Latest / AST SpaceMobile Podcast / Anpanman - Accretive Opportunities to be Funded

Transcript

Anpanman - Accretive Opportunities to be Funded · 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
  Everyone figured I'd start up the space because I think
• 0:32
  perhaps there's some confusion and of course some people need
• 0:36
  to be reassured, I guess, to be talked off a Cliff.
• 0:43
  We, we looked on Reddit, a number of us, and there's
• 0:46
  clearly either panic insurance or people were trying to use
• 0:51
  some level of deception to I guess drive the stock price
• 0:53
  down. But but yeah, there's a couple
• 0:56
  pieces of information that came out today.
• 0:59
  Let me just make sure that people can hear me kind of this
• 1:06
  before I start rambling again. Give me a thumbs up if you can.
• 1:13
  OK? Looks like people can hear me.
• 1:15
  Yeah. So we had some news come out
• 1:17
  today, which I think is important to kind of go over.
• 1:22
  Let's see. So the first piece of news there
• 1:24
  was an AK filed earlier today, which I guess it was the first
• 1:29
  thing to hit the tape and that was a new employee incentive
• 1:36
  incentive plan, which includes which will be up for a vote in
• 1:40
  November. And it basically let's see here.
• 1:44
  Just want to make sure, sorry guys, I'm just reading this now.
• 1:48
  The amount of shares that can be issued for the incentive plan is
• 1:54
  14,000,000 shares in this amendment.
• 1:55
  And then I think the total overall is 15,000,000 shares,
• 1:59
  which includes some leftover stock, which is important to to
• 2:02
  note leftover stock from the 2020 incentive plan.
• 2:04
  So, you know, I saw some people freaking out on Reddit.
• 2:08
  They're like, Oh my God, this solution.
• 2:09
  And it's, and I think it's important to understand that
• 2:12
  this is an employee centered plan.
• 2:14
  And so when you have a, and I have a, I'm kind of face
• 2:18
  pointing myself like as a public market investor, people should
• 2:22
  know this stuff. But if they don't, yeah, as a as
• 2:26
  a growth tech company, often times people are given
• 2:31
  incentives either, you know, they might be restricted,
• 2:34
  restricted stock units or could be stock options, but you
• 2:37
  actually have to authorize the underlying shares in order to do
• 2:40
  that. And why would a company issue
• 2:44
  restricted stock units or options for employees?
• 2:46
  Well, you want to align their incentives, right?
• 2:49
  So if an employee at ASD Space Mobile is working their ass off,
• 2:53
  which I know many are on the production floor, if you're
• 2:56
  working, you know, multiple shifts and call it 18 hour days
• 3:00
  or, or during crunch time, it might be, you know, up to that,
• 3:03
  that level. If you were just being paid a
• 3:06
  salary or hourly wage, then you would have little incentive to
• 3:09
  work harder because you're not really seeing the benefits of
• 3:13
  that labor. And so, you know, just like an
• 3:17
  hourly employee at McDonald's, they may not do their best,
• 3:20
  right? Because you don't get rewarded
• 3:22
  necessarily for doing better or having higher production or
• 3:26
  having great customer service. Now, if you're a, a waiter or
• 3:29
  waitress, often times you will see those folks try to do their
• 3:33
  best because they are incentivized by a potential for
• 3:36
  tips, right. And so similarly here for AC
• 3:40
  space mobile or any type tech company for that matter.
• 3:44
  And most radar companies, they grant the stock options or RSUS
• 3:48
  to incentivize employees because then employees are fully aligned
• 3:52
  with shareholders that if they meet deadlines, if they go above
• 3:56
  and beyond the the Call of Duty for work, then their stock
• 4:01
  price, they should see appreciation, right?
• 4:03
  And not only do those folks, you know, make some level of salary
• 4:07
  or perhaps their hourly workers, but if they do have stock
• 4:10
  incentives, then they will reap the benefits of the stock price
• 4:14
  doing well if they hit deadlines and you know, the management
• 4:18
  executes. So that's just part of normal
• 4:20
  course business that, you know, you, you have a pool of shares
• 4:25
  that you're authorized to grant. Obviously you don't grant them
• 4:27
  all today. You grant, you know, when
• 4:29
  someone's higher, they might get a package of options and those
• 4:32
  might, you know, best over 4 years based off of how long
• 4:35
  they've been, they might get ongoing grants as well.
