Latest / AST SpaceMobile Podcast / Kook's Weekly - October 13

Transcript

Kook's Weekly - October 13 · AST SpaceMobile Podcast

0:06
This is the AST Space Mobile podcast.
0:10
Where we just basically turn the phone be seamless, regardless of
0:14
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.
0:27
OK, good evening everyone. Quite the exciting weekend I was
0:31
out camping soon kind of was between packing and getting out
0:37
the door to beat traffic missed what turned out to be the end of
0:42
the world for a lot of people and so I was catching up once I
0:45
got better cell phone service at the absolute wipeout in crypto.
0:48
I hadn't even noticed that Space Mobile had closed down, let
0:52
alone it crashed the 75 bucks in the aftermarket.
0:55
And so I was just thinking, OK, how about that?
0:59
And as a very long term Space Mobile shareholder, I'm just so
1:06
conditioned to these draw downs where whenever you think you've
1:10
finally made it with this stock and you know, think, you know,
1:14
finally people are going to see the bigger picture.
1:17
And you know, we have pictures of airplanes landing.
1:21
I'm looking at the thing man, just reposted, which is the
1:24
Antnolf landing in Alaska. I'm just thinking, oh, come on,
1:28
God, it's like, are we really going to do this and drive this
1:30
thing down to 70 for no reason? And looks like the answer was
1:34
for like a nanosecond, yes. And then the Calvary route
1:37
arrived. And so, you know, just check
1:41
where we are right now, $86.50 on 51,000 shares, not bad.
1:49
And so where do we go from here? And you know, to me, it's just
1:54
seeing these satellites get put on the cargo plane is, is so
1:58
exciting. And what we know is that FM 1 is
2:01
now on its route to India via Alaska.
2:05
I'm not quite sure where other stops it might take sort of it's
2:09
earth goodbye tour really for FM 1.
2:12
Is it for the last time, you know, gets to visit all the the
2:17
states before its one way journey into the heavens.
2:20
And then we have FM 2 is going to be leaving by truck any day.
2:26
And that will be another interesting test of the Kevin
2:29
Mack theory that everything is priced in.
2:32
And so there will be a picture of a truck going past the Cape
2:36
Canaveral sign once again. And that means that it's a
2:39
Falcon 9 launch, which is exciting.
2:42
And it could very easily be happening before the ISRO
2:47
launch, which I would personally prefer just because of the
2:52
certainty of a Falcon. But the market's certain to see
2:55
what operational execution looks like.
2:59
And we also saw some things being unloaded from Antonoff in
3:03
Midland. And so I haven't fully scoured
3:06
every possible angle on map, but my instinct was that those are
3:10
some of the components that some of the critical path items for
3:13
satellite packing that we have not yet in, in source as part of
3:18
our vertical integration. And if that's true and we were
3:22
getting some critical path items into the plant, that means that
3:25
we could, you know, Fast forward a month, we could start to see
3:29
FM 34 etcetera starting to lead the factory gate.
3:34
And to me, this is all about just re racking the share price
3:38
to new safety levels, if you will.
3:43
And so, you know, as I kind of think back on my journey with
3:47
this stock, a lot of times I'd have to think, you know, my
3:52
downside is, you know, potentially to 0, which is
3:54
unsappling. And that was this weekend,
3:59
talking to some of the other dads that knew I was involved in
4:01
this. One of the one of the guys works
4:03
in NVIDIA, which is interesting. And you know, I have to be
4:06
honest and go, well, yeah, look, a year ago there was a real
4:09
chance this thing was going to go to zero.
4:12
I just chose to not accept that reality and sort of will an
4:16
alternate path into existence. But the truth is it had a
4:22
different return distribution that it does today.
4:25
And so now I'm kind of thinking of my mindset on Friday when I
4:28
saw that $75 aftermarket price, in my head I thought like, fine,
4:32
whatever, bring it. You want to have a correction.
4:35
Let's see where that new floor is.
4:37
We saw that the the floor last month was $37, which was pretty
4:42
annoying, to put it lightly. But it was annoying.
4:46
I got an e-mail from a pretty, pretty important person saying,
4:51
well, I hope, hope you didn't blow out of your shares in, in,
4:56
in September on that SpaceX Equestar news.
4:59
And I wrote them back and I went, are you kidding me?
5:02
I mean, that was like a little mosquito bite.
5:04
I'm used to kind of having limbs Hacked Off with machetes until
5:09
when I saw that aftermarket price, my, you know, just to
5:12
share kind of my internal thought processes.
5:14
Now we have the Verizon DA. I'm trying to think of all the
5:18
other news we got. You know, I don't think the
5:20
market fully appreciates all the Vodafone news we get.
5:23
And then we have the operational shakedown which is happening
5:26
with FM One, FM 2. Of course none of that matters
5:28
if if something systemically were wrong with the technology.
5:32
But I think we're very confident now with block one that that's
5:35
not the case. And so these draw downs from
5:40
here I hope are much more shallow absent something just
5:42
dramatic in the macro. And that's exciting to me is
5:46
just knowing that the the lows are going to be just annoyances
5:52
for people that have really adopted the long term mindset
5:56
with this stock. And let's talk a little bit
5:58
about what a rare find this is just to bring to the front this
6:01
post from more Roger. Nothing really makes me happier
6:05
other than sort of the success and health of my children.
6:08
Then seeing people improve their situation in a meaningful way.
6:12
And so more Roger, who's a delivery driver in Seattle, go
6:15
Mariners told everyone he makes $65,000 a year.
6:19
Good for him, but better for him is that he became a millionaire
6:23
because of his investment in AST space Mobile.
6:26
And so that's wonderful. And so this individual now is
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highly likely to have much more certainty around their future,
6:35
potentially retirement that's more comfortable than it
6:37
otherwise would have been because of really the space mob
6:42
for one, but also just because they were a long term investor
6:44
and secular growth company and didn't succumb to the urge to be
6:49
a short term investor, whip stuff around, swing trade.
6:54
And you know, you see these crypto people, what happened to
6:56
them over the weekend is just stunning.
6:59
And of course, when you are running 20X leverage on an
7:03
altcoin, it's easy to say you get what you deserve, but I
7:08
don't, I don't think like that because a lot of people said the
7:11
same of me when ASTS was $2.00. And you know, basically we're I
7:16
mean, a little bit of shot and Freud of like, I got what he
7:18
deserved and and you never really want to wish I'll on
7:21
anyone is my life life choice. But it is nice to see these
7:25
stories of people that really did the work and now have
7:30
materially changed their lives, not just sort of like, Oh, I had
7:32
a good little trade, you know, really changed their life.
7:36
And so why is this so rare? And you know, why did I, why did
7:42
Katzie and Pin Man, well, you know, too many people to name,
7:47
frankly, why did we all glom on to this?
7:52
And so I know my logic was if I was going to have a social media
7:55
account and kind of share ideas on the Internet, I wanted to
7:59
find something that was going to be the Grand Slam of all the
8:03
grand slams. And importantly, one that was
8:05
going to be a huge secular winner, which is to say that
8:07
there's really going to be not a wrong price to buy it.
8:11
You can in the short term, first buy the right price.
8:13
Is 86 going to be the lowest price that he's ever seen for AC
8:16
space bubble? I hope so, but it might not be.
8:21
But the key is if you buy it at 86 and it goes to have a
8:24
correction back to 7565, whatever.
8:27
If you wait a year, will you even remember the draw down?
