I mean that most people would
• 23:51
  kind of look at one way where at least, you know, I saw it
• 23:56
  differently. I it's like there was that I
• 23:58
  don't know if it was a glass door post, but it was going
• 24:01
  around where some guy had recently left.
• 24:05
  And it was something to the extent of, you know, hey, the
• 24:10
  technology is fascinating. A bunch of really brilliant
• 24:14
  people work here. But you know, I can't stand the
• 24:16
  CEO because he's always looking over my shoulder, sleeping on
• 24:19
  the floor, you know, yadda, yadda, yadda.
• 24:21
  And I'm ripping my shirt off, going crazy, you know, jumping
• 24:25
  up and down yelling, you know, you know, where most people are.
• 24:29
  Like, I'd rather, you know, get shot in the head then work for a
• 24:33
  guy like this. But you know, if you're going to
• 24:36
  shape the future and truly make a debt in the universe to use
• 24:40
  another, you know, jobs quote, that's simply what it takes.
• 24:45
  You know, it's the right type of crazy.
• 24:47
  You can go back and you can look at jobs, you can look at Gates,
• 24:50
  you can look at Bezos. You know, if you, if you had a
• 24:54
  historical fact pattern that would describe all of the, yeah,
• 24:59
  great entrepreneurs and execs that, you know, I would put in
• 25:03
  the category of the right type of crazy, you're going to see
• 25:05
  the same similarities, the same general lens in which they
• 25:10
  operate and view the world again and again.
• 25:12
  And you know, I think it fits beautifully with AST.
• 25:16
  Yeah, yeah. So I I think at this point based
• 25:21
  on what a Bell and ASD has accomplished, they have my
• 25:25
  implicit trust. They come out with a $800
• 25:28
  million ATM. I'm like sure, you know, I'm
• 25:31
  sure you have a good reason you want to do a billion dollar
• 25:34
  convertible. Very kind of fantastic reason,
• 25:36
  Bell Yeah, let's do it. So I think, you know, and that's
• 25:40
  that's a great part about having a company culture and a founder
• 25:43
  that you can implicitly trust. You're not, you know, you're not
• 25:47
  reading page 235 of the debenture of trying to figure
• 25:50
  out like what's going on anymore.
• 25:52
  You're like, yeah, OK, you know, I'm I'm sure you want to go lots
• 25:55
  of satellites. Fantastic.
• 25:56
  Let's do this. So I you know, if it, once you
• 26:01
  look in enough companies and you see cultures, you're able to
• 26:04
  recognize a special 1. And I think, you know, for
• 26:07
  everyone, the space mop, you really should appreciate how
• 26:10
  special a bell is and the culture that flows from him
• 26:14
  throughout the company. It's it's exactly the right kind
• 26:17
  of culture You need to, you know, hopefully one day build
• 26:20
  like a trillion dollar market cap business.
• 26:22
  Amen. And and, you know, now to to
• 26:24
  that point, I'll just, you know, talking, you know, to
• 26:28
  observations that, you know, as a outside passive minority
• 26:32
  investor that not only speak powerfully to, you know, Tuan's
• 26:37
  point and about culture, but is another way in which you can
• 26:43
  kind of keep the pulse on the business.
• 26:45
  And, you know, it's operational evolution being approximately
• 26:49
  the same as what you believe it to be is their ability to
• 26:54
  attract, you know, world class talent.
• 26:57
  You know, today earlier people were tossing around, I think his
• 27:00
  name's Chip Walcott. I love the fact that it's his
• 27:04
  nickname is Chip, but you know, the tremendous experience in in
• 27:08
  radar and and missile defense programs and you know, that
• 27:13
  obviously I think bodes very, very well for, you know, winning
• 27:16
  future programs of record and all that stuff.
• 27:18
  But you know, you can just go down the line historically.
• 27:21
  I mean, one of the more recent high profile departures from
• 27:26
  AT&T was I think it's Jr. Wilson.
• 27:29
  If I but you know, he leaves AT&T after 20 years where I
• 27:35
  think he was like most recently vice president of towers and
• 27:38
  roaming and in in building commercial strategy and
• 27:41
  eventually became chief of networks and spectrum at AST.
• 27:45
  And so, you know, I I could walk down that list, but you know,
• 27:49
  here you have this, you know, very successful executive, you
• 27:54
  know, who has decided to make the switch, which highlights,
• 27:57
  you know, not only I think growing industry faith and a STS
• 28:00
  potential, but it signals that the company is succeeding in
• 28:03
  creating environment where top telecom talent is willing to
• 28:06
  stake the reputation and career on the outcome here, you know,
• 28:10
  and then you dive into what he did in the past at AT&T.
• 28:14
  And so, you know, it tells you, you know, the you know, Wilson
• 28:18
  connects to complex network integration between satellite
• 28:21
  and terrestrial systems. He can forge new commercial and
• 28:23
  roaming partnerships with global operators.
• 28:26
  He will be, you know, priceless and accelerating the adoption
• 28:29
  of, I think, seamless universal mobile connectivity.
• 28:32
  But, you know, you put it all together and bringing Wilson on
• 28:35
  board suggests that AST is, you know, not only positioning
• 28:39
  itself for a sophisticated network, you know, partnership
• 28:42
  and and commercialization strategies, but it's
• 28:45
  significantly increasing its credibility and execution
• 28:47
  capabilities as it aims to, you know, for large scale global
• 28:53
  deployment, which is kind of the moment we're at right now.
• 28:56
  Yeah. I think.
• 28:58
  Maybe I can go back to one of the things that you said and
• 29:01
  then I do want to add to what you just said as well.
• 29:03
  But going back to delays in space, I think for people who
• 29:07
  aren't familiar with the sector, which is often the short sellers
• 29:11
  and skeptics and just normal institutional investors, I don't
• 29:15
  think they have kind of a the context of what delays are.
• 29:20
  And so timelines do slip. And I've mentioned this in
• 29:22
  spacing before where when you publicly say, and you, you know,
• 29:27
  it's, it's to, it's to your, whether it's regulators for
• 29:31
  regulators, by the way, like, and we've seen this in FCC
• 29:34
  filings, like you're going to be super aggressive in your
• 29:36
  timeline because you want those bureaucrats to move quickly.
• 29:39
  So you're going to say, Hey, we want to launch 20 satellites
• 29:41
  before the end of the year because they need to, they need
• 29:44
  to know like you're serious and you're trying to push this thing
• 29:47
  along. If you were to say, well, maybe
• 29:49
  we'll launch 20 by second-half of next year, then then
• 29:53
  bureaucrats are going to go slower.
• 29:54
  So there is a, there's, there's an understanding that people
• 29:58
  have to have around space, which is when you set timelines, it's
• 30:02
  your suppliers. It's like it's everything that's
• 30:04
  coming around. And as we know, like things when
• 30:07
  people work on those things, then you're going to give the
• 30:10
  best case timeline because then it's it's going to slip because
• 30:13
  if you give a reasonable case line timeline that it's going to
• 30:16
  slip relative to that. And so I think and so for these
• 30:20
  private companies by the way, for AST to have a quarter or two
• 30:23
  slippage or a few months or weeks, that's nothing.
• 30:27
  I mean, if you look at like ViaSat and they, they're getting
• 30:31
  their second satellite which is going to be launching I think in
• 30:33
  the next few weeks that is delayed by that was delayed by
• 30:36
  five years. So like, so and, and like if you
• 30:41
  talked about Elon Musk and Starship, Starship was supposed
• 30:44
  to land on Mars in 2022, right? And so like Starship is now
• 30:49
  maybe getting to a level where they can like land.
• 30:53
  And so I don't think, you know, Mars is probably closer to, I
• 30:56
  don't know, take a guess like 20-30 or something.
• 30:59
  But but when you put out 2022, that's a call to action.
• 31:02
  That's a call to action for regulators, for his engineers.
• 31:06
  It's like, let's let's get pedal to metal felt.
• 31:08
  Well, you know, full well knowing that it's going to take
• 31:11
  longer than that. And so I think when investors
• 31:15
  from outside who look at space companies are like, Oh my God,
• 31:17
  look, they missed a deadline and or they missed a timeline.
• 31:20
  And so you can't trust the monitor.
• 31:21
  It's like, no, no, no, that this is just how the shit happens.
• 31:24
  It's this stuff is really hard and it takes longer than you
• 31:27
  think. And so I think it's how the game
• 31:30
  is played, period. Yeah.
• 31:31
  And I think, I think. People, for example, in the lawn
• 31:35
  must now has the confidence of investors where it's like, Oh
• 31:38
  yeah, timelines are going to slip, but he has to be
• 31:41
  aggressive to kind of get the ship going to to focus on
• 31:45
  hopefully getting to that point in time, but understanding it's
• 31:48
  going to slip. And so like, if you're a Tesla
• 31:49
  investor, you know, like, OK, this stuff's going to take
• 31:52
  longer than expected, but it's going to be good, right?
• 31:55
  And so I think the same thing you can say about AST as well,
• 31:59
  or any number of companies like Rocket Lab, Like people thought
• 32:02
  like, oh, Neutron's going to fly in 2024 and now it's 2025.
• 32:06
  And that's, that should be expected.
• 32:08
  Like it should surprise nobody, right?
• 32:10
  And then, yeah. And I think I think like what
• 32:13
  you guys were saying too about the right kind of crazy about.
• 32:17
  I mean, when you meet him in person in Tuan, I don't know if
• 32:20
  you've met him yet, but like he's just when you talk to him,
• 32:24
  it's like there's this level of optimism, but but, but
• 32:28
  confidence like sheer like when you meet him, he's like, it's
• 32:32
  going to happen. I'm going to make it happen.
• 32:33
  I remember in 2023 when I met him in the summer here in New
• 32:37
  York and, and he was like, you know, I was asking all these
• 32:41
  questions about like, do you think you have enough money?
• 32:43
  You, you, you think you can do this?
• 32:45
  And he's like, he's like, it's going to happen.
• 32:47
  Like trust me, I. Everything and I was just.
• 32:51
  Like, OK, I mean, like, you know, he just has the supreme
• 32:53
  confidence, even though, as we all know, like there were
• 32:57
  periods of time where we were almost at the point of, you
• 33:00
  know, financial calamity, right? But, but I think like, yeah.
• 33:05
  And and then going back to and the, the, the right type of
• 33:08
  crazy, it goes to the employees as well, right?
• 33:11
  Because if you don't fit the DNA, you're just not going to
• 33:14
  make it. And that's OK.
• 33:15
  Like not everybody. Like we actually had a recent
• 33:17
  Space Mob member who works in production who interviewed with
• 33:21
  the company and got an offer. And part of it was part of the
• 33:23
  discussion was like, hey, if you, if you go work in this
• 33:27
  company, like see you see you in two years or three years because
• 33:30
  like you're going to be working your ass off.
• 33:32
  And so are you at that point in your career where you want to do
• 33:35
  that. And it's going to be exciting
• 33:37
  and it's going to be highly rewarding financially.
• 33:38
  But then you've got to commit yourself, right?
• 33:41
  And so like when I came out of undergrad, when I did investment
• 33:44
  banking, I knew it was like, see you later friends, like every
• 33:47
  working over 100 hour weeks. It's going to be my life for the
• 33:50
  next two to three years. And I during that period of my
• 33:53
  life, I like don't know popular culture.
• 33:55
  I never watched shows. I didn't listen to music or
• 33:57
  anything because I was always at the office.
• 33:59
  But but that's what I commit to and I got a lot out of it.
• 34:02
  And I think that's what, you know, the the people at AC space
• 34:05
  mobile, that you have to be that kind of crazy, right?
• 34:08
  And that that also exists at SpaceX.
• 34:11
  It exists at Rocket Lab, any number of companies.
• 34:13
  But I think I did want to add one last thing, Ryan, what you
• 34:17
  were saying about the about employees.