• 4:38
  But, but yeah, for any normal thriving growth company, you
• 4:42
  have to grant, you know, folks equity incentives to properly
• 4:47
  align their work and reward them for that hard work.
• 4:49
  So that's, that's kind of, you know, I think people for
• 4:52
  whatever reason, and this is private Reddit misunderstood
• 4:56
  that this is a company raising money.
• 4:59
  No, it's, it's actually just having increasing the
• 5:03
  authorizations to have the flexibility to, you know, grant
• 5:07
  ongoing equity, whether again, options are are issues to
• 5:11
  employees. Moving on to the second piece of
• 5:14
  news, the company did put in place.
• 5:16
  And this is something that we're all very familiar with because
• 5:20
  as Cook has mentioned in previous spaces, the company
• 5:23
  views at the money offerings as a very, as a very, you know,
• 5:30
  great tool to raise capital from time to time.
• 5:33
  And this is something that I think a bell as as an owner
• 5:37
  operator who owns who obviously, you know, whenever there is some
• 5:40
  level of deletion, he feels at the most because he, he owns a
• 5:43
  significant amount of the company, but the company views
• 5:46
  this is a very efficient method to raise capital.
• 5:49
  And as Kuka mentioned in previous spaces, you know, there
• 5:53
  is this belief with retail shareholders that, you know,
• 5:57
  during the difficult times when whether it was, you know, short
• 6:00
  sellers are skeptics or whoever, you know, we're, we're giving
• 6:04
  the company a hard time and, and didn't believe.
• 6:07
  And this was during the 2022-2023 period, you know,
• 6:13
  retail shareholders stuck with the company.
• 6:14
  And as part of that, the company kind of went down this path of,
• 6:19
  of after doing 1 marketed offering, which was pretty
• 6:22
  brutal, decided that the at the money offering was probably a
• 6:26
  better tool that gave them flexibility.
• 6:28
  Like when you do a, a marketed offering, you basically have to
• 6:32
  go out for the complete nut, right?
• 6:34
  Whether you over, you go for a much bigger size or, or, or
• 6:38
  whatever it is you do an offering, you place it with
• 6:40
  institutional investors. You know, depending on the
• 6:42
  quality of those investors, some percentage of them could be long
• 6:46
  term fundamental investors and they actually hold the stock and
• 6:49
  I buy more and have to market. However, if you're placing it
• 6:52
  with hedge funds like you know, their capital markets desks who
• 6:55
  are looking to make some spread, you know that the, the offering
• 6:57
  it's priced at some discount for good companies that might, that
• 7:00
  are well followed. It might be 3 to 5% discount
• 7:03
  for, you know, more speculative companies that may not have
• 7:07
  institutional support. You're looking at pretty big
• 7:10
  discounts and depending on the capital markets environment, you
• 7:13
  know, that could be 1015 twenty 30% discount.
• 7:16
  And so I think the company has used the at the market offering
• 7:22
  as a very savvy and and flexible tool to raise capital from time
• 7:27
  to time depending on what the needs are.
• 7:30
  And so we've seen this and this has been pretty much the
• 7:33
  expectation now for investors that the company will have an
• 7:36
  ATM, an ATM place for at specific moments in time when
• 7:42
  there is this need for flexibility.
• 7:44
  And I think given where we are right now putting one in place,
• 7:48
  which today the company put in an 800 up to $800 million ATM in
• 7:53
  place, I think it's smart. And the reason why that is, is
• 7:57
  that first of all, let's take a step back.
• 8:01
  The market capitalization yesterday for the company was
• 8:04
  $26.1 billion and putting in place and $800 million ATM that
• 8:10
  let's just assume like they raised it all today, which
• 8:13
  they're not going to. But if they did, that would
• 8:16
  result in about 3% solution, which is pretty diminish.