8:31
That's that's my goal when, when thinking about the stocks that I
8:35
would want to talk about. You want to make sure that if
8:38
someone can hold it, they will generally make money and and do
8:41
well. And so why is Space Mobile so
8:45
rare? Well, if anyone's read the Peter
8:47
Thiel book Zero to 1 it, it really could be summarized by
8:51
this concept of ideas that sound dumb and are commonly viewed as
8:56
dumb except for the fact that when they're right, it means
8:59
that you have no competition. And so space Mobile was an idea
9:03
so crazy that even the experts in the industry, AT&T, said this
9:07
directly, all but laughed it off except for the fact they knew a
9:12
Bell and the quality of his leadership and that's why they
9:15
backed him. But it was an idea deemed so
9:17
crazy, others dismissed it. And you could see even recently
9:22
some of the legacy space guys who said, well, why would you
9:24
put your whole ball of wax in this idea so crazy?
9:29
Because there's no half measure measures in life.
9:32
If you want to sack Rome, you you have to go cross the
9:37
Rubicon. There's no other way.
9:39
When Elon was coming up with Tesla, he could have had a
9:44
hybrid solution and had a small internal combustion engine
9:47
there, which was solved a lot of problems, but it was 1/2 measure
9:51
ASD space mobile took no half measures.
9:54
Everything was ground up. First principles designed to
9:57
solve an enormously hard problem, but in a way that would
10:00
ultimately lead to a frictionless solution and
10:03
scalable solution for consumers, which is key.
10:05
Otherwise it wouldn't be the hit.
10:09
And so there's not very many companies that take a first
10:13
principles approach like that. And I'm, I'm humble to the fact
10:17
that I'm not smart enough to catch many of those, if any of
10:22
them except for space mobile, I did not catch Tesla, things like
10:25
that. I've been thinking a lot about
10:27
another one that I won't mention the ticker of right now, but I
10:30
kind of had an epiphany when I was sitting in traffic trying to
10:35
understand why it is there's so many people trying to drive
10:38
through Riverside and then realizing that there probably is
10:42
no real answer to that question. But in that moment, it hit me on
10:45
another idea of like, oh wow, I get the big picture now.
10:47
And a lot of these things, you just have to get the big picture
10:51
to see past all the FUD. And with Space Mobile, there was
10:54
FUD galore, but we all saw the big picture.
10:58
And so as we're basking in this euphoria this week, of course,
11:00
what happened an ATM. And so I just almost thought,
11:03
but I saw that in the morning just went, oh, Jesus Christ,
11:06
like, are we doing this again, guys?
11:08
And so of course the company should have an ATM Yeah, they
11:10
have a billion 5 of cash, but if you run the model out, they're
11:14
going to burn that in heartbeat to put up a valuable
11:17
constellation. Then they shouldn't drive their
11:20
cash down to 0. That's pretty dumb.
11:22
And why would you risk your company and make it vulnerable
11:26
like that to could competitors like SpaceX?
11:29
You would not. So they announced dilution stock
11:31
was obviously getting drilled in the morning.
11:34
And then I had some, you know, short sellers, Pivotal, I love
11:39
you, Pivotal putting some memes in my DMS kind of mocking me,
11:43
which frankly, he selected some hysterical memes.
11:46
And I actually had a really deep laugh knowing that I blast his
11:51
balls off to outer space because I've done my work and he has
11:53
not. And so imagine my surprise when
11:56
his balls got blasted off before the close that day.
12:00
But it is important to appreciate that growth companies
12:05
need cash, and an ATM is an incredibly efficient way to do
12:09
it. Cash is the weapon.
12:11
And a lot of times when you talk to industry experts, they say,
12:14
well, the key reason why competing with SpaceX is so
12:16
difficult is that Elon has infinite resources.
12:23
Well, do they not Clear and so you know, they're having to
12:30
issue stock to buy Spectrum. We have some snippets of what we
12:33
think their balance sheet is, but AST doesn't have that much
12:37
lower of a cash balance than SpaceX and AST has much less
12:42
risky cap X than SpaceX. SpaceX has, you know, we're
12:46
having another Starship launch tomorrow.
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They've got some big boy capital commitments on a lot of things
12:52
outside of AD to C constellation.
12:55
And so we're now actually dollar for dollar, probably the most
13:00
resourced aerospace startup in the world.
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And if you're a long term investor, you really want a
13:07
company that is going to have this at the flexibility.
13:10
And I really hope that they blew out that ATM all last week.
13:14
And if they didn't, I hope they do it soon because why, why risk
13:19
it for them? I mean, what we just saw on the
13:20
market is that they could be doing everything perfect in
13:23
terms of execution. And then Trump sees that the
13:26
market is at all time high highs, which they are, and
13:30
realizes that he has a little bit of capital to play with in a
13:33
way. You know, he doesn't obviously
13:35
want to have his presidency defined by a the stock market
13:38
down 20%. And so when he's dealing with
13:41
house money like this, he can start to play harder on some of
13:44
these geopolitical issues to advance the ball otherwise.
13:47
And then, of course, when the market tanks, if he takes it too
13:50
far to chicken out and rinse and repeat.
13:53
And so if you're the company existing in this type of world,
13:56
which they are, I wouldn't play it cute.
13:59
I would take the money and know that I can play through really
14:03
any type of cycle that comes. And so we had an pin man do a
14:07
good spaces on this topic. Honestly, now that the stock is
14:10
ripping again, you could probably don't need a list of
14:12
the spaces because clearly people got over it.
14:16
But there's many reasons why this company is going to want to
14:18
show a huge balance sheet other than never mind the fact that
14:22
it's a smart thing to do. But if you're submitting a
14:25
proposal for Golden Dome and trying to be a big boy
14:28
contractor in the largest defense project ever, you are
14:34
going to want to have serial launching capacity.
14:38
And so I know a lot of people really struggled with the idea
14:41
that AST Space Mobile said, well, we're, we're fully funded,
14:47
so why are you raising more money?
14:49
And my point is, we have a little bit of the Heisenberg
14:53
principle where you have two things can be happening, which
14:59
makes it impossible to see one at a time without influencing
15:02
the other. And here we have so much growth
15:05
opportunity that the actual definition of fully funded is
15:09
constantly moving. And so you have to kind of pause
15:12
your definition of what do we want to define as fully
15:15
financed, but then that is limiting to the other growth
15:20
opportunities that we could also pursue.
15:23
And this is where I think it's important point for anyone
15:25
that's a serious long term investor to understand.
15:27
If you're just like a trader and you're more more important if
15:31
you're a short than whatever, you just spread your false
15:34
narrative how you see fit. But if you're a long term
15:36
investor and especially less experienced, and you're trying
15:40
to reconcile this concept of the company selling fully financed
15:43
and then seeing the company raise more money and then seeing
15:46
Fudsters say, oh, look, see, they're shysters and they're
15:49
lying to you and they're, you know, they eat fraud for
15:52
breakfast. The reason why you can take
15:54
comfort that the Fudsters are wrong is again, this idea of
15:58
fully funded for what? And so yes, they are fully
16:01
funded. If they turned off the money
16:03
spigot, they could go fully fund out the 45 to 60 satellites for
16:07
the full constellation. That appears to be true.
16:09
Now, it would be tight. They could do it, but it would
16:12
be tight. So that's the first reason to
16:14
raise more money is to never have it be tight.
16:16
The second reason, reason to raise more money is what we
16:20
found out with Scott is they want to get up to 12 satellites
16:23
per month capacity to be able to meet government demand.
