Latest / AST SpaceMobile Podcast / Anpanman - Updated thoughts on Globalstar rumors and recent precedent

Transcript

Anpanman - Updated thoughts on Globalstar rumors and recent precedent · AST SpaceMobile Podcast

• 0:07
  This is the AST Space Mobile podcast where we.
• 0:11
  Just basically come from be seamless regardless of where you
• 0:15
  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. Hey everyone, Happy Sunday.
• 0:30
  It's a beautiful Sunday, more I guess afternoon here in New York
• 0:33
  City. The marathon running, which is
• 0:36
  always a great event. Just got back from some kids
• 0:40
  soccer and I have a little bit of free time.
• 0:43
  So I figured I'd run a space and provide some additional thoughts
• 0:47
  about the article or sorry, not the article, but the the post
• 0:50
  that I'd put up about global star and potential SpaceX
• 0:55
  interest and reported and SpaceX X interest and how Apple fits
• 0:59
  into that. If people can give me a thumbs
• 1:02
  up. I just want to make sure that
• 1:04
  before I start rambling that people can hear me.
• 1:07
  Just look here. What's weird about I mentions
• 1:16
  for Twitter Spaces is that you there's a delay, it's probably
• 1:21
  15 seconds, 10 seconds delay. And so when you're not live, you
• 1:26
  actually when I, when you ask for like thumbs up, you don't
• 1:30
  really see thumbs up until a few seconds later.
• 1:34
  So anyway, yeah, thanks everyone for joining.
• 1:37
  I wanted to talk about some latest thoughts about the the,
• 1:42
  the two information articles and then one Bloomberg article that
• 1:45
  leaked over this past week about a supposed global star sale
• 1:50
  process and what it means and what it what it could mean.
• 1:54
  And that there's an interesting precedent that I wanted to talk
• 1:56
  about, which kind of gives you a good sense of the potential deal
• 2:02
  dynamics and why a deal would be tough.
• 2:07
  Unless of course, I mean, all roads basically lead through
• 2:09
  Apple because they effectively control global star.
• 2:12
  And so if Apple has indeed changed their heart and is
• 2:17
  willing to work with SpaceX, then certainly a deal can can
• 2:20
  happen. And never say never.
• 2:22
  I mean, you know, there's, there's a whole host of reasons
• 2:26
  why Apple should work with SpaceX and there's, there's a
• 2:29
  whole host of reasons why they shouldn't work with them.
• 2:31
  And we'll, we'll kind of go through those.
• 2:32
  But but yeah, so I guess to start, I did want to answer a
• 2:37
  few questions. There was there was some people
• 2:39
  who reached out to me and said, hey, isn't leaking this stuff
• 2:42
  illegal because it's material, non public information?
• 2:44
  And can people get sued like journalists or the sources?
• 2:49
  And I'll just say, when I was an investment banker, you know, I
• 2:52
  did M&A in the tech industry for and, and you know, financings,
• 2:57
  IP OS for one of the big banks for, you know, call it eight
• 3:01
  years. And leaks are pretty common
• 3:04
  practice. I would say some firms, you
• 3:06
  know, definitely look down on it, but it's, it's part of like
• 3:08
  deal tap looks right. And so if you're a banker, an
• 3:12
  attorney or even APR firm working with the company,
• 3:15
  usually a thief PR firm gets engaged when a deal's about to
• 3:18
  get announced. And so they usually aren't the,
• 3:22
  the source of leaks, but it's usually bankers or lawyers and
• 3:25
  sometimes company insiders. And the reason why leaks happen
• 3:29
  is that it's, and This is why I've said whenever you read
• 3:33
  something in the journal about a sale process or something high
• 3:36
  profile, you always have to ask yourself, you know, why is it
• 3:39
  being leaked and who's leaking it?
• 3:40
  And you know, what's their objective?
• 3:43
  What, what are they trying to accomplish?
• 3:44
  And so often times leaks will happen for a number of reasons.
• 3:49
  For example, if a company is has put itself up for sale and let's
• 3:55
  say they send out, they send all feelers to various buyers and,
• 4:00
  and let's say they're not getting the reception that, that
• 4:04
  they thought they would. That's not as much interest.
• 4:07
  Then you might go out to Bloomberg and say, hey, the
• 4:10
  company is in, in the sale, in the process of selling itself.
• 4:14
  And you know, let's say Amazon, Meta and Google are thought to
• 4:19
  be lead bidders. Then all of a sudden that makes
• 4:22
  potential buyers snapped your attention like, oh, they've got
• 4:24
  real players there who are looking to tend to acquire the
• 4:28
  company. Maybe I should take a look too.
• 4:29
  And so that's one way where you can hopefully gin up more
• 4:34
  interest. It is risky though, because you
• 4:37
  know for any company that if you're in a hot sale process,
• 4:40
  it's actually usually a good thing because then you can
• 4:43
  informally let the market know that there's a lot of buyers
• 4:46
  involved. You might also put a price out
• 4:48
  there like the board might have some price expectations of like,
• 4:51
  hey, we, we, we think clearing price of $10 billion or more
• 4:55
  will get the deal done. And so often times that will get
• 4:58
  leaked too. But you know, the, the on the,
• 5:01
  on the flip side, it can be risky, right?
• 5:03
  Because if it's a, often times if there's a sale process, it's
• 5:09
  not going well and you try to leak things like, oh, you know,
• 5:12
  potentially Bain Capitals there and some other PE firm And, and
• 5:16
  here the price expectations. Well, it's not as if I the buy
• 5:21
  side get their advisors or the buyers are not sophisticated
• 5:24
  either. Sometimes they can kind of read
• 5:26
  the tea leaves and, and see what people in the process are doing
• 5:29
  and be like, oh, that article was Leech because this process
• 5:32
  is not going well. And so I, I can lower the price
• 5:35
  or I can just walk away like nothing's happening here.
• 5:38
  And so there, there is a risk. You know, often times some
• 5:42
  buyers who are in processes, if they see news leak, they will
• 5:45
  tell even before the process starts, they'll tell sell side
• 5:48
  advisors like if there's any leaks, like there's no deal,
• 5:51
  we're we're not going to be part of some public auction.
• 5:54
  And often times, like if the companies are in exclusivity,
• 5:58
  for example, let's say the buyer and the seller get into
• 6:03
  exclusivity for a period of, you know, call it 2, two weeks or
• 6:06
  something, then leaks, leaks at that point are, are quite
• 6:10
  dangerous because as the seller, you don't want to piss off the
• 6:13
  buyer. And if you're an exclusive
• 6:14
  talks, you know, you, you want to get that deal done.
• 6:19
  But then then there's also other leaks that try to kill the deal.
• 6:22
  Like if if you, if you're a, let's say, if you're a buyer who
• 6:27
  didn't make it to the final rounds or didn't get
• 6:29
  exclusivity, you might leak it to the Wall Street Journal to
• 6:32
  try to blow the process up. And so that's why there's so
• 6:35
  many different potential reasons why you might leak a deal or
• 6:40
  leak a situation. You might want to try to set
• 6:43
  price expectations. Another thing is like sometimes
• 6:45
  buyers who aren't in a target company, then they're unwilling
• 6:48
  to sell. They'll put them in play.
• 6:50
  Like they'll actually leak an article and say XYZ company
• 6:54
  approached so and so with a price of this high and were
• 6:58
  rebuffed. And then all of a sudden, the
• 7:00
  target, you know, is now that that's like a very hostile
• 7:04
  approach where then you might have ARDS and a Ventraven hedge
• 7:08
  funds start buying the stock and the stock goes up, you know,
• 7:11
  2030%. And then you've got these hedge
• 7:14
  funds calling board of management saying, hey, you guys
• 7:16
  should sell the company. And they're incentivized to do
• 7:18
  that because all of a sudden they're involved in a stock
• 7:21
  that's up 2030%. And if the company doesn't sell
• 7:24
  itself, then the stock's going to drop back down.
• 7:26
  And so all, you know, there's this shoulder pressure to get
• 7:28
  something done. And so that would be like a
• 7:30
  hostile situation where, you know, a buyer tries to put a
• 7:34
  company in play by leaking that they approach them or somebody
• 7:37
  else approach them, and then the company rebuffed them.
• 7:41
  And so other things, other potential leaks are you could
• 7:45
  have attorneys or bankers, basically what we call like a
• 7:50
  trial blown like they, they, they float a potential deal.
• 7:53
  And Gold Star would fit into this construct, by the way, you
• 7:57
  might, you might float the idea of a potential deal.
• 8:00
  And then you have something to actually talk about with
• 8:02
  regulators. Like you could, you could
• 8:05
  totally see SpaceX going up to Chairman Carr at the rented car
• 8:10
  at the FCC and you know, the attorney general at the
• 8:14
  Department of Justice and say, Hey, you know that article, you
• 8:18
  know, just curious like what your thoughts are or get a
• 8:21
  reaction from maybe staff of what they think about a
• 8:24
  potential transaction. And so, you know, you might, you
• 8:27
  might float regulatory balloons to see what the market reaction
• 8:30
  is like if the market and this is like this is kind of deal tax
• 8:34
  one O 1. If you're a buyer and you're
• 8:37
  unclear whether or not the market would be receptive to a
• 8:40
  potential acquisition of another company, you might go leak it
• 8:43
  and then see what your stock price does.
• 8:44
  If the stock price goes up, then it's like, oh, investors think
• 8:47
  it's a good idea. And so I think I have,
• 8:49
  especially if you're issuing the stock, then you're like, oh, I
• 8:52
  have, I have the mandate. Or at least initially, it seems
• 8:55
  like the market would be OK with it.
• 8:57
  Obviously the market needs to understand what the terms are,
• 8:59
  but but that might be a trouble when you float to see what the
• 9:05
  market reaction is. And then, of course, if it is
• 9:07
  something that is sensitive from a regulatory standpoint, you
• 9:11
  might get some comments from politicians.
• 9:13
  You're like, oh, yeah, this is a good deal.