• 8:20
  And so if the company, let's just say they put it in place,
• 8:24
  they don't raise anything today. And for whatever reason,
• 8:29
  reformed trader who has been, by the way, like spot on in all of
• 8:33
  his calls. Let's say if the stock price
• 8:36
  were to go to 500, the company would be stupid not to raise
• 8:39
  money at that price. And the reason why they would
• 8:42
  want to raise money, I know some people have been hard about, you
• 8:47
  know, hey, maybe told me that the consolation the, the, the,
• 8:52
  you know, 45 to 60 satellites is fully funded.
• 8:54
  Well, yeah, it, it is fully funded based off of our current
• 8:57
  capital position. I think there is some obviously
• 9:01
  there's potential funding that's coming in whether that's first
• 9:03
  net, you know, import export bank funding, other types of you
• 9:08
  know, commercial prepayments. There's also you know, defense
• 9:11
  awards, right. But at the same time, if you're
• 9:15
  a company that's in ASTS position and we talked about the
• 9:19
  different opportunities, whether that's on the commercial side or
• 9:24
  on the defense side, you know in particular Golden Dome or any of
• 9:27
  the other, you know, 10 potential use cases.
• 9:31
  A lot of these things actually require some level of CapEx
• 9:33
  upfront. And so while the initial
• 9:36
  consolation may be fully funded, there may be these other
• 9:39
  opportunities, many of which perhaps we don't really know
• 9:43
  about, which I mean, we got as a prime example where no one
• 9:47
  expected the company to buy Spectrum.
• 9:49
  And then lo and behold, they pull the trigger in January.
• 9:52
  And, you know, they were fortunate enough to line up
• 9:56
  some, you know, credit NSPV that they could draw down on, you
• 10:02
  know, debt basically to help pay for that.
• 10:03
  But then they also issued some warrants and then there's
• 10:06
  ongoing cash payments as well. But, you know, that was a an
• 10:10
  opportunity that was ahead of its time that no one really
• 10:12
  foresaw and required capital. And and then you Fast forward a
• 10:18
  few months later, Starling pays in cash and stock $19 billion to
• 10:23
  go buy Echostars 8 of S3, I'm sorry, 8 of S4 and H Block
• 10:28
  Spectrum. And so for a company in AT Space
• 10:33
  Mobile's position, you're going to want to have the ability to
• 10:36
  tap funding for some of these things, you know, like the
• 10:40
  global S ban rights. You know, we paid some, some
• 10:43
  shares for that, that was small enough where you could do that.
• 10:45
  But then you know, if you're looking to, if it's acquisitions
• 10:50
  and you know, Rocket Lab holders will know this quite well
• 10:53
  because the company's been very acquisitive.
• 10:56
  You're some of these targets are going to want actually cash
• 10:58
  instead of stock as consideration, especially if
• 11:00
  it's if they're VC back to work, you know, private equity back.
• 11:03
  But I think in AC Space Mobile's situation, I think it's
• 11:09
  important to note that for some of these government
• 11:11
  opportunities, if you get an award there, you are going to
• 11:15
  get some money up front, but then you're going to have to
• 11:17
  find some level of CapEx as well.
• 11:18
  And so it's important to go back and look at what the company's
• 11:23
  done recently. You know, they've they've
• 11:25
  expanded space in Spain, production facilities in Spain,
• 11:28
  also Homestead floor, which I think is very strategic in terms
• 11:33
  of location. And I think the production
• 11:36
  facility there is, is basically, you know, in anticipation of
• 11:40
  some of these defense awards and that facility is going to have
• 11:44
  to be built out. And then as Scott mentioned
• 11:46
  recently in Midland, which was news to us, they they've
• 11:52
  expanded space there and they will have the ability to ramp up
• 11:57
  production. Now of course you got to buy
• 11:59
  equipment and and hire people. But you know, we originally
• 12:02
  thought that the, the top end of solid production was 6 per
• 12:06
  month, but now they have the ability potentially to go to
• 12:08
  11:50. And so that money, you may have
• 12:12
  a fully funded business to do 6A months for the 1st 45 to 60
• 12:16
  satellites. But then if you're planning to
• 12:18
  potentially pull forward production and raise capacity,
• 12:21
  and the reason why you might do that is, you know, you might
• 12:23
  want to get to commercial service faster and, or going
• 12:26
  back to the defense capabilities.