• 34:20
  I mean, we talked about this too, about how from EMC if, if
• 34:25
  the bell did not do a good job and there's some people who are
• 34:28
  like, well, EMC wasn't that good of a company of blah, blah,
• 34:30
  blah. But but the proof in that was in
• 34:33
  the pudding, right where where when he left and he started AST
• 34:36
  space mobile, all the prior executives follow them.
• 34:39
  They, they're all like, Hey, you're going to start a new
• 34:42
  company. I want to work with you because
• 34:43
  I had such a great experience with you and I believe in what
• 34:46
  you're doing and you're doing something really crazy, but I
• 34:49
  believe in you. So do it.
• 34:50
  And so like Chris Ivory came over, Michael Pollock, Tom
• 34:55
  Severson, who is the CFO, who then eventually had to retire
• 34:58
  because he he was getting up there in age, Doctor Yao, who's
• 35:02
  the current CTO. I mean, there's a whole host of
• 35:05
  basically like the entire senior executive team came over from
• 35:09
  EMC to AST, like, you know, about obviously took some time
• 35:12
  off after he had sold the company and then decided to
• 35:15
  leave. But then I think that's a true
• 35:17
  testament of the fact that, yeah, this guy's, he's like, you
• 35:23
  know, hard driving, you know, he demands a ton from his people.
• 35:26
  But then all the senior executives basically followed
• 35:29
  him because they wanted to do it again.
• 35:31
  They're like, I want to go make this magic happen again.
• 35:35
  I mean. Amen.
• 35:36
  I mean, I I think, yeah, when when everyone follows Patton out
• 35:40
  the door to his next adventure, there are very few signs as I
• 35:47
  mean, then tell you about who someone is, their character,
• 35:50
  their ability to lead, their technical competence, all of
• 35:55
  these things, especially in a business as as scientifically
• 35:59
  complex as this to see, you know, not just his old team,
• 36:04
  but, you know, All Stars a players, you know, whatever term
• 36:08
  you want to use, you know, come to the company like moths to a
• 36:13
  flame consistently, you know, throughout its entire evolution
• 36:18
  is a very it's a poker tail with with very powerful signal value.
• 36:23
  And that's just, you know, one element of, you know, you, you
• 36:26
  can kind of make this argument or, or how the conversions of
• 36:29
  all these things points to something truly extraordinary in
• 36:32
  so many different ways from so many different angles.
• 36:36
  You know, it almost gets exhausting.
• 36:37
  I mean, believe it or not, I probably cut half of what I
• 36:40
  could have written out of this, you know and believe.
• 36:48
  Me. It is one hell of a.
• 36:49
  Story and and I would add one point to yours and pan about,
• 36:55
  you know what are I would just kind of amidst this backdrop
• 36:59
  with the delays and that kind of thing.
• 37:01
  You know, I think it's imperative that you keep in mind
• 37:05
  what we're playing for and should they succeed, whether you
• 37:10
  know, we turn the constellation on in 18 months or or 2 1/2
• 37:15
  years is irrelevant to the long term intrinsic value of this
• 37:20
  business to what it's going to generate in it in terms of of
• 37:24
  cash flows and steady state to its reinvestment runway.
• 37:28
  You know, it is patience is always a virtue, but it is an
• 37:32
  extraordinary virtue here and one that I don't think I would
• 37:38
  miss timeline to something I would be if it was a different
• 37:41
  industry, I would feel very differently about.
• 37:43
  But I don't think you can really know what you own and freak out
• 37:48
  about these types of things. I think that's an indication
• 37:52
  that you need to do more work because it's just just the
• 37:55
  nature of the beast. Hey, Ryan.
• 37:58
  Yes, so. You know, I, I want to say
• 38:00
  congratulations on finishing and publishing the tome.
• 38:04
  It was, you know, a work of tremendous dedication.
• 38:08
  I never could have ever ridden this thing because, I don't
• 38:14
  know, I was just not disciplined enough.
• 38:15
  But. I wish, but you know.
• 38:19
  Repergency and. Concise.
• 38:21
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. But you.
• 38:23
  Know I sort of had a a passenger seat view of it as you're
• 38:27
  writing it and sending me drafts.
• 38:29
  So as you're writing it, what was what do you think was the
• 38:32
  hardest part to write or to explain in your in your tone?
• 38:38
  Good question. A hardest.
• 38:44
  Is is? Well, you would probably either
• 38:48
  be setting the stage, the kind of this precipice of the final
• 38:54
  frontier of of, you know, bridging the digital divide and
• 38:58
  making that aspect of it come alive.
• 39:02
  Because there's, you know, you have these kind of cripple
• 39:05
  convergence of, of secular megatrends that all had like
• 39:10
  interplay with each other simultaneously in the kind of
• 39:14
  Lollapalooza factor, the compounding velocity that those
• 39:17
  three things bring to the current moment.
• 39:21
  And then two, trying to be judicial and respectful of, you
• 39:27
  know, our only kind of true comparable, IE SpaceX, you know,
• 39:32
  or more specifically Starlink and Musk, you know, you know,
• 39:37
  one of the books that I truly enjoyed on on Twan's
• 39:41
  recommendation that really brought a lot of stuff alive to
• 39:45
  me that, for example, eccentric orbits did not was lift off the
• 39:49
  story of the early years of SpaceX.
• 39:52
  And you know, the the cultural aspects that you mean.
• 39:59
  This is all a long winded way of saying that I deeply admire
• 40:02
  SpaceX. I deeply admire, you know,
• 40:04
  certainly many aspects of Musk, you know, as an entrepreneur, as
• 40:09
  in a businessman. And I did not want people to.
• 40:12
  Think that I was being too cute or patently dismissing all of
• 40:17
  the very real, you know, virtues of that business and its leader.
• 40:21
  I mean, you know, I would never argue with its dominance in in
• 40:25
  fixed broadband. I would never argument with its
• 40:28
  near or argue about its near monopoly and launch.
• 40:31
  I would never argue about it's, you know, having a cost of
• 40:35
  capital that is essentially 0 in the unlimited money machine that
• 40:40
  that brings to the table and all of which makes SpaceX and
• 40:44
  Starlink a very serious competitor that you would have
• 40:48
  to be brain dead. The kind of reflexively discount
• 40:52
  as not a big deal. But that is, you know, as you
• 40:55
  peel the onion back here and you understand the history the way
• 41:00
  Musk, you know, for the first time ever that as far as I know
• 41:04
  of at any of his companies, not just SpaceX, where he went
• 41:08
  completely against not only is his business print principles
• 41:13
  and you know, historical modest operandi from his past ventures,
• 41:19
  but you know, it's just it was one of those things where you
• 41:23
  seem kind of mistake after mistake and those mistakes
• 41:26
  compound. And you know, this again points
• 41:29
  back to understanding the history here to how we got to
• 41:33
  this current moment. You know, for the first time in,
• 41:35
  in Musk's history, he didn't, you know, you know, build, build
• 41:41
  the product, you know, from kind of a clean sheet first
• 41:44
  principles basis. You know, he entered the space
• 41:48
  via M&A with Swarm. You know, he repurposed
• 41:54
  satellites that were made for Internet of Things for D to D,
• 41:58
  You know, you just as you, if you're familiar with Musk in his
• 42:01
  history and at his various companies, you know, you read
• 42:06
  the specific way in which he went about, you know, building
• 42:10
  their current, you know, D to D architecture and everything
• 42:14
  around that. And it's just, it's just so
• 42:17
  inexplicably, you know, divorced from the way he typically
• 42:20
  operates. And so I didn't want to risk
• 42:25
  coming off and I wanted to be as fair as possible and give credit
• 42:28
  where credit was due. And, and hopefully, if I, you
• 42:32
  know, put all those puzzle pieces, you know, and they all
• 42:35
  clicked in the place the right way, you would come to the
• 42:37
  conclusion that I think, you know, I know I have.
• 42:40
  And I know, you know, almost everyone listening to this call
• 42:43
  haves, which is when you really do really do the work to know
• 42:47
  the details. You know, it is, it's not that I
• 42:52
  don't think SpaceX or Starlink can catch up or that they don't
• 42:55
  have great engineers or all those things.
• 42:57
  But you know, based on the merits and the objective
• 43:01
  evidence, I don't see how they are a material competitor to the
• 43:07
  premium broadband and and the service offerings that AST will
• 43:10
  turn on with the, you know, the turning on of its global
• 43:13
  constellation, you know, for five years at least or you know,
• 43:17
  something approaching that. And when you understand all of
• 43:21
  the first mover advantages and how they all kind of snowball
• 43:25
  into the self re reinforcing network effects, yeah, I think
• 43:29
  that's an important piece of of kind of thing that's clearly.
• 43:32
  But you know, I just don't know how they catch up or provide a
• 43:37
  comparable product before the game is over, you know, IE
• 43:42
  before ASD can scale with the MN OS globally, you know,
• 43:45
  throughout the world. And you know, that's, that's a
• 43:49
  really important aspect I think to get comfortable with, you
• 43:53
  know, the idea, its strong valuation and, and its future,
• 43:56
  which, you know, I, I continue to maintain that, you know,
• 44:00
  anything sub $100 billion for this business is, is, you know,
• 44:03
  kind of asininely stupid. This is a, the definite, I mean,
• 44:08
  this is arguably the best business, at least intrinsically
• 44:12
  I've ever studied at scale. The question is, can it get to
• 44:15
  scale? And I think, you know, that that
• 44:18
  uncertainty is the primary driver of the opportunity today.
• 44:23
  You know, the mission isn't finished and you know, until it
• 44:27
  is, until people pick up their phones, you know, in the desert
• 44:31
  somewhere or, or how about just driving from there neighborhood
• 44:36
  into the city and you know, their phone call doesn't drop or
• 44:40
  you know, they're, they can scroll the, the web.
• 44:45
  You know, whether they're on the top of Mount Kilimanjaro or, you
• 44:49
  know, in a rain forest. You know, I remember distinctly,
• 44:53
  you know, what it was like when we transition from, you know, I
• 44:57
  can still remember putting my AOLCD in the computer in hearing
• 45:02
  the modem dial up, you know, go. And I can remember the sickly
• 45:05
  the first time I used, you know, I used a computer that was, you
• 45:10
  know, true broadband and it, it blew my, you know, I, I remember
• 45:15
  it palpably. And I think that is exactly
• 45:18
  what's going to happen. You know, this is a name where
• 45:21
  no one will understand it until it turns on, and then everyone
• 45:25
  will understand it and it won't need a 74 page thesis, you know,
• 45:30
  to, you know, for people to connect the dots.
• 45:34
  Yeah, it's just going to have a. Beautiful cash flow statement.
• 45:38
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you know, you know it's.
• 45:42
  Interesting you mentioned that, Ryan, because I, I.
• 45:45
  I think. I think for.
• 45:47
  People that aren't in the institutional investing world,
• 45:51
  this is, maybe this is harder to understand, but you know, a lot
• 45:55
  of the inbounds I get on AST right now is from, you know,
• 45:59
  smaller funds that are unconventional in some way or
• 46:04
  other types of long duration capital like family offices or
• 46:09
  endowments. You know, the type of inbound I
• 46:11
  don't get is anything that requires an investment
• 46:14
  committee. And there are, yeah, there are
• 46:18
  trillions and trillions and trillions of institutional
• 46:22
  capital that goes through an investment committee.
• 46:25
  Like right now you're an analyst or PM at A at wherever ASC is
• 46:32
  still a very hard pitch to make to an investment committee and
• 46:35
  get it past the investment committee.
• 46:37
  You know, a lot of time you're like, you know, why am I, Why am
• 46:40
  I bothering? I'm going to go pitch NVIDIA.
• 46:45
  But you know but. Once revenue hits and cash flow
• 46:49
  hits and you see the economics of this business pan out, it
• 46:53
  will become extremely easy pitched investment committees
• 46:57
  because you know people on the investment committee may be AC
• 47:00
  subscribers already and you know, we joke about the endless
• 47:04
  rat but but. Once this.
