Latest / AST SpaceMobile Podcast / Kook's Weekly - November 30

Transcript

Kook's Weekly - November 30 · AST SpaceMobile Podcast

0:06
This is the AST Space Mobile podcast.
0:10
We just basically found your phone and be simplest regardless
0:14
of where you are, we don't want the user even to know that it's
0:17
connected by satellite. Listen, the opportunity that we
0:22
have is very, very, very large. Good evening everyone.
0:30
Thanks for joining. Started so late.
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That was pretty cool football game.
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So the sentiment is pretty bad, which is which is one reason to
0:41
not spend as much time on the Internet as I do.
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But it's just probably the first thing to address is just the
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spiraling of negativity. And I'm wondering like, were we
0:51
pretty positive on Friday? Wasn't that like pretty
0:55
recently? And now I'm just kind of
0:57
watching people on Reddit crash and comments.
1:00
I always love the comments. I don't know if people are
1:03
trolling me. I think they're just being
1:06
honest. But you know, a lot of people
1:09
are going crazy. We need updates.
1:11
And it's like companies posting their fireside chats, blah,
1:17
blah, blah. You know, they're doing a lot.
1:19
But human emotions are human emotions.
1:22
And you know, as as my wife says, my feelings are valid.
1:26
Your feelings are invalid. But don't say that.
1:29
So you're supposed to just say, yeah, your feelings are valid.
1:33
But I think it comes down to kind of joke I made in a chat
1:36
where, you know, if I just kind of let my emotions run free, I'd
1:39
just sell all my shares right now in the overnight market,
1:42
which would have quite the funny price impact.
1:45
But then I'd pull myself back together and ask myself what I'm
1:49
doing with my with my life. And also as I just kind of ran
1:52
up after the football game game ended to go to the bathroom.
1:56
If you would like to know, I thought, you know, what's so
1:58
funny about this is it's not like the company's not going to
2:02
press release FM 2. It's not like they're going to
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not press release FM 8 through 10 and then 11 through 13.
2:14
I mean, these are as sure as the sun will rise.
2:18
We've seen pictures of these things.
2:20
We know the composite has been dropped off for these things.
2:24
So these are certain events and then you you just see this
2:31
hysteria where people forget about that and they fall over
2:35
themselves. I know there's a lot going on
2:37
with the yen, which is just nuts what Japan's doing right now.
2:41
And then what's causing, you know, these liquidations and
2:45
crypto, which I don't have a whole lot of sympathy for those
2:48
people. But you know, then that rattles
2:50
through and we see the overnight price of ESTs.
2:53
And I think that's what fuels it to you.
2:55
You know, I look at this and I'm just like, seriously, guys, like
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we're really down $1.60. You know, granted, a lot of
3:03
stuff, everything is down, but are we really doing this because
3:06
some dudes in Korea are trading perpetual futures on hyper
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liquid? I mean, kill me.
3:13
But that's the world we live in. And so if you want to understand
3:16
what it feels like, just look at a picture of the ViaSat CEO,
3:19
which is the cover of this week's weekly.
3:22
A man who looks like he's aged 50 years in the past year and
3:27
actually prays on stage. I don't know what he's praying
3:31
for, but it certainly looks like he's praying to die.
3:35
Or a fire alarm. Or a rap disassembly of a
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Starship next door to end himself.
3:44
Because he is a man that looks like he also knows the
3:48
inevitability. STS have a press release.
3:51
This is a man who knows that while he might not see a press
3:55
release Monday, December 1st, he more likely than not he's going
3:59
to see a press release in the coming days.
4:01
And the ASTS press releases are not good for him.
4:06
It's the inevitable decline of via set.
4:08
And so when you just want to take a step back, look at the
4:12
body language. And that's a really interesting
4:14
thing. I've studied a lot of body
4:15
language things with these books around forensic, forensic lie
4:22
detection. It's just as a way to like read
4:24
people read CEOs, things like that.
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And there's a lot of involuntary cues people give off and, you
4:31
know, kind of where their energy is directed and, you know, ways
4:34
they calm themselves. And so having your hands in this
4:36
prayer format is really a way to like calm oneself when stressed.
4:41
And these are people that are stressed because this guy or
4:45
Scott sit in the middle is going to destroy them.
4:49
And the beginning of their destruction is December 15th.
4:53
And so the first thing, you know, we're like a Roman crowd.
4:57
Like we've killed a bunch of gladiators, but now we want more
5:00
blood. And so we got FM One launch
5:03
confirmed December 15th. That's going to be super
5:06
exciting. I don't know what time of day it
5:10
is, but I would imagine that people like me and Ampan and
5:15
Tanner and Kevin and all these guys are going to do a live
5:19
stream. We should all do a live stream
5:20
to celebrate. Even if it's like 4 in the
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morning. That'll be pretty fun.
5:24
But when we look at this, this conference that Scott gave,
5:32
there were a lot of really great things in this in this video and
5:36
just talking about the launch schedule, really what we're
5:40
learning is the importance of Blue Origin for the company.
