Latest / AST SpaceMobile Podcast / Anpanman - Catalyst Season

Transcript

Anpanman - Catalyst Season · AST SpaceMobile Podcast

• 0:06
  This is the AST Space Mobile podcast.
• 0:10
  Where we just basically turn your phone and be seamless,
• 0:14
  regardless of 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.
• 0:28
  Everyone, thanks for joining. I apologize, could not make it
• 0:34
  due to some personal obligations.
• 0:36
  So you can join at 11:30, but instead I've asked Jacob to come
• 0:42
  join. So he's unknowingly going to
• 0:46
  act, participate in this discussion.
• 0:49
  But I don't know, didn't really have an agenda.
• 0:52
  I was actually planning to just talk with with Kook and discuss
• 0:57
  kind of latest events and then discuss your upcoming catalyst.
• 1:01
  And then of course, yeah, we had a tremendous amount of
• 1:05
  volatility in the market. And yeah, there's some new
• 1:08
  information that came that has come out which I wanted to
• 1:11
  cover. But but yeah, I didn't really
• 1:14
  have much on the agenda. Just wanted to to reconnect and,
• 1:18
  and talk, talk all things ASD space mobile.
• 1:21
  But I guess maybe just to kick it off, an important bit of news
• 1:27
  hit the tape just now. And this was actually something
• 1:31
  that was dug up by by sign Lars 13128, who is a spaceball
• 1:38
  member. He tweeted this out.
• 1:41
  And so it looks like President Trump is going to sign the
• 1:45
  National Defense Authorization Act.
• 1:48
  He'll be doing that at the Oval Office this evening at 6:00 PM.
• 1:51
  And so that will with his signature that's going to write
• 1:56
  Golden Dome into federal law. And so that's an exciting
• 2:00
  moment, I think for the entire space sector, especially for
• 2:03
  companies who are going to be part of Golden Dome, which you
• 2:07
  know, I've, I've discussed at length how I think AST Space
• 2:11
  Mobile is going to be a, a big participant in that project.
• 2:16
  But we'll see obviously once that gets signed in into law,
• 2:22
  then perhaps we might hear some information start coming out
• 2:25
  from companies that are participating and you know,
• 2:29
  timing that, who knows. But I think in regards to the
• 2:32
  holiday schedule, you know, next week, which is the week of
• 2:37
  Christmas for for those that celebrate tends to be somewhat
• 2:40
  of a slow week for PR. And so perhaps we might hear
• 2:44
  something sooner rather than later.
• 2:45
  But but yeah, that's an exciting piece of news.
• 2:48
  So I think as I've, you know, discussed before, a majority of
• 2:53
  the market especially well in particular institutional
• 2:56
  investors don't really know about ASD Space Mobile.
• 2:58
  And for those that even have an idea what the company does,
• 3:03
  usually people are kind of focused on the director of ICE
• 3:07
  applications, you know, tied to M and OS.
• 3:10
  I don't think unless you're, you know, Space Mob and you've been
• 3:15
  an active engaged investor for the last 12 months, you probably
• 3:20
  have no idea that the company is up for, you know, the company
• 3:24
  already has 9 military contracts and is a prime candidate to win,
• 3:31
  you know, win work for Golden Dome.
• 3:34
  So, so yeah, that's an exciting time.
• 3:36
  And I think if the company does get an award, I think it will
• 3:42
  probably be a rewriting type of event where people will look
• 3:46
  just beyond, you know, consumer broadband connectivity to
• 3:49
  devices. But all of a sudden you'll have
• 3:53
  this other area of business which is going to be quite
• 3:55
  material. And as I've mentioned before,
• 3:58
  you know, Scott has discussed 2026 and I think it was the Bank
• 4:03
  of America investor meeting. He talked about how 2026 is
• 4:06
  going to be, you know, majority of of the revenues for 2026 are
• 4:11
  going to be from military. And then 2027 is when they
• 4:15
  expect the contribution from the commercial side, which is the MN
• 4:19
  OS to kick in. And so when taking those, you
• 4:23
  know, comments into context, it would seem that we are well
• 4:27
  poised for Golden Dome. But yeah, we'll find out, you
• 4:31
  know, this evening Trump will sign.