16:27
Well, you have to start pulling forward CapEx, pulling forward
16:30
hiring, which is the end, pulling forward burner.
16:33
These are good things if you're a long term investors because
16:37
you're pulling forward growth opportunities, but more
16:39
importantly, you're making your company more defensible and more
16:43
immune from competition. Things like the Legato deal,
16:50
incredible uses of money and so you can be fully funded, but
16:54
then you see a deal like Legato come along.
16:57
Well, you need more money to do something like that.
16:59
And I don't know if they might actually end up just paying cash
17:01
for the Legato prepayment at this point versus using the non
17:07
recourse that facility unclear, but they're going to have these
17:11
options now. And there's, you know, real
17:13
reasons why a board could consider many different ways to
17:17
finance the growth even if they'd previously signaled a
17:21
prior plan. And we also are seeing that this
17:24
acceleration is happening. And so Rakatan put out a slide
17:30
just showing that again, there's a 60 satellites planned in 2026
17:35
and rolling out the service in Japan.
17:36
Great, until balance sheet visibility is what is allowing
17:41
all their partners to see and believe that.
17:44
And that's also going to go hand in hand with DAS getting signed
17:47
as the project becomes inevitable.
17:49
M and OS need to shit or get off the pot.
17:53
They have to start getting the DA signed.
17:56
And Verizon, which we'll get to in a second, is a big kind of
18:04
bolder that is going to I think cause a massive avalanche.
18:09
So the visibility of our satellite getting on that plane.
18:12
And then what will shortly happen is the visibility of our
18:15
satellite getting on a track to the Cape is going to show the
18:19
world that is constellation is now over its constellation
18:23
Constipation, which is an idea I put out maybe a month ago of it
18:27
takes a while for these satellites to really get through
18:31
the satellite production capacity get shaken down.
18:33
There's a lot of pieces to this puzzle.
18:36
For example, some of the parts that are not internally made,
18:40
you might have some critical path items you need to secure,
18:42
which evidently were dropped off by this airplane.
18:45
You needed to get the control sat down, all these little
18:49
things. But once you get them down, the
18:51
production lines can start humming and that's where the
18:53
operational acceleration occurs. And that's what you're really
18:56
seeing in the stock price in my belief.
18:59
And so then where did the shorts really get their ass handed to
19:01
them this week? Well, Scott did something very
19:04
funny, which is he announced an ATM, which anyone that's been a
19:09
long term investor here knows that typically has met the stock
19:12
is going to trade heavy for about a month.
19:14
And we just had a really nice run in the share price into into
19:20
the 80s. Announced an ATMI personally
19:24
woke up that morning and you know, of course was like, oh
19:26
God, I was like, OK, but on your big boy pants, it's smart to
19:30
raise money. All these things I just
19:32
proclaimed earlier as truths, but I'm also human.
19:35
So I was like, yeah, God, OK, fine.
19:38
Then to me, this just meant I was going to have to deal with
19:40
this stock churning around for another month as the market just
19:43
basically repeated. What it typically did is assume
19:47
the company pumped the stock, did the ATM, but had already
19:51
shot other bullets, which that means it's basically like a free
19:54
look for shorts to grab 1520 thirty 40% in in the, you know,
20:00
drawdown phase of the stock. That's what typically happened.
20:03
And it Pavilas dogs. The dog started salivating.
20:07
Well, instead of getting fed the shorts the next day found out
20:13
that they had had an electric shot collar installed in their
20:17
rectum. And they got blasted beyond
20:21
belief when ASD Space Mobile announced ADA with Verizon.
20:26
Whoops. And so the funsters had actually
20:31
been pretty adamant that Verizon was going to walk away from ASD
20:34
Space Mobile. You never heard any of the core
20:38
space mob researchers, which I include myself in that group say
20:43
that that was going to happen. Many of us had various sources
20:47
of information, various instincts, etcetera that let us
20:50
all to the same conclusion in different ways.
20:52
I knew that I had many 9.999999% certainty Verizon was going to
20:58
close. I didn't really know what was
20:59
influencing the timing, but here we are.
21:02
And so to the broader market, there was real uncertainty.
21:07
Why was it taking so long? It was almost a year and a half.
21:09
What what could go, what could be going wrong?
21:13
And so I could see how this was a massive relief to standards
21:18
buys and to people that were looking for more proof points,
21:25
this was probably one of the big ones.
21:28
And so it is no surprise that the stock really rips.
21:32
The uncertainty that was alleviated was was pretty
21:36
meaningful in this and it kind of goes back to reconciling the
21:40
Kev Mack statement of well everything is discounted.
21:43
Well, not really Kev Stur because what's actually
21:47
happening is a risk adjusted probability of things might be
21:51
discounted, but you don't know necessarily what the implied
21:54
probability is in the market. And I think that's big
21:57
disconnect with the space mob versus the general market as a
22:00
lot of people haven't really focused on the stock.
22:02
So they're probably pricing most of these events with 20%
22:06
probability, 30%, probably something like that.
22:08
And the magnitude of these events is actually quite high.
22:12
And so moving the probability from 30% chance of happening to
22:16
100% chance of happening when it actually happens results in a
22:19
really big change in the share price.
22:22
And so you could argue until you're, you know, white in the
22:24
face of what efficient markets mean, but there's a symmetry
22:29
where I believe the space mob just literally knows those
22:33
events and the probabilities of those events better.
22:35
So we're sitting here saying this thing is worth way more.
22:38
The market is inefficient because what we're saying is the
22:42
probabilities are wrong. And why do we think that, you
22:47
know, this group of knucklehead retail investors already are are
22:50
we're not retail, but you know, why do we think these
22:52
knucklehead retail investors have a better grasp of the
22:54
probabilities? Because we're doing more work.
22:56
We literally have, you know, maybe 50 to 100 people that are
23:00
spending all of their time all day researching.
23:06
Did a bell have enough fiber for breakfast?
23:08
Because of course, we want to make sure he's alleviated from a
23:10
constellation Constipation. And yeah, I think we just spend
23:14
more time because all of our money is involved in this.
23:17
I did the math on myself because I really probably very deep,
23:22
deep psychological problems where I have, as I found out
23:25
when I did the math, actually 85% of my net worth in the
23:28
stock, which it doesn't really sink in which which is something
23:32
I struggle to understand how my brain works because I shouldn't
23:37
be able to sleep at night when I'm trying to be honest with
23:39
myself. I shouldn't sleep in past the
23:43
market open, which I do often or just go surf like I didn't even
23:49
really know or care about the blow up on Friday aftermarket.
23:54
Someone with 85% of their net worth in a single stock pre
23:57
revenue satellite company should probably not be as relaxed as I
24:01
am. And so I don't know there's a
24:02
right answer to that. I'm just pointing it out that
24:05
you're on the phone with someone who's probably verifiably
24:07
insane. So just trust your know your
24:09
sources. But when I look at this, and
24:13
this is when I was talking to Tut, he had some good
24:17
observations. It's just ASTS is such a simple
24:20
story that once told everyone can understand it.
24:27
And so even though we do all this work and we understand
24:29
details that other people really never have to understand, when
24:33
you're actually doing the drive by pitch on it, it's a super
24:37
simple story. And you know, that's my, my
24:39
belief is, I think I've said this in the, you know, maybe a
24:41
year ago too, in my belief is at some point, not yet, but at some
24:45
point AST space mobile will be the stock that everyone talks
24:50
about. It will be the barometer of the
24:55
market, which which can seem like a crazy concept, but I
24:57
remember, you know, a long time ago when Bitcoin actually made
25:00
its debut on sort of Bloomberg top.