5:43
Really driving down these coughs, it's back end weighted,
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but really you can tell they secure a lot of great capacity.
5:50
And the other thing that was interesting that he said is the
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screenshot when he said it. And then looking at the body
5:57
language of the via Setzi or who again has his hands, you know,
6:01
comfort formation, trying to calm himself.
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And then his face is just like as long as a Norwegian summer
6:09
day. And Scott is saying we've also
6:13
made other MSS spectrum moves globally, which is again, very
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funny to have a picture of the VSAT CEO next to him when he
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says this 'cause this will be a future litigation.
6:23
For those of you that Remember Me from spaces such as Coop
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talks about Legato. One of the things about Legato
6:30
is that VSAT had tried to trap ASTS into just a North American
6:36
agreement. And ASTS said, no, we're going
6:40
to conquer the world. And the judge said, you know
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what, I'm going to let you all settle this outside.
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And it's, it's very clear. And BSS said it, ASTS said it,
6:49
that they will be pursuing S band spectrum globally.
6:53
And so here now we have Scott saying in this conference quote,
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we've also made other MSS spectrum moves globally.
7:01
So this could just be the ITU prioritization rights.
7:05
That's the easy answer, but I don't think that's the full
7:08
answer. And so I think that this goes to
7:11
what Vodafone and ASTS are doing with Sacco around the EU 2
7:17
gigahertz spectrum. I suspect there's more to this
7:20
than we currently know about. And it's very exciting because
7:24
ultimately the market, like it or not, will begin to place an
7:28
enormous value on the spectrum capture that AST says the
7:33
satellites will be the means by which it's monetized.
7:36
But the core upstream asset is the spectrum.
7:39
And I, I believe certainly wasn't part of my original
7:42
thesis when I made this investment.
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I did not think that they were going to be able to get
7:46
spectrum. Doesn't make it a change,
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doesn't make it is a change in the thesis.
7:51
It's an improvement in the thesis when a company that is
7:55
effectively midstream, really relying on someone to get them
8:00
users and to get them spectrum is able to be so powerful and so
8:04
disruptive that they're able to actually get the spectrum
8:08
themselves at have a discounted price because of their
8:13
technology advantages. That is something that I hadn't
8:15
anticipated, but it's very, very powerful.
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And I think we're going to add make up a #102 hundred $300 per
8:21
share ultimately, because it really to me is the same as a
8:26
railroad in the 19th century where if you started laying
8:30
track across the US, you started getting all his land grants,
8:33
which, and I have a mineral rights.
8:35
And that's where when you take stocks like these, I think all
8:39
got acquired over time. Burlington oil and gas, things
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like that. Burlington oil and gas was
8:45
Burlington Railroad and it was all coming from these metal
8:50
rights that were conveyed to the railroads when they laid track.
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Think, think about it as the midstream asset.
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And then they were granted these upstream assets, metal rights
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turned into oil, which ended up being worth fortune.
9:01
And that's what I think is happening here with ASTS.
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It's a, it's a fleeting opportunity for the first mover,
9:06
but we are the first mover. And so that's why it is our
9:09
opportunity. In other news, ASTS updated
9:13
their website pretty cool. And so, you know, people would
9:17
speculate well, why of all of the things they have to do right
9:21
now, why are they updating the website?
9:24
And it's probably because they're about to get a lot more
9:27
attention. And so either the beginning of
9:30
the commercialization of the service, their partners starting
9:34
to really pump it now that we're going to have the first Max Gen.
9:39
satellites going up. There's a lot of reasons why the
9:43
velocity of eyeballs could be changing on this company.
9:47
And maybe the website change is the telltale.
9:52
And so that's all also pretty exciting.
9:54
We also had Vodafone singing the praises about ASTS.
9:58
And so it's nice to see our partners, especially when you
10:01
think about it, the CEO of our partners and these are big
10:05
companies talk about us. And so she points out that we're
10:09
going to have European commercial service starting in
10:11
2026. That is one month from now is
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2026. And they talk about how they've
10:17
been working with ASTS since 2019.
10:19
Again, these are very long partnerships.
10:22
And so that's important. This is fly by night.
10:24
There's deep, deep integrations. We need M and OS and so don't
10:29
expect them to be replaced anytime soon.
10:32
Vodafone making progress. We're having partnerships with
10:35
multiple M and OS across Europe. This is very important.
10:39
Sorry, low cough because this means that our market share is
10:43
going to be much higher than what we thought it was going to
10:44
be initially. And take the US example.
10:47
Initially we had AT&T and that was exclusive and thought well,
10:52
OK, we know better, better than nothing.
10:55
And then we got Verizon big change going from 30% of the
11:02
market, 35% of the market to 70% of the market was a big change.
11:06
And so then likewise Europe, we're not burdened by the Santa
11:09
specific. Now we're we're opening this up.