• 12:28
  If the partner defense or sorry, Department of War comes to and
• 12:31
  says, hey, we actually want to build our own constellation
• 12:34
  utilizing your technology, can you build these satellites for
• 12:37
  us? We'll give you a bunch of money,
• 12:38
  but that's going to be money billed out over time.
• 12:42
  But you're going to put forward the upfront CapEx to do that.
• 12:47
  Yeah, you're going to you're going to refund that CapEx and
• 12:51
  you're going to build out because it's going to be highly
• 12:53
  accretive, right. And so I think those are, you
• 12:57
  know, some potential uses. The other, the other thing I
• 12:59
  mentioned before is spectrum where, you know, I think given
• 13:04
  where the company is right now, a lot of the opportunities for
• 13:09
  SPAM globally are going to be, you know, going to regulators
• 13:14
  and giving them a package of hey, this is what we're going to
• 13:17
  do. This is why it's going to be
• 13:18
  beneficial. We're working with this M&O.
• 13:21
  And so often times those are going to be just a regular
• 13:24
  process where you get granted the spectrum for use.
• 13:26
  But then there might be situations where you might
• 13:28
  actually have to go acquire the rights if there's a pre-existing
• 13:32
  player who's not really using the spectrum or maybe they're
• 13:35
  not use it, utilize them improperly.
• 13:37
  You might have to pay some, some cash or whatever it is to to get
• 13:41
  that done right. So I think for the company,
• 13:45
  having a flexible war chest is, is important, especially at this
• 13:50
  point in time where, I mean, quite candidly, there's almost
• 13:54
  like this insurmountable wall of opportunity where you've got a
• 14:00
  number of things on commercial side, a number of things on the
• 14:03
  government side. And we haven't even talked about
• 14:05
  Firstnet, You know, that I, I assume we'll get, you know, some
• 14:08
  level of funding for Firstnet and we'll find out.
• 14:11
  But then on the defense side, you know, there's all these
• 14:14
  different applications that will require some level of upfront
• 14:17
  investment. And then and then overall, I
• 14:20
  think the other thing I, I forgot to mention is that you
• 14:24
  know, because we have with auto spectrum and we're pursuing SPM
• 14:27
  spectrum that so our current Block 1 Bluebirds can address
• 14:31
  low band spectrum 600 to 900 megahertz.
• 14:33
  But then you will have to put up a new satellite, which is what
• 14:37
  will be what we call block free, which will be I think in terms
• 14:41
  of form factor similar in size or perhaps smaller.
• 14:45
  You actually don't need as big of an array for to utilize mid
• 14:49
  band spectrum, but they might keep the same 4 factor which
• 14:52
  would actually improve the efficacy of the satellites.
• 14:55
  But there will be another constellation.
• 14:58
  And so while I know the company has been, you know, they're,
• 15:03
  they've worked on 4th and 5th generation type of satellites.
• 15:07
  Yeah, you have designs, but then you're going to need to start
• 15:10
  procuring materials and start planning for production of that
• 15:14
  other constellation. And I think actually going back
• 15:18
  to what Scott was saying, which is potentially getting up to 12
• 15:21
  satellites per month in terms of production, I think he's
• 15:25
  probably, you know, let's put the defense angle aside because
• 15:29
  I think, you know, a lot of these satellites are going to
• 15:32
  end up being dual use case. If he's talking about 12
• 15:35
  satellites a month, then they're probably thinking about pulling
• 15:40
  forward the production of the mid band Bluebirds, right?
• 15:44
  So Block 3, so while we're putting up the first shell of
• 15:49
  low band Bluebirds, block 2 Bluebirds over 2026, I wouldn't
• 15:53
  be surprised if we in the next quarter or two, the company
• 15:57
  starts talking about expanding the production facility to start
• 16:00
  manufacturing mid Denton birds. Because I mean, right now, you
• 16:05
  know, we're at, at this period of time where, you know, there's
• 16:08
  this tremendous opportunity. And one of the key limiting
• 16:12
  factor or two key limiting factors are, you know, 1 is
• 16:17
  human, which is, you know, management bandwidth and hiring
• 16:21
  enough people to execute on the opportunity.