• 4:33
  And then, you know, perhaps we might start seeing some news
• 4:35
  around, you know, recipients of Golden Dome.
• 4:39
  But I think it's important to point out that for any companies
• 4:43
  that are part of Golden Dome, those companies already know
• 4:48
  that they're going to be a big participant.
• 4:50
  And you've seen this with a lot of companies out there that
• 4:55
  they've already ramped up hiring and, and filled out production
• 5:00
  space and, you know, put a decent amount of upfront
• 5:04
  investment. Because once this thing is
• 5:05
  signed off and it gets funded, it's President Trump's goal to
• 5:12
  have Golden Dome up and running before he leaves office, which
• 5:16
  is in a pretty short time frame. I mean, you're looking at
• 5:19
  another three years. And so I think it's Golden Dome
• 5:23
  Awards are going to favor those companies that have technologies
• 5:27
  that are, you know, products that are already available or
• 5:31
  need little modification. And so again, I think that's
• 5:34
  going to position ASD quite well.
• 5:37
  The other thing that came out, let's see.
• 5:40
  Let me look at my sweet. The other thing that came out, I
• 5:44
  think was yesterday or the day before Jennifer Manor, who's the
• 5:47
  SVP of International Affairs. She does a lot of the policy
• 5:51
  work for the company. Oh, sorry, this was yesterday.
• 5:54
  No, let me just look here. It was the day before yesterday.
• 5:57
  She was speaking in front of one of the committees.
• 6:02
  Let me just look here. So the Spectator had actually
• 6:06
  posted this. This is 2 days ago, on December
• 6:08
  16th. She was speaking to the
• 6:11
  Subcommittee on Communications and Technology for the ON of the
• 6:14
  Committee on Energy and Commerce.
• 6:16
  And so in particular they were talking about public safety
• 6:19
  communications. And in that speech, as part of
• 6:24
  her or one of the questions that was poised her about the
• 6:26
  company's asking if AST Space Mobile was ready, she actually
• 6:33
  disclosed there. There's a bit of a gaffe in, in
• 6:36
  how she disclosed it, but she said that the company's
• 6:39
  production level is already at six satellites per day.
• 6:42
  And, you know, obviously that would be crazy if it was 6
• 6:45
  satellites a day. What she actually meant probably
• 6:48
  was that the company had reached its milestone of producing 6
• 6:52
  satellites a month. And so, so that was a pretty big
• 6:56
  piece of a little, you know, nugget that that she had let out
• 7:01
  during that, that testimony. And this just kind of shows like
• 7:05
  the power of the space mob where this hearing was something that,
• 7:11
  you know, a few folks were following and and then they
• 7:13
  brought this to everyone's attention that this that data
• 7:17
  point was disclosed. And so if that is true, if the
• 7:20
  company is at six satellites per month production, that means
• 7:24
  that, you know, the next two batches of Bluebirds are
• 7:29
  probably close to ready and ready, you know, ready meaning
• 7:34
  whether maybe maybe some additional testing has to
• 7:37
  happen, but those are likely ready to ship.
• 7:40
  And that would fit with the timeline of the company's, the
• 7:44
  company's timeline of saying 2 batches worth of launch, sorry,
• 7:48
  two batches that would fill a launch would be ready in
• 7:51
  December. And when looking at how much
• 7:54
  time it takes to integrate into a fairing, I believe SpaceX has
• 7:59
  two launches scheduled for February, early February.
• 8:04
  So, so that would fit the timing and then and yeah, so I think
• 8:08
  that's, that would be a huge milestone.
• 8:10
  I'm not sure if the company will do any PR around reaching that
• 8:14
  milestone. But one thing that's interesting
• 8:16
  to note is that our friends at Israel this morning had put out
• 8:21
  some PR on their website. I don't, I don't, I don't think
• 8:23
  it was intentional, but they were, they were opening up
• 8:27
  reserve tickets for the event and they, they gave a date of
• 8:31
  December 24th at the equivalent. Well, the equivalent day and
• 8:36
  time for here in New York would have been December 23rd at like
• 8:39
  10:30 PM Eastern Standard Time. But they did, they did put out a
• 8:44
  date which then they quickly retracted, which I'm, I'm
• 8:47
  assuming that's probably the company reached out to them and
• 8:50
  said, hey, hold up. Don't put that out there because
• 8:53
  I'm guessing the company probably wants to put out some
• 8:57
  bigger PR package relating to that launch and perhaps, you
• 9:01
  know, other things associated with it.