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And so this is going to be very important for the model because
11:15
the basic model of this company is going to be users times ARPU,
11:20
average revenue per user. Very simplistically, when you
11:23
start to double and triple the number of users, you could
11:27
generally assume that the attachment rate of, you know, if
11:29
you have a population of 100 million users, how many people
11:32
are going to pay for the up, you know, the upgraded service, just
11:36
law of large numbers. The more bodies that are
11:38
captured in our addressable market, the more revenue we can
11:43
have, the higher the multiple, the longer the runway of growth.
11:45
And so these are nice things to see our partners do and give us
11:49
updates on. And so now let's talk about
11:54
charts, which I really have no credibility in talking about,
11:57
but I will quote he who does reform trader.
12:01
And so I always find this pretty interesting one charts or
12:06
distraction when I'm otherwise really upset and I can go, yeah,
12:10
yeah, yeah, look, this chart that shows a big red arrow down
12:13
is actually bullish. And so yeah, sure, whatever.
12:16
That's how I think about it. But what's nice is that reform
12:21
or is a pretty objective guy and this guy calls it like he sees
12:24
it. He's been kicked out of our chat
12:26
groups like 4 times because I think every time he's like this
12:29
looks like a head and shoulders. We're like bam, this kook.
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And then when he's saying it's like an inverse head and
12:35
shoulders and about to go up or like, yeah, let's get back in.
12:38
And so now we're we're liking him again, just to be clear
12:42
because he's showing that we've hit this uptrend started in May
12:45
2024. We retraced to the 61.8%
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Fibonacci level. Just always remember,
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mathematics is the language of nature, and this is a level that
12:57
was also something or other that was important to him.
13:00
I don't quite follow all of it, but basically it's a really
13:04
pretty chart that shows that the stock is really where it should
13:08
be when it's about to bottom and go a lot higher.
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That's really the summary. So step away from the ledge.
13:15
This could be the beginning of a very grand ascent, which is what
13:20
I personally think is never mind what's happening right now
13:22
because the yen is blowing up again.
13:24
Thanks for nothing, Japan, except thanks for making my
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spring break in Japan cheaper, I guess, Although the yen's
13:31
actually rallying. So it's not so good for me.
13:34
But what I expected is that we're going to get AF.
13:39
What are we going to call it now?
13:40
FM 7 or FM 2 PR, which is BB7 for those playing at home.
13:47
And then I think we're going to get visibility on the next two
13:51
launches after that, which are going to be multi satellite
13:54
batches and that's going to show this uncorking of production
13:58
capacity. And I think it will hopefully
14:00
get an update on reaching the six satellite per month cadence.
14:04
And then I personally think we're going to get Golden Dome.
14:09
And so Golden Dome, let's talk about it.
14:13
So the irony of Golden Dome is that the literal radar is being
14:18
kept under the radar. Thanks, Trump.
14:21
Can you leak something? And So what they're doing is
14:26
interesting is they're trying to keep it out of the public while
14:32
in the public. And so they're keeping big
14:35
contracts apartment by giving small contracts and then that
14:41
reduces the need or eliminates the need to disclose those
14:44
contracts. And you know, I guess the whole
14:48
point of that is to not let China know what we're doing or
14:51
how we're doing it yet. Then you have a bunch of
14:53
companies making videos on like exactly how they're doing it.
14:56
So I'm not quite sure what they've achieved, but point is
15:00
these Department of Work contracts appear to be going out
15:05
and then we're starting to get companies talking about it.
15:07
So Honeywell put out a super cool video.
15:09
I think Lockheed did one. And then, you know, coincidences
15:13
of coincidences. ASTS space Mobile starts having
15:15
golden Halos around their satellites.
15:18
Some people think that the space mob is crazy for reading into
15:22
this that, you know, I don't know, maybe.
15:28
But when you actually start to look at the pattern, OK,
15:32
Department of War says to its vendors, we will not give
15:36
massive contracts for all these reasons.
15:39
OK, Well, that kind of kills small companies because they
15:41
have to fund this on their balance sheet.
15:43
Big companies are like sweet, we'll just fund it on our
15:45
balance sheet so that we cannot compete with little companies.
15:49
And now then you had ASTS raise a billion one and then the ATM
15:55
and everything. So really raising like billion 5
15:58
in October, lot of money, I think they probably would have
16:02
done it anyway. But all of a sudden this is a
16:05
huge opportunity for the company and all of a sudden you gas up
16:08
your balance sheet, you're in a unique position to take
16:11
advantage of it. Checks out.
16:13
You've had the company be very, very vocal about being evolved
16:16
in Golden Dome. So it's not totally a mystery.
16:20
Then you have them change the graphics.
16:23
By the way, Lockheed literally seems like they're using the
16:26
same graphics, which is interesting.
16:29
I think we've seen quite a few coincidences between potential
16:33
partners at ASTS in terms of their press releases and
16:37
designs. So it's pretty exciting.
16:41
And my sources, which are not entirely clear that they're
16:47
right, seem to indicate that ASTS is in here.