• 47:08
  Pool of investment committee locked up, capital starts
• 47:12
  blowing to into AST. It will, no joke, be the endless
• 47:17
  rally. And I'm just very excited for
• 47:19
  that, that dynamic to happen. Well, I mean it's.
• 47:23
  It's. There's nothing more wonderful.
• 47:26
  I mean there's another name we own that is, you know, a
• 47:29
  relatively large company and we had a a very close friends
• 47:35
  former analyst worked for this. I think, I think they had
• 47:38
  something like 150 billion in AUM.
• 47:42
  And, you know, he was prescribed the pitch to the investment
• 47:47
  committee. And so I talked to him, I don't
• 47:51
  know, for a couple hours, you know, a couple days in a row to
• 47:55
  kind of help him tighten it up because, you know, for mutual
• 48:00
  friends, he knew, I knew the name very, very well.
• 48:03
  And, you know, when I, you know, got done with it, I, I looked up
• 48:08
  the AUM he, the person that made an offhand comment about, you
• 48:12
  know, kind of their minimum position size, which I think was
• 48:14
  like 4 or 5 billion. And, you know, I went and I did,
• 48:20
  you know, just for this single institution and I, it was a
• 48:23
  similar dynamic where we were at a kind of cascade point.
• 48:27
  It would take them, you know, at 1020% of the average daily
• 48:31
  volume, you know, months to build this position.
• 48:37
  And and as as not just one institution, but 2345 in until
• 48:41
  it because it starts to become kind of a career risk to not own
• 48:46
  it. I mean, this is a a technical
• 48:48
  dynamic that plays out over years and you know this kind of
• 48:55
  perennial or or forever bid beneath the equity.
• 48:59
  It's just the technical factors that are part and parcel of when
• 49:04
  big money and big institutions get long.
• 49:08
  It's, you know, it's not like they can, you know, wake up in
• 49:11
  the morning, put it in the market order and by lunchtime
• 49:14
  get filled. And and you know, we.
• 49:18
  We still, I mean, I, I don't know what our exact percentage
• 49:20
  of institutional ownership is now, but when you combine that
• 49:24
  with how strongly held and tight this float is between insiders,
• 49:29
  the space mob people that you know, can see the deep reality
• 49:36
  of the business very clearly. It just creates this torque.
• 49:40
  I mean, you know, like when I first got involved in Antoine
• 49:43
  and I were arguing with quote UN quote, smart investors and value
• 49:47
  investors Club. You know, I, I think I began the
• 49:50
  whole thing, which is of all the names one can short, you know,
• 49:54
  yeah, there is no more terrifying way to get absolutely
• 49:58
  naked and have your fun literally shut down based on an
• 50:03
  Infinity squeeze. You know, given the the inherent
• 50:07
  economic leverage and you know, the power of the business model,
• 50:11
  the instability to capital efficiently scale, you know how
• 50:15
  early it is in terms of the institutional adoption curve.
• 50:18
  And you know, everything we just talked about, I mean, you know,
• 50:22
  you got to be positively insane to be short this stock that or
• 50:26
  very, very dumb, you know, Well, there there are.
• 50:30
  There are a lot of dumb people. I mean, it's, I mean to answer
• 50:34
  your question, I think the current percentage of shares
• 50:38
  held by institutions according to Schulberg is 35% and then
• 50:41
  float is 45%. So when you see, when you see a
• 50:46
  a widely held institutional name, it'll be closer to like 90
• 50:49
  ninety, 95%. Their retail is going to be a
• 50:51
  little pimple. But I, I do think so the one
• 50:54
  hand, yeah, on the one hand, like they, they probably will
• 50:58
  wait for cash flows. But then I think something that
• 51:00
  will pull that forward is if we do get a Golden Dome award now
• 51:05
  it's different for a prime to get it like, you know, Lockheed
• 51:08
  Martin or someone else. It's kind of it's almost like a
• 51:10
  little pimple, right? It's like, OK, you got golden
• 51:12
  Dome. And does it really move the
• 51:14
  needle out of relative to the rest of your, you know, the
• 51:18
  revenue that you're getting it, it probably doesn't move the
• 51:20
  needle that much. But but getting golden Dome is
• 51:23
  kind of like for institutions though, though.
• 51:26
  What's a pureplay wing to to play golden Dome?
• 51:28
  It's like, oh, I need to own AC space mobile.
• 51:30
  Oh, and they've got this like interesting consumer business
• 51:33
  too, which I guess I'll learn about or, you know, it's it's
• 51:36
  it's one of these type situations where I think once
• 51:39
  that award comes, then it's going to be off to the races.
• 51:43
  Well, think about. It like this think.
• 51:44
  About like this, there are two ways in public markets are two
• 51:50
  themes I'd say broadly where gaining public equity exposure
• 51:56
  is essentially non existent, but yet they are in terms of kind of
• 52:01
  tailwinds and and thematically the most powerful themes in the
• 52:05
  markets today released XAI. One of those is D2 DI mean
• 52:12
  there's a reason why SpaceX and Starlink, I mean, I guess open
• 52:15
  AI is the most valuable private company in the world now, but so
• 52:20
  the second most valuable company in the world or private company
• 52:24
  in the world. And you know the fact that the
• 52:27
  second most valuable private company in the world, you know,
• 52:29
  75% of its intrinsic value is due to Starlink.
• 52:33
  You know, AS TS only true comparable and not available in
• 52:38
  public markets. If you want a pureplay to DTD,
• 52:42
  there is no better name for the consumer broadband business than
• 52:45
  AST. You know, at the same time, and
• 52:48
  this is what just really blows my head off, you know, the
• 52:52
  ability to find direct pureplay exposure to Golden Dome is also
• 52:57
  kind of equally as elusive. I mean, you have Palantir and,
• 53:01
  you know, you have one or two ways you can play this.
• 53:05
  But, you know, generally speaking, you know, in order to
• 53:07
  get exposure, you have to buy, you know, North or up or Bowen,
• 53:11
  you know, all of these old crime defense contractor, other stuff
• 53:14
  that comes along with that. Yeah.
• 53:16
  Yes, and so. You're you you don't really have
• 53:18
  kind of concentrated exposure to the US defense pivot that is
• 53:23
  taking place right now and I think will be a decade long plus
• 53:27
  transition as I kind of outline in the piece.
• 53:30
  And so, you know, you have a day coming, you know, I don't know
• 53:34
  if it's six months or 12 months. I mean, the market usually
• 53:37
  starts to really discount the future, typically like, you
• 53:39
  know, 9 to 12 months ahead of time where people are going to
• 53:43
  wake up to the fact that AST is basically a, a, you know, one of
• 53:48
  the, that the scarcity, you know, that the scarcity of being
• 53:52
  able to find, you know, a publicly traded pureplay to not
• 53:55
  just Golden Dome and the secular mega trend and hundreds of
• 54:00
  billions that are going to be put to work towards that effort
• 54:03
  over the next decade. But the D2D, which you know, as
• 54:08
  is kind of the point of the larger thesis, will bridge the
• 54:12
  digital vide and, you know, connect the unconnected
• 54:16
  permanently. And those two factors, the fact
• 54:19
  that, you know, they're not appreciated or really kind of
• 54:22
  widely understood yet. Once the institutions buy in, I
• 54:27
  think you're going to see kind of a, a, a simultaneous kind of
• 54:31
  grand awakening to the themes and, and it's scarcity that
• 54:38
  markets as a way to get exposure to that.
• 54:40
  And that should be quite exciting.
• 54:42
  You know what's going to be? Funny to in whether it's in a
• 54:46
  months, few months time or quarter quarters.
• 54:48
  I mean, not, not, not to throw shade at you or Taun.
• 54:54
  It'll be funny to see in in some of the larger hedge funds.
• 55:00
  Whether it's like. Dan Loeb or I don't know you,
• 55:03
  you pick Ackman any number like to see in their quarter.
• 55:07
  The letter is like, oh, we, we started this investment in this
• 55:10
  company called AST Space Mobile and basically they will lift
• 55:15
  every, everything that we've talked about.
• 55:17
  They will write about it in there and talk about how it's
• 55:19
  game changing. This company is going to be the
• 55:22
  largest wireless carrier in the world by subscribers.
• 55:25
  And like it's got dual purpose use for a consumer, but also for
• 55:29
  military applications. It'll, it'll just be like mind
• 55:32
  blowing. I think for any number of retail
• 55:35
  investors who are listening to this, who were there early to
• 55:39
  see to be invested in the company when it was as little as
• 55:41
  what 700 million in market cap. I mean, today we're at 2526
• 55:46
  billion. I mean, that's pretty crazy,
• 55:48
  right? Like, and, and the fact that we
• 55:50
  all know Scott Wisniewski and you know, Beth and, and, and you
• 55:56
  know, people, I mean, God bless him.
• 55:58
  Like during, during the rough times, people were asking for
• 56:01
  both of their heads and we was like in the same time.
• 56:03
  But now they are, they the vision, they, it's, it's come
• 56:08
  through and they are. I mean, I mentioned that today
• 56:12
  when I talked about the space. But if you listen to Iridium's
• 56:15
  conference call, it was like, it was like a funeral.
• 56:18
  It was insane. It was like, I mean, though we
• 56:20
  found they were dead for years. We've known they were dead for.
• 56:23
  Years and they they were in denial and they're like, you
• 56:26
  know what we're going to we're going to raise more debt and buy
• 56:28
  back more stock and issue a grow our dividend and we're going to
• 56:32
  have a CapEx holiday. We all by the way, first ASD
• 56:36
  space mobile investors. One of our jokes is like, hey,
• 56:38
  we have CapEx holiday. It's like that European.
• 56:42
  What was that that mean was like a European holiday.
• 56:45
  But anyway, but I think like, you know, for, for Iridium, you
• 56:50
  know, they, they, they stop their share buyback because
• 56:53
  they're, they physically said we need to start spending on our
• 56:56
  future. And it's like, hey, hey,
• 56:58
  Sherlock, like you should have did that 5-10 years ago when you
• 57:02
  were laughing about direct to device.
• 57:04
  And you're you're, you know, basically paying 10 for our to
• 57:07
  go spread FUD about AST face mole, which by the way, like no
• 57:10
  one listens to that shithead anymore because he's been wrong
• 57:13
  the entire way. But I think like, I think what's
• 57:16
  the, what's the conference that he's putting?
• 57:17
  On with like the who's who of the dead men walking.
• 57:20
  I laughed out loud when I when I saw the, you know, the
• 57:24
  conference representative global star bicep it.
• 57:27
  Was like Battle of the Bastards, you know, it's, it was pretty.
• 57:32
  But but. To this point even.
• 57:35
  Outside of of all of the dead men walking in, you know, the
• 57:39
  satellite space per SE. I mean the amount of of global
• 57:42
  market cap external to to just to them that is going to get
• 57:48
  blown up. And, you know, there's a lot of,
• 57:52
  I mean, you know, this is one of those ideas where it's not just
• 57:56
  about the optionality and the opportunity, you know, long the
• 58:00
  space, you know the name, you know, you, you dive deeply
• 58:04
  enough into this story and you realize, you know, even on the
• 58:08
  short side, it is, it is like a gift from heaven Because, you
• 58:12
  know, the second this thing turns on, you know, there's
• 58:15
  probably, you know, a half a billion dollars worth of, you
• 58:18
  know, publicly traded market caps that should pretty much go
• 58:20
  to 0 overnight. Well, the radio.
• 58:24
  Keeps on getting both long and. Short already went from 30. 5 to
• 58:29
  40 to now 18 and even even rumors that they put themselves
• 58:34
  over sale and Global Star too. Like, I mean, that article about
• 58:38
  global Star was actually quite bearish.