25:02
I thought, well, holy crap, I bet these guys never thought it,
25:04
this would be such a mainstream asset where you even get a
25:06
mention on, on Bloomberg. And I'm sure to be validated
25:11
that way. And you Needless to say, boy,
25:14
did it go a lot more, you know, mainstream than that.
25:19
But the simplicity of the story and even this weekend when
25:22
camping and, you know, desperately trying to watch the
25:25
Mariners to drink game without a cell phone signal, when I
25:28
explained to you there are people I'm camping at, they're
25:30
just saying like, hey, guys, this is the last time this
25:32
problem will ever occur. Everyone understood it.
25:36
Everyone saw the need for it and was captivated by it.
25:39
And that's what's neat here is people can really dream a dream
25:43
on this stock and your imagination can run to sort of
25:48
boundless sort of opportunity because you very quickly get
25:51
beyond the dead zone theory. And when you dig deeper, you
25:56
start to just see the extent of what the market opportunity is.
26:00
So then moving back to Verizon again in pin man did a did a
26:06
good spaces and I've leaked that out as well.
26:09
So if you want to find it looks like 6, 1800 other people
26:13
already did find it, but it's the paradigm shift.
26:17
And for me, Verizon, back when you announced it back in May of
26:21
2024, that was the kind of oh, crap moment for me.
26:26
Because you do the math. That just means AST is locked in
26:30
60% of the US market, which is a, is a monopoly threshold to
26:34
me. And so if you've locked in a
26:36
monopoly threshold in the world's largest telecom market,
26:38
then you're likely going to lock in a monopoly everywhere else.
26:40
And then you have a global monopoly.
26:41
And then you can in fact chill out, sleep in, pass the open and
26:46
not worry about things. Here we are.
26:48
And so that's why the Verizon announcement is very poor
26:53
because it goes to validation. Whatever.
26:58
That's a feel good story. You know, someone validated my
27:01
tech. Well, they've already showed the
27:02
steepest cell phone's working, so it's validated.
27:04
What this actually does is seal the commercial Moat.
27:10
And a commercial Moat, once sealed, is hard to unseal.
27:14
And when you start to have a monopolistic Moat created
27:18
through commercial strength, never mind tech strength, never
27:22
mind regulatory strength, you start to have a high mode
27:26
business. And I've been told that that's a
27:29
good thing to put your money into.
27:30
So I did and then now we're having the press pile in until
27:34
PC Mag said forget Starlink. What?
27:38
How do you forget Starlink? Forget Starlink.
27:40
Verizon is all in on AST space mobile for satellite phone
27:44
service. PC mag wow, forget Starlink.
27:50
Hope Tim is listening. What a loser.
27:55
So now we get to the MNO deal or no deal and so well, actually
28:00
let's actually talk about one more thing.
28:01
So with the Verizon press release, what was interesting to
28:04
me is that there was no prepayment.
28:07
And this proves the AST space bubble management are lives
28:11
because they said we were going to get prepayments.
28:13
So I'll wait for the cash open and I'll just sell all my stock
28:18
in the market order. Because of course, if there was
28:20
no prepayment, then the entire thesis is busted or not.
28:24
So it actually is very interesting.
28:27
Some will, will point out, well, Verizon already did a
28:29
prepayment. Well, I was actually kind of
28:31
expecting another one. And so if someone had said hey
28:34
quarter you're actually expecting, I thought Verizon was
28:38
going to come with a massive upside of his prepayment deal.
28:41
And I didn't really think about that a lot.
28:43
But when the DA hit, it made me think about it more.
28:48
And the thing we don't know, but what I could reasonably expect
28:52
is that when you're negotiating these DAS with M and OS and you
28:56
say, OK, well, all the stuff you're dealing with, if you boil
28:59
it down, what are probably the key things that matter the most
29:04
If you're ASD Space Mobile, it's the revenue share, it's the
29:09
prepayments and then probably things around exclusivity.
29:12
And I'm sure there's some key details that I'm just not
29:15
sophisticated enough to really appreciate.
29:17
But if we hone in on the revenue share and the prepayment, I
29:20
would have believed, I would tend to believe these things
29:23
move inversely. And so as you asked for more
29:28
prepayment type consideration, I could see an M&O saying, yeah,
29:34
that's jolly and well we will finance your business for you,
29:37
but you are going to effectively pay interest on that with a
29:41
smaller profit share. And so I could see Scott sitting
29:44
back with his Abacus and going, perhaps there is a relationship
29:49
between not taking a prepayment and instead and funding my
29:55
business, perhaps with an ATM, but then getting a very
30:00
different and higher commercial chop or revenue should.
30:05
And math that's not going to be made available to us.
30:08
But we can start to guess that there is going to be a net
30:12
accretion, net dilution calculation he's going to do
30:15
where on one hand, you can say, well, I'm not going to blow out
30:17
my Share Account by another 3.3% because I'll have all the
30:21
prepayments. But maybe my revenue share goes
30:24
from 60% to 50% and he does the math, etcetera.
30:28
And so what's interesting is with such a high stock price, I
30:31
could see ASD Space Mobile actually saying, no thanks on
30:35
the prepayments. We'll just take a higher revenue
30:39
share. And I can see the M and OS
30:40
going, OK, fine. You know, you want to take the
30:43
adoption risk. You, you know, you want to own
30:47
that upside if you believe so strongly in your service.
30:50
Amen. Because from an M&O's
30:52
perspective, they're going to get paid in multiple ways.
30:54
They're going to get paid because of lower churn.
30:57
That's a big one. They're going to be generating
31:00
magical revenue from heaven that literally from Leo didn't be
31:03
more precise. So the bears don't think I'm
31:06
exaggerating. So magical revenue from Leo that
31:09
they otherwise wouldn't get. And so this is all just net
31:12
revenue to them, not a net cost. And so if they can actually then
31:17
not even have to pay upfront for it, all the better.
31:21
Let these other guys roll the dice.
31:23
And so that's my theory of what is probably a dynamic happening.
31:27
And I'm not saying that there will be no prepayments because
31:29
I'm sure there will be. But with the company able to
31:32
raise capital so efficiently, I could see them now in a position
31:35
where they can actually play for much bigger value creation for
31:39
us, the shareholders, than they might have previously thought
31:41
possible when they had to rely more heavily on the kindness of
31:45
strangers, the M&S. So just a thought is something
31:50
that something that occurred to me.
31:53
So then we had Canada, you know, similar to the Blue Jays,
31:57
decided just to lose. And so Scotiabank really kind of
32:00
foretelling a spirit of being a loser, decided to download Space
32:06
Mobile right before the stock ripped in their face because of
32:11
flurry of confirmatory fundamental events that proves
32:14
that the diligence is all right. And so they've apparently been
32:18
compromised by short sellers. So, you know, good luck to them
32:22
in their life. But I've included it here.
32:26
Pivotal Capital was really quick to retweet this as Pivotal
32:29
Capital would be. And he even did the the extra
32:35
work of highlighting all the the really negative things, which is
32:38
always super great. And so they're basically just
32:42
saying that ASD Space Mobile is delayed and so people might
32:46
ditch them for Starlink. And Starlink has this next
32:48
generation satellite. What else did they really say?