16:52
So that's good, but I don't really know how to handicap
16:56
those things. So my personal view based on the
16:58
mosaic of information which I have is that ASTS is going to
17:01
have a nice part of Golden Dome. And I think that when we look
17:06
back to last week, we had Blue Origin say they're involved with
17:12
the Golden Dome, but it was actually a little bit unclear if
17:13
they were saying that ASTS was involved in Golden Dome because
17:16
they said that we, we have this new 99-X4 New Glenn rocket, the
17:21
Super Duper 1. And it had three real customers.
17:26
It had Amazon for Kuiper, it had NASA, it had AST Space Mobile.
17:32
And they specifically mentioned this will be serving Golden
17:35
Dome. Seems, seems like something is
17:40
afoot. And my understanding is that
17:43
ASTS is rolling, Golden Dome increased as Blue Origin showed
17:49
more capabilities because I think these companies might be a
17:52
little bit of a package package deal.
17:55
And so then last week, we also had some just random press
17:58
releases from ASTS. So I'm like, oh, hey, by the
18:00
way, we're American. And so as Kevin points out,
18:07
Kevin Chen, that is AST doesn't usually do these types of PRS.
18:11
They've reported their facilities in quarterly updates.
18:14
And so then you know, why, why do this now, especially last
18:18
week, which is kind of a dead week.
18:20
And so his theory, which which I hope all of them are right, is
18:24
that they are priming the prompt for updates on the six
18:29
satellites per month production capacity.
18:31
That would be great. It could be in response to
18:34
SpaceX law fair in the FCC docket where they're saying, oh,
18:38
I guess ASTS is a European company now because of SATCO,
18:41
which is not accurate or ASTS is just showing how American they
18:48
are in front of Golden Dome announcements, which are going
18:53
to put all these companies in the in the direct spotlight.
18:58
Not sure, but it is interesting. And the company certainly was
19:02
giving us a lot of tidbits last week on what should have
19:05
otherwise just been a passive week.
19:07
Everyone, you know, was probably chilling out, probably didn't
19:10
have to do anything. And they were pretty active.
19:12
And so I think that they were my personal belief, you know, you
19:16
know, Fletsters think I'm insane, but I think that they're
19:20
trying to talk to us in terms of the space mob and in terms of
19:24
the retail community. They know they have an audience.
19:26
So step one is knowing that if you, you know, shout into the
19:29
room, someone's there to hear it.
19:31
Step 2 is then having an intent to do that.
19:36
And that's the hard part. I don't know.
19:38
But I do think that they understand that we are good with
19:40
information and they can tease us with some things.
19:44
We'll put it together to help inform the community so that the
19:49
most people most of the time will hopefully be led to the
19:53
right decision. And so I think the company
19:56
certainly is very loyal to its retail investor base and truly
19:59
wants these people to do well. The company is showing with
20:03
their own actions that they're very, very bullish on the
20:06
company and the stock price in particular and so.
20:10
They, I believe, want people to hang on and you know, they're
20:14
not trying to pump it, but they're trying to give us
20:16
tidbits because they know there's people like me, Katzie,
20:19
Kevin Tanner, Tut and Pin Man, you know, the whole lot of
20:23
people that are posting all day. It's not like they're oblivious
20:26
to our existence. They know that if you feed us,
20:29
you know, we will jump on the spaces at 9:30 Pacific Time on a
20:34
Sunday to talk about it. And so then you ask yourself
20:38
again, why did they put out all those press releases and why are
20:41
they starting to hint at things that we could clearly draw a
20:44
line on? Hey, this looks like Golden
20:47
Dome. Well, I believe it's because
20:48
they got Golden Dome and these are apparently supposed to be
20:52
out more broadly by Christmas. So that's pretty soon, you know,
20:56
really three weeks. So a lot could happen.
20:59
But let's go back to this Deutsche Bank conference where
21:01
we again look at the CEO of VSAT looking like Ichabod Crane about
21:07
to lose his hat. And this guy looks so sad, but
21:11
unfortunately, he's sitting next to Scott.
21:13
So every time I screenshot it, all you see is this really,
21:16
really sad Mark Gamburg up speed his hat.
21:19
Oh, poor Mark. And so meanwhile, Scott is
21:22
saying that the benefits of a really large satellite is a lot
21:25
of power in orbit. Now something I've said many
21:28
times is the critical path of this whole thing is power.
21:33
The bigger power plant you have in space, the more things you
21:37
can do with it, which in our immediate circumstances is
21:43
power. A really, really big phased
21:46
array antenna to close the link budget for a complex telecom use
21:51
case. But there's a lot of other stuff
21:54
you can do when you make a lot of power.
21:57
And so I believe as you see the AI race heats up, I believe that
22:02
ASTS is going to be the prime example of companies that are
22:07
going to be able to enable AI data centers in space.
22:11
Who else? No one else has been able to
22:13
innovate the way ASTS has been able to innovate in producing
22:18
the most power in orbit, bar none.