• 16:25
  And then the second one is capital, right?
• 16:27
  I mean, you can up to a certain degree, you can throw money at
• 16:30
  something to, to, to accelerate production and roll out.
• 16:34
  And so, so I think, you know, the company is putting this in
• 16:39
  place to have that flexibility. And it's important to note that
• 16:44
  they may not tap it or they may not tap all of it.
• 16:46
  I mean, who knows, but it's up to them.
• 16:47
  It's up to their discretion. I would assume that given the
• 16:51
  run up in the stock price, the company wants to have this in
• 16:53
  place for flexibility. And what changes in terms of how
• 16:59
  the market perceives this is that, you know, in the past for
• 17:05
  ASD Space Mobile, you know, if the ATM was put in place and
• 17:09
  this is when you had I guess like it was more a retail
• 17:12
  ownership. And then of course a lot more
• 17:15
  uncertainty in the business just given the level of development,
• 17:19
  then the stock may have sold off quite a bit.
• 17:22
  Whereas now given where we are and people, I mean it's like
• 17:25
  very at least for retail shareholders, I can't say the
• 17:29
  same for most institutions, although there are a few who are
• 17:31
  pretty savvy. I think we all know the the menu
• 17:35
  of opportunities that are in front of us and all those
• 17:38
  require capital, right? And so now we've kind of shifted
• 17:43
  from the market reacting in a negative, visceral way that, Oh
• 17:48
  my gosh, it's Lucian. And then there's still
• 17:50
  uncertainty towards, hey, we're actually at this point of
• 17:53
  execution where more money actually helps.
• 17:56
  And even beyond that, there's these highly accretive
• 18:00
  opportunities to go execute against.
• 18:03
  But we need money. We need money to go do it.
• 18:05
  You have to spend money to make money, right?
• 18:07
  And so I think, you know, now you're seeing an adjustment in
• 18:12
  the mentality of the market and how it perceived these things.
• 18:15
  And yeah, so I think I think it's important to understand
• 18:20
  that because these, you know, I, I and to credit to like Rocket
• 18:25
  Lab shareholders, like I think they understand this quite well
• 18:27
  because you know, Rocket Lab in that situation, the company is
• 18:32
  trying to build an end to end space company and they're doing
• 18:35
  that through, I mean, you can't, you can only do so much
• 18:37
  organically. They're going out and buying
• 18:39
  great assets and they're taking advantage of, you know, a, a, a
• 18:45
  currency that's rewarding them for those applications.
• 18:48
  And so they're, they put in place an ATM, they're doing
• 18:51
  acquisitions and you know, and if it's the strategy and then
• 18:55
  they, those acquisitions, you know, from the perspective that
• 18:59
  investors should be value accretive and highly strategic.
• 19:03
  And so I think we can all agree that the one acquisition, I
• 19:07
  guess the company has done 2 acquisition.
• 19:08
  The one key acquisition though is, is Legato.
• 19:12
  That was highly accretive, right?
• 19:14
  And so, you know, we've talked about whether Legato is worth
• 19:18
  about a billion, 15 billion, you know, once fully deployed, of
• 19:21
  course that spectrum is highly valuable.
• 19:24
  And so having the capital and currency able to do those
• 19:29
  acquisitions is important. I, I talked about Firefly
• 19:32
  yesterday. You know, we saw them actually
• 19:35
  go issue stock and acquire a business on defense side.
• 19:39
  I think it's like defense software.
• 19:41
  I, I didn't really get a chance to, to read through that.
• 19:43
  But in that case it I feel pretty bad for those guys
• 19:47
  because you know, they, they missed 1/4 and then they
• 19:50
  announced this deal with the stock down pretty significantly.
• 19:54
  And so they they suffered unfortunately more dilution than
• 19:57
  they could have if they had put up a good quarter and then
• 20:00
  issued stock at 4550 versus I guess in the 20s.
• 20:05
  But yeah, just wanted to get people together to kind of go
• 20:09
  over what is ATM means, which I think.