• 9:03
  And so there's a lot of, there's a lot of interesting things that
• 9:07
  are percolating right now. And so when talking about
• 9:12
  catalyst season, there's quite a few things like, you know, big
• 9:16
  catalyst, which I referred to yesterday when we were down,
• 9:20
  what, 1112%? That's something things were on
• 9:23
  the horizon, which I fully believe.
• 9:25
  Jacob, did you have a question? Yeah, I was just.
• 9:28
  Curious, I was, I was going to ask you this the other night or
• 9:31
  Tuesday night, but for the six satellites a month that's that's
• 9:35
  fully produced, right. That's not just the microns done
• 9:38
  is that is we're at a production rate is 6 satellites a month.
• 9:45
  Yeah. So that would be, I think what
• 9:47
  she was referring to is 6 satellites a month.
• 9:49
  But that's a good point. She might be.
• 9:52
  She might have been referring to the microns.
• 9:56
  I guess, I guess I'm asking more, maybe I'm just we'll swing
• 9:59
  on just just her exact wording. But just the just the
• 10:02
  forecasting has been coming from Scott and the company and stuff
• 10:04
  is that they're they've been saying they're going to get up
• 10:06
  to 6 satellite a month, but that's not 6 Micron.
• 10:09
  It's not like the production rate of the microns, right?
• 10:11
  That's the actual satellites. That's, that's right.
• 10:14
  So they already are at six microns per month.
• 10:17
  And that's the key. The key milestone was to get to
• 10:22
  6 satellites with, you know, the control bus, So in a fully
• 10:26
  integrated satellite to to get to that level by the end of this
• 10:29
  year. And so lining up what Jennifer
• 10:32
  had said and then what Scott had said in the past, it would make
• 10:36
  sense that they probably are at or pretty close to six
• 10:39
  satellites per month production. Awesome.
• 10:43
  Yeah. Then the I guess the follow on
• 10:44
  to that, it was just that you were talking about the testing
• 10:46
  they have to do. I I was just curious if he knew
• 10:49
  on top of your head, do they have the tea vac chambers which
• 10:51
  is like where they do the temperature vacuum testing on
• 10:54
  site? Yeah, yeah.
• 10:57
  So they actually have tea vac chambers on site at Midland back
• 11:01
  in the day. For those that remember, when
• 11:04
  they first launched Blue Walker Three, they didn't have a tea
• 11:07
  vac And so they actually had to put Blue Walker 3 on a truck and
• 11:11
  go drive it out to San Diego and then test it and then drive it
• 11:15
  back. Which, as you can imagine, like
• 11:18
  if you found so many some some issues, you would then have to
• 11:21
  drive it back. Or maybe perhaps like if you had
• 11:25
  some stuff on site, you would fix it and then you would test
• 11:27
  it again. But you don't having AT vac is
• 11:31
  off site is not as convenient as having an on site.
• 11:34
  So so the company does have T vacs on site.
• 11:36
  And one of the key questions that we've had is space mob is,
• 11:40
  you know, if you've, if you've tested one or two satellites of
• 11:45
  the same, you know, configuration, do you actually
• 11:48
  need to test the rest of them? Right?
• 11:49
  Because it I think you might test the initial few.
• 11:53
  And once it gets to a point where, hey, these things are
• 11:56
  sturdy and everything's working out OK, do you actually need to
• 12:00
  test all 60 or 90 or do you spot test them?
• 12:05
  You know, once you get once you get to a point where you know
• 12:08
  production is pretty consistent and and yields for components
• 12:12
  are at a high level. Like do you actually need to
• 12:14
  test every single satellite? Not sure.
• 12:17
  I I think on the the I'm just speaking probably about the
• 12:20
  industry. I'm pretty sure the standard is
• 12:21
  always test all in it. The only other company.