• 58:39
  But then of course Jay Monroe who's been, you know, trying to
• 58:43
  get out of that investment for for many years and talked about
• 58:46
  how he thinks he can get $10 billion or more for it.
• 58:49
  But you notice, like, both of those companies didn't trade up
• 58:52
  because no one believes that shit.
• 58:54
  It's like, like, why would you pay?
• 58:56
  Yeah, why would you pay a premium for these companies?
• 58:59
  Like, let them go. Let them get into financial
• 59:01
  distress and pick them up for pennies on the dollar.
• 59:03
  Like if there was real if, if, yeah, if, if investors were if
• 59:08
  they truly believe that you'd see these companies trade up
• 59:11
  2030% on those types of rumors. But, but truly like for
• 59:16
  Iridium's conference call, it was, it was like a funeral.
• 59:19
  It was like a funeral. It was pretty, I mean, I, I
• 59:21
  encourage everybody to read the transcript or listen to it.
• 59:25
  And another interesting thing is that, and this is, this is truly
• 59:29
  like just kind of a, a contract of, of the industry.
• 59:32
  Like no one, no one. You, you don't talk about ASD
• 59:35
  safe mobile, never mention them, right?
• 59:37
  Because it's like in the information article, which by
• 59:39
  the way, like I think Tim Farr anchored and kind of prompted,
• 59:42
  created that article. There's no mention of it like
• 59:45
  space mobile between this whole Spar link and Apple saga or
• 59:49
  whatever and global star. But it's like, hey, you're kind
• 59:51
  of missing the elephant in the room, which I think it's
• 59:54
  purposeful, right? And then in Iridium conference
• 59:57
  call today, Matt Dash did say he did or yesterday he did say.
• 1:00:03
  You know, hey, some companies that don't have revenue like
• 1:00:05
  we're we're not being treated like them.
• 1:00:07
  Well, yeah, you're not being treated because your husband
• 1:00:10
  like there's no opportunity for you.
• 1:00:12
  But then it it's funny because like all the analysts except
• 1:00:15
  asking them, they're like, well, you're going to put the country
• 1:00:17
  up for sale. Or if you partner with people
• 1:00:20
  who would be your order of strategic partners that you
• 1:00:23
  would like to work with, would it be SpaceX?
• 1:00:25
  Would it be Amazon? But no one's mentioning AST
• 1:00:27
  Space Mobile, which is kind of funny, but the.
• 1:00:30
  Yeah, they can. And a radiator, can't they?
• 1:00:32
  Can't say the name Larry because to do so.
• 1:00:35
  Is to hasten their demise even faster.
• 1:00:38
  And so they're in this twisted kind of catch 22 where if they
• 1:00:42
  even begin to acknowledge, you know, that the reapers at their
• 1:00:45
  doorstep, you know, they usher in the period where the dots
• 1:00:49
  start connecting with, you know, the institutions on Wall Street.
• 1:00:52
  I mean, you know, you just can't read from that point on.
• 1:00:56
  And you know, I'm sure they are are are sparkly acutely aware of
• 1:01:02
  this reality in a in a way of our better than than even we can
• 1:01:05
  understand given, you know, the state.
• 1:01:08
  That is a good point because I think.
• 1:01:09
  I think everybody can talk about SpaceX.
• 1:01:11
  I'm Starling can because it's so obvious.
• 1:01:13
  And then it's not as if like everybody has access to go
• 1:01:16
  invest in those companies, but then they will not mention AST
• 1:01:19
  space mobile because it's like, oh, wait, what's this company
• 1:01:22
  about? Research it and then I call you
• 1:01:24
  shit. I need to own some of this even
• 1:01:27
  AS TS own. Partners don't want them talking
• 1:01:29
  about, you know, I won't say it, you know, out of respect for the
• 1:01:32
  company, but you know, there's people invested in the cap stack
• 1:01:35
  that, you know, don't want the company talking about certain,
• 1:01:40
  you know, efficient efficiencies and elements, you know, of the
• 1:01:44
  way AST will change the game. So it it's not just the dead men
• 1:01:50
  walking the direct competitors, but in many ways it's it's, you
• 1:01:54
  know, actual investors in the company that that understand the
• 1:01:59
  reality of what is about to be ushered in far better than most.
• 1:02:04
  And I think they're they're dead silence or, you know, their
• 1:02:07
  willingness to ask for discretion is, you know, one of
• 1:02:11
  the most powerful poker tells. If you if you can read between
• 1:02:15
  the lines, I think it tells you a lot about the state of play
• 1:02:18
  today. I and you bring.
• 1:02:20
  Up a good point, I think people there is there are some nuances
• 1:02:24
  to this and I think people should understand when it when
• 1:02:28
  it comes to AT&T and Verizon and they're talking about this
• 1:02:30
  partnership in particular, they are going to walk a very fine
• 1:02:35
  line. They're going to be balanced out
• 1:02:36
  right. Like on the one hand, AST space
• 1:02:38
  mobile, it's their partner. They want to they want to you
• 1:02:41
  know, they want to work with the company and foster it, but then
• 1:02:45
  and they need about a counterweight to to Starling,
• 1:02:47
  right? But then also there probably is
• 1:02:51
  some fear that at some point there the the the balance
• 1:02:54
  between their relationship with AST and then themselves like,
• 1:02:59
  you know, they're they don't. Want to create.
• 1:03:02
  Something that becomes too big, right?
• 1:03:04
  And so I think and you've seen John stanky talk about a little
• 1:03:08
  bit like this where he says, hey, you know, we want we want
• 1:03:11
  many players and we want competition, which is true.
• 1:03:13
  Like all these guys want options, right?
• 1:03:14
  You don't want to be tied to just one company.
• 1:03:18
  And then also they became so powerful where you you don't
• 1:03:21
  have an ability. It's like when your child get
• 1:03:23
  becomes stronger than you And and the times that you could
• 1:03:26
  like you could spank them with no percussion, it's like, Oh my
• 1:03:29
  gosh, they can now beat me up. So I think, I think people
• 1:03:33
  shouldn't freak out when that when that happens because it's
• 1:03:36
  in the interest of and remember, these are our strategic
• 1:03:39
  partners, but then also, you know, there are negotiations
• 1:03:43
  like in five years, we have to renegotiate, you know, the
• 1:03:46
  agreements and and so do you there there's a bounce, right?
• 1:03:50
  And so I think, I think as we kind of go along this journey,
• 1:03:54
  when you do hear some of these things from whether whether it's
• 1:03:57
  a Verizon or AT&T and they're like, you know, we want other
• 1:04:00
  people out there by the way, like you can want other people
• 1:04:02
  out there. But then once the networks are
• 1:04:04
  integrated and you have seamless handover, it does not make sense
• 1:04:08
  to have to numb DD vRS because then your phone goes haywire.
• 1:04:12
  Consumers are confused and and it the service becomes shit
• 1:04:15
  because then it's like, well, which system takes priority and
• 1:04:20
  also their stuff and so well we're there's a.
• 1:04:23
  Yeah, yeah. To hit on what you're saying, it
• 1:04:25
  is the abstract benefit of other options that they are speaking
• 1:04:30
  to. You're not realistic desire to
• 1:04:33
  have more than one, you know, why would you add an inferior
• 1:04:37
  player? You know, you know, I mean, we
• 1:04:40
  could kind of walk down and we can deduce from the facts a lot
• 1:04:44
  of kind of self-evident elements of the Moat, you know, but they
• 1:04:49
  but at the same time, they they also don't want to be kind of
• 1:04:52
  bent over with a gun to their head with no negotiating
• 1:04:55
  leverage. So again, this is just one of
• 1:04:58
  those ideas where developing real contacts and understanding
• 1:05:03
  is everything. You know, I see this with we've
• 1:05:06
  had a large investment in Nintendo for you know, going on
• 1:05:10
  6 plus years. And you know, if you're not
• 1:05:12
  fluent in Nintendo speak, it's quite easy to freak out or to
• 1:05:16
  misconstrue, you know what what in fact they are saying.
• 1:05:22
  And, you know, being able to sit in a position of understanding
• 1:05:28
  where you understand the culture, you understand their
• 1:05:30
  message, you know, their messaging, how they think is a
• 1:05:34
  tremendous advantage to not getting shaken out by, you know,
• 1:05:39
  again, a lot of things that if this was kind of a normal
• 1:05:43
  situation, you know, you would be right to fear or freak out
• 1:05:47
  and and re underwrite, you know the position.
• 1:05:51
  So, you know, I don't know where it was going, but when?
• 1:05:55
  Are you going? Yeah, I'm going to switch
• 1:05:58
  topics. Because, you know, one thing
• 1:06:01
  that we learned today that I hopefully will be true is that
• 1:06:04
  Indian Prime Minister Modi will announce our launch date for
• 1:06:09
  BB6. I thought, yeah, I thought that
• 1:06:12
  that's pretty bad. We'll see, right?
• 1:06:14
  If that happens, I'll. That's going to be amazing to
• 1:06:16
  see, yeah. Well, I mean, when you think
• 1:06:19
  about, I mean, you know, that one thing that I, I hate that I
• 1:06:23
  wasn't able to adequately cover and all the members of the space
• 1:06:28
  mobile kind of intuitively understand.
• 1:06:30
  I I wanted to focus on the the low hanging fruit, you know, the
• 1:06:34
  deals already in place. You know, I I make a distinction
• 1:06:37
  between the Tam and and and the Sam, but the same being, you
• 1:06:42
  know, the addressable market day one when the constellation turns
• 1:06:47
  on, you know where you you really die.
• 1:06:49
  You know, you talk about 18 T Verizon, the people with
• 1:06:52
  exclusive, you know DA signed, but you know India, you know
• 1:07:00
  this as a proof of concept and proof point for you know other
• 1:07:05
  countries you know that have the geographic issues.
• 1:07:09
  You know, there are so many elements of proving out, you
• 1:07:14
  know, the, your, your, you know, the, the case study that is
• 1:07:18
  India and the cascade that success there will unlock, you
• 1:07:23
  know, in, you know, other places throughout Southeast Asia or, or
• 1:07:27
  Africa, you know, from one standpoint or you know, Canada,
• 1:07:32
  You know, we, we just recently had the, the bell news.
• 1:07:36
  But, you know, 1 stat that people don't realize is, you
• 1:07:40
  know, the, what is it? The, the dispersion of people
• 1:07:44
  throughout Canada and you know, the population density there is,
• 1:07:49
  you know, as you know, almost as bad as India.
• 1:07:53
  And so, you know, it's not just, you know, proving that the
• 1:07:57
  service works as advertised. It's showing that, you know, in
• 1:08:02
  areas where building terrestrial towers and you know, all of the
• 1:08:07
  typical things that has ushered in connectivity and the
• 1:08:10
  Internet, you know, throughout the rest of the world that you
• 1:08:14
  know, you're they're, they're, you know, one of the big
• 1:08:18
  insights that I focused on in the piece, or at least tried to,
• 1:08:22
  is how the physics and economics of terrestrial networks
• 1:08:25
  basically create a permanent coverage gap that only satellite
• 1:08:29
  solutions can bridge. I mean, even in theory.
• 1:08:31
  So you know, a different way to say it is Bridgeting the digital
• 1:08:34
  vibe is is essentially structurally impossible without
• 1:08:37
  non non terrestrial solution like ASTS.
• 1:08:41
  And this has a number of of you know, indicators.
• 1:08:44
  You know, for example, it guarantees satellite demand,
• 1:08:47
  connectivity demand regardless of economic conditions.
• 1:08:50
  And and you know, that says a lot to the stability of the
• 1:08:52
  business. But you know what India will
• 1:08:57
  prove has tremendous implications for the
• 1:09:00
  reinvestment runway. And you know how all that will
• 1:09:03
  play out as a bell goes on, it goes about connecting the
• 1:09:06
  unconnected and, and delivering on his mission.
• 1:09:09
  And I wish, you know, I could have had spent more time there.
