Latest / AST SpaceMobile Podcast / Kook's Weekly - December 14

Transcript

Kook's Weekly - December 14 · AST SpaceMobile Podcast

0:06
This is the AST Space Mobile podcast and we.
0:11
Just basically come your phone be seamless regardless of where
0:14
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, let me just give it a SEC and also just check the chat and
0:33
see if people tell me it's working.
0:40
I don't know. The last one all of a sudden
0:41
just showed everyone getting kicked off.
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So Elon didn't realize I was actually about to compliment
0:47
him, which is ironic, before he shut me down while proclaiming
0:52
the importance of freedom of speech.
0:54
And so it looks like people are saying it's all good.
0:58
OK, great. So let's start again.
1:00
The thing we started with is really just this high level
1:03
aspect which I think is really important.
1:05
One thing I always ask my team when when we're looking at
1:07
investments is just zoom out and ask is this a strategic asset?
1:12
And so really to me, the definition of a strategic asset
1:16
is one that someone else needs to buy to either pursue an
1:21
important new business or be relevant versus something that's
1:25
just kind of a cash flow based investment or a point solution
1:28
where no one necessarily really cares.
1:30
And you know, I've said this many times, but I think what
1:32
happened, the big surprise for the Mag 7 is that you had, you
1:37
know, some billionaire hobbyists by appearance build these space
1:42
companies that masqueraded sort of as, you know, build a super
1:46
yacht, build a space company, nothing to see here.
1:49
And then you wake up and you have these globally important
1:53
businesses all of a sudden. And, you know, two weeks ago
1:57
when we saw Sam Altman say or revealed that he was considering
2:01
buying a space business, I think that was a wake up call for a
2:06
lot of people where they had this kind of oh, shit moment of
2:10
is this strategic? And this was always my belief,
2:13
both both on SpaceX too, is that there was more to me that meets
2:18
the eye to these space businesses.
2:21
And Bezos himself when he had that interview now at this
2:24
point, it was a couple months back, you know, very he's very
2:27
calm guy. He didn't have to prove anything
2:28
to anyone. And he's not raising money.
2:30
He funded it all himself. And he, you know, I'm very
2:33
clearly set. I think this is a, you know, one
2:34
or $2 trillion opportunity. And a lot of people in the
2:39
audience, including me, would, would probably think, well, how
2:43
and why, you know, a lot of people look at launch and think
2:47
it's maybe a small market. That's certainly what I thought.
2:50
And I don't know that many market participants really got
2:54
their head around the telecom opportunity until maybe recently
2:57
with Starlink. And then now we're, we're really
3:00
quickly learning about the opportunity with space, space
3:04
data centers and other things. And actually, I was just as I
3:07
was out Christmas caroling, one of the other dads works at
3:11
NVIDIA and I was asking him and what do you think?
3:14
And, and he was explaining to me he's like, well, I don't know,
3:16
it's a lot of power you need. And he was explaining to me
3:18
these racks, you'd just been with a in A1 MW rack and just
3:22
was telling me how crazy they were with all the piping.
3:25
And he's like most of the weight is just coolant and these just a
3:30
big water cooling facility with some chips inside.
3:33
Until we were talking about this a little bit, he didn't have a,
3:35
he didn't have a real strong point of view on this.
3:37
But I did say he knows ASTS cause of course that's what I
3:40
talk about around the campfire. And he said when I told him that
3:43
they already had the ability to do 120 kilowatts of power, his
3:46
eyeballs, he's like, wow, that's a lot less than a MW though.
3:51
You know, there's a lot of questions we have to answer when
3:53
it comes to space based data centers, but answer those
3:59
questions we will. And so then also kind of
4:02
stepping back about this other thing that Peter Lammark
4:04
retweeted from Vodafone was also very telling where on the
4:08
history wall of Vodafone ASTS appears three times.
4:13
And so we're we're strategic asked.
4:17
So getting to where the rubber meets the road.
4:19
I know a lot of us saw this tweet from the company that came
4:22
out just an hour or two ago with A and frankly a beautiful
4:26
picture of FM One. Yeah, FM One in fairing ready to
4:31
launch. They've handed it over to the
4:32
launch provider, which is really a way to say, hey guys, we've
4:36
done our part. If there's any type of delay
4:41
that's really on the launch provider at this point for
4:43
reasons that are outside of our control and should be pretty
4:48
soon. So maybe in the next week or
4:50
two, we get that launch and we're not particularly excited
4:53
about is actually what might happen in between now an FM One
4:57
launch. I personally believe that
5:00
there's a chance that FM 2 get shipped.
5:04
I think that that's going on New Glen three could be wrong, but
5:09
that's just what I think. And I think there's a very real
5:11
possibility that Bluebird 8 and 10, which is really kind of like
5:15
a three shot and then 11 and 13, which is another three shot.
5:20
Those might get shipped very shortly as well.
5:24
Now, I don't know that I'm not trying to get people all
5:27
excited, but I'm, I'm personally very cognizant that the risk to
5:32
the upside of those things is near and present.
5:34
And so for for me, you know, you might well know Cook, what does
5:37
that mean? Well, that's where I'm pretty
5:39
cognizant on things like do I want to sell covered calls next
5:42
week? You know, what do I want to do?
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And I, I did buy some ASTX, which I use this very, very much
5:50
as a trading vehicle. Very small size compared to my,
5:53
my core position. I see when I mean small, I mean
5:58
.1%. So we're talking like really on
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the edges. It's really just so I can feel
6:04
my heartbeat with excitement with some of these little
6:07
things, but economically has zero influence on my actual
6:10
position whatsoever. Just so that people contact set.
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But that's kind of I think is that this could happen this
6:17
week. It's a good week for it to
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happen. And I also think that golden
6:20
gnome could get announced. And so in the 2026 NDAA, which
6:24
is the appropriations bill to fund the the military that got
6:28
housed by the House and he has to go to the Senate and then
6:32
Trump will sign it. And I think that there's going
6:34
to be a real push to have that done before Christmas.
6:38
My my belief, again could be wrong, is that that is what
6:43
unlocks some of these big golden Dome contracts.