• 9:15
  Or this promotes, you know, American leadership in the
• 9:18
  sector. Or you might get other
• 9:20
  politicians or regulators who might come back and say, this
• 9:24
  thing's DOA dead on arrival. Like, there's no way we're going
• 9:26
  to let this deal happen. We're going to go try to block
• 9:28
  it or whatever. And so.
• 9:31
  So, yeah, that would be a potential regulatory like a
• 9:35
  child balloon that people float. They leak some article.
• 9:38
  But but going back to what I was saying before, you know, is it
• 9:41
  legal? Yeah, it's legal.
• 9:43
  It's looked down upon. But companies, bankers, lawyers,
• 9:46
  they all engage in it and they do it to accomplish what are
• 9:51
  objectives. They are whether it's, you know,
• 9:54
  there, there's always some angle, which is why it's rare
• 9:57
  when journalists actually dig up something and they get it right.
• 10:01
  Usually they get pieces of it fed to them and, and they're
• 10:04
  given hints and directions. And it's like, hey, I think you
• 10:07
  should go talk to this person or this company or, you know,
• 10:10
  here's here's a few crumbs. Maybe check out these filings or
• 10:13
  they'll just get told directly what it is.
• 10:15
  And by the very nature that this information is being fed to a
• 10:19
  journalist who then goes and publishes it, it's legal in a
• 10:23
  sense that that private information becomes widely
• 10:25
  distributed and public now. And so it's not material, non
• 10:28
  public information because it becomes material, but public
• 10:31
  information, if that makes sense.
• 10:33
  And so, and journalists have, you know, a high degree of
• 10:38
  protections given, you know, the freedom of speech and, and in
• 10:42
  the US and, and as long as they are widely disseminated, that
• 10:45
  information, then it becomes, you know, cleansed in some, in
• 10:49
  some regards. Now, if a journalist is talking
• 10:52
  to sources and then trades on that information on their own,
• 10:55
  then then obviously that's illegal.
• 10:56
  Or if they share that information directly to say a
• 11:01
  hedge fund and they trade on it, that's, that's illegal.
• 11:04
  However, if a, if an investor is talking to journalists and
• 11:08
  they're doing research and it's part of a mosaic where they,
• 11:11
  they get some hints that maybe a company is looking at some
• 11:15
  strategic alternatives. And that investor also looks at,
• 11:19
  I'll just make stuff up. Like, you know, the company
• 11:21
  recently put in a double trigger mechanism on the, on the
• 11:25
  executive compensation packages like a month ago, which you
• 11:28
  know, which typically you would do in a change of control
• 11:32
  transaction. You want to keep the executives
• 11:33
  around. And so sometimes that's a tell
• 11:36
  where people put double triggers in compensation packages like a
• 11:40
  few months right before deals announced.
• 11:42
  So they put that together, they put, they look at some of the
• 11:45
  other things that companies doing maybe on the conference
• 11:48
  call, you know, for example, radium on their conference call,
• 11:53
  you could tell like they're boxed in and they need to do
• 11:55
  something. And, and, and all the research
• 11:58
  channels are like, out of all the five or six companies, who
• 12:02
  are your top partners, then that seems pretty clear, like the
• 12:05
  company probably needs to sell itself.
• 12:07
  And so in that regard, if, if let's say hedge funds were
• 12:12
  talking to some of these journalists and journals are
• 12:14
  smart, they're not going to give any details away.
• 12:17
  And, and they know they can get in trouble too.
• 12:19
  But but if that hedge fund were to piece the pieces, piece
• 12:24
  together the pieces of the puzzle and create a mosaic of
• 12:27
  Leia, I think something's happening with this company
• 12:30
  that's legal. And that's, that's stuff that,
• 12:32
  for example, space mob does like you're, you piece together
• 12:36
  various pieces of information. You know, who, what, what is the
• 12:40
  company? You know, what is the company
• 12:42
  posting about? And you know, maybe there's like
• 12:44
  some logistics and variation things like that.
• 12:47
  And, and and maybe about has met has gone to Saudi Arabia a few
• 12:50
  times and then at their conferences and you know, maybe
• 12:54
  there's some Saudi Arabian officials who who posted about
• 12:58
  the company then then yeah, maybe there there could be
• 13:01
  something going on there. I mean, obviously the company
• 13:03
  had MO us with with or has MO us with the top three Saudi
• 13:08
  carriers, the M and OS. And so it seems very likely that
• 13:12
  a deal with one of the three at a minimum, and of course, all
• 13:14
  three is likely to happen. But anyway, that's a long
• 13:18
  rambling introduction to, you know, why these types of things
• 13:22
  get leaked. And and yeah, so I think it's
• 13:25
  important to really, when you see this type of stuff, to
• 13:29
  really take a step back and ask yourself, why is the news coming
• 13:32
  out now? Who's doing it and what is their
• 13:34
  objective? And so, so going back to the
• 13:37
  information back in May, I believe it was May or January,
• 13:44
  there was an article that that was leaked about how Apple, I
• 13:50
  should pull it up and just take a look here.
• 13:55
  There's a whole history about how satellite, Apple satellite
• 13:59
  ambitions have been threatened by Elon Musk.
• 14:02
  And then how the two companies, you know, I've kind of had the
• 14:05
  standoff relationship and then Global Stars kind of in the
• 14:09
  middle of it all. And, and so that kind of laid
• 14:11
  the groundwork. Sorry, this was in May of, of
• 14:13
  2025. And so that laid the groundwork
• 14:16
  of where we are today. And that gave kind of an
• 14:19
  overview of what the relationship, how it kind of
• 14:23
  evolved. And, and I think for those who
• 14:25
  don't know, I believe Apple and this is kind of beyond the
• 14:28
  article, but I think Apple started testing with Global Star
• 14:31
  and thinking through the potential of providing satellite
• 14:35
  SOS and, and text messaging back in 2021.
• 14:38
  And there were hints of it where I think in some disclosures
• 14:41
  around related to Global Star, they talked about an unnamed
• 14:44
  partner that was giving them potential payments and, and
• 14:48
  testing the service. And of course, our, our industry
• 14:51
  consultant Inferrar was very close to that.
• 14:54
  He wrote about it at length. We all know that he works for
• 14:58
  Global Star in his recent industry presentation where he
• 15:02
  he talks about the DDT market. That whole presentation in a
• 15:05
  very, very tiny disclosure in one of the random pages, it says
• 15:09
  the whole report was paid for by Global Start.
• 15:11
  But the reason why I mentioned him is that he is, it does seem
• 15:16
  to me just kind of going through the articles is that he is a
• 15:19
  primary source of some of some of the information here.
• 15:23
  And so I think the company is using him as well as their
• 15:25
  bankers as a conduit to kind of feed these journalists.
• 15:29
  And so in that first article, it talks about the I need to
• 15:33
  relationship between, you know, Elon Musk and and Tim Cook about
• 15:38
  how obviously Apple was developing their service.
• 15:41
  And then when Musk found out that this was happening, he he
• 15:45
  supposedly, and this is according to the journalist and
• 15:47
  by the way, the two journalists at the information both cover
• 15:50
  have both historically covered Apple to the Wall Street
• 15:54
  Journal. And so so they do have some
• 15:56
  sourcing from former Apple execs and perhaps some Apple people
• 16:01
  who work at Apple now. But anyway, but in that article,
• 16:06
  they specifically mentioned how when Musk had learned in 2022
• 16:10
  that that Apple was going to include Global Star SOS
• 16:13
  messaging and the Rifund 14, he, you know, contacted the company
• 16:17
  and said, hey, we want to do this.
• 16:19
  We'll provide it for you and we want you to pay us.
• 16:23
  And, and by the way, this is like this goes back to like,
• 16:26
  hey, is this really a market and are people going to pay for it?
• 16:28
  Well, SpaceX wanted to charge Apple $5 billion upfront for 18
• 16:33
  months and then on an ongoing base after that exclusivity
• 16:39
  period ended, they would charge them $1 billion a year for the
• 16:42
  startling service. And they have supposedly, you
• 16:45
  know, 72 hours to decide. And of course, you know, Tim
• 16:48
  Cook and Apple rejected that. And then, and then infamously,
• 16:51
  SpaceX announced in August of 2022 that they were going to
• 16:57
  partner with T-Mobile. They, they supposedly created
• 17:00
  this, this new technology that could connect to cell phones.
• 17:03
  So they announced that in August 2022, which which is announced
• 17:07
  right before Apple announced their new product with Goldstar,
• 17:09
  which was September of 2022. Interesting.
• 17:12
  Of course, HD space mobile Blue Walker 3 was supposed to launch,
• 17:17
  I think it was that July or August and then it got pushed
• 17:20
  back to September. And so, you know, just like Musk
• 17:24
  does and you know that that's one of his talents as opposed to
• 17:29
  T-Mobile. They, they got to be, they got,
• 17:32
  you know, they, they, they were able to win mindshare amongst
• 17:35
  the news outlets. And, and they claim to this day
• 17:37
  that they were first announcing, you know, this potential product
• 17:41
  in August of 2022, when in fact, as we all know, AST space
• 17:45
  mobile, you know, kicked off this whole market in, in 2017.
• 17:50
  And so anyway, they in that article, it talks about how
• 17:56
  there's this uneasy relationship between these three companies.
• 17:59
  Obviously, you know, SpaceX slash Starlink slash Tesla have
• 18:04
  various potential competing products.
• 18:06
  I mean, the biggest hydro fall one would be Elon Musk's, you
• 18:10
  know, his alluding to potentially developing his own
• 18:14
  mobile phone to compete with with, you know, Apple and
• 18:17
  Google, but then also trying to provide Internet connectivity
• 18:21
  directly to phones and basically going around MNO carriers.
• 18:26
  And so for those that don't know, there's also some
• 18:28
  additional history here between Elon Musk and and Tim Cook.