• 1:09:12
  But there are tremendous implications with this as a test
• 1:09:16
  market. And it doesn't, you know, being
• 1:09:18
  familiar with all those implications, it doesn't
• 1:09:21
  surprise me at all that, you know, Mariah is is, you know,
• 1:09:24
  wants to announce it. I think he would be dumb not to
• 1:09:28
  if my understanding is correct. So, you know, it's not at all
• 1:09:31
  surprising. Yeah, I know.
• 1:09:34
  We've we've all had. Our issues with ISRO and sort of
• 1:09:38
  their, you know, their public statements that they made and
• 1:09:41
  possibly extended timelines. But you know, once I heard that,
• 1:09:45
  you know, PM Modi, you might be announcing the launch date.
• 1:09:49
  I I thought, wow, this is actually, you know, hats off to
• 1:09:52
  Bell and Scott for seeing strategically how this could
• 1:09:55
  play out. This could be very much worth it
• 1:09:57
  because, you know, I think it's going to be a huge profile
• 1:10:00
  raising event for AST in India and you know it.
• 1:10:06
  I, I feel like, you know, you know, the Indians are very
• 1:10:09
  active on social media and so you're going to get a lot of,
• 1:10:12
  you know, retweets, you know, postings and all that.
• 1:10:16
  So I think isn't it, isn't India, It's a good.
• 1:10:18
  Profile raising, yes. And isn't isn't technically.
• 1:10:21
  India, the largest wireless, you know, mobile market in the
• 1:10:25
  world, Yeah. One either one point or it's
• 1:10:30
  probably or second to to China. One of those two is the top.
• 1:10:35
  I mean, I'm not I'm not exactly sure, but I I do think India
• 1:10:39
  might be spice. Subscribers.
• 1:10:40
  But China might be my value, I do think geopolitically.
• 1:10:43
  It's critical too. And, and for the, the, the US
• 1:10:47
  administration, the Trump administration, you know, it,
• 1:10:50
  it's going to be important because I think, I believe India
• 1:10:54
  and always ET and all those guys since 2020.
• 1:10:59
  But then India is always kind of a player that's going to it.
• 1:11:02
  It could either go towards Russia or it goes towards the
• 1:11:05
  West. I mean, they, they kind of pick
• 1:11:08
  and choose their battles. And so I think having them on
• 1:11:11
  sides for our constellation, but then also for Starlink as well
• 1:11:16
  is really critical for geopolitics because you wouldn't
• 1:11:20
  want India to them adopt, you know, some of the Chinese
• 1:11:24
  solutions that are the 2, the two constellations that are
• 1:11:26
  going to be competing with * lake and ASD space mobile.
• 1:11:29
  So, so I think, I think politically this is a huge deal.
• 1:11:33
  It's probably something that we don't fully appreciate or
• 1:11:36
  comprehend. And it's probably worth every
• 1:11:38
  single dollar that was spent on that Antonov to send it over, to
• 1:11:42
  send the satellite over there and to pay, pay full freight or
• 1:11:46
  they pay, you know what? They probably got a decent
• 1:11:48
  discount on the LVM three rocket because it's, because this is,
• 1:11:52
  this is a marquee event for. I mean, it's, it's putting aside
• 1:11:55
  like it's not a government customer, but a true US
• 1:11:58
  commercial customer to put an important, the first plot, you
• 1:12:02
  know, first of its design. It's going to go up on that
• 1:12:05
  rocket. It's going to be a huge source
• 1:12:07
  of pride for for India. And they should be.
• 1:12:09
  Yeah, yeah. I mean, maybe they already.
• 1:12:13
  Punch above their weight in in space as is you know it, it just
• 1:12:18
  fits, you know, from every angle.
• 1:12:19
  I mean, and when you think about the poor and you know, the, the
• 1:12:26
  growth in permanent growth and the benefit to the in people
• 1:12:30
  that will be ushered in from AST, you know, basically turning
• 1:12:35
  on connectivity. And you know, I mean, it, it
• 1:12:39
  will be transformational in ways that it's the type of carrot
• 1:12:44
  that, you know, a politician would dream to be able to dangle
• 1:12:47
  towards another country to, to bring them to their side
• 1:12:52
  permanently. From a geopolitical perspective,
• 1:12:55
  I mean, it's hard to imagine a more powerful 1.
• 1:12:59
  And so again, the shoe fits with the larger fat pattern.
• 1:13:06
  Ryan, yeah. Have you have you gotten?
• 1:13:08
  Any. Feedback on your piece.
• 1:13:12
  So yes, you know, one of the nice things about about kind of
• 1:13:19
  putting it out, putting yourself out there and you know,
• 1:13:22
  originally, you know, we hadn't planned on it, on getting it.
• 1:13:26
  You know, the, the idea was that we would release it to our LP's
• 1:13:30
  and then we would release it in sections to non LP's over time.
• 1:13:35
  Well, it, it got out into the wild and so you know, it is what
• 1:13:40
  it is on, it's on somewhere, right?
• 1:13:42
  Yeah, which by the. Way I hadn't heard that name.
• 1:13:45
  Yeah, 20 years, I think it got. Distributed on Napster.
• 1:13:50
  Yeah, the whole ball. Of wax.
• 1:13:54
  Right. Oh my God.
• 1:13:56
  But so we've gotten a tremendous amount of kind of inbound
• 1:14:00
  feedback. But, you know, from an investor,
• 1:14:02
  you know, from my seat as the PM, you know, one element that
• 1:14:07
  is nice about having your work kind of distributed far and why
• 1:14:11
  it is, you know, there's a million people out there that
• 1:14:13
  want to pull your pants down and poke holes in your thesis and
• 1:14:19
  point out any of its errors or flaws.
• 1:14:21
  And, you know, as an investor, you know, this is one of the
• 1:14:25
  most valuable things, this kind of feedback loop that you can
• 1:14:29
  have not only to, you know, building, maintaining and kind
• 1:14:33
  of reinforcing your conviction, but, you know, just to make
• 1:14:37
  sure, you know, you, you know, you're seeing what you think you
• 1:14:40
  see. And so one of the elements that
• 1:14:43
  I was hoping would come of it and, you know, let's give it
• 1:14:46
  time, but that someone would find a, a flaw or, you know,
• 1:14:51
  kind of pick apart some element of our reasoning.
• 1:14:54
  You know, we make, you know, I make mistakes all the time.
• 1:14:57
  You know, it wouldn't be the craziest thing in the world, but
• 1:15:01
  you know, much like our Nintendo working years past, we haven't
• 1:15:06
  It's it's actually quite shocking how weak the bear case
• 1:15:11
  is or how how poorly thought through or kind of just out of
• 1:15:15
  their depth. The people that have been
• 1:15:17
  skeptical of of the name and you know, so this is a the having a
• 1:15:23
  long form piece out there, then like, OK, well, point out the
• 1:15:26
  false premises. Tell me why and let's work
• 1:15:28
  through it. You know, so far, you know,
• 1:15:32
  almost every, every person that I've actually discussed the
• 1:15:35
  issue with that was skeptical or prior Bear is no longer
• 1:15:39
  skeptical. And if they don't own the stock,
• 1:15:43
  they're considering it. And you know, of all the things
• 1:15:46
  that that I look at as a reflection on on whether we've
• 1:15:51
  done good work, you know, that type of thing when you have kind
• 1:15:55
  of deep skeptics that are very smart and that, you know, don't
• 1:16:01
  necessarily suffer fools trying to take the chainsaw out and
• 1:16:05
  coming away with nothing. I mean, that's just something
• 1:16:09
  that that I think everyone at at Crossroads is extraordinarily
• 1:16:12
  proud of. And and you know that that is
• 1:16:14
  part of our goal. So, you know, you put your work
• 1:16:17
  in the world out in the world, in this case inadvertently, but
• 1:16:22
  you know, it has the effect of either, you know, exposing some,
• 1:16:30
  you know, a hole in one's logic or the opposite effect,
• 1:16:33
  reinforcing everything that you know.
• 1:16:37
  And, and thus far we haven't gotten any valid, I think,
• 1:16:42
  negative feedback from kind of the the broad picture we paint
• 1:16:47
  in in the actual piece. But let's give it time.
• 1:16:50
  But you know, that's another reason why I had to write it is
• 1:16:54
  because, you know, we agonize over these details.
• 1:16:57
  You know, as much as the piece is written in AI don't know, not
• 1:17:03
  a triumphalistic, but you know, I try and write how I genuinely
• 1:17:07
  feel based on deserve conviction.
• 1:17:09
  I, I've always been bothered by people that, you know, will find
• 1:17:13
  something really unique and special and you know, you know,
• 1:17:17
  the truth is that this is an amazing thing, but they'll
• 1:17:19
  downplay everything because they don't want to look like, you
• 1:17:22
  know, they don't want to tell the truth.
• 1:17:24
  And so, you know, I talk in in certain sections quite
• 1:17:27
  bullishly. But you know, that conviction
• 1:17:30
  isn't because we have it. You know, we only get to that
• 1:17:33
  place of conviction because we've done the work, because we
• 1:17:37
  have, you know, tried to kill the idea a million different
• 1:17:41
  ways. Because we have tried to seek
• 1:17:43
  out every thoughtful, intelligent bear we could find
• 1:17:47
  because we've talked to them, because we've we've made channel
• 1:17:49
  checks, because we've talked to the company.
• 1:17:53
  And, you know, it's a really nice thing when you kind of, you
• 1:17:58
  know, stand there and say, you know, you know, it's like, come
• 1:18:00
  all comers, you know, let's battle and no one is left the
• 1:18:05
  kind of fight. And that's kind of how it feels
• 1:18:08
  right now. But there's still a lot of wood
• 1:18:11
  to chop here. You know, I'm not one to to
• 1:18:14
  celebrate early, but I think we're still in the second inning
• 1:18:20
  of a story that, you know, as you put it the other day, Juan,
• 1:18:23
  you know, this is a, a name with kind of embedded operating
• 1:18:27
  leverage and a a total addressable market at scale that
• 1:18:32
  is so large. I think it's beyond the creative
• 1:18:34
  imaginations of most people because the only way you can see
• 1:18:39
  it clearly is by getting deep in the weeds, understanding the
• 1:18:41
  business model, how it will. You know how revenue will scale,
• 1:18:45
  how you know operating margins will scale.
• 1:18:48
  You know what the business should look like in terms of the
• 1:18:50
  unit economics and steady state. You got to do a fair amount of
• 1:18:54
  work to see it. But I think it kind of inverted
• 1:18:58
  a different way. I don't want to be the chump
• 1:19:00
  that found Walmart in 1976 and sold it after a double.
• 1:19:03
  I don't want to be the chump that found Microsoft in 1986 and
• 1:19:08
  sold it after a triple or Google in 2003 after the first double.
• 1:19:12
  Has it done well recently? Absolutely.
• 1:19:16
  But you know, in the big picture, grand scheme of things,
• 1:19:19
  you know, if they win this market and they dominate it,
• 1:19:22
  like I believe it's profitable. Profitable, you know, the
• 1:19:26
  numbers get silly, you know, and you know, that was one of the
• 1:19:31
  things that I had to really, you know, I spent a lot of my time
• 1:19:33
  early is like, could this be is this actually real?
• 1:19:36
  Because it sounds kind of made-up, you know, when you're
• 1:19:40
  not familiar with the details. And it is very, very real.
• 1:19:45
  And in a way that I just, I don't think there's any true
• 1:19:47
  comparable, you know, there was, you know, you've talked before
• 1:19:53
  and I talked in the piece about Netflix and I talked a little
• 1:20:00
  bit about Facebook being kind of in, in very distinct ways, you
• 1:20:04
  know, you know, analogous to the situation here.
• 1:20:07
  But, you know, as you've told me many, many times, you know, this
• 1:20:11
  is the bill. This is a company with, you
• 1:20:13
  know, that could very easily end up with a billion subscribers.