32:52
Yeah, yeah. Starlink, Starlink, Starlink,
32:53
Starlink, Starlink and WhatsApp might trigger Starlink DTC
32:58
launch in emerging markets again.
33:01
Funny joke because WhatsApp is working with Vodafone and ASD
33:04
Space Mobile which was released in a video, so that's exciting.
33:10
Scotiabank totally bottom ticked it so there's your cell set for
33:16
you. And.
33:18
And then we had asymmetric bets chime in.
33:20
I'm just trying to think what his point was.
33:21
Said the Scotiabank analyst has tacitly made that he doesn't
33:24
understand the DVD market. No MNL is leaving AST for
33:27
Starlink anytime soon because of delays.
33:29
Starlink needs an additional 2-3 years to get the V threes
33:32
anywhere comparable to what AST Space Mobile has now.
33:34
Yep, that's true. So wonderful.
33:37
Now moving on back to organizations that do good
33:41
diligence and think big, we have the SDA director.
33:47
And so they again remind us that the Halo program for which ASD
33:51
Space Mobile is a recipient of an award is focusing on
33:56
demonstrations with the launch of two identical satellites.
34:01
And then 12 to 18 months after that award, the prototypes well
34:05
basically dovetail into, you know, the purchase of tons and
34:09
tons of satellites to deploy the system.
34:11
And that's what we all think is happening here is that FM 1 and
34:14
FM 2 are the SDA demonstration birds, which is very exciting,
34:21
very exciting to get those in the air.
34:23
And I think that that's another material de risking event in the
34:26
eyes of the market. And then you have the space for
34:31
setting up more and more funds to get these technologies into
34:37
the world. And so there's a spacenews.com
34:40
article that's linked out, which is titled Defense Money will
34:44
Pour In. And it's a working capital fund
34:47
that will be used to buy satellite communications and
34:49
other commercial space services from the Department of War.
34:54
Great. And then we had some user Tux.
35:02
Tux is great. Go through the fiscal year 2026
35:06
Defense Authorization Act and just highlight that for
35:11
satellite communications, there's just like a little line
35:13
item here for $114 million, and then there's another line item
35:16
for $212 million for assured position, navigation and timing.
35:20
There's just all this money that is going toward the space as
35:24
people try to stay ahead of the curve.
35:28
And I think there's really going to be money for everyone.
35:30
And then you had Trump come out and say we are closely working
35:34
with Canada on the Golden Dome. Golden Dome is happening.
35:38
I don't have a firm grasp around the impact of the government
35:43
shutdown on this. It is already pre funded in the
35:48
big beautiful bill OBBB. And so you know, we're getting,
35:54
we're getting press releases out about that.
35:56
I did understand that some of the bids were delayed until
35:58
October 16th because there were so many questions that were
36:02
coming in. And so it is moving forward and
36:06
I don't know when it will ultimately be released, but the
36:09
markets kind of I think telling you that we're in a good spot.
36:13
We also had a Senator Kevin Sparks go visit the Midland
36:21
International Air and Spaceport and take a look at the the goods
36:30
coming out of Midland, which are AST space mobile.
36:32
So that's exciting. And I actually don't know much
36:34
about Senator Kevin Sparks. Let's just do a quick review.
36:40
So he is a Texas State senator, so less important obviously than
36:50
AUS senator, but still more politicians really understanding
36:55
what's happening in Midland, which is great.
36:57
Now, what we'd want to see are more US senators touring the
37:02
facility 'cause that's usually a sign of a very specific thing
37:07
that's about to happen. And then we've got another tweet
37:10
coming out of tough 4R who kind of came out of the blue.
37:15
I've started to really follow his work.
37:17
Seems like this person has a military background.
37:19
You can kind of tell a lot about someone by how they tweet and
37:22
what they're focused on. And so just keep an eye out on
37:27
what this person's sharing because I think that they're
37:29
coming from a pretty informed perspective with, I say,
37:32
informed in terms of relevant industry background, not
37:35
informed as and they know something they should be keeping
37:39
private. So this is a person that I think
37:40
has a background because they really started to highlight some
37:43
of the contract specifications that are out and help me sort of
37:48
sort of sharpen my own focus. And the next thing we have is
37:51
another reason why Catsy can never quit is Brett, when you
37:55
think you've identified everything, then the DoD drops a
38:01
program called Silence Swarm, which we're being told is
38:07
something we should really focus on.
38:09
And so it's just another defense communication system, which we
38:13
seem to be pretty, you know, pretty well suited to handle.
38:19
There was a really interesting article or interview actually
38:22
shared by Peter Lindmark, which which everyone should watch.
38:26
The tweet is titled Jennifer Manor speech.
38:29
And so Jennifer Manor is our our in house spectrum regulatory
38:35
person and she came from Legato back OG Legato.
38:39
And that was an echo star. She's very, very respected,
38:41
prolific author on spectrum strategy.
38:44
And so she gives an interview and, you know, there's some like
38:51
snippets of just kind of what is top of her and top of her mind.
38:54
And she notes that we've already done video streaming.
38:57
She says, look, we're going to do 8696 satellites for global
39:01
coverage, but we're going to want 248 for the extra capacity.
39:05
She brought up yet another word, which we've talked about last
39:08
week, which is data sovereignty. And she tied this into how AST
39:14
is precise beamforming technology allows the company to
39:18
operate with data sovereignty in mind in Europe, where you have
39:21
very tight and complex borders. And she referenced Germany, for
39:24
example, which has 9 borders, if I remember correctly, versus the
39:28
US, which only has two. And our borders are super
39:30
simple. And she made it explicitly clear
39:34
that our technology is very focused on how to protect the
39:37
spectrum so that you don't interfere with M and OS across
39:41
country borders. And how they are focused on
39:44
protecting the M and OS from interference issues and how
39:47
they're keeping the data in a country where it should be
39:50
versus having it unsecure, which is what happens with the SpaceX
39:54
and being shot to a gateway that is not controlled by a country.
39:59
And this plays into whether or not a satellite provider can
40:03
really accommodate regulatory requirements like lawful
40:08
intercepts and things like that, which is very important, in
40:12
fact, probably necessary. And so it's important to keep an
40:15
eye on what she's saying. And then appreciate how AST
40:19
Space Mobile was again, a first principles company designed to
40:24
meet really all the requirements that are needed versus SpaceX,
40:30
which was hacked together, technology from Chamoth, which
40:35
wasn't built from the ground up to solve this specific problem.
40:39
And it's a very important point in my belief as to why ASES is
40:45
going to have the vast majority of the M and OS sign up, which
40:49
is already well in motion. Another thing I was talking to
40:53
Ampam man about, we've been just trying to get better at
40:55
identifying some of these bigger secular trends in the market.
40:58
So many of them are so obvious in hindsight.
41:00
Even if you, I run up in some of these things where you do like
41:05
15 minutes of diligence or 15 hours of diligence and you go
41:07
like, I don't think that building nuclear power plants is
41:11
going to be as easy as the market thinks.
41:13
But the five minutes of diligence of we need more power
41:17
ends up being a good theme to really understand where a market
41:20
is going to send price signals. And MPMA just kind of said to
41:22
me, he's like, well, you know what the, the second trend is
41:25
space. You know, if you're going to
41:27
actually bet on a big trend, you know, AI, quantum, blah, blah,
41:31
blah, you know, those are probably all good trends.