• 18:33
  When Tesla was in trouble. I think it was like in 20, I
• 18:37
  forget exactly how many years ago, but there was a point in
• 18:40
  time when Tesla had Elon Musk tried to contact him Cook and
• 18:44
  and offered to sell Tesla to Apple when they were having
• 18:48
  tough times. And then from and depends on
• 18:52
  whose account you read, but supposedly when they did talk,
• 18:57
  Elon Musk was like, Hey, I want you to buy my company and then
• 18:59
  I'll be the CEO of the combined company.
• 19:02
  And then Tim Cook was like, no. And so there's, there's some
• 19:06
  history between the two and which I guess you know, it's a
• 19:11
  little bit of friction. But beyond that, obviously
• 19:14
  interventionist before given even where what SpaceX is trying
• 19:18
  to do, I think they're going to be increasingly competitive with
• 19:21
  Apple. And I'll talk a bit more about
• 19:23
  that later. But anyway, so yeah, there was
• 19:26
  this article, which I've posted it before.
• 19:29
  If you do a search on the information or go to my profile,
• 19:33
  you can see the first article where it talks about the, the
• 19:37
  issues between the two companies and how Apple was, you know,
• 19:41
  they, they made their bet with Global Star.
• 19:43
  And then internally they've had some potential infighting around
• 19:48
  whether or not that that relationship makes any sense
• 19:52
  just given kind of how the market is has evolved.
• 19:54
  And so Fast forward, I won't go through all that article, but
• 19:58
  Fast forward to I guess it was like two or three weeks ago, you
• 20:02
  know, we had another article from the information talking
• 20:04
  about how SpaceX was proactively including global stars spectrum
• 20:09
  banning to its next generation satellites, which as I mentioned
• 20:13
  before, that's something that you would just do anyway you
• 20:16
  want to make sure that. Any ASIC that you're developing
• 20:19
  for this new satellite, you'll want to include every single
• 20:22
  spectrum band under the sun because you never know what's
• 20:25
  going to happen in the future. And so, but then in this article
• 20:29
  too, it talked about how Apple would potentially support
• 20:34
  Spacex's spectrum and, and that, and in particular Echostar, AWS
• 20:40
  4 spectrum, which they're buying when they announce the deal to
• 20:43
  acquire that spectrum from Echostar.
• 20:45
  And so as I mentioned in another call, Apple is a handset
• 20:51
  manufacturer. They're trying to, they, they
• 20:53
  want their handsets to work with everybody's spectrum, any
• 20:56
  spectrum that is currently in use today and any spectrum
• 20:58
  that's going to become available for use tomorrow.
• 21:00
  And so that's, you know, that was something where I have
• 21:03
  actually tweeted a post about back in April where Apple is
• 21:08
  trying to define, help define the next three GPP standard,
• 21:12
  which is going to include all MSS spectrum.
• 21:14
  And so they were actively working at the standards setting
• 21:19
  body to include not only echostar spectrum, which you
• 21:22
  know, specifically requiring, but also Legato biosat, I mean
• 21:26
  any number of other, you know, satellite spectrum.
• 21:30
  They are actively working on shaping the standards around
• 21:32
  that. And they're going to include
• 21:33
  that in their next generation iPhone, which makes sense,
• 21:36
  right? Because As for Apple, they want
• 21:39
  to make sure that they utilize, are able to utilize any spectrum
• 21:43
  or any technology that their M&O partners, whether that's AT&T,
• 21:47
  Verizon, T-Mobile or any M and OS globally, like whatever
• 21:52
  service they want to use, Apple wants to make sure that they
• 21:55
  have, you know, absolute compatibility with all right.
• 21:59
  And so that's something that you would expect.
• 22:01
  However, the new part, the new part of I guess the new
• 22:04
  information that was in that article was the fact that, you
• 22:08
  know, Global Star. You, you saw some specific leaks
• 22:13
  from Global Star, which, you know, specifically mentioned A
• 22:16
  and, and this and this kind of got further, I guess further
• 22:21
  picked up by Bloomberg who. And I'll explain the process of
• 22:24
  why Bloomberg ran, ran an article, but it hit the, the
• 22:28
  information article, talked about how, and it introduced the
• 22:31
  idea that James Morrow, who's the, the chairman of Global
• 22:35
  Star, he, he stopped being CEO and I think Paul Jacobs took
• 22:38
  over from Qualcomm, but he, he's the founder who owns over 50% of
• 22:42
  Global Star. And he's, he's kind of brought
• 22:45
  them back from the dead several times by pitching a new story
• 22:48
  about how Global Star would reposition themselves.
• 22:51
  And, and, and then Apple came in in 2022 and basically bailed him
• 22:56
  out, right? Like they, they invested money
• 22:58
  into them and in exchange for that, that prepayment, they got
• 23:03
  80. Basically Global Star had to
• 23:04
  give away their entire business. They gave away 85% of their
• 23:07
  current constellation capacity and and 85% of future capacity.
• 23:12
  And so whether Global Star builds that satellite, those
• 23:15
  satellites and then and then operates the constellation or if
• 23:19
  somebody else is doing it and they're using Gold Star
• 23:22
  spectrum, that 85% of capacity is, you know, it survives into
• 23:28
  perpetuity. And so in all, for all intents
• 23:31
  and purposes, Global Stars is effectively an Apple subsidiary,
• 23:34
  where as a public investor, you, you own 15% of that satellite
• 23:42
  network capacity, which hopefully, you know, Global Star
• 23:45
  can sell with somebody else. And then you get some economic
• 23:47
  return, hopefully off of the 85% that you're servicing for Apple.
• 23:51
  And that that's the deal, you know, in distressed in their
• 23:55
  distress situation, that's the deal that they were able to
• 23:57
  negotiate. The other thing is that Apple
• 24:02
  got 20% ownership in this this SPB that holds all of global
• 24:08
  star spectrum. And so, you know, there's very
• 24:11
  particular rights around what they can do around global Star.
• 24:15
  You know, they have a right of first refusal, which means if
• 24:18
  someone comes in and tries to buy the company, then Apple can
• 24:21
  come in and match them or top them in order to win a deal.
• 24:25
  But then some of these other business protections, which
• 24:28
  generally we don't know all the details, but you know, by by by
• 24:32
  effectively having that right of first refusal and having
• 24:35
  ownership of 85% of the network, that's a de facto poison pill.
• 24:38
  What I mean by that is if you don't have Apple's consent to
• 24:42
  buy the company, then again, you have to be comfortable with the
• 24:46
  fact that you only get 15% of the network and then some
• 24:49
  economic return on the rest. But if you don't have their
• 24:51
  consent, then they can de facto just block you from doing a
• 24:55
  deal. And what I mean by that is, you
• 25:00
  know, they they could always of course, threaten to match your
• 25:03
  deal or top it. But they can also just not give
• 25:07
  consent that that they agreed to a deal, right?
• 25:10
  Because they effectively control the entire company.
• 25:13
  Let me just look here. I wrote a few small notes here.
• 25:22
  But yeah, there there is a parallel to another situation
• 25:25
  which I'll talk about in a bit, but that I think is, is very
• 25:29
  similar and can kind of give us a sense of the weird, the the
• 25:33
  weird deal dynamics error. But but yeah, so that
• 25:35
  information article that came out recently, there were
• 25:38
  specific quotes in it which kind of allude to that they were
• 25:42
  being leaked by Gold Star. And in that, in that article,
• 25:46
  you could kind of get a sense that Gold Star kind of sees and
• 25:51
  I, I, I set this up in the, my, my Twitter post, but you know,
• 25:56
  Global Star specifically talks about, you know, a $10 million
• 26:00
  price that James and Rose supposedly told some people who
• 26:03
  had direct knowledge. And so whenever articles refer
• 26:06
  to sources as direct knowledge of the matter, that's typically
• 26:09
  principles like people at the company, whenever an article
• 26:12
  says people, you know, people familiar with talks, usually
• 26:15
  that refers to bankers or lawyers.
• 26:18
  And so these are this is kind of the when I worked at the hedge
• 26:21
  fund or was a banker, you read these articles very closely
• 26:25
  because they're written in a certain way and they can give
• 26:28
  your hints as to, you know, again, where they where they
• 26:31
  came from and what they're trying to do.
• 26:33
  But but yeah, if you take into account that the information
• 26:36
  article and then also the Bloomberg article that came out
• 26:40
  shortly thereafter. And the reason why Bloomberg ran
• 26:42
  an article is as a journalist, you, when you see something like
• 26:46
  that, you might go, one of your, one of the best things that
• 26:49
  journalists can do is to go try to go refute an article, Meaning
• 26:54
  the information puts out an article and says, Hey, the
• 26:55
  company is potentially interested in selling
• 26:58
  themselves. And then, but Bloomberg or Wall
• 27:00
  Street Journal might do be like, oh, hey, you know, I've got some
• 27:02
  free time. Let me go try to refute this
• 27:03
  article because that's, that's good reading as well.
• 27:06
  Like if, if I if, if you're able to, to basically write an
• 27:11
  article that says like the other one is complete bullshit, then
• 27:13
  that's a really fun and notable to write.
• 27:16
  So what they'll do is they'll go run the traps and talk to their
• 27:18
  sources. And so Bloomberg of course, talk
• 27:21
  to their sources and they're like, oh, there actually is
• 27:23
  something going on here. And so in their article, they
• 27:25
  talked about the fact that and this is where you would have
• 27:29
  global star advisors feeding Bloomberg the article because
• 27:32
  Bloomberg typically their sources are going to be bankers.
• 27:35
  And so the bankers told them, yeah, there's we have a, we've
• 27:39
  been talking early stages of talks and we're speaking with a
• 27:43
  few companies. Let's see here.
• 27:46
  Let me just pull this one up. Yeah, so Global Star in in the
• 27:53
  Bluebird article says specifically that they're
• 27:55
  exploring a sale. They've had early talks with
• 27:57
  with SpaceX and then other shooters bringing people
• 28:00
  familiar with matter. And so that's definitely
• 28:03
  bankers. And then they talk about how
• 28:07
  SpaceX is one of the parties the company's speaking to, but it's
• 28:10
  possible that others could emerge.