22:23
AI data centers are going to be about power, same as the RF use
22:30
case. Power is the critical link.
22:33
We produce the most power. I think that's going to be a
22:37
benefit and I think it's going to expand our Tam in ways that
22:40
will be interesting in a few years from now.
22:44
So then let's also just put again in context what this
22:47
company is doing. So our friend Tanner just made
22:50
this point where this year only four large Geo satellites have
22:59
been ordered this year. And so this is the universe of
23:03
the industry is around 4 satellites midpoint 6000
23:08
kilograms, so 24,000 kilograms total.
23:12
ASTS is primed to be doing that type of gross tonnage per month
23:20
by December and let's just assume that slips so by January
23:23
whatever. And so when you think about just
23:27
the scale of what ASTS is doing measured by satellite tonnage,
23:31
it's truly shocking and disruptive in a way that, you
23:34
know, my mind goes to things like Tesla, things that are able
23:38
to produce at levels previously unheard of.
23:43
They were going to cause the cost to go down massively.
23:47
And it's just useful to think about that in terms of how
23:50
strategically important our company is.
23:53
And then let's think about that a little bit more.
23:55
We again revisit Retanner about the military opportunities,
23:59
which ASTS partners at Fairwinds talk about a lot.
24:04
So it's pretty cool when you see Fairwinds having their job
24:08
postings and they talk about ASTS, militarized broadband
24:14
devices, ASTS tactical hub systems, all these things that
24:20
are ASTS specific, which are getting sold into our defense
24:24
industry. It just shows how large this
24:27
company can be. It's a platform around which
24:31
other products and services are based.
24:34
I was just watching these really cool videos of the F-47, this
24:37
new Gen. 6 fighter jet that America is making, and it's
24:41
going to have 5 drones alongside it the whole time.
24:44
Just think about the need for connectivity that that we're
24:50
going to have in this world that we live in today and the world
24:52
we're going to live in tomorrow. Who's going to provide?
24:57
I think I know the answer. So then we talk about and so we
25:03
had some really good finds this week.
25:05
I did this already seems like a lifetime ago, but there was a
25:08
document that was dug up by Rocket Tank 1T3 whose tank is
25:12
always full and it was around ASTS setting standards with
25:19
Apple and notably Global Star was nowhere to be found in these
25:24
filings. And so it should come as no
25:27
surprise to anyone that's been following the Legato documents
25:31
or me who has brought to attention the Legato documents.
25:35
The ASTS has hard wired in its agreements specific revenue
25:41
triggers when its spectrum is integrated with Apple and Google
25:48
or separately. The contract contemplates all of
25:51
the above. It is no surprise that ASTS is
25:56
working with Apple since ASTS is working with 70% of the M&O
26:02
market share in the US, which is the most profitable telecom
26:05
industry in the world. So yeah, Tim Cook knows about
26:09
ASTS Space Mobile. They're working together on the
26:12
standards. Pretty exciting stuff.
26:15
But what's begging the question is, is Apple going to ditch
26:17
Global Star? That's the question a lot of us
26:20
have been asking. I don't know the answer to it,
26:22
but imagine the power of that press release, which would be
26:25
premature today, but there's no need for Global Star.
26:30
Maybe for some backup emergency texting services and things like
26:34
that. But you could still ditch them
26:35
and just do that with Asts. But the real meat of the prize
26:39
is going to be in broadband. That's what people are going to
26:44
want the second they see it. And that's where the big
26:46
companies are all oriented toward working with ASTS Space
26:49
Mobile. Meanwhile, you have countries
26:52
realizing the same thing. Chile came out with some.
26:57
What was it, news article? Yeah.
27:00
And it was found by Rocket Tank. But it was Chile's minister of
27:04
transport talking about how they've had serious discussions
27:08
with ASTS and there's a concern about only having SpaceX in the
27:14
market as they should be. And then we also have Europe, I
27:18
mean, surprisingly, getting more and more vocal about war with
27:22
Russia, which is, I don't know what a scary prospect that is,
27:27
but frankly not inconceivable. And so the more I've studied
27:31
Russia and I spent a lot of time starting in Russia when they
27:33
invaded Ukraine, read all the old history books to really
27:35
understand all of it. And when you I don't want to get
27:41
into politics too much, but like when you think about the Russian
27:43
mind state, I'm trying to get commented like crazy about
27:46
Russian people on this call. But from a Russian perspective,
27:52
they're the rightful inheritors of the Holy Roman Empire.
27:57
From their perspective, they believe it was the last of
28:00
Caesar's bloodline married into the Romanov family of memory
28:04
serves. And so they view themselves as
28:07
the last bastion of that and I could see them viewing it as
28:14
their destiny to go back West, which they demonstrated desire
28:18
to do. Again, inconceivable to the
28:21
American mind isn't an American mind, I don't think is very
28:25
braced for European land wars that we have on right now.
28:28
But the European sure as hell think that that's a possibility.