41:33
And you know, they're, I, I see why they're exciting, but space
41:37
is too. And we had the FCC come out
41:40
again this week just saying we want to go fast until we had
41:44
Vlad come out just highlighting that, you know, the FCC is space
41:48
month and they're looking to make a major move for satellite
41:51
DC networks. They're overhauling how the
41:54
Earth stations in the spectrum are approved, You know, really
41:57
just letting this industry go fast, which we really need.
42:05
And so I haven't followed up on the dockets in the past week,
42:10
but you know, we're only, I mean, two weeks away from the
42:13
comment period closing for our SES application.
42:17
And you know, you better believe now actually sorry, I see Kevin
42:20
Chen's update. So yeah, on the 23rd of October,
42:24
the replies and responses are due.
42:26
And so this could be getting approved, you know, in 2025
42:31
potentially, and this regulatory approval will really be putting
42:37
a nail in the coffin of the bears who said that, you know,
42:40
this technology would never get approved.
42:42
And and the FCC is telling you that they are going to make it
42:47
happen. So now let's go to Vodafone,
42:50
which, you know, it's amazing. We're in a in a choir week.
42:54
This Vodafone, these Vodafone updates are really enough to
42:58
carry a weekly. But then, you know, when you're
43:01
having Verizon and all these other things happen, it's it's
43:04
easy to kind of get on, you know, the back of the newspaper,
43:07
the Verizon put on a video and again says in partnership with
43:10
Meta, small company of somewhat, you know, meaningful relevance
43:14
in the world AST space mobile. They are having this technology
43:19
hub in Malaga, Spain. And this is where we learned,
43:23
you know, more about of of course, Facebook wants to have
43:29
WhatsApp tuned to this, of course.
43:33
And so this just shows though, that the MAG 7 are starting to
43:36
become acutely aware of this technology and actively working
43:40
with it. And you know, this could lead to
43:43
some exciting developments down the line, obviously already led
43:46
to the exciting development of Google making an investment in
43:48
the company and clearly working with AST to make sure Android
43:53
devices work very well. We're waiting on what seems to
43:56
be the inevitable day that we get a press release around
43:58
Apple. Same goes to be said with
44:02
Amazon. Congratulations on what
44:04
Microsoft's might be. Maybe a little slow in the 8
44:06
ball but makes a lot of sense why they don't care.
44:10
The intersection of AST Space Mobile with the MAG 7 is not
44:15
that different from Nvidia's intersection with what was the
44:19
MAG 7X NVIDIA 2 where all of a sudden the world's collided.
44:24
And then, you know, kind of like the Hadrian, there's a CERN
44:29
particle Collider. You know, if particles slam fast
44:31
enough, you know, wow, boom, energy is created.
44:37
And so I think the world's of AI and just general consumer
44:43
Internet are very quickly going to be colliding with AST Space
44:46
Mobile. And that's going to wake the
44:48
world up and goes back to why I think AST Space Mobile is going
44:50
to be the stock the world talks about.
44:54
So then we had another catch. Rocket Tank 123 is a great
44:57
account to follow up. And they pointed out that in
45:01
this Vodafone update, they noted S band.
45:07
Well, we don't have S band. Yeah.
45:09
And so they're indicating S band will be utilized in Europe,
45:14
likely by Sacco. And so this was shown in their
45:19
testing slide. And so again, the eagle eyed
45:22
space mob is, you know, catching anything that has ever caught on
45:26
camera. And so then the SBM is very
45:28
interesting because this plays in a little bit of the legato
45:33
adversary procedure even within MERSAT, where in MERSAT was
45:36
trying to preclude AST effectively from going
45:39
international and SBM, which was vehemently denied that AST would
45:44
ever accept such a condition. And then we have the ITU
45:47
priority rights that the company bought, which bears would say
45:50
are not worth anything, but I think they're missing that
45:52
they're vital peace and a game of chess.
45:57
And we might now just seen another card hit the hit the
46:01
table here. And it makes sense that Vodafone
46:06
could certainly be making some things happen for us in terms of
46:11
getting more spectrum. And that I think is going to be
46:14
a thesis for the company over the next couple years, once
46:17
people really get a handle around the base business and and
46:20
never mind get a handle around Legato, then I think that
46:23
there's going to be, you know, what started as a joke by me of
46:26
ASTS as the the first spectrum treasury company.
46:31
I think that's going to be true. And so I think it's going to be
46:33
an example of the meme. You know, they're doing the
46:35
meme. And then what we're going to see
46:37
over time is people are going to realize that AST space mobile is
46:39
actually the vehicle for the most accretive spectrum
46:44
acquisition globally. And for all I know, that could
46:48
end up being actually the core value driver of the company as
46:52
you know, this company, if it is going to start to be, you know,
46:55
multiple hundreds of billions of dollars of value company, which
46:58
I firmly believe it is, I think a big chunk of that could be
47:01
driven by an unfair advantage in Spectrum acquisition.
47:06
So further out thinking. But I think it can be very
47:09
important to have some further out thinking.
47:12
Going back to Kevin Mack explaining why he sold NVIDIA 23
47:16
years ago and laughing about it. Well, easy to have done I'm sure
47:21
back then. There's a lot of things that
47:22
happened to NVIDIA. But if you could have a glimmer
47:24
of a dream, you know, a glimmer of a dream to see a big idea in
47:29
a stock, you'd rather know it and think about it than not.
47:33
Because I personally don't want to under think something.
47:39
We're all balance of probabilities telling me that
47:42
there is a really big opportunity.
47:45
You don't want to under think that because over trading and
47:49
over activity, I think it tends to be the enemy of successful
47:52
personal investment results. And so now if you're if you're
47:56
already sitting on the beach, stay on it and you know, enjoy
48:02
good things tend to have more good things follow.
48:05
And so now let's get back into the Tam.
48:07
There's an article about the guy that lit the Palisades wildfire,
48:13
which was not a very courteous thing to do and burned down an
48:16
entire city, which impacted quite a lot of people.
48:19
And as the failures of Los Angeles, which are many, you
48:26
know, including but not limited to the Palisades fire.
48:30
They did note that the LA Fire Department is making a lot of
48:34
changes. And so they're going to be
48:36
adding network redundancy tools, including Starling satellite
48:38
Internet service to be able to maintain communication lines
48:41
when traditional methods fail. And so when reviewing really the
48:46
update they've given about how this fire really happened, a lot
48:51
of it comes down to just chaos. People are not able to
48:54
communicate, radio frequencies were overwhelmed, systems
48:58
weren't available, information could not move.
49:00
It's a classic thing of chaos shows disaster and people did
49:06
not have good systems in place. And I think that this is a
49:11
telltale of what's going to happen.
49:12
I think every single emergency response force in the US, if not
49:18
the world is going to be having these types of redundant tools
49:22
in place. So it's good for Starlink for
49:24
sure, but it's going to be great for AST space mobile as well.
49:29
And that's when people think about the Tam Bursnet is just
49:34
the beginning. And they're going to be willing
49:37
and able to pay quite a lot for these tools when we're thinking
49:40
about what our ARPU is. And so the story just keeps
49:46
getting better sadly because of the failures of our existing
49:49
technologies and the the horrible prices people pay as a
49:53
result of those failures. But in an effort to not have
49:55
those mistakes continue to repeat, we are seeing changes
49:59
being made and we're right at the center of of that.