• 20:12
  As Tut would say, trust the process.
• 20:14
  I mean, the company's has been a good steward of capital.
• 20:18
  And you know, the stock price, we joke like I know some people
• 20:23
  are upset that the stock price is down, what, 4%?
• 20:26
  But yeah, we haven't been at this price since Friday or
• 20:31
  actually early Monday. So anyway, yeah, it if, if the
• 20:37
  company is raising money, you know, it's probably for good
• 20:39
  reason If they're not raising money, they want to have it in
• 20:42
  place. You know, you want to have that
• 20:44
  flexibility in case we do hit the $500 mark or $100 mark,
• 20:48
  whatever it is, right. I think from a being a fiduciary
• 20:52
  of the company and a responsible board, you do want to have these
• 20:57
  things in place for growth company that's at this stage
• 20:59
  where the capital needs are pretty high until you get to the
• 21:03
  point where you're generating snippy and cash flows to cover
• 21:06
  your needs, which you know I think is going to start kicking
• 21:09
  in over 2026. And as a reminder, I think once
• 21:13
  we have 25 satellites in place that should cover our operating
• 21:16
  expense burn. But then you know obviously
• 21:18
  there's going to continue to be you know capital expenditures
• 21:21
  until we launch the full commercial service, which at
• 21:26
  that point I think we can all safely say we'll be self
• 21:30
  funding. But anyway, I guess the, the
• 21:33
  last thing I would note is that the other piece of news today
• 21:36
  that came out is Scotiabank. They, they have a price target
• 21:41
  of 4290, which they've kept for quite some time.
• 21:44
  Interestingly, you know, I've, I've followed the reports that
• 21:49
  that analyst has published and I've talked with people who've
• 21:51
  talked with them and, and that research analyst was quite
• 21:54
  bullish early on and then a big proponent of the company.
• 21:57
  But then I guess over the last few quarters, they turn
• 22:02
  markedly, you know, bearish. And for what I understand,
• 22:06
  there's a number of short sellers that have successfully
• 22:09
  converted this guy. And so when you look at his
• 22:12
  research, what it was literally a few months ago to where it is
• 22:16
  today, it's like night and day difference.
• 22:18
  It's like the guy fully understood the thesis and gone
• 22:21
  forward. And then for whatever reason,
• 22:23
  maybe commercial reasons, maybe Scotiabank, you know, services,
• 22:27
  some of these hedge funds are short now he's like negative.
• 22:30
  So today he came out with a report which was he downgraded
• 22:33
  to the company from neutral to sell.
• 22:36
  And obviously if you have a stock price targeted 40 to 90,
• 22:41
  then you know, that's probably not a bad thing to do if you
• 22:43
  truly believe in that. But anyway, you're going to have
• 22:46
  these research analysts that are going to kind of go back and
• 22:49
  forth. You know, I would like to say
• 22:51
  for the research analysts that are neutral or that are
• 22:54
  negative, that's room for them to eventually change to upgrade
• 22:57
  in future when they're wrong, which I think this guy is wrong.
• 23:00
  But but yeah, that was that's another piece of news that was
• 23:04
  out today. But but I think, you know, for
• 23:07
  the stock can be down what, 5% At one point we were down just
• 23:10
  two to 3%. Again, this is potential
• 23:13
  dilution up to 3%. That dilution, by the way,
• 23:16
  changes like if the stock, you know, the company is not
• 23:19
  necessarily selling stock today, but you know, if the if the
• 23:23
  stock price were to rise, I'm just, yeah, we're just making
• 23:26
  this up. But if stock were to go to, if
• 23:27
  the stock were to double and go to 140 dollars, then the implied
• 23:31
  dilution is 1 1/2% if they sell there.
• 23:33
  So obviously it's like it's a moving thing depending on if and
• 23:37
  when the company decides to sell stock.
• 23:40
  But anyway, that is my brief talk today.
• 23:47
  I don't know if anybody has any questions or let's see here.