• 28:11
  And then, but however, SpaceX hasn't made a final decision or
• 28:15
  sorry, Global Star hasn't made a final decision and could remain
• 28:18
  independent. And so that, by the way, is a
• 28:21
  very specifically from Global Star to say we have, we're not
• 28:26
  in play. It's we're totally in control of
• 28:28
  the situation. We may decide not to sell
• 28:29
  ourselves. But of course, like, as we all
• 28:31
  know, it's not really not up to them.
• 28:33
  It's up to Apple because they hold the keys here.
• 28:36
  And so, so that's why I like when, when I analyzed the three
• 28:40
  articles and I wrote about it, you could tell it's primarily
• 28:44
  sourced from Global Star. They, they, they quote Tim
• 28:46
  Farrar in both of the information articles.
• 28:50
  And of course he, he talked in a very smug way about like
• 28:53
  something big that was happening.
• 28:54
  And so it's clear that he leaked a decent amount of it to them.
• 28:58
  And, and he also works closely to global stars.
• 29:00
  It's also why, for example, he hates AST space mobile so much
• 29:04
  for the past several years, because he, he works with global
• 29:07
  star and some of the other legacy guys.
• 29:09
  And, and so, and it probably doesn't help that, you know,
• 29:12
  space mob is called him out and all this bullshit.
• 29:14
  So that's why he hates the company.
• 29:16
  But anyway, but yeah, so you know, the the company global
• 29:20
  star is is effectively announced like without formally because
• 29:24
  sometimes like companies will formally announce that they're
• 29:28
  seeking strategic alternatives and that that's actually when a
• 29:31
  company does that, that that's pretty serious, right?
• 29:34
  Like if we're coming PRS and says we've been approached and
• 29:36
  we're bringing ourselves up for sale.
• 29:39
  When you do that, you have to feel really good that
• 29:41
  something's going to happen. Because if, if through that
• 29:44
  process, EPR that and then maybe one or two quarters later, you
• 29:48
  actually don't sell the company, that's really bad because then
• 29:51
  investors are like what just happened?
• 29:53
  Like, so you felt good enough about the process and you you
• 29:56
  ran an option and then no one showed up.
• 29:58
  It's like, well, why didn't you sell?
• 30:00
  Is there something bad? Like did buyers not like
• 30:02
  something, you know, if you, if it wasn't priced, you know, is
• 30:06
  there, is there a potential material issue with the company
• 30:10
  that we should be worried about? And so that's a really risky
• 30:12
  gamut. And So what Gold Star here is
• 30:15
  what they've done is they've put the company in play informally
• 30:17
  through these articles, but there's a reason why they did
• 30:19
  that, right? And so here it's it's a risky
• 30:24
  gamble for them because they're trying to create this narrative
• 30:26
  that there's a robust auction process.
• 30:28
  You know, the Bloomberg goal talks about Spacex's.
• 30:31
  It's faithfully saying like they're the lead horse and
• 30:33
  there's potentially other people there.
• 30:35
  And the reason why they're doing this is that they want to create
• 30:38
  this sense of urgency and, you know, demand that the company's
• 30:42
  in play. And it's and there's a lot of
• 30:44
  people involved and, you know, and, and potentially you could
• 30:47
  get over $10 million, which is the price that they keep stating
• 30:50
  in these articles, right. And so you know what that price
• 30:54
  was stated in the information. And then for it to be repeated
• 30:57
  in Bloomberg, that means that Bloomberg, the journalist went
• 31:00
  to Global Stars banker and said, hey, is this true?
• 31:02
  Is it, is it 10 billion? And and you're like, yeah,
• 31:04
  that's that's what we want. So are they going to get it?
• 31:06
  Who knows, right? But, but why?
• 31:09
  So taking a step back, you have to ask yourself, well, why is
• 31:11
  Global Star doing this? Why would they risk a potential
• 31:15
  potentially fail sale process? And you know what?
• 31:18
  What is causing them to kick this off now?
• 31:22
  And, and so I think for some of us, we've asked, well, why, why
• 31:26
  would SpaceX want to go by the company now or any other
• 31:32
  potential parties, right? Like Global Stars, obviously in
• 31:35
  a pretty tough position, even that Apple kind of runs a show.
• 31:39
  And so why would they do this? Well, after doing a little bit
• 31:42
  of research, you know, I was able to find that.
• 31:47
  And I haven't, you know, I haven't followed global starter
• 31:49
  that closely. But so in 2023, they, they took
• 31:53
  a prepayment of $252 million from Apple in order to, you
• 31:59
  know, start work on their service.
• 32:00
  And this this isn't prepayment, meaning here's money and and you
• 32:04
  get to keep it forever. It's actually it's a prepayment
• 32:07
  that has to be paid back to Apple.
• 32:09
  And whether that's in that's in in kind meaning like if if Apple
• 32:17
  users use a certain amount of messaging and then that
• 32:20
  messaging basically gets offset that whatever the Apple had to
• 32:24
  pay, that gets offset by the turn of 52,000,000.
• 32:26
  Like that's one way or if those that service is it the service
• 32:32
  isn't being used, then Global Star actually has to pay back
• 32:36
  that money to Apple in hard dollars, right?
• 32:39
  And so that initial tranche of $252 million, that payback
• 32:44
  period starts in this quarter, Q3 of 2025.
• 32:48
  And that's over 16 quarters of installment.
• 32:50
  So that's about 6, call it, $15.8 million per quarter, which
• 32:55
  is for Global Star. That's a pretty decent amount.
• 32:58
  So that's like just annually that's about $63,000,000 and
• 33:04
  that's for a company that as I mentioned before has had, you
• 33:07
  know, financial issues in the past.
• 33:09
  If I just look at Global Stars projections for 2025, you know,
• 33:14
  they're looking to me 265,000,000 of revenue, EBITDA
• 33:18
  of 129,000,000. Let's see, their operating
• 33:22
  income in total for this year was 11.7 million.
• 33:25
  I guess next year they're going to do like 3839 million of
• 33:29
  operating income in 147 million EBITDA.
• 33:31
  But I mean that's that's $63,000,000 that they have to
• 33:34
  pay back over 4 quarters for four years and so 252 in total.
• 33:41
  But you know, 63,000,000 annually.
• 33:42
  So that's a pretty decent size nut.
• 33:45
  And then you've got another tranche, you know, Global Star
• 33:48
  got another 235,000,000 prepayment from Apple that they
• 33:52
  used to pay off their twenty 2913% notes.
• 33:56
  And interestingly, those are the notes that our old friend
• 33:59
  Charlie Ergen had purchased and I think he controlled most of
• 34:02
  those. And so Charlie Ergen, who is the
• 34:06
  founder and owner of, of Dish and Echostar, he's had this
• 34:10
  history of buying credit in distress companies and then
• 34:14
  taking them over and do that with TBSD and Tarastar, which
• 34:17
  then ultimately those two satellite company Spectrum
• 34:20
  became what is known today as AWS 4, which then you flip to,
• 34:24
  to SpaceX for $19 billion. But anyway, but yeah, Global
• 34:28
  Star went to Apple and said, hey, we need to borrow another
• 34:31
  $235,000,000 in 2024 to go repay these notes so that Charlie
• 34:35
  Ergen, you know, doesn't give us a hard time.
• 34:37
  And they're like, OK, fine, we'll give it to you.
• 34:39
  And so that that 235,000,000 has to be repaid either in, in, in
• 34:47
  service, you know, Apple messages they, they, you know,
• 34:52
  Global Star charges them for the usage or in hard cash.
• 34:55
  And so $135 million over, let's see here, I think it's 30 two
• 35:01
  quarters. So that's about $7.4 million a
• 35:05
  quarter or that's $29 million a year.
• 35:08
  So now we're looking at 63,000,029 million, that's $92
• 35:12
  million that have to be paid back to Apple annually.
• 35:16
  For a company that's doing 130 hundred 50 million of EBITDA,
• 35:21
  that's a lot of money. And then on top of that, Apple
• 35:28
  provided the company you know, $278 million in March of 2025 to
• 35:34
  help build these were prepayments to help build the
• 35:37
  next generation of their consolation, which I believe
• 35:41
  Apple in the contract can give up to $1.1 billion, I think in
• 35:46
  certain cases 1.3 billion. But again, like this is not,
• 35:51
  this is not like free money that Global Star actually has to pay
• 35:54
  this back. And so whether they pay that
• 35:56
  back through the service they provide to Apple or through cold
• 36:01
  hard cash, that that's money that has to be paid back over
• 36:06
  time. So if you start adding all the
• 36:07
  stuff up, Global Star is in a tough spot, right?
• 36:11
  Like they, they, they're, they still need to try to find
• 36:15
  customers for the 15% of the network that they they currently
• 36:18
  operate or the future network. That network is doesn't do
• 36:22
  broadband, it just does SMS and SOS master G in the future one
• 36:28
  that they're going to roll out and we you know, I guess people
• 36:31
  at NDA space would know better, but I'm not sure the new
• 36:35
  constellation is going to be that much better.
• 36:37
  You know, I'm sure it'll provide better data services, but in
• 36:41
  order to pay back all this money, you're going to need like
• 36:44
  real, real service revenues. And you know, given, given
• 36:51
  where. And so if you're, if you're a
• 36:53
  global star, you've got these payments coming up.
• 36:56
  And the story right now is that for now is that, you know,
• 36:59
  Apple's your biggest customer and you've got this
• 37:01
  relationship. And and so global star seems
• 37:03
  like it's in a pretty good spot for investors.
• 37:05
  But then once investors start seeing these payments start
• 37:10
  going out the door this quarter and you know, maybe they have
• 37:13
  enough service revenues to cover them.
• 37:14
  But but once they start seeing this drag on, on their
• 37:18
  financials this quarter and into 2026 and beyond, then the story
• 37:23
  becomes a bit more precarious, right?
• 37:25
  Because then what if these Apple users then start using AST space
• 37:30
  mobile or Starlink direct to sell services?