6:46
And I think that ASTS is the recipient of one of these big
6:49
golden Dome contracts, but we'll talk about that next.
6:52
Another thing that caught my attention this week which is
6:55
neat is this post by ASTS investors which is a Twitter
7:00
account which if you could believe it they tweet about ASTS
7:04
despite their handle being ASTS investors.
7:07
And they highlighted that a new job opening had just come online
7:11
and that was for someone to help scale the manufacturing process
7:16
for the composite satellite buses.
7:19
So for those that are not as deep in the weeds, the FM one,
7:25
FM 2, use a metallic structure for the spacecraft and weigh it
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weighs more and then a Bluebird 8, 8 plus you're going to use
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composites. And to our knowledge, the
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composites have been the critical path item, which is to
7:41
say that progress could not move forward until those composites
7:44
were received. We tracked and saw composites
7:47
being dropped off with the Antonoff plane and we believe
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that they are now receiving a continuous stream of these from
7:54
their vendors, which is good and won't say why we know that, but
7:58
we think we do. And so then seeing the company
8:02
hire for the capability to bring this in house is important
8:05
because this is a critical path item.
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We want to have as much as we can vertically integrated.
8:10
So we control our destiny. And here we see a job opening,
8:12
which tells you just that. The company's not the only one
8:19
keeping us updated. We also had AT&T directly this
8:24
week say hey, space mom check it and then directed us to Firstnet
8:29
at a very specific time to share a testing update with us.
8:33
And then sure enough, first that actually produced, you know,
8:39
some cool videos showing a bunch of first responders testing out
8:43
the equipment, showing that it worked.
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Very exciting stuff. And what's great, and people
8:51
might not appreciate this, but it's just a very important point
8:53
to make is that the company's always very deliberate when they
8:56
have rule technical details to share.
9:01
They have those releases done with their partners to add that
9:06
credibility and and you know, verified results.
9:10
So going to the Short Pumpers, like I mentioned earlier, there
9:14
are Christmas carolers of motivation.
9:18
They've been lately saying, hey, this company looks a lot like
9:21
Nikola. You know, how do you trust these
9:22
results, blah, blah, blah. Well, the point is like Nikola,
9:27
I don't get too sideline Nikola, but like you had this FOMO where
9:29
some idiots at GM were just kind of like scared of missing out
9:32
and then didn't didn't do any of their work.
9:34
Versus by contrast, AST space mobile has been working with
9:37
their partners for five plus years and along the way have had
9:41
progress press release by those partners and multiple partners.
9:46
And it's not just some fly by net company.
9:48
It's AT&T, Verizon, Rakuten, Vodafone, First Net, which is a
9:54
separate legal entity but is controlled by AT&T and they're
9:58
all showing this work. And we're having this feedback
10:00
from the first first responders, which is great.
10:03
So people would know that these tests, you know, do show it
10:06
working outside. Well, guess where first
10:08
responders are generally working outside the natural, natural
10:13
place for them to try technology.
10:16
And also Block 1 satellites are not as powerful as the next
10:20
generation satellites that are coming.
10:23
It's just a function of size matters.
10:25
And FM 1 is going to be much, much bigger than the other
10:30
satellites, which with a phased array means that the beam
10:32
forming is much more advanced and sophisticated.
10:35
And so with low band spectrum you yours, you will get indoor
10:39
coverage at least through one wall.
10:42
But in any respect, getting broadband service from a
10:46
satellite is itself a very good thing.
10:53
So then first, that's something we've talked about for quite a
10:55
while and you know, it's kind of become the joke of, you know,
10:58
first net soon. But what's important about it is
11:03
the the validation of the company for 1/2 frankly
11:08
fulfilling the mission of the company.
11:09
And so this will save lives. That's great.
11:11
You know, if you're starting a company and you have a great
11:13
economic case, well, that's what you're supposed to do.
11:15
But to the extent you're going to save a bunch of lives is
11:18
certainly something that should make people feel good.
11:20
I just remember this is a good time for me to put my jets hat
11:23
on. So let me just put my jets hat
11:25
on fulfill the prophecy. You're welcome world and just
11:30
visualize me right now said buying a microphone looking at
11:33
my weekly as I have a written in Microsoft OneNote.
11:36
We're in a jets hat. That's that's the visual I want
11:40
to give Corey as he slips into bed tonight.
11:43
But the important thing with Firstnet is it should be a big
11:47
contract. You have 7 million or so Subs
11:50
that are going to be paying premium rates.
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It's going to unlock a ton of spectrum for one.
11:56
So the way this is working is this is going to utilize
11:59
Firstnet, Firstnet spectrum. But when it's not being used,
12:02
then AT&T has the ability to use that spectrum for commercial
12:07
uses. So it's actually quite
12:09
interesting. Katzy is the person that brought
12:11
this to all of our attention. And now let's do let's do some
12:14
math with Endless Capital who is definitely not known for for
12:19
being quiet and calm and that's why we love him.
12:22
And so his math seven and a half million devices ARPU of 10
12:26
bucks, which is which is low, although he might be doing net
12:30
said $900 million of annual revenue.
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And so then when you put a margin on that and then put a
12:36
30X multiple on it, that's 20 dollars, $20 billion of value
12:42
and that's $50 per share. And I think that's about right.
12:46
That's that's kind of the math I think is going to be applicable
12:49
for First Net. That's the math I think is going
12:51
to be applicable to Golden Dome. So I think these things because
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they're going to be such extremely high multiple lines of
13:00
business because it's government and very stable, I think these
13:03
things are going to drive 50 bucks of value per share at a
13:07
clip. It adds up real fast.
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Now let's check in with Kevin Chen on on his math.
13:14
And so we've actually had people disclose these numbers.
13:18
And so June 26th we have Muhammad Beg of First Net AT&T,
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there's a video out by him and he talks about it.
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It's called the ASTS initiative. And the current services are
13:31
between $20 and $100 per month and they're targeting a price of
13:35
about $20.00 per month for AST. So these ARPU's are pretty well
13:42
triangulated. And then it's about the uptake.
13:43
And I truly believe that first net users are going to have a
13:48
very high lay level of uptake of this service, which is great and
13:52
drive demand and it's going to validate it even more so.