28:31
And so all the European countries are rearming.
28:36
Looks like there might be drafts coming back and things like
28:38
that. Some pretty scary stuff to
28:41
again, imagine a European ground war.
28:44
But as part of this rearmament process, you need space
28:47
capabilities. And so this is just becoming
28:49
more and more obvious every day. Europe is really far behind on
28:54
this and Satco is right there ready to supply what's needed.
29:02
And that's why I think there is, you know, a big possibility that
29:05
ASTS gets a lot of spectrum and the Vodafone is probably running
29:10
up and down the halls of Brussels really selling our
29:14
prospects, which could be a very big exciting contract.
29:18
I know some people notice that on the AST website when they're
29:21
comparing the size of a person in a car to the satellite, they
29:24
have a BMW5 series is the reference vehicle and not on a
29:29
Ford F-150. This is another example of does
29:34
the space, does the space mob look too deep?
29:37
And I would say, are we looking deep enough?
29:41
And so have I thought for the past three days incessantly
29:45
about why ASTS chose to have a BMW5 Series on that slide
29:49
instead of a anything else. No, this is all I thought about.
29:56
And so I think the logical conclusion is that ASTS won
30:00
Golden Dome and now they have their sights set on winning Iris
30:04
Squared. There I stand it, the car choice
30:08
in that slide was the dead giveaway of the future of NATO's
30:14
rearmament strategy. But now going back to Iris and
30:18
so I don't really understand how this project is thought to be
30:23
successful, but you tell SAC Group is getting destroyed is as
30:29
they have to raise capital for it.
30:31
What I don't know is is there an off ramp for this project or is
30:34
it kind of hard wired to have a bunch of money spent on it
30:38
ultimately maybe exists or ultimately die not I just don't
30:42
know. And any anyone that does know
30:45
how that works, please DM me or post and make sure I see it and
30:48
I can include it in the weekly. I responded in the comments to
30:52
the to mega constellations which is a really good account and he
30:55
really knows a lot about this. That's something on my mind is
30:58
really understanding this project a little bit better and
31:01
I certainly have some area to improve my knowledge of it.
31:05
So now let's check in on our friends in New Zealand.
31:08
And so we have some interesting quotes came out actually.
31:11
And so we we know that we're involved with this something
31:14
called O2 I believe. And there's some quotes that
31:19
were referenced that then talked about Telstra, which is a
31:24
company that's working with Starlink.
31:26
And then they said, so our partner said, we admire what
31:33
SpaceX does, but we like the idea of controlling the
31:35
infrastructure. We're ultimately an
31:37
infrastructure company, which means we'd rather put the
31:39
capital on the ground here in New Zealand than run a large op
31:41
Axeline. I thought that was interesting.
31:43
So I dug into that a little bit. And the issue here is an MNL.
31:49
We've talked about this before. When they use ASTS Space Mobile,
31:53
they're using their own network and their own granite ground
31:55
equipment. We're just dumb pipe, but their
31:57
data sovereignty, the investment goes on the ground with the
32:00
ground stations. It's there now with Starlink,
32:04
it's an integration to a separate network.
32:06
It's very complex. The E node B which is really the
32:09
base station is up in the sky. It's not forward compatible.
32:12
You don't have data sovereignty blah, blah, blah, A lot of
32:16
differences. And so this is an example of the
32:18
MNL really walking us through those differences a little bit
32:23
more. And it's pretty interesting
32:28
because then you'll also see the M and OS complaining about how
32:32
from their own P&L, their deals with Starlink are just going to
32:36
look like a huge expense. And that's a direct quote.
32:40
And what I don't know is how our partners will account for this.
32:48
So there can be two approaches. There can be net and gross.
32:50
So AT&T could book the entirety of the revenue on their own P&L
32:54
and then net out half of it in OpEx for ASTS or they could just
32:59
recognize net net revenue net of what ASTS is doing and then it
33:03
looks like it's 100% EBITDA margin from their perspective.
33:07
They'd probably want to use the net approach just because it's
33:10
going to be so margin accretive and and maybe help people's
33:13
perspective of their business. But it is important to know that
33:17
these companies do see a big difference of effectively paying
33:20
out a bunch of money to SpaceX for just an op X line versus
33:23
something that is their own and on which they're generating more
33:28
discrete revenues for it. Then we're just checking in.
33:33
I think there's some more complaints about SpaceX.
33:38
Yep. So AMPAN man found a nice thing
33:40
with Intel's Starlink pitch and it just shows that it's SMS
33:46
only. It only works with newer non
33:48
Apple handsets. No, no, that's not good, can
33:51
only be outside, blah, blah, blah.
33:53
And so not a great scalable solution versus it works with
33:58
Vodafone has been saying very vocally in contrast about we
34:04
talked about that podcast they did about how it's their own
34:06
network. It works great.
34:08
It's broadband, things like that.
34:10
And meanwhile we have Vodafone increasingly talking about first
34:13
responders and emergency response.