50:03
We also then had Verizon again did not ditch AST Space Mobile,
50:08
but then there was AVP at Verizon Frontline, which is
50:11
their version of Firstnet. And he said this isn't just
50:15
about technology, it's about providing the critical
50:17
communication that helps save lives At Verizon Frontline,
50:20
we're committed to ensuring those on the front lines have
50:23
the most advanced and reliable network no matter what their
50:26
where their mission takes them. Hashtag Verizon, hashtag public
50:30
safety, some other things. Hashtag AST space Mobile where
50:35
he reposted the AST Verizon DA press release.
50:40
So another car hits the table as well.
50:43
So I guess we're getting the Verizon first responders as
50:45
well, which of course we would. The Tam just keeps going up.
50:51
And then we had Kevin, who's never Sleeps, highlight an
50:57
article where Joe Madden, who's a legacy, or I don't want to say
51:01
legacy as if that's a bad thing, but he's a very tenured expert
51:05
in the telecom industry, kind of dancing around seeing an expert
51:10
consultant because obviously that tends to have negative
51:12
connotations, but he's a respected guy in the industry.
51:14
He'll just look at that. And so in this article, he just
51:18
points out that the Tam is going to be really big.
51:22
The fact that AST Space Mobile can receive the uplink uplink
51:26
signal through signal through a roof and through many vehicles
51:33
opens up the market dramatically.
51:35
He points out that 80% of traffic is indoors and at least
51:39
half of the out outdoor traffic is inside a car, train or other
51:42
vehicle. And his point is that AST is
51:46
going to be able to service that market well, whereas many other
51:50
systems like Starlink, Apple, Skylit, all these guys cannot.
51:57
They need line of sight. And so that's the yeah that
52:01
we're able to access. Now we also have Chemstrix,
52:06
again, AST Space we're talking about too.
52:09
And so we have Luis Abboud, who's our VP of Commercial was
52:12
presenting in Brazil and talks about the fact that AST Space
52:19
Mobile is breaking down the idea that this service really only
52:23
applies to quote mountain climbers.
52:26
And so he really talks about the capabilities of this and we all
52:31
know where this story is going to end is that most people are
52:35
probably going to be using this more often than they think.
52:38
So and then we always want to put these in numbers knowing
52:42
that with a secular winner, you have multiple variables.
52:47
And so people will go, well, what's the growth look like?
52:49
And they hold the Tam constant, the total addressable market.
52:52
But a great investor tends to take a separate bet on the Tam
52:56
itself. And so if you find ATM that's
52:58
big, but then also identify that that TM is likely to grow quite
53:02
a lot as well. You have this double push of a
53:04
company gain market share within a market, but then the market
53:07
itself growing and that's additional growth available as
53:11
well. And so Barclays comes out and
53:13
believes that the DDD market is going to be $30 billion a year
53:17
by 2034, and that, you know, Space Mobile is likely going to
53:23
be the dominant player in it and what's likely to be a duopoly.
53:27
I think what the surprise is going to be is that that $30
53:30
billion market happens much faster than consensus and that
53:36
it's going to have a growth rate attached to it, which is to say
53:39
that that 30 billion is going to be a much bigger number, which
53:43
is very exciting. But that's kind of my reflection
53:46
on looking at, you know, a lot of markets over time and where
53:50
you can win huge as an investor. And so if you re run the clock
53:53
20 years ago on SAS, people would have seen like a very
53:57
small town, but it was growing very quickly all you and you
54:01
could not possibly have anticipated how large that Tam
54:04
was going to be. Same thing with cloud computing
54:07
right now, I think people are actually, you know, probably
54:10
pretty aggressive in assuming what AI Tams are going to be.
54:12
So I'm going to leave that one out.
54:14
But that's because they've learned so much on SAS and cloud
54:17
computing Tams and just how to be wrong by 1,000,000 miles in
54:20
terms of how big these things can be.
54:22
And I think that's what's going to happen here.
54:24
And we're seeing every day that the DDD platform is finding more
54:29
and more use cases that expand far beyond dead spot coverage.
54:34
And that's a real important point to hammer home it,
54:38
especially to the shorts, because I think that's what's
54:40
going to really crucify them in the end is, is really just not
54:43
understanding how big this market's going to be.
54:46
Then we have Katzie, some of you might know our Swedish friend.
54:51
And he pointed out an interesting little pattern is
54:54
that Verizon made ADA with ASTS before they made a spectrum deal
54:58
with Dish and Echostar, whereas AT&T already had ADA with AST
55:04
Space Mobile and has closed with Ergen.
55:08
And so he points out that companies, once they've been
55:13
able to find out how they can deploy spectrum, then they go do
55:18
it. And so this is the spectrum
55:22
enablement thesis that if true, ends up being very, very
55:28
powerful for all stakeholders and something we are going to
55:33
want to monitor very closely in the future to just see how true
55:36
it is. I mean, there's really two
55:37
paths. There is ASTS allows M and OS to
55:42
grow their spectrum portfolios or utilize them more efficiently
55:46
or AST space mobile itself acquires that spectrum and then
55:49
effectively resells it to the MN OS or makes it available.
55:53
But in any respect, what's really happening is the world is
55:56
very, very quickly potentially find ways to more efficiently
55:59
monetize spectrum. And that's music to the FC CS
56:03
ears for its worth now never to have a dull moment.
56:11
A week would not be complete with an amazing video by Blue
56:15
Origin showing New Glen 2. And now this is a handsome
56:19
rocket, if I could say so myself.
56:21
And so it is really big. It is on the whatever they call
56:26
it doesn't look like a truck, doesn't look like a train, but
56:28
the rocket mover and that's going to be teed up for launch
56:32
pretty soon. And you know, we wish them
56:34
godspeed as they do it. But it looks it is a beautiful
56:38
machine. So I wish those guys the best,
56:42
but now it's time for straight talk with Kook until Sebask
56:49
points out that there's going to be 3X ASTS leverage ETFs coming
56:55
on December 22nd. And so I know it's a very
56:57
unpopular thing to say as AST space mobile stock just goes
57:00
straight to Infinity, but please God be careful.
57:06
If you're going to be making an investment in why you leverage
57:09
ETFs, make sure you understand that these are really not good
57:13
vehicles for long term holds. Because of the way the
57:18
volatility decay works, you're always effectively buying high
57:22
and selling low. Then you might find yourself
57:24
having been right on your thesis, but still not having
57:27
made money because your implementation through security
57:31
selection was wrong. And then also on Friday, it just
57:34
goes without saying that a lot of people that had done
57:37
incredible amount of due diligence on fartcoin and really
57:41
believe that they saw something the market had missed and that
57:44
Kevin Mack was again, not respecting how the market was
57:47
inefficient, you know, got liquidated.
57:50
And, you know, I got asked by someone in the comments of, you
57:54
know, hey, Coop, you know, do you think I should use margin to
57:56
buy space mobile? And I don't know, you know, you
57:58
be you. But the the reality is, if
58:01
you're asking me and you have no idea who I am, I could for all
58:05
you know, I'm an alien. If you're asking me for advice
58:08
of whether you should have a leverage position and A-100 Vol
58:11
stock, you probably should not be doing that.
58:14
And you what you really want to avoid is being pushed out of a
58:17
trade. And so if your space mobile is
58:20
going to become the dominant secular winner in a huge
58:23
industry, your priority should be making sure you're alive and
58:28
solvent to see it happen. And now I've probably been way
58:31
too scared over the years of these draw downs, which are
58:35
pretty severe. But I, I strongly believe that
58:38
the draw downs in space mobile are going to be much shallower
58:41
going forward than they were in the past because of a lot of
58:44
reasons, which should be self-evident.