13:56
And again, it's a big spectrum unlock.
13:59
In the world of spectrum unlocks, we also had Legato FCC
14:03
application file. So we've been waiting for this.
14:06
And then we started to get visibility that this was really
14:10
gated by our SES filing, making sure that the comment period was
14:14
closed before we then filed another FCC application.
14:19
And it's pretty uneventful. Honestly, I read all the filings
14:22
and I don't know that I saw like frankly that much to report on.
14:26
It's a it's an amendment to Legato's current license.
14:31
They're saying that, you know, they're going to deploy without
14:34
a spectrum on ASTS spacecraft and please approve it.
14:40
Thank you. And so hopefully it will be
14:44
pretty straightforward. And I have the link to the SEC
14:47
filings if anyone wants to read that.
14:50
It does give us a little bit more insight in terms of how the
14:52
constellation will look until the next tweet is Katzie
14:57
breaking it down? And so we've got 96 satellites
15:01
that will be this mid band constellation.
15:03
It's going to be weaved right in with our low band constellation.
15:07
This starts to give us beamforming capability to have
15:10
incredible coverage. And so in the DD dock, which I
15:13
almost actually am complete updating, but there are these
15:17
slides really they're just catsy tweets.
15:20
It showed just the difference of what happens when you project
15:22
low band beams and then mid band beams in terms of coverage,
15:27
amplifying data rates and having a very robust service.
15:31
So it all works kind of as a Symphony of radio frequency
15:35
being put on the ground and the legato spectrum is going to be
15:39
very important. It seems like a lifetime ago.
15:44
And so again, I think a lot of people share this, but you know,
15:47
what we, what we experience on a week sometimes can feel like a
15:52
lifetime. And it really does feel like a
15:54
lifetime ago that we had the UBS fireside chat and Scott gave us
16:02
a lot of information. For one, just when thinking
16:05
about again, the strategic nature of the business, we have
16:08
Scott saying there's not an operator around the world that
16:11
doesn't want to meet with us. And that I that I believe, but
16:14
it just goes to show you who's driving the bus here.
16:17
DAS are a function of what ASTS wants to sign, and they've
16:21
signed some big ones, but there's going to be a lot more
16:23
coming. Right now.
16:25
Obviously, this company has different priorities.
16:29
Getting these satellites up in the air is the necessary
16:31
condition for DAS to mean anything.
16:33
And so they're working on that, which I'm sure is just making
16:36
their M&O partners that are in wait all more anxious to make
16:40
sure that their phone call gets picked up first.
16:43
And if you're wondering why, I would just ask you to go back to
16:46
the weekly from 2 weeks ago maybe where there's that VSAP
16:50
market study which is really interesting, notwithstanding the
16:53
mobile XCEO responding to me on Twitter saying oh your market
16:57
studies can be wrong. Thanks douchebag.
17:01
No shit. But when your competitor puts
17:03
out a market study that directly shows why they might have
17:07
rendered themselves obsolete through catastrophic
17:09
misinvestment in technology and fumbling the ball with their
17:13
very own spectrum going to their competitor, you might want to
17:16
listen to their market study, which shows that the market is
17:18
going to be way the hell bigger than they had ever anticipated.
17:23
And that should be a wake up call.
17:25
And so these market studies, while they're not going to be
17:27
accurate to the, to the T, they're directionally telling
17:31
you lots of market sentiment. And so the via set study was an
17:37
interview, I think it was 12,000 people.
17:39
And it's, you know, getting a good cross section of people
17:41
around the world in terms of what they care about.
17:43
And the the thing that the M and OS are going to really see is
17:47
never mind the ARPU bump, it's the reduction in churn and the
17:51
ability to grab subscribers from other M and Ms. because
17:55
consumers value this. The perception of how important
17:59
satellite coverage is is far greater than the actual need
18:04
state. Need state being high anyway.
18:07
The perception of the need state is very, very high, which is why
18:12
consumers want it so badly. I'm the type of person that sort
18:16
of lives my life to solve for the edge case.
18:19
And so I'm thinking about the scenario when I really need to
18:22
make a phone call. And that's how I believe a lot
18:24
of other people too. So interestingly, Scott also
18:28
says very specifically, we're putting more power into orbit
18:32
than anyone else. Well, that's really going to the
18:35
AI data center use case and it's also going to military use
18:37
cases. And just think, why is Scott
18:39
being so specific with that? And is it because, you know,
18:43
some random cartoon Twitter accounts started, you know,
18:45
berating them about this and we forced the company's hand?
18:49
The answer is yes. We forced their hand.
18:52
Like the market forces, the Fed, the space bomb is undefeated.
18:55
And it's probably because something happened.
18:57
Scott's not a dope. He's certainly not listening to
19:00
me when I say jump. He's definitely not saying how
19:02
high. He's saying delete your account,
19:04
Kook. But there's something going on
19:07
of why he brought that to everyone's attention.
19:09
He also confirmed that there's 13 launches scheduled for 2026.
19:12
That's cool. And then this is I mean, if you
19:15
hear one thing for me tonight, it's he specifically talks about
19:19
other things ASTS can do. He specifically says and
19:25
mentions it's radar capabilities is what bought brought the
19:28
company into the Golden Dome discussion, specifically saying
19:35
they are involved in Golden Dome and why they're involved in
19:38
Golden Dome. And then he goes on to talk
19:41
about how they have a separate Micron facility they're spinning
19:44
up for government programs. Huh, interesting.
19:54
And then he says the government wants government capabilities
19:57
that ride on commercial platforms.
19:58
And he talks about how each program of record is $100
20:00
million per year, and they're currently working on 10.
20:03
Then he talks about how the production is almost up to six
20:05
satellites per month and that they'll disclose that when it's
20:08
done because he knows it's a big deal.
20:10
Talks about the 90% margins. This is an issue I don't want
20:13
people getting hung up on because it's a really a function
20:16
of net versus gross revenue reporting.