• 23:55
  I'm just looking at some of the comments, someone saying that
• 24:01
  will dampen the short squeeze. I don't OK, I don't, I don't
• 24:06
  actually know if there's I mean, yeah, I'm sure some short
• 24:08
  sellers have been covering, but I don't think it really matters
• 24:12
  at this point. I mean, there's and the the data
• 24:16
  feed I get for short interest has been kind of walky recently,
• 24:20
  so I'm being able to get updates.
• 24:21
  But up till Friday, short interest have basically stayed
• 24:26
  the same. And so I don't think much of
• 24:29
  this run up has been short covering.
• 24:30
  I think it's been like Ernest spine or, you know, whether it's
• 24:35
  long only or momentum people or retail, but I think it's been
• 24:39
  buying. I don't think it's really been
• 24:41
  driven by short covering, which, you know, God bless the shorts.
• 24:45
  We like to use them as a whipping horse and whipping boy.
• 24:49
  And like, you know, we like to play.
• 24:51
  I mean, I I like to play with them because I think it's quite
• 24:54
  entertaining. And during it's very quiet times
• 24:58
  when there's a birth of news, I think it's always fun to just,
• 25:01
  you know, pick it shorts. But honestly, like they actually
• 25:04
  are pretty important for us. You know, they were they were
• 25:08
  bad for the company in terms of raising the cost of capital back
• 25:11
  when the stock price was lower. But now I don't know, they're
• 25:15
  just kind of a interesting anomaly, right?
• 25:17
  And you know, they continue to lose money and they they
• 25:21
  continue to galvanized, you know, show holders by spreading
• 25:24
  fun. And so it, it's similar to
• 25:27
  Reddit when people are pretty negative, usually that's a sign
• 25:32
  to add risk to AC6 bowl to buy. And then when short sellers
• 25:38
  start taking victory laps like they did at 36 to 40, they're a
• 25:42
  great signal. Like I, I joke about Pivotal
• 25:44
  capital and or not a capital, whoever that guy is with, but
• 25:48
  the Japanese were criminal. That's his profile.
• 25:50
  But when those guys like start doing victory laps and say I
• 25:54
  told you so, that's when you like back up the truck because
• 25:58
  they are great bottom signals. And I think it's important like
• 26:01
  to understand that any high growth company, you're going to
• 26:04
  have these types of drawdowns. You're going to have 30%
• 26:08
  drawdown, just like reformed trader and you know, called
• 26:10
  successfully. It should just, you know, it's,
• 26:14
  it's not a bug, it's actually a feature like that happens to all
• 26:17
  those companies where there's some like uncertainty or doubt
• 26:21
  or people. I mean, it can be as simple as
• 26:23
  you have one or two large shoulders that are rebalancing
• 26:25
  it or looking to cut risk and, and so it moves the stock or you
• 26:30
  have sector beta beta, meaning like just movement of their
• 26:33
  overall markets. And every company has
• 26:35
  correlation, some level of beta and, and you know, like, well to
• 26:39
  the markets. And so you're going to have this
• 26:42
  like washing machine where sometimes the entire entire
• 26:44
  sector moves down or entire sector moves up.
• 26:47
  And so I think shorts play an interesting role and they keep
• 26:51
  us entertained, but I don't think they've actually been a
• 26:54
  big part of this rally. And unfortunately for them, you
• 26:59
  know, they had the opportunity to, I think it was quite funny.
• 27:02
  I'd already covered this before, but for those that didn't hear,
• 27:06
  you know, when Vodafone CEO came to visit Midland and an
• 27:10
  interesting nugget from what I heard is that she came to
• 27:13
  actually sign FM one the satellite because it was it was
• 27:17
  done. And I think one of the cool
• 27:18
  things that a bell and management team are doing to
• 27:23
  really, you know, make these M and OS feel like they're part of
• 27:27
  the partnership, which they they truly are, because the service
• 27:29
  would be nothing without them. But inviting, inviting
• 27:32
  leadership to see the final product and personally sign each
• 27:35
  one of these satellites. I think it's really cool.
• 27:38
  But yeah, it was funny when the company tweeted that, hey,
• 27:41
  Vodafone's here and they're visiting like all these short
• 27:44
  sellers on Twitter were like, oh, see, like nothing's
• 27:48
  happening. They're not.
• 27:49
  They didn't get it shipped and they're just, they're spreading.