• 1:20:17
  You know, would Netflix at 300 million approximately right now.
• 1:20:21
  I mean, you know, it's easy to Eve it I think on a trailing
• 1:20:24
  basis is, is like 40, you know, So you know, whether it's the
• 1:20:29
  earnings, whether it's the multiple you describe those
• 1:20:32
  earnings, whether you look at when you look at comparable
• 1:20:34
  business subscription businesses, you know, Netflix,
• 1:20:36
  Spotify, things like that, this this at scale will make them
• 1:20:41
  look adorable, you know, a decade hence.
• 1:20:45
  And and that is in itself hard to kind of believe, if that
• 1:20:50
  makes sense. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:20:52
  I mean, I, I think, I think people.
• 1:20:54
  And this is true for like current shareholders.
• 1:20:57
  It, it's hard when you've, you've made a lot of money from
• 1:21:02
  the lows, right? Let's say $2.00 and you're here
• 1:21:05
  now at $25 billion. And there's people like Kirk
• 1:21:08
  Spano or others that are like, Oh my gosh, there's no marginal
• 1:21:11
  safety and the stock could go back to five.
• 1:21:14
  And this, this kind of like random work Babble, random
• 1:21:18
  Babble, which is like, no, you're actually at a point of
• 1:21:21
  maturity where the company is about to exit, you know, hit Max
• 1:21:25
  queue, like we're about to launch a consolation, cash flows
• 1:21:28
  are about to turn on. You're about to get government
• 1:21:30
  contracts. And so this is when you, this is
• 1:21:33
  when the institutions are like, oh, I can own this.
• 1:21:35
  And they buy and press the position, you know?
• 1:21:40
  Yeah, yeah. This is when you press and then.
• 1:21:42
  This is when you own the compounder, the multi year
• 1:21:45
  compounder there if they can grow, if they can grow cash
• 1:21:49
  flows by 50 sixty, 7080% a year, you're going to get a multi
• 1:21:54
  multi multi bagger. And this is when you want to
• 1:21:57
  hold on for dear life. I mean, this is like, I
• 1:21:59
  remember, you know, when I was in banking and I remember taking
• 1:22:04
  like working on Google IPO and like people were like, Oh my
• 1:22:08
  gosh, it's worth at the time, I think when the stock was like at
• 1:22:13
  $75 is like long, long time ago and people are thought there it
• 1:22:17
  was trading at like maybe 10 times EBITDA and we're like, oh,
• 1:22:20
  it's really expensive. You're such a dumb ass, like buy
• 1:22:25
  the thing or Amazon. Like I remember owning Amazon
• 1:22:27
  from time to time and making a a nice like 3040% and being like,
• 1:22:32
  I'm done, like sell out of it. And, and and that's like for a
• 1:22:35
  company like this, which is truly, I think, I think we've
• 1:22:38
  all caught lightning in a bottle right where we were there and we
• 1:22:41
  were basic. Like I've talked about this in
• 1:22:44
  space and before, but now is the time actually probably sometime
• 1:22:48
  in 2026 under a normal IPO market is when AC Space Mobile
• 1:22:53
  would actually go public. But then because of COVID, we
• 1:22:57
  were able to get in at Series C, which is kind of nuts, right?
• 1:23:00
  And then and of course we saw the sausage being made and it
• 1:23:02
  was painful and all those things.
• 1:23:04
  But then when the company has we're, we're now going to have
• 1:23:09
  two quarters of revenue and then two more.
• 1:23:11
  And then that company would have in AC Space Mobile in a
• 1:23:15
  traditional market would have gone public in the mid middle of
• 1:23:18
  2026. And what do you call it?
• 1:23:20
  I don't know, fifty $60 billion valuation, whatever it is,
• 1:23:23
  right? But now we are, we're at that
• 1:23:26
  point of exit where and you know, when they price of IPO at
• 1:23:29
  a 60, it's going to trade to 100, right.
• 1:23:31
  So, but we we owned our yeah, we own it at that point in time
• 1:23:36
  where investors want in. And so this is not the time to
• 1:23:39
  drop the football before the end zone like, and it's not in the
• 1:23:42
  end zone. It's not the end zone.
• 1:23:43
  It's actually a huge marathon where, yeah, there's going to be
• 1:23:48
  ebbs and flows and there's going to be volatility.
• 1:23:49
  But we're probably like at mile 2 or mile 3 and we're like
• 1:23:54
  starting to just warming up. So we haven't even hit like the,
• 1:23:57
  the stride yet. We haven't hit, you know, pace
• 1:24:00
  it. Yeah.
• 1:24:00
  And I I would point out too, I don't know who, forget who in
• 1:24:04
  the space mob. Retweeted it, but it was
• 1:24:07
  extraordinarily on point. But it will have Peter Thiel
• 1:24:10
  talking about, you know, you know, his, his biggest mistake
• 1:24:14
  with Facebook and thinking that, you know, they went from, you
• 1:24:18
  know, 100 million valuation to a billion to 10 billion to 100
• 1:24:22
  billion. And, you know, his, you know,
• 1:24:24
  learnings or his primary take away there was, you know, given
• 1:24:28
  the, the network effects, you know, the when you have a
• 1:24:31
  business like Facebook or like AST, the bigger it gets, the
• 1:24:35
  better it gets. And, you know, the natural
• 1:24:38
  dominance that that it asserts snowballs with scale.
• 1:24:42
  And, you know, this is a, a relatively new phenomenon of, of
• 1:24:47
  modern markets and, you know, which is in fact ushered in from
• 1:24:50
  connectivity itself, which is, you know, kind of wild to think
• 1:24:56
  about. But so you know, that that point
• 1:25:01
  and then two, just as a on a human level, as an investor, and
• 1:25:05
  I will, I will die on this hill. I am far more uncomfortable.
• 1:25:09
  And, and this is, you know, a guy that has been, you know,
• 1:25:12
  spent 20 plus years trying to master the lizard brain, you
• 1:25:17
  know, and, you know, kind of invert my emotions, you know,
• 1:25:22
  you know, to kind of the opposite of what would be kind
• 1:25:24
  of basic human nature. I mean, a friend during the
• 1:25:27
  pandemic, I was talking to and he's like, you know, I bet
• 1:25:30
  you're thriving. I bet you love this.
• 1:25:33
  And this is a long way of saying is that it's easier for me to be
• 1:25:37
  in the the depths or, you know, gritting my teeth in a bear
• 1:25:41
  market because, you know, it's usually raining bargains.
• 1:25:45
  And that is kind of energizing, you know, on a very real
• 1:25:50
  fundamental level what most people aren't used to.
• 1:25:53
  And, you know, it is, you know, harder.
• 1:25:55
  For me, it's actually, and it sounds cute and you know, coming
• 1:26:00
  from shape, but it's, it's when your stock's up 300% in a year
• 1:26:04
  and you know, it's only 10% of, you know, down the runway, not
• 1:26:08
  selling, you know, like, you know, as a defensive, highly
• 1:26:12
  conservative investor, you know, my brain is like, oh, you know,
• 1:26:15
  you know, should I should I take them off?
• 1:26:17
  Should I sell? And that is exactly the wrong
• 1:26:22
  reaction, you know, give been, you know, where we are in the S
• 1:26:26
  curve or you know, the J curve of the businesses growth
• 1:26:29
  trajectory. And it is, it's just, it's so
• 1:26:33
  much more comfortable for me kind of maybe just as a, as a
• 1:26:37
  natural born value investor to be in the teeth of a bear market
• 1:26:40
  or a name that you own that you've done the work on.
• 1:26:43
  It's selling off. And you know, you know, that's,
• 1:26:47
  that's just fundamentally more comfortable where, you know,
• 1:26:49
  when a stock goes parabolic like this, you know, keeping your eye
• 1:26:53
  on the North star, you know, remembering the power of its of
• 1:26:57
  itself reinforcing modes. You know, that the, the, the
• 1:27:00
  Tam, you know, the reinvestment runway, the, the, you know, tech
• 1:27:03
  enabled hyper scalability of the business, you know, the fact
• 1:27:07
  that it'll have pricing power. And it is like the Platonic
• 1:27:10
  ideal of a great business. And that's why I joke, you know,
• 1:27:14
  I don't want to be the Trump that sold, you know, an
• 1:27:16
  inevitable, you know, £800 gorilla, you know, in the middle
• 1:27:21
  of the second inning Because, you know, I mean, when I even
• 1:27:24
  look back at my own mistakes over the course of my career, it
• 1:27:27
  is almost universally the names that I sold and did not hold
• 1:27:31
  that keep me up at night. And and that's, you know, if
• 1:27:35
  that's hard for me, it's it's triply hard for someone that
• 1:27:38
  hasn't been trying to discipline themselves in this specific way
• 1:27:42
  for, you know, over 2 decades. So for what that's worth.
• 1:27:47
  So not to make you know, too much fun of the the people that
• 1:27:50
  got. Pretzel and shaken.
• 1:27:51
  Out. It's not emotionally easy, but
• 1:27:54
  you know, you have to, you know, keep your eye on the North Star
• 1:27:57
  and trust your work and you know your reasoning and, you know,
• 1:28:03
  have faith in that. And then constantly look for
• 1:28:05
  disconfirming evidence, you know, no matter how long you've
• 1:28:09
  been involved in a name that things have changed.
• 1:28:11
  And that's not easy either. But we are so far from, you
• 1:28:16
  know, any, you know, area that could even be conceivably
• 1:28:19
  described as as maturity, you know, strap in.
• 1:28:23
  We're, we're just getting started.
• 1:28:26
  My my trick to holding on to stocks now.
• 1:28:29
  And there's. Something I had to learn over
• 1:28:32
  the years to what? A coma.
• 1:28:38
  Yeah, right, right, right. Yeah, it is to just be lazy.
• 1:28:42
  Yeah. Oh, it's true.
• 1:28:45
  Yeah, because. You know.
• 1:28:46
  I, I, you know, I've. Owned.
• 1:28:49
  I've owned over time some, you know, super long term winners
• 1:28:52
  and because I thought I had to do work, I'd be in the.
• 1:28:58
  Weeds on like some. Irrelevant quarterly detail or
• 1:29:01
  short term detail. I'd be like, oh crap, you know
• 1:29:03
  what? Like the second derivative of
• 1:29:06
  their sales growth in the Southeast Asian geography.
• 1:29:10
  It's turning down. Gotta sell it, right?
• 1:29:13
  It's just like so stupid because you convince yourself like this
• 1:29:17
  is what a smart professional investor does.
• 1:29:20
  Absolutely not. Now you put all your work in at
• 1:29:24
  the beginning and you try and find the inevitable businesses
• 1:29:27
  like the last three years, you know, I've, we've we've all and
• 1:29:31
  you guys for longer put in a lot of work into AST.
• 1:29:35
  There is going to be some point when the constellation turns on
• 1:29:38
  and cash flow starts flowing that I I will never think about
• 1:29:42
  AST again because why like are are people cancelling their
• 1:29:47
  sellers descriptions right, No, there's just going to be no
• 1:29:51
  reason to think about the stock and all you have to do is sit on
• 1:29:55
  your hands. Don't be stupid and let this
• 1:29:57
  thing compound to billion subscribers.
• 1:29:59
  Well, and and it's to reinforce Kwan's point is so like you know
• 1:30:03
  we've. Talked in some of these podcasts
• 1:30:06
  of, you know, Kwan was very early to, you know, you saw
• 1:30:10
  Tesla very clearly at a point in time when it was very, very
• 1:30:15
  difficult to certainly as a, as a value investor to kind of
• 1:30:20
  hold, you know, stick to 1's convictions.