20:19
I'll, I have a slide on this at the new DD dock and I'll just
20:22
share that when it comes out. But the simple math is ASTS is
20:25
going to report net revenues. And so if I pay 20 bucks a month
20:30
to AT&T, yeah, that's, that's the gross revenue of the
20:33
company. ASTS is only going to report the
20:35
$10.00 of their revenue share. And so if they reported the full
20:40
20 as gross and then had the profit share coming out, their
20:43
EBITDA margins would be 50% Masamanos not 90%.
20:48
When you report net revenue, which is reasonable way to do
20:51
it, you're going to report much lower revenue, but a much higher
20:56
EBITDA percentage and, and the same EBITDA in both scenarios.
21:01
But that's why the 90% margins are accurate.
21:04
It's because that revenue share represents their CAC, their
21:07
customer acquisition cost. It's, you know, in a way you
21:11
would, you could argue all day about this, but it's important
21:14
just to understand what's economically happening.
21:16
It's a it's a genius model to effectively push your CAC all to
21:22
AT&T, who's going to be able to acquire customers far more
21:25
efficiently than you, blah blah blah.
21:28
So this UBS call was great. Let me just go through some of
21:31
the links. There's 5 links I posted related
21:33
to this. So there's the replay.
21:35
I listened to this twice. I think most people listen to
21:37
this multiple times. And then let's just check in
21:41
with some other notes with this. So yeah, ASTS investors get in
21:45
this account for some reason continues to post about ASTS
21:49
despite their handles name and just repeated what I just said
21:52
about the government use cases. Let's check in with Regrum,
21:56
which it's unbelievable to me that I only realized that his
22:00
name was murder spelled backward recently.
22:02
It's just why you shouldn't listen to me.
22:03
I'm not a very high Q individual.
22:06
He did also post the whole thing on his Spotify empire.
22:11
And then Kevin Shen of course, comes out with like 15 pages of
22:15
notes because that's why we have Kev by.
22:17
And so let's just quickly scan what he said.
22:21
So they have the flexibility to go to multiple launch providers.
22:25
They're hitting the six per month cadence.
22:27
There's lots of DAS, more power in orbit than anyone else.
22:32
This is the Golden Dome part. Again, their large array allows
22:35
them to do your radar to support main strategic capabilities for
22:38
the US, which has brought them into the Golden Dome
22:40
conversation, their dual use capabilities, which is exciting.
22:48
What else we got basically not a whole lot more to report on
22:53
there, but you know, nice, nice to hear this stuff repeated.
22:57
And then what I really glommed onto and I have some more
23:02
research, research slides that I've put together to this point.
23:08
It's around just how big the market could be.
23:12
And so Scott's been really clear said we're building this company
23:15
because we believe there's 10s of billions of dollars of
23:18
revenue capability. And when you sit down these
23:20
panels, the other companies say, well, we don't know about the
23:23
term and you know, it's fine. You know, they from a legacy
23:27
perspective with their narrow band solutions, they have been
23:30
10 limited because they have very high friction services.
23:32
And so there's, you know, the change in the world in terms of
23:35
demand for data. There's also a change in how
23:37
this is deemed delivered. So low friction model versus a
23:41
high friction model. And ASTS took a bet full ball of
23:45
wax saying we think it's a big market.
23:47
So we're building really, really big satellites, super expensive
23:52
constellation, you know, $3 billion.
23:55
And we believe there's a big market.
23:58
So once we're up, we're going to put that to a test.
24:01
And if it is big, we're actually going to be able to realize that
24:03
much money. And that's an important comment
24:05
to really reflect on, frankly. You want to, when you find a
24:11
company like this, you want to understand how the revenue model
24:14
works or how it scales. You know, do you have to push a
24:16
rock up a mountain or, you know, once you build a stadium, does,
24:20
you know, a crowd of 70,000 people just show up?
24:26
And it's important because there are a lot of people looking at
24:30
the current revenue and saying, well, I mean, this space mob,
24:33
these clowns, they think this company's going to do $4 billion
24:36
of revenue, you know, in 2027 and they did $14 million in Q4.
24:40
Look at these knuckleheads. How stupid can you be?
24:43
And it's just kind of like, well, well, why can't people be
24:48
nice? Is really what I'm thinking.
24:49
Like why, why, Why would you go to like hurling insults as
24:53
opposed to try to understand someone's perspective?
24:55
But it's pretty obvious when you're building a fixed cost
24:58
infrastructure, the revenue is not ratable.
25:02
You know, before Union Pacific had a lot of revenue, you had to
25:05
build the train track. Once you have the train track,
25:08
then you can move the cargo. And so right now we're building
25:10
the train track. And what's great is then you can
25:15
move all of the cargoes all at once on like a train, which
25:18
means that the revenue ramp should be, we'll find it, but it
25:22
should be dramatic. And so when I, when I hear that
25:27
10s of billions of dollars of revenue from Scott, that's not a
25:30
random number. I know Scott well enough.
25:32
He doesn't, he's not a random guy.
25:35
And so that's when I did some maths try to back into that.
25:38
And you can do that various ways, you know, they're obvious
25:44
ways. You look at the number of
25:45
covered subscribers on the M and OS, you assume attach rate, you
25:50
assume an ARPU. Then you realize there's IoT.
25:53
Some people have multiple devices.
25:55
I have, you know, look at my household, we have 355 AT&T
26:04
plans. Is that all soon to be 7?
26:09
Once my kids get phones and then my cars are connected, I have
26:12
multiple cars, blah, blah, blah. You know, like each, each family
26:17
is going to have more of these connected devices that I think
26:20
they probably realize. And so there's a multiplier
26:22
fact. Then there's things like Golden
26:23
Dome and Firstnet, which can each be a billion dollars.
26:26
Then there's Satco. Then there's the, you know, the
26:30
great, you know, developing world where God knows what.
26:34
But interestingly enough, that Vasat report shows that those
26:37
people actually have the highest demand and the highest
26:40
propensity to pay as a percent of their current ARPU.
26:43
So it's a lower ARPU, but they're willing to pay a lot to
26:45
get this service. And then you can kind of back
26:48
into, you know, is, is Scott right?
26:52
If you get to those steps of numbers, you can really start to
26:56
quickly justify a market cap of hundreds of billions of dollars.