• 27:52
  They're just PR ING this to to cover their ass and create some
• 27:56
  type of positive message when in fact nothing is happening.
• 27:58
  When in fact, it was the opposite.
• 28:01
  They actually invited Vodafone over because the satellite was
• 28:04
  ready for the executive to sign and because it was ready for
• 28:08
  shipment and, and ready to go. And so the stock like did that
• 28:11
  boarding short sellers were like, you know, doing victory
• 28:14
  laps. Reddit was like losing their
• 28:16
  shit. And of course the stock wouldn't
• 28:17
  even down a bunch. I mean, it's down a dollar or
• 28:19
  two. And then lo and behold, the the
• 28:21
  satellite's ready to ship. And, and the stock went from,
• 28:25
  gosh, let me take a look. I know I've got a bad memory,
• 28:28
  but it was just last week. I mean, the stock went down to
• 28:31
  like 4849 and then all of a sudden with the news, it closed
• 28:36
  the week at 60, basically 68, right?
• 28:38
  So yeah, I mean, if you're a short seller, you, you may,
• 28:44
  you're making your, I don't know wherever you're shorted, but
• 28:46
  you're making your 4% you should be covering right now.
• 28:48
  This is your opportunity. But because I think as I
• 28:53
  mentioned before, at least for retail shareholders and folks
• 28:58
  who know the AST space mobile story very well and ATM is not a
• 29:01
  bad thing. It's actually a tool that the
• 29:04
  company uses. They're not going to go out and
• 29:06
  do a marketed equity offering ever or I, I won't say ever.
• 29:10
  Maybe they'll do that eventually to bring in more institutions.
• 29:13
  But you know, aside from curable notes, which you actually have
• 29:18
  to go market those from equity perspective, this is just a
• 29:22
  normal course. And I think as, as I said, you
• 29:26
  know, there's a number of opportunities for them to pursue
• 29:29
  and that's why they're pretty in place.
• 29:30
  So that's that. But anyway, that concludes my
• 29:34
  talk. I hope that's helpful.
• 29:37
  I guess I'll post this on Reddit to get people off the Cliff,
• 29:42
  which as we we joked, I mean, we're at a stock price not seen
• 29:46
  since Monday morning. So anyway, I hope everyone's
• 29:52
  doing well and yeah, well, I'm, I'm excited to see I, I do think
• 29:58
  and when I've looted this thing before, but I think we have like
• 30:00
  some big news that's going to be dropping I need any day now.
• 30:03
  And in particular, I think 2 MN OS, one starts with the letter
• 30:08
  V, the other one starts in the letter B.
• 30:11
  And you can figure out from the 50 plus that we have, I think
• 30:14
  the commercial definitive agreements are, are coming very
• 30:17
  soon. And so, yeah, that's going to
• 30:20
  happen. But anyway, thanks for joining.
• 30:24
  I actually got to go to write down this appointment here
• 30:26
  shortly. So you had to cut this off, but
• 30:29
  maybe I'll be back later when we have our positive news, whether
• 30:33
  that's today or tomorrow and the day after or or imminently,
• 30:37
  which I know people like to use that that word, but thanks for
• 30:40
  doing it. Take care.
• 30:42
  Thanks for listening to the AM AST Space Mobile podcast.
• 30:46
  If you enjoyed this episode and you'd like to help support the
• 30:49
  podcast, please share it with others, post about it on social
• 30:52
  media, or leave a rating and review.
• 30:55
  To catch all the latest news about AST Space Mobile, make
• 30:58
  sure to subscribe. Thanks again and I'll see you
• 31:01
  next time. We're doing something very, very
• 31:07
  big and I think with this technology we can really affect
• 31:10
  billion lives. AFT Space Global is the only
• 31:13
  company that has good technology to deliver cellular broadband
• 31:17
  connectivity directly from space to do everyday smartphone.
• 31:22
  People will just basically turn their phone and be seamless,
• 31:25
  regardless of where you are. We don't want the user even to
• 31:28
  know that it's connected by satellite.
• 31:31
  Our role is to bring this into reality, always in partnership
• 31:34
  with the animal. Listen, Waffles.