• 37:33
  Then, then how are you going to end up, you know, then?
• 37:35
  And if, if there's a dearth of users on on your network, then
• 37:39
  then these these payments become hard cash payments that go to
• 37:43
  Apple, right? And so that's where I think
• 37:46
  you've Jay Monroe and he's not a dumb guy.
• 37:49
  Like he probably saw the writing on the wall and was like, OK,
• 37:53
  we're in a really tough spot. Like people feel good about our
• 37:56
  story to a degree, but it's going to be start becoming
• 37:59
  really bad once AST space Mobile and SpaceX get their
• 38:02
  constellations up and people really start using them.
• 38:04
  They're like, oh, wait, I, I can use these services.
• 38:07
  And, you know, for AST, it's, it's broadband and it works
• 38:10
  indoors and I don't have to put my phone at anything.
• 38:13
  Like why would I ever use this Apple SOS messaging service?
• 38:17
  And so that's where I think that became the, the impetus for all
• 38:22
  this activity of out of nowhere starting in May and then of
• 38:25
  course, October, you know, the second-half of October, like
• 38:29
  these leaks. And so, oh, the other thing I
• 38:33
  forgot to mention is, is for Apple that that 1.1 billion
• 38:36
  infrastructure payment of which they've dispersed 278 million.
• 38:40
  The other thing that's kind of scary for Goldstar is that if
• 38:44
  they lose any of their spectrum licenses, which by the way, like
• 38:47
  SpaceX at the FCC has been trying to like take their
• 38:49
  licenses away, which, you know, I guess that's part of SpaceX
• 38:53
  and playbook because they did the same to Echostar.
• 38:55
  So they like, they use a stick, then they, they ultimately gave
• 38:58
  them the carrot, which they, they bought them out.
• 39:00
  But if they lose any licenses and, and, or they can't deliver
• 39:08
  the new network, which I think there's like certain milestones,
• 39:11
  then Apple can claim immediate fault and, and ask for repayment
• 39:15
  of that one point, you know, whatever they dispersed out of
• 39:18
  the $1.1 billion. And so I know Tanner alluded to
• 39:22
  this, but I don't really know for sure.
• 39:24
  I think of course NBA space is building that satellite.
• 39:27
  And then I think Rocket Lab is providing some of the buses
• 39:30
  around that next generation consolation.
• 39:32
  But at least kind of at a high level, looking at the new, some
• 39:37
  of the pieces of news or, or social media posts out there, it
• 39:40
  seems like that consolation is behind or delayed.
• 39:43
  I don't think it's because of Rocket Lab, I think it's because
• 39:45
  of NBA Space or I mean, I think as we all know, space is hard.
• 39:49
  This stuff takes longer than you think for global star
• 39:52
  negotiating with Apple in a, you know, from their distressed
• 39:55
  position, they probably promised Apple the moon.
• 39:57
  And then when it comes to actually delivering, if you're
• 39:59
  using a prime and not doing it internally, building a
• 40:02
  concentration is really tough. And so they probably are feeling
• 40:06
  some level of stress that they're not going to be able to
• 40:08
  hit those milestones. And so, you know, for for Apple,
• 40:12
  they're in a really sweet spot like if.
• 40:15
  If global star slips on a banana and they don't, they don't do
• 40:17
  what they say they're going to do, then they can, they can
• 40:19
  immediately claim repayment and effectively put global star in a
• 40:23
  bankruptcy. And, and that I think is a
• 40:26
  pretty realistic. I, I wouldn't say it's not.
• 40:30
  I don't think it's Apple's MO to try to put companies into
• 40:32
  bankruptcy. But if they, if they got a a
• 40:35
  great, if they woke up on the wrong side of the dead one day
• 40:39
  and we're like, you know what, I want to own global star spectrum
• 40:41
  and then I'll go lease it to somebody else.
• 40:43
  They could totally put Global Star in a bankruptcy tomorrow by
• 40:48
  not giving them any more, you know, financial life lines and
• 40:51
  not allowing them to sell anyone.
• 40:53
  And then Global Star is in a tough spot, right?
• 40:55
  And and I'll talk about a precedent that kind of fits that
• 40:58
  derivative. But, but anyway, going back to
• 41:01
  what I was saying before, I'm sorry, I keep just kind of going
• 41:04
  all over the place. It's it's a lot to cover, but
• 41:07
  but for Global star to kind of start planning this idea and
• 41:12
  you've seen kind of the themes in his articles where it's like,
• 41:15
  well, Apple's kind of unsure what they want to do and and
• 41:18
  SpaceX is interested in working with Apple.
• 41:21
  But, you know, maybe, maybe a compromise potentially is, you
• 41:26
  know, one of two things. I mean, this is what global
• 41:27
  store would the whole objective of all this would be either to
• 41:31
  one buy more time with Apple or or, you know, loosen up this
• 41:37
  maybe some of these milestones or maybe get additional capital.
• 41:40
  Just get Apple to make a decision like either go all in
• 41:43
  on what we're doing and give us more money and give us more
• 41:46
  freedom or buy us. I mean Gold Star in in their
• 41:51
  world. Like the perfect situation would
• 41:53
  just be that the company that controls you just engineer that
• 41:58
  would be either either highest there, I'll come.
• 42:02
  And then the second one would be inject enough uncertainty here.
• 42:08
  And this is where the uncertainty comes, because I
• 42:09
  think in both of the information articles, like it's very
• 42:13
  specific where and Tim Farrar plays the leading role here.
• 42:16
  He's like, well, if if SpaceX is able to buy global star, then
• 42:19
  it's basically game over for everybody.
• 42:21
  But like that's an implicit threat from global * saying
• 42:25
  Apple, if you don't give us time, you don't help us out and
• 42:28
  and SpaceX ends up buying us, then then they're going to
• 42:30
  control everything right. And so, but it's kind of they're
• 42:34
  kind of playing both sides where it's like, we need your help,
• 42:38
  you're the optimal outcome, but then, you know, we're going to
• 42:40
  run the sale process and SpaceX is the main, main potential
• 42:44
  bidder. And if they win, then who knows?
• 42:48
  Who knows what's going to happen?
• 42:48
  Like maybe they'll be more competitive with you or or
• 42:50
  whatever it is, right? Like, but at the end of the day,
• 42:52
  Gold Star wants to sell to Apple because Apple own holds all the
• 42:56
  keys. And in these articles they, they
• 42:59
  talk about the obviously the, you know, Apple's right of first
• 43:04
  refusal and, and some of the deal dynamics there because they
• 43:09
  want to make sure that the market knows that, hey, we're,
• 43:12
  we're warning you that these things are out there just in
• 43:14
  case or any potential buyers should know that these are out
• 43:16
  there. Obviously, like if they're
• 43:18
  negotiate, if buyers are doing due diligence, they'll learn
• 43:21
  this stuff on their own, but they want to make the public
• 43:23
  know, know that these things are out there, right?
• 43:27
  And so, yeah, there was mention before, you know, global stores
• 43:30
  have crossroads, they face significant financial repayments
• 43:34
  to Apple starting now. Yeah, they're they don't have
• 43:37
  their the control of their own destiny in that they outsource
• 43:40
  the design, development and you know, manufacture of their
• 43:44
  satellites to somebody else. You know, they basically
• 43:46
  outsource by prime prime contractor.
• 43:48
  And then then of course, like if they see Space mobile and
• 43:52
  Starlink are successful, then what economic, economic return
• 43:56
  can they expect being a backer of service to, for, for Apple,
• 44:01
  right? Like, if no one's using the
• 44:02
  network and, and they owe Apple all these payments and, and
• 44:06
  they, they're not getting service revenues in return to,
• 44:08
  to make those payments, then they're going to be a tough
• 44:10
  spot, right? And so, so, yeah, I think that's
• 44:14
  why you're seeing all this kind of come to a head and, and
• 44:17
  global stars holding their nose and hoping, you know, they
• 44:20
  they've kicked off this process and they're hoping that, you
• 44:23
  know, either Apple buys them or they've put enough pressure and
• 44:28
  they have enough sponsorship with an Apple where Apple's
• 44:31
  like, you know what, we'll we'll just let you guys sell to SpaceX
• 44:35
  and we'll get some preferential firms or treatment for their
• 44:39
  next generation consolation and we'll call it a day.
• 44:41
  But the issue with that, of course, is that Apple sees, you
• 44:47
  know, SpaceX is a, is a direct threat in terms of, you know,
• 44:50
  wanting to make their own handset, you know, whether it's
• 44:52
  getting into on the, on the X side.
• 44:54
  And it's not just SpaceX, it's all of Elon Musk's, you know,
• 44:57
  ecosystem. And we've talked about like this
• 44:59
  vertical stack of, you know, with X, he's got social media,
• 45:04
  AI, you know, financial payments, calling, I mean, you
• 45:06
  can use X for chat and calling. And so these are all things that
• 45:11
  that Apple's interested in or are important to Apple and their
• 45:14
  ecosystem. And and you know, obviously you
• 45:17
  have to include Tesla as well and robots and just a whole host
• 45:20
  of things. It's not just SpaceX, but it's
• 45:23
  all these, it's X, it's rock, it's Tesla.
• 45:27
  And so for Apple like it, it's a pretty big threat.
• 45:30
  And so the key question is, you know, why would you underwrite
• 45:33
  your own demise, right? So why would you let Globalstar
• 45:37
  sell to SpaceX? And then, you know, they
• 45:41
  potentially start eventually because Globalstar has global,
• 45:45
  you know, worldwide SP and elevating spectrum that would
• 45:49
  just accelerate their ability to provide, you know, some type of
• 45:54
  Internet service directly to users without having to go
• 45:56
  through Apple or MN OS. And so, you know, for me that
• 46:00
  that seems kind of a bit of a stretch where I don't know if
• 46:03
  Apple, I think Apple's pretty strategic.
• 46:05
  I don't think they would give away the carbs like that.