27:00
And the other way to do the math is just look at the data
27:03
production rate of the company. And so company can, you know,
27:07
build lots of satellites, they can build multiple shells.
27:09
It's not limited to 243. That's what the current
27:12
application is. And then you can start to
27:13
actually think of how much data they're going to produce, assume
27:15
that it will get sold one way or another.
27:18
And that's another way to evaluate.
27:20
That's how I tried to value Legato spectrum is calculate the
27:23
spectrum, reuse the value of the data they can put down and
27:26
figure out how much revenue that should generate.
27:28
Triangulate that with how much revenue MN OS are generating
27:31
off, you know, their spectrum portfolios.
27:34
The numbers actually match. It's kind of cool.
27:36
And it gives me confidence that, you know, we're speaking the
27:41
same language. Scott and I we're, you know, we
27:43
both think there's a big opportunity and then just take a
27:46
look, you know, Google's introducing the first AI
27:48
glasses. You know, I do I see myself
27:53
wearing eye glasses. You know, it's ask myself, do I
27:56
see myself inducing glioblastoma?
27:58
No, I don't, but who knows? I, I was a late adopter of
28:02
Airpods for the same reason. I didn't want to give myself
28:04
brain cancer for fun. But you know, if this stuff
28:08
takes off, that's just one more device that needs connectivity.
28:11
And I think AI at the edge is, is going to be a thing.
28:15
More connectivity equals more use for satellites, more people
28:18
paying couple bucks a month and it adds up real fast.
28:23
And then what I think is so fascinating is when our
28:28
competitors actually tell us things about our company we
28:32
didn't know. And so in the FCC filings
28:36
related to the SCS application for AFT, we have the RWA, which
28:39
is the Rural Network Association complaining they don't, you
28:43
know, don't approve Asts because they will kill us.
28:48
Well, that that's not a reason to not approve the service.
28:51
You know, you got to make an argument that they're going to
28:53
interfere with your towers etcetera.
28:56
And they said that the problem is with ASTS, AT&T and Verizon
29:03
will not need to utilize expensive third party systems
29:06
which they pay handsomely. So unbeknownst to me when I'm in
29:11
the USI was not aware that I was not always on an AT&T system.
29:15
Never really thought about it until if I'm driving through,
29:17
you know, wherever I might be hitting some local rural
29:22
association tower. The RW as is an association of
29:26
local providers. So it's not literally I'm
29:28
hitting a rural wireless association tower, but those,
29:32
those people that have agreements back and forth.
29:36
And AT&T is spending between 1:00 and $200 million a year on
29:39
roaming fees. When I'm driving, you know, to
29:42
some random place using a, a third party tower, those will go
29:47
away because AT&T will just service me with Asts.
29:53
The rural telecom providers will still have to rely on AT&T for
29:57
roaming unless they strike a deal with Asts.
30:00
But this is the type of Tam discovery that I didn't know
30:03
about initially. We started, you know, dead spot.
30:06
That was the math. It's like, well, how how many
30:07
dead spots are there? What is existing wireless
30:10
coverage, these things. And then we started to realize
30:13
that no, the MN OS are going to pay capacity payments for
30:15
redundancy of their network, for surge capacity for a first net.
30:19
And then it's, you know, thinking, oh, wow, they're
30:22
talking about copper replacement.
30:24
They're going to decommission on economic towers.
30:28
And now we found out, you know, it's like pulling $100 million
30:31
bill from your couch. Now it's like, oh, no one told
30:34
us that they're paying these crazy roaming fees that will go
30:36
away with Asts. This is where the Tam just keeps
30:39
on going wild and goes back to the first thing we've talked
30:43
about what happens when you stumble upon a strategic asset.
30:47
And that's what Ampam Man and I talk about a lot is, you know,
30:50
this week we again got really excited about Golden Dome.
30:54
We think we have got this. I'm not a paid pumper, despite
30:59
the accusations. I actually don't know the paid
31:00
pumping business. I don't know if I'm missing out
31:02
on some great career opportunity, but it doesn't
31:05
strike me that that's a good way to make money.
31:07
So we just kind of self pump each other and we're talking in
31:10
this week and we're just kind of telling themselves, Can you
31:13
believe we backed into this? You know, we we made this
31:17
investment five years ago. We had no idea how this market
31:20
was going to evolve. And we just honestly cannot
31:23
believe our luck that it starts to look like the world is going
31:26
to need space based AI data centers.
31:28
And this is the company uniquely situated to win.
31:31
And then we, we, we think that this company is going to power
31:34
Golden Dome. That's really cool.
31:38
We didn't, we didn't have that in our bingo list five years
31:41
ago. That's what happens when you
31:42
have a strategic asset. They grow in importance.
31:46
They're a platform, they create opportunities for themselves.
31:50
It's a really good way to live your life is to own a strategic
31:54
platform and then just chill out.
31:57
And so then the other cool thing is just how all these other M
32:04
and OS have a really strong incentive to use us.
32:08
We are going to be a common layer across all the M and OS.
32:15
It now seemingly eliminates cross M&O roaming and we ourself
32:22
become the global roaming network.
32:25
And so it's a big deal and the company was always built to be a
32:30
carrier neutral solution until we're not doing what SpaceX is
32:36
doing, which is directly threatening the existing balance
32:43
of the M and OS. Elon could take the view, and I
32:47
don't know if I'd take that aside of him, that he could in
32:49
fact create a very successful M&O.
32:51
Not going to doubt that for a second.
32:53
That's an expensive proposition, though, and ASTS is a bet that
32:57
the incumbents, you know, sort of the empire will strike back.
33:01
And sometimes the empire does strike back.
33:03
You know, remind me all these fintechs in 2020 that took a
33:06
dent out of JP Morgan, basically?
33:08
Not JP Morgan's doing just fine. And so sometimes, you know, the
33:13
evil empire, you can hang around for quite some time.
33:16
And ASTS is enabling, you know, I don't want to call ATT the
33:19
evil empire because they gave me some free schwag, so they bought
33:24
me off for life. But I don't think that SpaceX is
33:29
going to find it very easy to go scale an MNL.
33:32
But in so even talking about that, there's certainly
33:36
alienating those MNS from wanting to work with them.