• 1:30:23
  But the first time I remember reading your work and kind of
• 1:30:28
  being blown away, you know, Tom was the first person that I
• 1:30:32
  ever, that I've ever come across that saw AWS and Amazon clear as
• 1:30:38
  a in 2011, you know, you know, I don't know if you still own
• 1:30:44
  Amazon, Amazon phone. I mean, maybe that's a a sore
• 1:30:46
  point that you, you know, yeah. So that was a point I I was dumb
• 1:30:49
  and talked myself out of it. But you know, less than learned.
• 1:30:52
  Yeah, right, right. And I got about 20 of those.
• 1:30:55
  But. I I do think, I think, yeah,
• 1:30:59
  there is. And this goes to there there is
• 1:31:03
  a point. Of not.
• 1:31:04
  Over trading things and overthinking things.
• 1:31:07
  Because I think there was a point in time where some of us
• 1:31:11
  in space, you know, in the Vistra community got a sense
• 1:31:15
  that, you know, that, that this satellite was going to be
• 1:31:17
  delayed and that there were going to be some bumps along the
• 1:31:20
  road. And, and so, and I think we
• 1:31:22
  started getting some, some sense of it, I think back in April or
• 1:31:27
  May. And if you overthought it, you'd
• 1:31:31
  be like, oh, well, you know what, I'm going to.
• 1:31:34
  And actually sorry, it, it actually became, it became more
• 1:31:37
  prevalent that that idea in Bay. And so the this the hedge fund
• 1:31:42
  guy would be like, shit, we need to sell it and then get short
• 1:31:45
  because this is going to be market moving news and all this
• 1:31:48
  other stuff. Whereas it's not really taking a
• 1:31:51
  step back and seeing the bigger picture, which is we, we talk
• 1:31:55
  about this word often now it's inevitability, right?
• 1:31:58
  Like, OK, so it's off by a month or or two months or three
• 1:32:01
  months, like it's inevitable, like it doesn't really matter.
• 1:32:03
  And so those guys and and we saw it in spades where not only do
• 1:32:08
  those hedge funds probably they got the same kind of sense as we
• 1:32:13
  did. Not only did they perhaps sell
• 1:32:15
  if they were long, but they went head and short in May.
• 1:32:20
  You guys remember that in June that you never, you know.
• 1:32:23
  You know. You need directional movement of
• 1:32:25
  just, it was straight up for what, 20 days, 18 days?
• 1:32:28
  And yeah, well, you got the only two companies.
• 1:32:31
  I think there were two companies, you know, TWAN.
• 1:32:33
  Told me this at least that had been like, you know, 22 or 23
• 1:32:38
  days in a row. And the other two were like
• 1:32:40
  Amazon and net, you know, like 2, you know, trillion, yeah,
• 1:32:43
  Facebook trillion dollar companies, which is good company
• 1:32:47
  to be in as far as kind of meaningless short term data sets
• 1:32:52
  are are concerned. But you know, the like to sum
• 1:32:56
  all this, you know what we're talking about here.
• 1:32:57
  And I think it's unsurprising that, you know, the the great
• 1:33:01
  Charlie Munger, I think said it best.
• 1:33:02
  But you know, the older I get, I like to think with experience
• 1:33:06
  and, you know, the wisdom accrued, the more this, you
• 1:33:10
  know, simple comment kind of hits me in my face with the kind
• 1:33:14
  of the profound nature of its wisdom.
• 1:33:16
  But you know, when Munger said something along the lines, the
• 1:33:19
  hardest thing to do an investing, you know, an
• 1:33:22
  intelligent investing is developing the conviction to
• 1:33:25
  hold. And you know, that is, you know,
• 1:33:29
  it's like so many of of the kind of cliched buffetisms, you know,
• 1:33:34
  they seem kind of cliche and corny and obvious when you're
• 1:33:37
  younger and, you know, with time and experience And it just, you
• 1:33:42
  know, you, you read them and see them very, they hit very
• 1:33:46
  different, you know, with time and experience.
• 1:33:51
  And I think this is exactly the case with so many people.
• 1:33:56
  They're they're trying to arve, you know, near term, you know,
• 1:34:00
  they either want to prevent, you know, volatility or, you know,
• 1:34:03
  they're trying to think through six months to a year ahead of
• 1:34:06
  time and trying to be too cute by dancing in and out of it.
• 1:34:10
  You know, it's like I you're talking, it's like, even if most
• 1:34:13
  investors found were the next Warren Buffett, you know, most
• 1:34:17
  of them would probably leave after the the 1st, you know,
• 1:34:21
  tripling of their investment under the idea that, oh, there's
• 1:34:25
  no way that this guy can continue.
• 1:34:27
  You know, I'll, I'll, I'll withdraw and you know, when
• 1:34:29
  he's, you know, in the feet, you know, the part of the bear
• 1:34:33
  market, maybe I'll reinvest. You know the idea.
• 1:34:37
  If you're lucky enough to find an inevitable early in its
• 1:34:40
  growth curve, the absolute worst thing you can possibly do is try
• 1:34:46
  and be cute by dancing in and out of the name, you know, with
• 1:34:51
  just deeply misguided and sometimes tragic, you know
• 1:34:55
  consequences. Well, that that's that's you
• 1:34:58
  know, when when the stock re rated.
• 1:35:00
  Multiple times there were people along the way who who you know,
• 1:35:04
  they were they were grateful to make 2030%.
• 1:35:07
  I'm going to sell and I'm going to buy back lower.
• 1:35:09
  You know, perhaps like this, the stock did go lower.
• 1:35:12
  And then and then of course, you have this, there's this gut
• 1:35:15
  reaction that people have and they see something down and
• 1:35:17
  like, Oh, I was right. And you know what, I'm not going
• 1:35:20
  to buy it. I'll wait until it goes even
• 1:35:21
  lower. You know, that, that mentality.
• 1:35:25
  But there were so many people who, who sold out and then they
• 1:35:28
  just never got back in or they were smart and they, they were
• 1:35:32
  like, you know, I was wrong and I'm going to buy back higher.
• 1:35:34
  And they did. And it turned out quite well for
• 1:35:36
  them. And I think, I think a big, a
• 1:35:39
  big take away and you know, this is not, this is a journey that
• 1:35:43
  everybody's learning. I mean, no, no invest No2
• 1:35:45
  investments are alike and there's there's some level of
• 1:35:47
  pattern recognition. But then this particular
• 1:35:50
  company, there's there's nothing, there's been nothing
• 1:35:53
  like it before, right? And so I think to what you guys
• 1:35:56
  are saying, when you have something this special,
• 1:35:59
  obviously you've got to manage your risk.
• 1:36:01
  And if it becomes 100% of you're not worth them.
• 1:36:04
  Maybe SPV and drag. Basically, Yeah, yeah.
• 1:36:09
  But then and and perhaps it will become 203 hundred.
• 1:36:13
  Percent of your wealth because it's it's growing and and
• 1:36:15
  you'll, you'll make multiple of your current wealth.
• 1:36:17
  But but I think the the the important thing, as you say is
• 1:36:21
  to recognize what you have and where, where we are about to go
• 1:36:25
  and and do nothing. Just sit on it.
• 1:36:28
  Just sit on it and which is tough, right, because I think
• 1:36:31
  there were kind of in this, this time where people want dopamine
• 1:36:37
  hits and they want to move things around and, and you know,
• 1:36:39
  to some extent, like I have, I have some trades and other
• 1:36:42
  things because I want to stay active.
• 1:36:44
  But then AST is kind of at a point where, you know, we're
• 1:36:48
  we're at it. It there.
• 1:36:50
  There could be some things here and there that that we make it
• 1:36:53
  wrong or the company has hiccup are here, but it it over the
• 1:36:56
  long run, it really doesn't matter.
• 1:36:58
  And so just trust, if you trust management, then just hold your
• 1:37:02
  shares and just, you hold on for dear life and just let, let it,
• 1:37:06
  you know, like we say, trust the process and just let it play out
• 1:37:08
  because it's inevitable. Like if it's the consolation
• 1:37:12
  going to go up, like you said, they're going to the cash flow
• 1:37:16
  printing machine going to turn on.
• 1:37:18
  And, and that's when things like, if you think the past, you
• 1:37:22
  know, two years have been crazy and, and unbelievable, just wait
• 1:37:26
  until they start printing 1 billion, two billion, 3 billion,
• 1:37:30
  four billion of free cash flow and, and then all bets are off,
• 1:37:33
  right? Well, I mean, I I eat.
• 1:37:35
  As I say in the piece, it's really hard.
• 1:37:38
  You know, even sandbagging almost being trollish in your
• 1:37:43
  underlying assumptions, how you get sub 5-6 billion in, in EBIT
• 1:37:50
  on this business. And, and when I mean
• 1:37:52
  conservative, I mean, I really mean conservative.
• 1:37:55
  And I won't you know, go through all of the layers, but this is a
• 1:37:59
  business that, you know, I wouldn't be shocked if it was
• 1:38:03
  doing 20 billion in free cash in 10 years.
• 1:38:06
  I mean, this certainly has that inherent capacity.
• 1:38:10
  And you know, you know, it is very hard to do 2 things at
• 1:38:14
  once. And I think as a fiduciary, you
• 1:38:16
  know, this is essential. It's like, you know, eternal
• 1:38:19
  vigilance against risk in all of its forms is essential to
• 1:38:22
  survival. And so you have to do something,
• 1:38:27
  you know, two things at at the same time.
• 1:38:28
  That is very hard, which is, you know, to stay, you know, you
• 1:38:34
  know, on the lookout skeptical for, you know, a ways in which
• 1:38:37
  you can be wrong, where the, the the story can subtly change, but
• 1:38:41
  also detached enough that you don't get, you know, you, you,
• 1:38:48
  you keep your eye on your North Star and you know, you have a
• 1:38:51
  some sense of where you are in the journey.
• 1:38:54
  Because if you don't do both of those things, you know, you
• 1:39:00
  know, bad things can happen And it's a it's a very difficult
• 1:39:04
  thing. Like most big capital T truths,
• 1:39:08
  they're simple to understand, but not easy to actually live
• 1:39:12
  out. You know, it.
• 1:39:14
  It's, it's not easy to develop the conviction to hold and to
• 1:39:19
  remain appropriately skeptical. You know, the entire way.
• 1:39:24
  I mean, personally, I just, you know, I have a lot of very smart
• 1:39:28
  friends that I have kind of accumulated over the years and,
• 1:39:31
  you know, I use them as a sounding board, you know, trying
• 1:39:36
  to poke holes constantly. You know, I, I always want to
• 1:39:39
  know where I'm wrong. I want other people that are
• 1:39:42
  informed and, you know, have some level of operating and
• 1:39:46
  domain expertise to constantly critique, you know, how we're
• 1:39:51
  seeing things. But, you know, with a name like
• 1:39:54
  this, at least at this point in the diligence journey, it's
• 1:39:58
  getting easier and easier as, as Tawan alludes to, to take your
• 1:40:02
  hand off the wheel, if you will. And just, yeah, you know, kind
• 1:40:07
  of, you know, go the Zen man on the mountaintop side of things
• 1:40:11
  where you know, you can just you you can kind of.
• 1:40:15
  Make that that golden mean between the extremes hold for,
• 1:40:20
  you know, the center. Well, I think I think it part of
• 1:40:23
  it is also recognizing. The signpost along the way and
• 1:40:28
  momentum like, yes, if you were, if you were an early, I mean, we
• 1:40:32
  were in the trenches like in 2020 and 2021 where Tim Farrar
• 1:40:36
  was saying, you know, it was spreading all kinds of fun, that
• 1:40:39
  it wasn't going to work. And back then it it was hard.
• 1:40:42
  Not it was hard to not pay attention and disregard whatever
• 1:40:46
  you're saying, even even agonizing, right, because
• 1:40:50
  because of the early stage of the company and the fact.
• 1:40:53
  That you know they. Had one test satellite up, but
• 1:40:55
  then they didn't have Blue Walker 3, which is more of a
• 1:40:58
  full scale satellite. But then as where we are today,
• 1:41:02
  you know, you have short sellers and people still fighting.