34:15
And so to me this looks again like Satgal being able to
34:20
recreate first net in Europe. That should be a really big
34:23
revenue opportunity I for someone this week and I should
34:28
have included it in the weekly. I did just sort of a really
34:31
quick back in the envelope revenue estimate for AST.
34:35
You had Scott in that DB interview saying, look, we built
34:38
our company for scale. So while the other guys were
34:42
saying we don't think the Tam is there and if you don't think the
34:45
Tam is there, then you certainly should not invest billions of
34:48
dollars to build a constellation.
34:49
That much is true. And so these other companies are
34:52
taking a position. We don't think there's a market,
34:54
OK, great. They're not going to show up to
34:57
the dance. ASTS is taking the view.
34:59
We think there's a market that's going to be 10s of billions of
35:02
dollars. So we're building a company in
35:05
in front of it and that's what I think as well.
35:09
And so I did in this tweet, which I of course don't think I
35:13
included here really quick math that showed how you could bridge
35:19
to 20 to $30 billion of revenue. And you get there by looking at
35:23
what AT&T and Verizon could be worth, especially when you start
35:27
to monetize our Legato spectrum. You take that math times
35:32
basically 2 for Europe because Europe is bigger.
35:35
And then you have SAT go, which is going to be great.
35:38
And then you take all the government opportunities which
35:42
are going to be, you know, easily a billion dollars in the
35:45
US alone. You have 10 programs of record.
35:47
Each of those are going to be $100 million.
35:49
Some of them I think are going to be way bigger.
35:50
I think Golden Dome alone could be a billion.
35:53
And so all of a sudden you very quickly get into these numbers
35:56
that start to look like 20 to $30 billion of of revenue, which
36:01
is exciting. But you want to keep track of
36:02
these quote, UN quote little things like Vodafone recreating
36:06
Firstnet to start to do that math for yourself and and really
36:11
bridge it out. The the thing I wish I'd been
36:14
better at earlier in my career is seeing market share winners
36:21
in really big markets. And so the stupidest thing to do
36:25
is kind of look at what you have today on something to go, Oh,
36:28
it's a 20 times earnings. Must be efficient.
36:31
But you know, meanwhile, it owns 70% of its market and its market
36:35
is growing 40% a year in revolutionizing the world.
36:38
Well, that 20 times earnings when you flow out the growth
36:42
turns out to be like one times earnings when you then later
36:46
realize like, wait, why did this go up?
36:49
You know so much? And it's that non linearity is
36:52
is the trick. It's hard to see.
36:54
And as you can kind of do that math, especially if you publish
36:57
it publicly, you're going to get relentlessly mocked and made fun
37:00
of by people. But it is the right math.
37:02
You need to see where the big markets are that aren't
37:05
necessarily as obvious today to a passerby.
37:08
You need to find the market share winners and you need to
37:11
see where a company can have non linear revenue growth.
37:15
And you know, if you find those, buy them.
37:20
That's what I've done. And it's not only me that it's
37:23
been buying. And so Adriana, who is on the
37:27
board Sisneros, she is a Series A ambassador, her family was and
37:32
so she owns a lot of stock. But interestingly, she just
37:36
dumped her annual exclusion for children into ASTS based mobile,
37:40
which which actually find really interesting because it's not
37:43
huge amounts of money. You're allowed to give each of
37:46
your children I believe $18,000 a year from each spouse.
37:51
And so if you have a wife, you can give each kid roughly
37:54
$40,000 tax free. And you know, if you have that
37:59
amount of savings, you should because it's tax efficient thing
38:02
to do. I just did this for Mykins.
38:04
And I had always told myself be responsible, Kirk just put in
38:08
the S&P 500. When they actually access that
38:10
money in 30 years or whatever, you know, if you have compounded
38:14
at 8%, it's all going to have worked out well for them.
38:17
Well, yeah, that's a funny plan. And so last year I put in all
38:23
ASTS for them at 5 bucks. So now my kids legit have a ton
38:28
of money, which is pretty interesting because they're so
38:30
little and they don't really understand what that means.
38:32
But they're going to wake up and one day be like, holy shit, we
38:35
have a lot of money. And it's because they dumped
38:37
their entire annual gift exclusion into ASTS stock at $5.
38:42
And this year I was actually super annoying is I was going to
38:46
put it into MFI really just to pay homage to King Tut.
38:51
This stock had just been just destroyed last week and TUT has
38:56
been doing a ton of work on it. I own some too.
38:59
And so I was going to put it all.
39:00
I'm get the money to that thing and I wish it did because then
39:02
it it, it doubled the in over the next two days.
39:05
So it sucks, but Vanguard wouldn't let me buy that piece
39:08
of crap because they protect investors from themselves
39:11
apparently. And so in the absence of being
39:13
able to buy MFI, which frankly would have been the better IRR
39:16
investment because it went up 100% in two days, I put it all
39:20
back into ASTS Space Mobile at 51.