33:39
So now let's get to Golden Dome. And so Golden Dome seems to be
33:43
happening faster than the market is expecting.
33:46
And so general, I can't say his name.
33:50
Gut Lane said that Feinberg, who's the assistant Secretary of
33:56
Defense, founder of Cerberus is a quote, working really, really
34:02
hard to scale out the industrial base to expand the magazine
34:05
depth of our weapons and at the Golden Dome office as quote,
34:08
injected our requirements into that process.
34:12
And so they're they're moving on this.
34:16
And I still think that there was a hope to get a lot of this out
34:18
before Christmas. And that I believe is evolved
34:24
with this 2026 NDAA, the defense authorization spending bill,
34:30
which did pass the House and now has to go to the Senate and then
34:33
the president. So exciting stuff right there.
34:38
The military opportunities keep heating up.
34:40
So there's a tweet from Katzie and he found out that a bill
34:45
just dropped where this thing called T3 TL is back on the
34:48
menu. And it's actually, I don't even
34:50
know what that is, but it's something related to defense
34:53
that relates to us. And then, you know, we kind of
34:57
pit it though. And this is where it gets
34:59
actually pretty interesting about space based AI.
35:02
There's a lot of people fighting each other on the Internet over
35:05
this. Of course, 'cause that's what
35:06
Twitter is all about is to say something and then have a swarm
35:09
of people attack you immediately.
35:12
And so the Wall Street Journal helped put some fuel on this
35:16
fire by having an article about Bezos and Muss race to bring
35:21
data centers to space. So again, I was telling my wife
35:28
it's like, well, you know, space based data centers.
35:30
It's really just like me and Pam Mann, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and
35:37
Sundar and Eric Schmidt talking about this.
35:40
So just a bunch of knuckleheads that don't know what they're
35:42
doing. You just take a step back.
35:43
It's like literally the most important people on planet Earth
35:46
X myself and and and man are talking about this.
35:49
And yet all the people who have done nothing with their lives,
35:52
if any material substance in terms of progressing the
35:55
advancement of humans are all may Sayers.
35:58
And so it's like, I don't know, I might like listen to the guy
36:00
that figured out how to sell books on the Internet about his
36:04
views on space based inner centers.
36:06
And you know, he, he would probably have better information
36:10
than I. And so I've been digging into
36:12
this and it's pretty interesting.
36:13
I don't, I can't say that I, you know, again, who's the kook
36:15
report? Am I going to be the person
36:17
breaking through with some mathematical proof that shows
36:20
this is going to work? No, I'm not.
36:21
I'm going to be collecting a lot of notes from other people and
36:24
try to put it together. But what I would say is that is
36:28
this going to replace, you know, 100 MW data center overnight?
36:33
Probably not. Is it going to potentially add
36:36
capabilities for very high value and specific use cases related
36:41
to the military? That starts to make more sense.
36:46
Until now think about things like Golden Dome and I don't
36:49
know this, but all of a sudden I just had an epiphany.
36:51
Does it make sense to have a bunch of AI compute in orbit to
36:56
help with a super duper advanced ballistic missile targeting
37:01
system? That seems to make more sense.
37:04
If we're using these big arrays for radar purposes and tracking,
37:11
does it make sense to have some compute up there as well?
37:15
That's where I think this is going.
37:17
And so I started to realize that there's a very strong
37:22
possibility that ASTS with this new array of Micron facility
37:27
they're putting up in Midland. My suspicion is that this is not
37:31
necessarily going to be phased array antenna for
37:34
communications. It might be something on the
37:39
other side of the solar panel and it would make sense that
37:42
ASTS is uniquely situated to be putting up some GPUs as part of
37:46
an overall mesh for golden Dome where money really won't be an
37:50
object. Again, for a specific high value
37:53
use case. This starts to add up and I
37:59
don't know if I'm right, but I'm perfectly powered to have a view
38:06
and it's my money. And so I think that's what is
38:09
potentially going to happen. So I'm betting my money on it.
38:12
And if I'm wrong, I still have the original thing I bought,
38:15
which is worth, in my view, a lot more than what the current
38:17
price is. So then I have what's called
38:19
free optionality, which is cool. And so people can, you know,
38:23
slam us on the Internet for saying these things out loud,
38:26
fine, whatever. But for people who are pretty
38:29
interested in this company, trying to understand the
38:32
optionality that they're long in their investment, I think it's a
38:35
pretty interesting discussion to have You sometimes you are
38:38
willing to pay for an option, but it's better to get an option
38:42
for free. And so if you've done the work
38:44
and you believe that ASDS Space Mobile is a very exciting
38:47
telecom company that's worth, let's just say more.
38:51
And then you start to realize they have a really interesting
38:54
way to expand their business and expand their Tam with these
38:57
other use cases. Then that's a good thing to Oh,
39:02
and if you're wrong, it doesn't cost you anything and the
39:06
company's not going to pursue something that is wrong.
39:08
And so the only way you're wrong is if it literally just never
39:11
happens, in which case you didn't pay anything for it.
39:14
There's not capital at risk in this.
39:15
The company's not going to go build, build a speculative AI
39:18
data center constellation. That's going to be something
39:20
where a customer takes them to that, in which case by the time
39:23
you know for sure you're right, you already then are
39:26
economically right as opposed to a building and they will come
39:30
type of risk where then you can get killed on your investment.
39:34
Though it's interesting when you put it in that context and just
39:37
keep in mind when people are kind of slamming asses all too
39:41
speculative and blah, blah, blah.
39:43
Put it in context of you have your base case investment and
39:48
business that you're pursuing and then you have these
39:51
outgrowths of incredible high magnitude optionality for which
39:54
you're not paying for in my estimation.
39:57
And importantly, the company isn't having to put capital at
40:00
risk against those things. But then it goes to, I believe
40:03
that because the company is now building this dedicated Micron
40:06
facility and they talk about that in the exact same breath.
40:10
They talk about non communication use cases, radar
40:14
and Golden Dome. Call me crazy, but I'm putting
40:17
one-on-one together and say they were brought into business that
40:21
justifies that capital investment and that would make
40:25
sense based on how this company generally works.