• 46:08
  And so for those people who are optimistic that a Starlink or
• 46:12
  sorry, a SpaceX global star deal could happen, I would refer them
• 46:16
  back to a very painful experience of mine before.
• 46:18
  And this is the precedent that I'm going to talk about, which
• 46:21
  is there was this company that I invested in that would probably
• 46:24
  be a SPAC called Cano Health. And this is a value based care
• 46:28
  provider, which ultimately went into bankruptcy.
• 46:31
  But interestingly a lot of the dynamics are similar here where
• 46:35
  you have a dominant customer slash pair in the Apple ** Apple
• 46:40
  Global Star situation. You know Apple gets 85% of
• 46:43
  Global Star's total capacity from their network.
• 46:47
  And in the Keno Health, which was a a value based, you know
• 46:51
  health provider, it was basically a captive supplier for
• 46:55
  Humana. And so about 60-70, part 60 to
• 46:59
  70% of Keno Health's Medicare Advantage patients and the
• 47:03
  revenue went through Humana. And I believe Humana was like an
• 47:05
  early investor too, but for all kinds of purposes, like Humana
• 47:08
  was a critical customer and they had the ultimate say of what
• 47:12
  happened with Cano Health. And so interestingly, you know,
• 47:17
  Apple has a right of first refusal before any sale or
• 47:20
  change of control. Humana also had a right of first
• 47:23
  refusal with Cano before another protective provisions that
• 47:27
  basically would prevent a sale of Cano without their say right.
• 47:31
  And so Fast forward to, I think it was like 2022, you know, Cano
• 47:36
  Health was a highly leveraged density.
• 47:37
  And, and when rates started going up and, and their growth
• 47:40
  started flagging a bit, the company did the same thing.
• 47:43
  They, they announced through the Wall Street Journal, they leaked
• 47:47
  that they were in a potential sale process and, and they put
• 47:49
  everybody's names out there and they talked about like United
• 47:51
  Health, all the, all the other, all the big, you know, managed
• 47:55
  care providers, United Health, of course, Humana, they, they
• 47:58
  put their name in there too, and CVS and others, right.
• 48:02
  And so they were trying to create this, this sense of the
• 48:05
  potential sale process when everyone knew like it was, it
• 48:08
  was basically up to Humana to decide whether they wanted to
• 48:10
  come to sell or not. And was either going to be
• 48:13
  Humana that would buy them or they would say no.
• 48:16
  And and that was it like they couldn't sell.
• 48:20
  And so interestingly, when they leaked those articles, maybe
• 48:24
  it's like a month or two later handle health that leaks to I
• 48:27
  think it was in Wall Street Journal that that CBS was in
• 48:31
  exclusive talks with Keno Health and had been out the other
• 48:35
  players. And so that took the stock up
• 48:38
  and people were pretty excited. And again, just remember, this
• 48:41
  company was highly leveraged and, and faced some flagging
• 48:46
  difficulties because growth had slowed and and you know, they
• 48:49
  were and rates were going up. I think a lot of their debt was
• 48:51
  floating rate, floating rate debt.
• 48:53
  And so they were having it. They were going to have a tough
• 48:55
  time meeting their obligations. And so excuse me.
• 49:00
  But then what ultimately happened is that CBS decided to
• 49:04
  walk away from that deal because at the end of the day, they they
• 49:07
  just realized that Humana had the keys where they could not
• 49:13
  only match whatever CBS bid, but then they could just terminate
• 49:16
  the contracts that they had with with Cano.
• 49:19
  So for those that don't know, CBS owns, I think it's I think
• 49:25
  it's Aetna. Yeah.
• 49:26
  Aetna, which was a, a direct, which is a direct competitor to
• 49:29
  Humana. And so for Humana, it was, it
• 49:33
  was dead on arrival. Like they would never let Ano
• 49:36
  sell to, to CBS and have Aetna, you know, compete or, or be in a
• 49:42
  position to better compete with them.
• 49:43
  And so Humana basically put a kibosh on that and CBS walked
• 49:46
  from the deal, stock cratered. And then they tried to, you
• 49:51
  know, restructure the company a few times and ultimately, and
• 49:53
  Humana let this happen, right? They, the company went into
• 49:56
  bankruptcy. And then Humana, you know, in a
• 49:59
  smart way, they, they, they went into the bankruptcy and they
• 50:02
  bought the assets they wanted and they walked away, you know,
• 50:06
  so, so they were able to walk away with the assets that were
• 50:11
  important to them. And then the rest of Kendo's
• 50:13
  business, which served United Healthcare, CBS and other
• 50:17
  companies that, that went under. So they actually damaged their
• 50:21
  competitors and yeah, and they, they, they got what they wanted,
• 50:25
  but but that was all that full situation was started by Kendall
• 50:29
  Health because they were facing some financial difficulty and
• 50:33
  they decided to put themselves in play full well knowing that
• 50:36
  structurally they were disadvantaged because Humana
• 50:38
  ultimately had the cards like they had the right of first
• 50:41
  refusal. They had other protective
• 50:43
  provisions that would basically prevent the sale of the company
• 50:46
  to anyone else. And so there are it's almost
• 50:51
  like eerie parallels here where global stars in a famously
• 50:56
  they're they're looking at, you know, the market becoming
• 50:59
  increasingly competitive, HTC mobile Starlink are are coming
• 51:03
  in and they're going to get relegated to the like this
• 51:06
  backup service, but then they can't do anything about it
• 51:08
  because Apple holds the cards. And so they're going to now try
• 51:11
  to put the company up for sale and get something going And and
• 51:16
  it's a pretty, you know, dangerous gambit, right?
• 51:18
  Because either something does happen, but it's not going to
• 51:22
  happen without Apple's consent. And Apple could look at this and
• 51:24
  say, well, you know, I'm OK with it.
• 51:27
  Like I put some money into this thing.
• 51:29
  And I have seen, you know, senior security protection.
• 51:33
  I own, I own basically the current and future network that
• 51:37
  will run on the spectrum. You know, I have the, I have the
• 51:39
  money and the wherewithal to buy this, you know, to fully fund
• 51:43
  this thing or divide out of bankruptcy.
• 51:45
  So no one's going to push me around.
• 51:46
  I'm going to make a decision and in for people who are not
• 51:51
  familiar with the situation, looking at it, they might say,
• 51:53
  well, why would global star ever negotiate that?
• 51:55
  But it doesn't make any sense. Like they've they've painted
• 51:57
  themselves in the corner. And it's like, yeah, the the
• 52:00
  global star was on the financial ropes until Apple came in and
• 52:04
  gave them money to, you know, not only give them money, but
• 52:07
  gave them a market right for what they have previously, you
• 52:12
  know, Apple was like, OK, we're going to integrate you into all
• 52:14
  these these Apple iPhones and devices.
• 52:17
  I mean, Apple just recently, you know, they, they, they
• 52:21
  integrated it into one of their, their watches, the SOS messaging
• 52:26
  service. But but yeah, bubble story got
• 52:30
  an offer a deal that they couldn't refuse because there
• 52:32
  was no alternative. The alternative was, you know,
• 52:34
  financial ruin. And so I think when looking at,
• 52:41
  you know, space XS perspective or even, you know, some people
• 52:44
  have talked about AST space mobile.
• 52:46
  I don't know why either party would want to do this deal
• 52:49
  because essentially you're buying, you're, you're stepping
• 52:51
  into the shoes of global star who got a raw deal to begin
• 52:54
  with, right. And so you got to be comfortable
• 52:56
  with a raw deal and maybe that's worth it.
• 52:59
  Like working with Apple, like that's, that's worth it.
• 53:01
  But then for SpaceX, that doesn't seem to make sense
• 53:05
  because you you probably are going to be able to go cobble
• 53:08
  together global spectrum and do it, you know, take your time in
• 53:12
  doing that. I mean, global star would
• 53:14
  accelerate that. But then you've got you're
• 53:17
  locked into Apple and you know, it's almost like, what was it?
• 53:22
  I think circle, this is kind of a, a, a non sequitur red circle.
• 53:27
  They have this stable coin called USUSDC and in order to
• 53:31
  drive adoption, they basically got Coinbase to have it, you
• 53:35
  know, on their platform and, and it's been great.
• 53:37
  Like they've gotten to a massive my own adoption, but they gave
• 53:39
  away, I think like 80 or 90% of economics, not only on Coinbase,
• 53:43
  but wherever USDC trades, any yields that they get from it,
• 53:47
  they have to give it a Coinbase. And so that product is
• 53:50
  structurally flawed forever. And so that's what Gold Star
• 53:54
  too. Like they've it's flawed because
• 53:56
  Apple owns this thing and whether SpaceX buys it or like,
• 54:00
  you know, if AAC space mobile buys it, they would have to work
• 54:04
  out something with with Apple to make it more attractive.
• 54:07
  And that's why I mentioned that before.
• 54:09
  And so I think that's where this whole story and the situation
• 54:14
  kind of falls on its face now. Now, you know, could the parties
• 54:17
  work something out with Apple, like could SpaceX work something
• 54:19
  out with Apple and maybe become friends and do what happens?
• 54:22
  Sure, it could totally happen. But I think in terms of the
• 54:26
  market is saying some probabilities, I think the
• 54:28
  probability of something happening here that's going to
• 54:30
  be good for global Star shareholders is is lower than
• 54:33
  the market thinks. And but but you know, again, the
• 54:38
  home run scenario is like Apple decides to just buy the global
• 54:40
  Star and integrate it. But as we've read in some of
• 54:43
  these articles, you know, global star Apple is probably loads to
• 54:49
  become a service provider itself and compete directly with its
• 54:52
  M&O customers, which introduces a whole host of regulatory
• 54:56
  things from there. It's like being regulated by the
• 54:58
  FCC etcetera. But I think the, and yeah, I,
• 55:04
  I've been rounding here for maybe an hour almost.