39:23
And you don't do that randomly for your kids.
39:25
Your very few people are going to be trading their kids.
39:29
The study book counts. I mean, can't think of a Dumber
39:33
thing to do. And so, you know, I know my
39:35
mindset was buy something that they're going to hold for years.
39:40
And you know, what do you believe in most blah, blah,
39:42
blah, blah, blah. So I put it in AST S 'cause I
39:44
thought, you know, legit, you know, when I check in on this
39:46
thing for them in five years, buy things going to be $500
39:50
stock. And so, you know that more than
39:53
pays for college for them just on this year's gift alone.
39:57
But what's fascinating is thinking about my own logic and
40:00
then seeing Adriana do it and you go, why in the world of all
40:05
the things if she's already a billionaire, like just put in
40:08
the S&P for her kids or something like that.
40:09
She put in ASTS and I think that was a signal as well.
40:13
And, you know, kind of a back door a little inside her by, but
40:17
an important one nonetheless because it was for children.
40:20
So that that happened and I have that linked out.
40:23
We also had Scotiabank come back with an upgrade.
40:26
I think we publicly shamed them enough and so now we can be
40:29
friends with them again. And then we also have some just
40:33
more industry reports talking about Starlink in their
40:37
interference in this, especially when our satellites are up.
40:41
I think we'll just become a bigger issue where people will
40:45
see that Starlink is a move fast and break things company and
40:51
when you spam the orbit with 7000 satellites, they're
40:55
emitting an immense amount of RF pollution, causing a lot of
41:00
atmospheric damage. When these things deorbit there,
41:03
there could end up being, I think real push back.
41:05
I'm expecting it where there's a real separation between the
41:08
satellite companies in terms of, you know, the actual things that
41:13
should be important with ESG, which is make sure your
41:15
companies are not destroying orbit.
41:19
I think people should will look and go, hey, there's a company
41:22
here doing this with 100 satellites and there's a company
41:26
doing this with 7000 satellites. Are are we doing the right thing
41:30
here? And we have a company that's
41:31
able to have very advanced beam forming so that it's not
41:35
disrupting radio telescopes and more importantly, terrestrial
41:39
spectrum. And then we have Starlink, which
41:42
has these massive side labs. You want to want to know what
41:45
that means? Check my pinned tweet with the
41:48
DD document and go to the section called interference
41:52
Concepts and all this stuff is mapped out for you.
41:55
This will matter in my belief. So that's what we have for this
42:00
week's weekly sentiment. Shockingly went from being
42:04
pretty positive on Friday to being dirt poor right now.
42:10
And I wish I could tell you that.
42:12
I wish I could tell you that I'm Scott and as Scott, I would
42:15
just, I'm going to tell you all that we're going to have a press
42:18
release Monday morning and the stock will share 250.
42:20
But unfortunately I'm not Scott and I do not know if we're going
42:23
to have a press release tomorrow, but I hope and if I
42:27
don't have it tomorrow, if we don't have it tomorrow, again,
42:29
just realize there will be a press release on FM 7 shipping
42:35
at some point. There will be a press release on
42:38
the two batches of what we believe 3 each skipping for the
42:44
space size launches which are on next Space Flight.
42:47
They're out there, you can see them changing.
42:49
There's an interesting change actually.
42:50
People caught on that one of the updates for next Space Flight
42:54
showed ASTS launching 4 satellites on the next launch.
42:59
I wouldn't be surprised if that's right because I thought
43:01
that we were volume limited to launching just three satellites
43:05
initially because it's a new program.
43:07
But you know, some of these updates aren't random and we
43:11
could have a positive surprise on that.
43:12
And I think next week is really the first week of a very
43:17
exciting time for the company because in the month of
43:19
December, we're going to have FM One launch.
43:23
We're almost certainly going to have a bunch of satellites
43:26
shipped. We're going to have an update on
43:29
our production guidance. We could very easily have some
43:32
updates on Golden Dome, which I truly hope we're involved in,
43:35
and other, I'm sure some other pleasant surprises.
43:38
So I'm excited about what's happening next month and thanks
43:42
everyone for joining me so late at night and I will talk to
43:45
everyone next week. Thanks for listening to the AST
43:51
Space Mobile podcast. If you enjoyed this episode and
43:54
you'd like to help support the podcast, please share it with
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others, post about it on social media, or leave a rating and
44:01
review. To catch all the latest news
44:03
about AST Space Mobile, make sure to subscribe.
44:06
Thanks again and I'll see you next time.
44:12
We're doing something very, very big and I think with this
44:15
technology we can really affect a billion lives.
44:18
AFT space Nobody is the only company that has full technology
44:22
to deliver several broadband connectivity directly from space
44:26
to do everyday smartphone. People will just basically turn
44:30
their phone the simplest. But regardless of where you are,
44:33
we don't want the user even to know that it's connected by
44:36
satellite. Our role is to bring this into
44:40
reality, always in partnership with the animal.
44:42
Listen. Waffles.