40:31
So Regim did a nice tweet that says, did AST space mobile just
40:38
become an AIAI play? And this is where, you know, he
40:43
just pieces out all these other things we've learned.
40:46
And again, Scott said, quote, the add on opportunities are
40:49
really impressive. And you see that with all the
40:52
data center conversations in the last week or so, whether it's
40:55
communication services, non communication services to the US
40:57
government or the next generation of commercialization
41:00
of space will be in a great position to build that out.
41:05
Being vertically integrated and having this fantastic ecosystem
41:08
and then having an orbit architecture that is exciting.
41:12
And so then zooming out, why are we in a position to win?
41:20
We can generate over 100 kilowatts of power.
41:25
So that's a lot. That's already a big number.
41:28
And like I said at the beginning of one of the three spaces I had
41:32
today, I forget which one, if it's one of the dead ones, but
41:35
when I was just out with my friend who's at NVIDIA and I was
41:37
like kind of asking him his view and tell him I said, told him
41:41
again, AST Space Mobile can already do 100 kilowatts and you
41:44
kind of wow, that's a lot. So that will get attention.
41:49
So then you also have the thermal management.
41:52
And so you have ASTS has already really solved the way to radiate
41:57
the heat. They, they have incredible
41:59
thermal expansion on this because ASTS satellites are not
42:03
in sun synchronous orbit. They're going in and out of the
42:07
sun, although they will have an SSO shell as well.
42:12
But they've already solved this problem to have a giant
42:15
radiator, which is important. And then we already have the
42:19
backhaul solved and things like that.
42:23
So interesting things, but then we want to compare it to
42:26
Starlink and so Elon has been out giving us some numbers as
42:30
well. So Elon says that Starling V3,
42:33
which is their new big satellite, which they can't
42:36
launch yet because Starship crashes, says that Starling V3
42:40
will be 20 kilowatts. Again, ASTS based mobile we
42:43
believe is 120 kilowatts. And so then Elon is saying,
42:47
well, then they can basically rejigger that whole satellite to
42:51
get you 100 kilowatts if they get rid of the giant phased
42:54
array antennas. And so I'd be curious to know
42:56
what could AST Space Mobile do if it rejiggered its own mass to
43:01
optimize for that as well. And I don't know the answer to
43:05
that, but it was interesting that Elon is telling us how it
43:08
works for himself. And then and Penman also tweeted
43:12
out a really nice comparison between the two as well.
43:15
So like we said earlier, I personally think the military AI
43:21
opportunity is where this thing happens first.
43:24
And Katzie comes out with a really nice thread kind of
43:27
talking about that, where the the use cases and the problem
43:32
statements of the military are pretty specific.
43:35
And he does a nice job breaking it down and why every soldier
43:41
drone and sensor is really connected and why AST space
43:44
mobile is in a great position for that.
43:45
But then you also have Pete hikes that talking about it too.
43:49
So the Department of War is on it and the tweet from Pete is
43:58
they unlaunchedgenai.mil. And this platform puts the most
44:02
powerful frontier AMAI models directly in the hands of every
44:05
American warrior. And this just goes to why you're
44:08
going to need enable one and edge compute.
44:13
And you think we're going to play a really big part of that.
44:16
And so then as we look at kind of what's happening in the VC
44:18
world, I did give some links for some new entrants.
44:20
They're doing this. They're all kind of small scale
44:22
and sort of exploratory and so they're going to, they all seem
44:28
like they're in the BW12 phase where they're launching the cell
44:32
phone into space just to see if something could work.
44:35
ASD Space Mobile has launched the full ball of wax in space
44:38
and solve the scale problems more so than anyone else.
44:43
So there's some other links I've supplied for people if you're
44:48
trying to get up to speed. One from DM pure Puremont was
44:53
good and just talks about why SpaceX, you know, really bad
44:59
extension, not really specific to SpaceX, but why the incumbent
45:02
SpaceX Amazon and he doesn't know AST space mobile, but if he
45:07
did, he probably would have added them of just why the data
45:13
center in space idea is is it a pretty interesting idea?
45:19
And he thinks that there really is a dual use way where when the
45:25
satellites are dwelling, in other words, not being used in
45:28
front of flying over, you could add AI as a workload to take
45:31
advantage of that power. I don't know how that would
45:34
work. You need the space on the
45:36
satellite for that. But anyway, just one man's
45:38
opinion. And then, you know, we look at
45:41
what the market is really dialing in and that's where this
45:44
week we also have the news about SpaceX valuation.
45:47
So initially we heard this $800 billion valuation and that's
45:51
driven on some things that are on the come only for Yolanda.
45:54
Then, you know, really drive in the media cycle by saying that
45:59
they were going to pursue an IPO with a $1.5 trillion IPO.
46:05
Well, that has to clear the market.
46:06
Who's to say it won't? SpaceX is a very exciting
46:09
company, but that starts to get a lot of attention when people
46:12
go, well, how the hell do you justify a number like that?
46:17
That implies a really big Tam. That implies a Tam far larger
46:21
than the launch market by any structured imagination.
46:25
They're telling you that the Tam for the telecom applications is
46:29
absolutely astonishing and it's telling you that there's on the
46:34
Comm use cases like data centers etcetera that are promising.
46:41
These are all good things for AST space mobile.
46:44
It's waking people up to the enormity of the market
46:48
opportunity. And it's like we talked about
46:51
earlier when you're along a strategic asset, you began to
46:55
bolt on market opportunities as opposed to be in the little bolt
47:01
other things. There's a crossroads capital
47:04
letter update. Ryan does a really nice job
47:06
talking about the investment. So I'd recommend people to read
47:09
that. But then we get back to the, you
47:13
know, I want to know, it's not fun.
47:14
But like the SpaceX problems, we have Doctor Ollie, who's very
47:20
technical and a great contributor is post is supposed
47:24
to hear under this SpaceX interference tweet.
47:27
And he just is bringing more attention to why these amateur
47:35
radio telescope guys are picking up the Starlink emissions when
47:42
they're not supposed to. And so they're picking up and
47:44
they can hear Starlink, which is telling you that there is
47:50
interference and really high side lobes in terms of how those
47:54
beams are performing. This should come as nothing new.