• 55:06
  But the, the other, the other angle that I did want to talk
• 55:09
  about is the regular regulatory, the antitrust angle, because I
• 55:14
  think, you know, directed device is a, is a new market, But it,
• 55:20
  it shouldn't be a foregone conclusion that a, you know,
• 55:24
  SpaceX or even AC space mobile could buy global star or, or
• 55:27
  radium for that matter, because it's going to depend on how the
• 55:30
  market, all the Department of Justice, who I think they would
• 55:33
  be, not the FCCFTC, but the DOJ would probably review this deal.
• 55:38
  How they define directed device market?
• 55:40
  Like do they view it as something that includes all the
• 55:43
  players like, or do they, you know, like all data services,
• 55:48
  including satellite phones? Or are they focused on the new
• 55:52
  market, which is these these services to mobile phones and do
• 55:58
  they spice up the market into messaging?
• 56:01
  Or do they talk about it more broadly as just data in general?
• 56:05
  Or are there sub sectors of the market?
• 56:07
  So it's really gonna depend on how they they slice the market.
• 56:09
  But I think given how nascent this is and SpaceX is current
• 56:16
  dominant position and fixed wireless, yeah, it'll be an
• 56:19
  interesting exercise to see how regulators would look at this.
• 56:23
  Because I I don't think it would be a layup for, for example,
• 56:26
  SpaceX to buy global store or Iridium effectively, you know,
• 56:30
  putting a competitor out of business and then, you know,
• 56:33
  consolidating your market share. Because then that that would
• 56:37
  effectively, if you look at like old school traditional services
• 56:41
  and it's in the US, then maybe there's there's three players
• 56:45
  right now. That's how you would define
• 56:46
  market because AST space mobile content process is not to market
• 56:49
  yet. It's going to be next year.
• 56:51
  And of course, the DOJ would look at that too, But if you
• 56:55
  were just to say it's global star radium and SpaceX, that's
• 56:58
  that's a A3 player market going to two like that when it comes
• 57:02
  to the old school antitrust analysis, that's an immediate,
• 57:05
  you know, block like the DOJ is going to suit them to block that
• 57:08
  deal. And, and I think the chances of
• 57:12
  winning are probably low. But then if you include AC space
• 57:14
  mobile and you say, hey, they've got all these M and OS and and
• 57:18
  you know, they've got ATT and Verizon.
• 57:20
  So maybe that's a four player market and it's going to go to
• 57:22
  three that still would have pretty a pretty difficult review
• 57:27
  and maybe maybe it's approved with, you know, some conditions
• 57:30
  or concessions that SpaceX would have to provide.
• 57:33
  I'm not sure what those would be, by the way, But but even a
• 57:37
  four to three where the DOJ, I've mentioned this before, like
• 57:39
  they learned their lesson by approving the Sprint T-Mobile
• 57:43
  merger, which then created turned A4 player market into 3.
• 57:47
  And then, you know, what we what consumers have seen over the
• 57:49
  past couple years is just prices continue to go up.
• 57:52
  And and I think most people agree that that was a big
• 57:54
  mistake because part of the concessions get the yield done
• 57:59
  was to divest and Boost Mobile and some spectrum assets to dish
• 58:03
  networks. You know, good old Charlie
• 58:04
  Ergen, because he's going to create a fourth, what we say
• 58:08
  facilities based competitor, meaning somebody's going to
• 58:10
  actually build a physical network to compete versus, you
• 58:13
  know, a, a virtual network operator, which you can't really
• 58:17
  say like those guys are are have the the ability financially to
• 58:21
  compete. But anyway, we saw that fall on
• 58:24
  his face. And of course, Charlie Urgan was
• 58:26
  like, yeah, I'm going to build this out and then failed.
• 58:28
  And then, you know, he's selling his spectrum to AT&T and and
• 58:32
  SpaceX and probably Verizon as well.
• 58:34
  And so that's that's a case where a DOJ fix ended up being a
• 58:40
  complete failure. So they want they probably would
• 58:43
  want to avoid that. So I think even if, even if
• 58:47
  SpaceX were to try to get a deal done to Global Star and Apple
• 58:51
  did consent to it, you would have a pretty tough time in a
• 58:55
  regulatory review. And I'd probably give the odds
• 58:57
  of a deal like that actually going through probably like 20
• 59:00
  or 30% at those. But who knows, right?
• 59:03
  It depends on how they position it.
• 59:04
  It depends on the administration.
• 59:07
  I think even for a Trump administration, people would
• 59:11
  say, oh, they're business friendly and they'll help Musk
• 59:13
  out. I, I don't think you can assume
• 59:14
  anything, right? Because I think people assumed
• 59:17
  that about the Trump administration the first, the
• 59:19
  first term. And they're like, oh, it's going
• 59:21
  to be M&A, you know, cornucopia, like people are going to get
• 59:25
  deals done because this administration's going to just
• 59:27
  approve, be business friendly. And then of course, they came
• 59:30
  out of blocks. Oh gosh, I'm trying to remember
• 59:35
  they, they blocked like a few big deals just because of I
• 59:38
  think it was around media because Trump didn't like it or,
• 59:41
  you know, they didn't want there to be a yeah, it was, it was
• 59:46
  like politically motivated. I'm Warner and somebody else,
• 59:49
  which then ultimately, I think of course AT&T won that deal and
• 59:52
  then later they split it off. But anyway, I, I think where
• 59:55
  this administration, yeah, it's probably hard to handicap the
• 59:59
  odds of any deal being through regulatory review.
• 1:00:01
  But but I think when you when it's pretty clear cut when you
• 1:00:05
  have a four to three or especially and especially it's
• 1:00:07
  3/2. That deal is most likely going
• 1:00:10
  to get blocked because the last thing regulators want is, is a,
• 1:00:14
  is a duopoly that you help facilitate versus, you know, the
• 1:00:18
  market kind of naturally goes there.
• 1:00:19
  I mean, the great thing is like you've got AC space mobile and
• 1:00:23
  Starlink, they're entering the market.
• 1:00:25
  You've got 2 legacy players. And so you know what the, what
• 1:00:29
  the regulars would say is I'm going to block this deal because
• 1:00:31
  Global Star should be a good competitor for long term because
• 1:00:34
  it's got implicit backing by Apple.
• 1:00:37
  They have deep pockets. And so they'll figure it out.
• 1:00:40
  They'll they'll, they'll get some type of competing service
• 1:00:43
  going. And and so I need to block this
• 1:00:44
  because Apple's not going to just let this die.
• 1:00:46
  And of course, Apple can tell regulators like, hey, we're
• 1:00:48
  going to let this thing die. And then regulators will be
• 1:00:50
  like, OK, well, then, then they'll go into bankruptcy and
• 1:00:53
  then we'll see who buys the assets out of it, right?
• 1:00:55
  And it can be somebody else, it could be Google or who knows?
• 1:00:59
  But anyway, yeah, I, I think, you know, I've been going on for
• 1:01:02
  an hour. Hopefully that that's been
• 1:01:05
  helpful. I'm kind of been rambling and
• 1:01:07
  kind of going over different, different aspects of this, but
• 1:01:10
  let me check the questions here just in case I miss something.
• 1:01:17
  Let's see already here. You got burned by Kennel health.
• 1:01:20
  Yeah, I was a big bull on kennel health and so, yeah, burned on
• 1:01:24
  that, which is why I know about the the parallel here.
• 1:01:27
  And for those that don't know, yeah, you can you can go back
• 1:01:31
  and read. I mean, the deal dynamics are
• 1:01:33
  very, very similar. You've got Humana that's
• 1:01:36
  effectively in control of Kano. They have a right of first
• 1:01:39
  refusal. They have all the other deal
• 1:01:40
  protections. And so it was basically up to
• 1:01:42
  them to whether the company could sell or not.
• 1:01:45
  It was either going to be to Humana or nobody.
• 1:01:48
  And then Humana was like, you know what, I'm just about?
• 1:01:49
  These guys go to bankruptcy, which is what they did, and they
• 1:01:51
  bought the assets out of bankruptcy.
• 1:01:53
  I'm not saying that it's going to happen to Global Star, but
• 1:01:56
  the same dynamic supply where it's up to Apple to decide if
• 1:01:59
  Global Star is going to sell or not.
• 1:02:00
  And and if they don't want it to sell to SpaceX, it's not going
• 1:02:04
  to happen because Apple can make it hard.
• 1:02:07
  Like let's just let's go back to the regulatory review.
• 1:02:10
  The regulatory review. If Apple is the owner of Global
• 1:02:12
  star and the DOJ and FCC are seeking comments about the deal,
• 1:02:17
  let's say SpaceX and Global star decide to the not to do anyway,
• 1:02:21
  then Apple can complain at the DOJ and the FCC and say, Hey,
• 1:02:25
  we, we, we think this is how the anti competitive and we wanted
• 1:02:29
  Gold Star to build this consolation for us.
• 1:02:31
  And they're not doing it. And we want to be build a third
• 1:02:34
  credible player and we're going to give the money to go do it.
• 1:02:37
  And once the DOJ reads that they're going to be like, oh,
• 1:02:39
  this is a insta block. And when you when they go in
• 1:02:42
  front of the courts and Apple, you know, as witnesses and files
• 1:02:48
  affidavits that they were going to go invest in this, I mean,
• 1:02:50
  that's an immediate deal killer, right?
• 1:02:53
  And then, of course, Apple for any number of these other
• 1:02:58
  aspects of of their agreement with Global star, they can make
• 1:03:01
  life really hard, right? So they do have the de facto,
• 1:03:04
  you know, blocking power and, and we'll decide ultimately who
• 1:03:09
  owns global star or no one will own global star.
• 1:03:12
  Let's see, am I recording the space?
• 1:03:16
  Yes, I'm recording. So if you can't hear, you can
• 1:03:18
  listen to it later. Let's see.
• 1:03:25
  OK, people are giving me thumbs up.
• 1:03:27
  So see if there, if anyone has any questions, feel free to
• 1:03:32
  write them. Oh, someone's requesting come
• 1:03:34
  up. I'll, I'll take them up.
• 1:03:35
  Let's see. Spack Willy.
• 1:03:41
  Hey, Spack Willy, are you there? You're on mute.