58:47
But just make sure, you know, when the market's really
58:49
pumping, make sure you don't get overly exposed or bullish at the
58:52
top, which can really rob you of the opportunity to a, you know,
58:56
make some good moves when the markets kind of having a temper
59:00
tantrum or worse, stop you out. And, and then you, you don't get
59:05
to enjoy the benefits of being a long term holder.
59:07
So anyway, just feel like I should say something about that.
59:11
And because the market is, is hot, I'm uncomfortable, you
59:15
know, when, when things move, like that's because I'm, I don't
59:18
know, I'm just, my daughter calls me the party pooper.
59:21
So that probably sums up my emotional composition with these
59:25
things. But just want to make sure, you
59:28
know, just don't don't think that a 3X leverage ETF is
59:31
necessarily a safe thing. So now let's get to the Pivotal
59:35
Capital short thesis. And so he was excited that I was
59:38
going to give him airtime and invited him to actually present
59:41
his short thesis on on the spaces I was going to be.
59:45
I told him I'd be like Charlie Kirk that I would do, you know,
59:49
I think he said agreeably disagreeable or something like
59:53
that. And then he didn't want to go on
59:56
because he didn't want his voice exposed, which I could
59:58
appreciate. So I said I would just publish
59:59
it in full if he had a thoughtful thing he wanted to
1:00:01
share with Space Bot. So surprise, surprise, Pivotal
1:00:05
Capital being the intellectual weed that I think he is, he
1:00:14
didn't send me anything. And so anyway, we could all
1:00:18
conclude that Pivotal is short simply because of genetics at
1:00:20
this point. And you know, there's nothing
1:00:22
you can do about it. Bro, if you want to send me your
1:00:25
short thesis offers still open. I strongly believe that I'll be
1:00:30
getting the short thesis of AST stock goes down.
1:00:34
That seems to be the tendency. But instead of short reports, we
1:00:37
actually got some amazing long reports.
1:00:39
And so I've been still trying to get my hand on the Piranha
1:00:44
Capital One, which I don't think they've released for a while
1:00:47
yet. But this 10 W letter was
1:00:51
fascinating. And so I posted a link here.
1:00:53
I think Reg Room was the one that brought this to my
1:00:55
attention. So thanks as always to Reg Room.
1:00:58
But you had this really, really nice ride and this person I've
1:01:02
never heard of and I don't know how big their fund is.
1:01:04
I didn't see them when I was digging around for 13 F.
1:01:06
So I think this is a pretty small manager, but don't let
1:01:10
size get in the way of being a good thinker.
1:01:13
And so this person clearly is a long term concentrated investor.
1:01:17
Sadly for me, they own a bunch of Cloudflare, which I had owned
1:01:20
a lot after it was pitched to me.
1:01:23
I maybe it wasn't a spade. I actually pitched me back I I
1:01:26
work with but I sold that for reasons that seemed right at the
1:01:32
time. I thought the founder just was a
1:01:33
huge asshole. And so based on the founders
1:01:36
Twitter account when he was kind of posting pictures of his poor
1:01:39
show men when he missed earnings, he threw his sales
1:01:41
team under the bus. And I was wrong in my instincts.
1:01:45
But I thought the CEO that specifically blames his own team
1:01:49
is someone that is not accountable and it's probably a
1:01:52
reflection on some deep flaws of that person.
1:01:54
And this this guy Eric, Eric Prince, something Prince was
1:01:59
also in the Wall Street Journal in an article about him like
1:02:01
suing some elderly people in his neighborhood because he wants to
1:02:04
build some $100 million house in Park City or something like
1:02:07
that. Didn't seem like a good person
1:02:10
to me. So I decided to sell that stock.
1:02:12
Of course, it went straight up, but the got distracted.
1:02:17
So space mobile though this is a really good job of framing it.
1:02:21
And so I love this type of thinking.
1:02:22
This is consistent what I was talking about a week or two ago
1:02:26
of just trying to squint and see the bigger picture.
1:02:29
And so obviously we all know that Amazon is not a book
1:02:32
company and bookstore. Yeah, you know, that that
1:02:35
evolved. We all know that NVIDIA is not a
1:02:37
gaming chip. OK, obvious in hindsight, you
1:02:41
know, move on. But he points out that space
1:02:44
Mobile is is really selling, he says selling photons.
1:02:48
And So what is AOC really doing is it's effectively the most
1:02:53
efficient way to leverage electromagnetic spectrum
1:02:57
anywhere on Earth. It's a big idea.
1:03:01
It's globally scalable. And then the use cases of being
1:03:04
able to use spectrum are ever expanding and increasingly
1:03:08
important. And so, you know, abracadabra,
1:03:11
that should be a really big idea and have a lot of upset.
1:03:17
So I'll let you read the letter for yourself, but I thought this
1:03:19
was very thoughtfully written and want to make sure people
1:03:24
have the chance to see it. And then the last tweet we have
1:03:28
is just simply the rapidly expanding launch industry we
1:03:34
have. And so tomorrow I believe we
1:03:36
have Starship making another go of it.
1:03:42
I'll look on Kaushi later to see what the odds are of this thing
1:03:45
being successful, but we'll see. And then we've, you know, again,
1:03:48
we already talked about New Glenn rolling out onto the pad,
1:03:51
which is exciting. So I think that the supply shock
1:03:54
to the launch market is is going to be quite incredible in the
1:03:58
coming years and that's a good thing for companies that rely on
1:04:02
launch. So we are short launch.
1:04:05
I think launch is probably not a great business.
1:04:08
I would love to one day see detailed SpaceX financials.
1:04:12
So I can understand if I'm right or wrong on that.
1:04:15
But having a lot of launch available is a good thing for a
1:04:19
company that is going to be launching in my view way more
1:04:22
than 96 satellites and probably more than 248.
1:04:26
And so we will have, I think a near open-ended runway for
1:04:32
launch services until having a lot of rocket capacity is going
1:04:37
to just cause value to accrue to ASD space model, which was my
1:04:42
thesis from day one is that being short launch in a market
1:04:46
that will structurally have a lot of launch is going to be a
1:04:51
good secular theme to have all in there.
1:04:55
Hope everyone has a great week. I'm going to probably just go to
1:04:58
the beach tomorrow because we celebrate Columbus Day and
1:05:02
Indigenous Peoples Day at my firm.
1:05:05
And so if Trump crashes the market, I will not see it nor
1:05:09
will I care because I know what I own and the company is
1:05:13
executing in really exciting ways.
1:05:15
And so I believe that any, any corrections are going to be
1:05:19
again, shorter in term and less in severity and that's a very
1:05:23
welcome change as far as I'm concerned.
1:05:25
Have a great night. Bye.
1:05:31
Thanks for listening to the AST Space Mobile Podcast.
1:05:34
If you enjoyed this episode and you'd like to help support the
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1:05:43
To catch all the. Latest news about AST Space
1:05:46
Mobile, make sure to subscribe. Thanks again and I'll see you
1:05:49
next time. We're doing something very, very
1:05:55
big and I think with this technology we can really affect
1:05:58
a billion lives. AFT Space globally is the only
1:06:01
company that has proven technology to deliver several
1:06:05
mobile connectivity directly through state.
1:06:08
To do everyday smartphone. People will just basically turn
1:06:11
their phone the simplest. But regardless of where you are,
1:06:15
we don't want the user even to know that it's connected by
1:06:17
satellite. Our role is to bring this into
1:06:21
reality, always in partnership with the MMO Listen.
1:06:37
Waffles.