47:58
This was all in the FCC filings, but now we're actually seeing it
48:03
in the real world applications next.
48:06
And this thing I thought was actually particularly
48:08
interesting is you have Dish, sorry, DIRECTV.
48:14
So I mislabeled my tweet. I'm sure I'll get a libel charge
48:17
for that in 15 minutes. But DIRECTV came out and said
48:23
that SpaceX is testing is validating the results of Direct
48:27
TV's simulations, which is showing very high interference
48:33
until SpaceX is causing reduction in of service for
48:38
people watching satellite TV. And that there's a very high
48:42
impact on users of satellite TV because of Space XS inability to
48:48
have an efficient system. And so DIRECTV filed its data in
48:53
an FCC docket that is really just showing that SpaceX is
49:00
impacting them on an everyday basis at locations that would
49:04
normally have a good strong link.
49:07
SpaceX is spamming that and causing a degradation of
49:10
service. This is potentially a very big
49:13
problem for SpaceX. It means that they might not get
49:16
a permanent waiver to scale their service out.
49:19
And if they don't do that, they have to power down their system,
49:22
which causes all sorts of problems.
49:24
The specifics of the math on this is in is in my DD document
49:28
and will certainly be included in the updated DD document that
49:32
release sometime shortly. For anyone that is dealing with
49:38
feeling a little bit sad, I just recommend that you read Catsy's
49:42
annotations of the FCC filings. If that doesn't cheer you up,
49:47
then nothing will. There's no better comedic
49:52
content produced on the Internet than Catsy annotating FCC
49:56
filings. And so these were classics and I
49:59
think they've become kind of a cult following at this point of
50:02
the classic cat sea annotation. So we, we got that, which was
50:05
super fun to read. And and then the last thing is
50:12
there was a slide that was out from the chief scientist of
50:17
space systems, ASC Space Mobile, which just showed really I call
50:21
it orbital pinball, just shows what's happening with different
50:26
constellation sizes and the impact those have on radio
50:32
astronomy, astronomy and space environment and debris impact.
50:36
And so it just shows that Starling things just become
50:39
inevitable that something will go wrong because they have to
50:42
have over 10,000 satellites versus AST Space Mobile having
50:47
hundreds big difference. And so as it relates to the
50:50
burden of orbital collisions, the impact on science and things
50:54
like that, it just goes to show you that our model is more
50:58
sustainable and that the Starling constellation is going
51:02
to be a significant nuisance to everyone around them, whether
51:05
you're a neighboring satellite constellation or observers on
51:08
the ground. And then again, right before
51:10
that, we had that SpaceX is killing the video star.
51:17
It's as simple as that. You're not going to out DIRECTV
51:23
and that's the primary user of those frequencies and you're not
51:26
allowed to interfere with them. So that's what we have for the
51:29
weekly. I really think that Scott has
51:32
the chance to do the funniest thing this week.
51:35
It would be a great week to ship FM 7.
51:38
It would be a great time to unload the revolver of all six
51:44
of the next birds we have. You know, let's just bang, bang,
51:46
bang, bang, bang. Do you feel lucky?
51:50
Punk type of thing. And then it would be really
51:53
convenient if President Trump would tune into this spaces
51:57
right now and humor me by inviting Abell to a joint press
52:02
release when they announce the winners of Golden Dome and Mar a
52:07
Lago. And do that ideally before
52:10
Friday, before this jerk has his $75 one one call contract
52:17
expire. I would like for this guy to eat
52:20
it and eat it hard. That's my only request for
52:23
Christmas is I want to see a person lose money on one call
52:27
that they sold. Sure.
52:29
Is that too much to ask? So I think we're having a big
52:32
week. But again, really think, think
52:33
of yourself for for one, but really think about this mosaic
52:36
of facts that we think we've found as it relates to golden
52:40
dough. The change in tune from Scott, I
52:48
think is a big one. He's directly not even saying
52:51
hypotheticals like we're going to go after Golden Dome.
52:54
You know, he's, he's now saying we are in Golden Dome and then
52:57
he's following that by very specific capabilities and
53:02
infrastructure that the company is building to do that.
53:07
So I, I know I can speak for Anpan man, because we talk every
53:12
day, all day about this and, and admittedly, we can talk
53:15
ourselves into lunacy, but we think we've put the pieces
53:20
together that suggest something really big is happening on that
53:22
front. And then when you're tying out
53:24
the timing, which is the most difficult thing to do with this
53:27
company, but the, the progress of the defense authorization
53:32
through Congress, I think is the thing that unlocks this.
53:36
And the way these space stocks traded last week, they kind of
53:39
just got lifted it really, you know, some, someone always knows
53:44
something. I wish I were one of those
53:46
people. I'm not.
53:50
And so I'm usually kind of last to know the actual thing, but
53:53
I'm pretty good at anticipating the actual thing pretty pretty
53:58
far in advance. And it does seem like the market
54:02
might have glommed onto something last week.
54:04
And I think from our bottoms up diligence that we've seen a lot
54:07
of those pieces in place as well.
54:09
And I hope we're right and I hope it happens next week just
54:13
so that people could have like a big revelation of the
54:17
fundamentals of this company before they go away for the
54:19
hallways. I'll end there.
54:20
Thanks for joining me and I hope everyone has a really great next
54:24
week Foxy. Thanks for listening to the AST
54:28
Space Mobile Podcast. If you enjoyed this episode and
54:32
you'd like to help support the podcast, please share it with
54:35
others, post about it on social media, or leave a rating and
54:38
review. To catch all the.
54:40
Latest news about AST Space Mobile, make sure to subscribe.
54:44
Thanks again and I'll see you next time.
54:50
We're doing something very, very big and I think with this
54:52
technology we can really affect billion lives.
54:55
AFT Space globally is the only company that has full technology
55:00
to deliver several of mobile connectivity directly from space
55:04
to do everyday smartphone. People will just basically turn
55:07
their phone can be seamless regardless of where you are.
55:11
We don't want the user even to know that it's connected by
55:13
satellite. Our role is to bring this into
55:17
reality, always in partnership with the MMO Listen.
55:32
Waffles.