• 1:03:43
  Do you have a question? I'd be shy.
• 1:03:51
  Spack Willy, are you there? OK.
• 1:03:57
  Anyway, I, I think I cover most of it.
• 1:04:00
  Yeah. The key the I I would just say
• 1:04:03
  we'll probably hear more about this potential deal or deal
• 1:04:06
  process. I would I I might be wrong like
• 1:04:10
  I bet I could be totally surprised.
• 1:04:11
  You might see a deal if a deal is announced between SpaceX and
• 1:04:15
  Global star. That's certainly possible.
• 1:04:18
  It would have to have some type of blasting from Apple.
• 1:04:21
  I think in that type of situation, Apple probably, if a
• 1:04:25
  deal is announced, Apple probably get some type of
• 1:04:27
  sweetheart deal, but then they, they, they stay arm's length
• 1:04:31
  away from it because ultimately they kind of want to work with
• 1:04:33
  everybody. I think for, but I wouldn't, I,
• 1:04:38
  I think a high probability is that no deal happens or there's
• 1:04:42
  a small probability, maybe a deal with AST space mobile or
• 1:04:44
  somebody else, right. But I don't think, I don't think
• 1:04:48
  AST space mobile would, would buy global star themselves.
• 1:04:52
  They would have to be, you know, in partnership with Apple or, or
• 1:04:56
  something like that because it's, it's a pretty big
• 1:04:58
  financial nut global * if you let's just assume $10 million
• 1:05:02
  prices, correct. I mean, the company is only
• 1:05:04
  generating 130 billion, yeah, 130 million of EBITDA this year,
• 1:05:10
  150 million next year. There are some there are, there
• 1:05:14
  would be some cost savings if you did the deal, but Gold Star
• 1:05:18
  is effectively, you know, better dead than alive because all the
• 1:05:22
  values in the spectrum is not really in the current operating
• 1:05:24
  business because you you'd basically shut it all down like
• 1:05:26
  the constellations old the spectrum is valuable and with
• 1:05:32
  the new constellation, you could, you could certainly
• 1:05:35
  deploy a, a really good, decent broadband service on that.
• 1:05:40
  But you know, if you were just to look at things financially,
• 1:05:43
  for example, Iridium is much more attractive.
• 1:05:46
  It's spectrum is not as valuable because it it here.
• 1:05:50
  Let me just go back to my notes. I think Iridium has about 8
• 1:05:54
  megahertz, just one sliver of 8 megahertz of L band spectrum
• 1:05:57
  globally. And so that is, that is, that is
• 1:06:02
  attractive, but it's not great. But then Global Star has 8.7
• 1:06:09
  megahertz of spectrum L band spectrum and then you know, 17
• 1:06:13
  megahertz of S band spectrum globally.
• 1:06:14
  So their, their position is much better.
• 1:06:17
  But as I was saying before, Iridium, they actually have,
• 1:06:20
  yeah, they're generating call it 500 million of EBITDA this year.
• 1:06:23
  And so I think if you were to do some type of deal with them
• 1:06:26
  that's more interesting financially because you can, you
• 1:06:30
  know, they stop their share buyback, you could cut their
• 1:06:31
  dividend, you could take out a ton of cost and just run it for
• 1:06:34
  cash until you have a consolation that that would be
• 1:06:39
  able to utilize our spectrum. But anyway, maybe I'll end it
• 1:06:43
  there are my kids are back. So.
• 1:06:45
  Oh, I see. Francisco.
• 1:06:46
  Oh, maybe I'll bring you up here if you have a question.
• 1:06:51
  Hey, Francisco, are you there? Hey, what's going on, man?
• 1:06:55
  Yeah, I'm here. How's it going?
• 1:06:58
  Here Sunday, getting ready for the week, but real quick, I
• 1:07:02
  wanted to clarify that the CEO of Global Star on the third
• 1:07:06
  quarter, he actually mentioned that they have received the
• 1:07:09
  buses from Rock Lap and MDA and that they were expected to
• 1:07:12
  receive the second batch of buses like by the end of this
• 1:07:16
  quarter. So Rock Lap is not late on those
• 1:07:19
  buses for what it sounds like. I don't know where that rumor
• 1:07:21
  came from. Yeah, I, I don't know.
• 1:07:24
  I mean, it's I think Tanner, he's up here too.
• 1:07:27
  Maybe he can clarify but but I think the sorry go.
• 1:07:33
  No good. And I did listen to the CEO
• 1:07:36
  talking about this during the third quarter.
• 1:07:38
  So it's not something that I read or somebody told me.
• 1:07:41
  I've actually listened to it. Right, Yeah, go ahead.
• 1:07:47
  Yeah, I mean, I, I, as I was saying before, I don't think
• 1:07:49
  it's, it's a Rocket Lab issue, but I think I think Taylor was
• 1:07:54
  writing about how maybe the, the the the timing has been off,
• 1:07:59
  which is I was saying before, like it wouldn't be a surprise,
• 1:08:02
  right? And I think for, for a company
• 1:08:05
  like Global Star who was negotiating for a position
• 1:08:08
  weakness for them, they probably told Apple like, hey, we're
• 1:08:12
  going to do all these things and this would be great.
• 1:08:14
  And then of course, when it comes to reality, as we all
• 1:08:16
  know, space is hard and takes time and, and, you know, it's
• 1:08:20
  like, was it ViaSat? I, I mentioned this as an
• 1:08:24
  example for when, when people get all testy about things
• 1:08:27
  taking longer than you think, like bias that their second
• 1:08:29
  satellite game, what, five years delayed.
• 1:08:32
  I think it's launching on ULA in the coming weeks.
• 1:08:35
  But but yeah, that, that stuff happens.
• 1:08:36
  I mean, it's just normal. It's not good or bad.
• 1:08:38
  It's just, that's just what it is.
• 1:08:40
  But but yeah, I know. I appreciate it.
• 1:08:42
  Yeah, I, I don't think, I don't think Rocket Lab is delayed, but
• 1:08:45
  I guess I would say for a company like Gold Star, if
• 1:08:49
  you're outsourcing all your design and manufacturing it,
• 1:08:51
  it's tough, right? Because like, like we've already
• 1:08:53
  seen with AC where you know, they've, they've, they've taken
• 1:08:58
  longer to build the satellites because they wanted new features
• 1:09:03
  and they, they were able to incorporate them or they made
• 1:09:05
  changes. And so like for example, FM 1
• 1:09:08
  and FM 2, we don't really know all the features that are on
• 1:09:11
  those things, but they're much heavier.
• 1:09:13
  And then of course, the next satellites after those are, are,
• 1:09:15
  are going to be made of composites, which are much
• 1:09:18
  lighter. But then I think they're they're
• 1:09:19
  probably not going to have some of the same features as FM 1 and
• 1:09:22
  FM 2 because there's some like secret stuff going on there.
• 1:09:25
  But anyway, anyhow, But yeah, no thanks.
• 1:09:29
  Thanks for coming up and clarifying that.
• 1:09:32
  I think I'm going to end it. Yeah, I think I'm going to end
• 1:09:34
  it here because I got the kids here.
• 1:09:36
  I I didn't want to give a shout out to the Dodgers, which I was
• 1:09:39
  potentially going to do spatial survey, but then I was watching
• 1:09:42
  the game and it was probably one of the best World Series games
• 1:09:45
  I've ever seen. But sorry for Blue Jays.
• 1:09:48
  But hey, it was it was a great, great series.
• 1:09:51
  But yeah, we'll see. We'll see what this week brings.
• 1:09:54
  I think there's going to be more news from HP Space Mobile,
• 1:09:57
  especially as we head into the quarter.
• 1:10:00
  And so, yeah, I'm, I'm very optimistic and bullish.
• 1:10:03
  And, and I think as someone, you know, I alluded to this or I did
• 1:10:09
  a post about before, it's just interesting to see how this,
• 1:10:12
  this, this industry has evolved where what was once thought
• 1:10:16
  impossible is now kind of accepted.
• 1:10:18
  As you know, this is the new state of the market.
• 1:10:21
  It's and, and these legacy players are we've gone from, you
• 1:10:25
  know, one or two years or three years from them saying, you
• 1:10:31
  know, being comfortable and smug about their position to know how
• 1:10:34
  having to sell their companies, both Gold Star and Iridium just
• 1:10:36
  kind of nuts. But but yeah, that's, that's
• 1:10:39
  life comes at you fast, man. That's all, that's all three
• 1:10:41
  things working when when you got innovation at play.
• 1:10:45
  But but yeah, thanks everyone for joining.
• 1:10:48
  Hopefully that was helpful. Stay tuned for this evening.
• 1:10:52
  You know, Kook will have a space and, you know, maybe he'll talk
• 1:10:54
  about, I'm sure he'll talk about some of these things as well.
• 1:10:57
  But, but yeah, but we'll meet again.
• 1:10:59
  We'll talk again. And I hope this was helpful.
• 1:11:02
  Thanks everyone for joining. Thanks for listening to the AST
• 1:11:07
  Space Mobile podcast. If you enjoyed this episode and
• 1:11:10
  you'd like to help support the podcast, please share it with
• 1:11:13
  others, post about it on social media, or leave a rating and
• 1:11:16
  review. To catch all the latest news
• 1:11:19
  about AST Space Mobile, make sure to subscribe.
• 1:11:22
  Thanks again and I'll see you next time.
• 1:11:28
  We're doing something very, very big, and I think with this
• 1:11:30
  technology we can really affect billion lives.
• 1:11:33
  AFT Space Global is the only company that has full technology
• 1:11:38
  to deliver several broadband connectivity directly from space
• 1:11:42
  to do everyday smartphone. People will just basically turn
• 1:11:45
  their phone and be seamless, regardless of where you are.
• 1:11:49
  We don't want the user even to know that it's connected by
• 1:11:51
  satellite. Our role is to bring this into
• 1:11:55
  reality, always in partnership with the animal.
• 1:12:04
  Listen. Waffles.