• 1:41:05
  But then it's like, OK, well, you know, it's it's much easier
• 1:41:08
  because, you know, Verizon, it's your funeral.
• 1:41:10
  Yeah, it's like Verizon signed the definitive commercial
• 1:41:13
  agreement, what, 2 weeks ago? A week ago.
• 1:41:15
  So they validated everything up to here.
• 1:41:17
  And then you've got some fighters saying, well, the
• 1:41:19
  technology, who knows that they like committed, right?
• 1:41:23
  They did one test hall. It's not going to scale.
• 1:41:25
  This is this is the satellites on Mountain Bay, right?
• 1:41:29
  They did. Test Hall.
• 1:41:30
  It's not going to, it's not going to scale and it's.
• 1:41:33
  I like you're laughing but but it's like wait.
• 1:41:36
  Wait a second, so you're telling?
• 1:41:37
  Me that Verizon did not do tests at scale of multiple phones like
• 1:41:43
  you're telling me that they say one one single test call and
• 1:41:46
  then they sign these different agreement like how stupid do you
• 1:41:50
  have to be to make that assertion?
• 1:41:52
  It is. It's mine by mind.
• 1:41:55
  By you know it I mean. I actually kind of feel bad for
• 1:41:58
  that guy in particular. That was, I haven't heard a
• 1:42:00
  howler like that on. Ouch.
• 1:42:03
  Yeah, but it's, you know, in in a long time.
• 1:42:07
  But it's like, OK, we've gone from 0 military contracts to 8
• 1:42:11
  contracts. So you're you're willing to bet
• 1:42:13
  that like the tech doesn't work and that it's all a sham.
• 1:42:18
  But yet they have, they have all these M and OS, they've got all
• 1:42:22
  the, you know, the, the whatever departments in SDADIU, you know,
• 1:42:28
  department of War, they've got everybody fooled.
• 1:42:30
  That's like, come on, guys like we're what's that?
• 1:42:33
  Forget about it? Is that, is that one of the
• 1:42:34
  points They're making the peas, you know?
• 1:42:37
  You know when you have the equivalent of the chairman of
• 1:42:39
  the of the Federal Reserve backing your fine tech startup?
• 1:42:43
  I mean this, this is quite literally a direct direct, you
• 1:42:47
  know, you know, a fully valid analogy when you take both, you
• 1:42:51
  know, FCC Garmin car and Cruz, who's basically just behind
• 1:42:54
  whatever you think of as politics, every major piece of,
• 1:42:57
  of space legislation that, you know, where he sits.
• 1:43:01
  You know, I mean, it's yes, crazy.
• 1:43:03
  It's it's, it's crazy because Tim Farrar still keeps pounding.
• 1:43:07
  He keeps using the old trope like the FCC is unhappy with
• 1:43:10
  them and they're not going to prove stuff.
• 1:43:11
  It's like, are you fucking kidding me?
• 1:43:13
  Like he's he's dealt with the Brad sympatheticness at this.
• 1:43:16
  Point I mean he's, I mean I, I literally, it's not even funny
• 1:43:22
  to me. Anymore, it's just.
• 1:43:23
  Sad. It's, you know, like it's
• 1:43:27
  painful. I, like, I can't even get joy
• 1:43:29
  out of it because I feel so bad for the guy, you know, just so
• 1:43:33
  tightly holding on to, you know, the shred of reputation that,
• 1:43:37
  you know, is left after taking a neutron.
• 1:43:40
  There's nothing left. Yeah.
• 1:43:41
  I mean, he's literally a broken clock is raw, is right twice a
• 1:43:46
  day. You know, his, you know,
• 1:43:48
  consistent unbroken speak or streak of just laugh out loud
• 1:43:53
  howlers at this point is not to be like a statistical, you know,
• 1:43:58
  I mean it. It's just it's genuinely hard to
• 1:44:01
  be as wrong consistently about everything big and small as he's
• 1:44:06
  been for, what, five years? Yeah, I I never really
• 1:44:10
  understood. You know how, and I apologize to
• 1:44:14
  any engineers that are listening to this call, but you know how
• 1:44:17
  some engineers are so rigid on the obtuse and they'll never see
• 1:44:22
  they'll never see past or or they'll make up every reason to
• 1:44:25
  be right about something. And and he kind of falls into
• 1:44:27
  that. But I I do think I mean it's
• 1:44:29
  good because he does server purpose now which is he does
• 1:44:32
  convince kind of I guess wet down in the years skeptics to go
• 1:44:37
  short more stock that wall of where he going.
• 1:44:41
  Yeah, which is good. Which is.
• 1:44:42
  Good. I mean, I, you know, want to
• 1:44:43
  make him our Mac on. At this point and you know,
• 1:44:46
  just, you know, I. Mean he, he's actually
• 1:44:49
  extraordinarily valuable in several way.
• 1:44:53
  I mean, like this is the gift that keeps on giving.
• 1:44:55
  And yeah, I, I, I hope he maintains that last credit
• 1:44:59
  credibility just a little bit longer, you know, so we can buy
• 1:45:03
  more. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:45:06
  I will say. As we, I guess maybe we should
• 1:45:09
  probably wrap up. Here it's 1146 out here in the
• 1:45:12
  East Coast. But what 1 interesting thing is
• 1:45:15
  this is a a nice little nugget for people.
• 1:45:18
  Someone did reach out to, to AC after the convert offering and,
• 1:45:24
  and I'd asked about the purpose of it.
• 1:45:26
  And, you know, we've, we've talked about, you know,
• 1:45:27
  obviously they want to accelerate the business.
• 1:45:29
  But then one of the things that IRI said back to them is that,
• 1:45:34
  Oh yeah, you know, a Bell didn't sell any stock at 100 because he
• 1:45:37
  really believes it's going higher.
• 1:45:40
  People should understand that, you know, we've talked about a
• 1:45:44
  Bell not taking salary, not taking bonus, you know,
• 1:45:46
  compensation, new awards or anything.
• 1:45:49
  Like the guy has done one caller transaction to lock in some
• 1:45:53
  value. And that call transaction was,
• 1:45:56
  you know, 3% of his net worth. Then it only came into play if
• 1:46:00
  like the stock went above a certain level.
• 1:46:01
  But he also wanted to protect his downside.
• 1:46:03
  But that's 3% of his holdings and that's all he's done.
• 1:46:06
  And the stock, it's like 30 bits of his holdings now and you
• 1:46:09
  know. You're right, you know, like
• 1:46:13
  it's, it's, it's kind of. Interesting.
• 1:46:15
  So I think whether, and this is no shade on any other companies,
• 1:46:19
  but it's, it's just calling facts, right?
• 1:46:21
  Like if you look at Palantir, as the stock has gone up, like
• 1:46:23
  people have sold and good for them.
• 1:46:25
  They they earned it. They deserve it.
• 1:46:27
  But a bell and this is the the certain type of crazy.
• 1:46:30
  He's like all in like he, he truly believes.
• 1:46:33
  And I, I hope, I mean, you know, just from a mental standpoint,
• 1:46:38
  like maybe he takes a little more off the table at the same
• 1:46:40
  point, because then we can say like, oh, he's, he's a human,
• 1:46:44
  he's normal. But but at the same time like he
• 1:46:48
  just. He's got this.
• 1:46:50
  Vision and and and that's what sustained him through this
• 1:46:53
  entire journey right like he thinks it's going to be ours
• 1:46:57
  yeah yeah he knows what he owns far better than than.
• 1:46:59
  Even what we do and you know, to see an exact live it it and not
• 1:47:05
  take you know, I mean you you think like like I sit there and
• 1:47:09
  I think my oh, Ryan. Hey Ryan, Ryan got so excited.
• 1:47:19
  He I know he cut himself off. Ryan, maybe he has a drop off
• 1:47:29
  and come back. Right.
• 1:47:31
  Right. But you know.
• 1:47:33
  I I could probably finish Ryan's thought.
• 1:47:34
  Is that it? A Bell's a very rare executive.
• 1:47:38
  And you know, when you think about the people that create
• 1:47:42
  tremendous, tremendous amounts of wealth, trillions of dollars,
• 1:47:45
  like all the founders, they were not motivated by Bunny,
• 1:47:49
  obviously. Like, you know, I'm sure they
• 1:47:51
  think money is nice. They'd like to have more of it.
• 1:47:53
  But they really had a mission, some other mission they wanted
• 1:47:57
  to do. And, you know, Abell, he has a
• 1:48:00
  mission, whether it's to, you know, eventually connect the
• 1:48:06
  unconnected, you know, that might be it.
• 1:48:08
  But he has, he has just a grand vision for what he wants this
• 1:48:12
  company to be. Yeah.
• 1:48:15
  And we're, we're lucky to, I mean.
• 1:48:17
  Quite, quite candidly. I mean, depending on how you
• 1:48:20
  came across on this investment, I mean, for me it was it was a
• 1:48:23
  lot of luck. And so I think we, we can all
• 1:48:26
  count our blessings that, you know, that this community came
• 1:48:29
  together and we held on for your life and we're still here and
• 1:48:33
  it's worked out so far. Knock on wood and and pushing
• 1:48:37
  we're we're in the first first inning of what's going to be a
• 1:48:42
  long road of of success. I believe yes, yes.
• 1:48:45
  And one day, Ashley Vance will write a book.
• 1:48:48
  And he'll have to talk about a bread man and a golden surfer.
• 1:48:54
  Yeah, that, that. By the Swedish cat he he ghosted
• 1:48:58
  me. It's like because he was like.
• 1:49:00
  Oh yeah, let's catch up and then.
• 1:49:01
  I peed him a few times and he ghosted me.
• 1:49:03
  So, but that said, I, I think there is potentially something
• 1:49:07
  in the works. One of the space mob guys is,
• 1:49:11
  has started putting together a potential of the history of a
• 1:49:15
  space mob and, and some of us might be working with him on it.
• 1:49:19
  So we'll see. Yeah, I don't know.
• 1:49:21
  We'll see where it goes, but but yeah, let's it would be.
• 1:49:25
  It'd be a story for the ages. I think so.
• 1:49:27
  I think so. We'll.
• 1:49:29
  Have a lot of good folks in it too.
• 1:49:31
  Right. But anyway, all right, yeah, I
• 1:49:34
  guess we'll call. It there.
• 1:49:35
  Thanks everyone. For joining and and thanks Ryan
• 1:49:38
  and and Juan, this has been great.
• 1:49:41
  And as always, like even for me and I'm sure you like whenever
• 1:49:45
  we have these discussions, I learned something new.
• 1:49:48
  Yeah, yeah, definitely. Thanks for hosting.
• 1:49:50
  Thanks for having us on and. Thanks.
• 1:49:52
  Everyone for listening, all right, take care everyone and
• 1:49:55
  again bye bye. Thanks for listening to the AST
• 1:50:00
  space. Mobile podcast if you.
• 1:50:02
  Enjoyed this episode and you'd like to help support the
• 1:50:05
  podcast? Please share it with others,
• 1:50:07
  post about it on social media, or leave a rating and review.
• 1:50:11
  To catch all the latest news about AST Space Mobile, make
• 1:50:15
  sure to subscribe. Thanks again and I'll see you
• 1:50:17
  next time we're. Doing something very, very big
• 1:50:23
  and I think with this technology we can really affect.
• 1:50:26
  Billion lives AFP Space globally is the only company that has
• 1:50:30
  full technology to deliver several of broadband
• 1:50:34
  connectivity directly from space To be everyday smartphone.
• 1:50:38
  People will just basically turn their phone and be seamless,
• 1:50:41
  regardless of where you are. We don't want the user even to
• 1:50:44
  know that it's connected by satellite.
• 1:50:47
  Our role is to bring this into reality.
• 1:50:50
  Always in partnership. With the enemy.