• 12:24
  Well, maybe not only, but like, I would wonder it see if, like
• 12:26
  if Starling's still doing that cause 'cause how many they're
• 12:29
  producing, you get that serialization.
• 12:30
  But I mean, for, for, for AST, it's almost I, I would be, it'd
• 12:35
  be really, they have to be really confident not to test
• 12:38
  them all because it's that, you know, what are they 2122 million
• 12:41
  dollars or whatever to send to produce and start one of those
• 12:44
  up and then have to have it be not work because of something
• 12:47
  simple with the testing. I feel like, I feel like it's,
• 12:50
  it's high value enough that they they're still going to test all
• 12:52
  90 or 100 or 320 or how many they eventually make.
• 12:56
  Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, I think the reason why
• 12:59
  that question has come up in the past is, you know, how many, how
• 13:02
  many T vax do you have? And then, you know, how long
• 13:06
  does it take to test each one? And so could that become a
• 13:09
  bottleneck, which I'd, I'm assuming with 3 billion in cash,
• 13:13
  they, they probably buy enough T vax to do what exactly what
• 13:17
  you're saying, which is you probably want to test all of
• 13:19
  them at least until maybe at some point far in the future,
• 13:23
  you might not test some of them. And, and you know, I think like
• 13:26
  for example, vibration testing, if you, that could be something
• 13:30
  where if you're using the same exact vehicle, launch vehicle
• 13:34
  and the same exact number of satellites, maybe after a
• 13:37
  certain period of time, you wouldn't, you wouldn't vibration
• 13:40
  test them. Because you've you've figured
• 13:42
  out like from the, the harmonics or whatever you call it, the
• 13:45
  vibrations of a particular vehicle of so many satellites
• 13:48
  that you've done it enough where if everything is successful, but
• 13:52
  perhaps you don't do that again. Yeah, that or, or you like drop
• 13:57
  the the time or are you and maybe send some of the like the
• 14:00
  rigorousness of it has to you know, it's like, OK, we don't
• 14:02
  need to test this for I'm making up numbers, but like we don't
• 14:05
  need to vibrate this for an hour or whatever.
• 14:07
  We only have to do it for 20 minutes or something, I don't
• 14:09
  know. Yeah, yeah.
• 14:11
  So these are all good questions. Maybe someone could ask or maybe
• 14:16
  someone will ask it for the next quarterly update in the company.
• 14:20
  But but yeah, it's, it's, I think, I think we're, we're
• 14:25
  pretty close. Like I know Cook talks about
• 14:28
  launch Constipation. I mean, launch is, you know,
• 14:32
  the, the satellite has been at Israel out of our hands.
• 14:35
  And as I said before, integrating that into a new
• 14:39
  fairing that takes time. You know, if we ever want to
• 14:43
  launch on Israel again, then it'll be much faster because
• 14:45
  there's going to be, they're going to basically, you know,
• 14:47
  leverage any learnings that they, they they were able to
• 14:50
  garner from this time. But similarly, when we launch on
• 14:54
  Falcon 9 and New Glen, it's going to take some time to
• 14:58
  integrate the satellites into the fairing, whether it's in the
• 15:00
  three configuration or 4 for SpaceX Falcon 9 or if it's a 6
• 15:04
  to 8 satellite configuration. It'll be interesting to see what
• 15:09
  kind of adapters they put in there and, and you know, how
• 15:12
  they integrate them into the fairings.
• 15:14
  But but yeah, it's exciting. I mean, we're, market volatility
• 15:19
  aside, I think it's a very exciting time.
• 15:22
  You know, the stock was down 11% yesterday.
• 15:25
  And of course, like there's plenty of people with their own
• 15:27
  anxieties coming out on Twitter or Reddit, You know, it, it's,
• 15:34
  it's like clockwork when people, people's concerns come to the
• 15:39
  fore, like when the stock is down because everyone's looking
• 15:41
  for a reason why the stock is down or justifying the need for
• 15:44
  the company to do something. And, and I think maybe we'll
• 15:47
  talk a bit about market psychology now.
• 15:49
  I think when you have a period of risk, risk reduction in the
• 15:54
  market and people are de grossing and every name is down
• 15:58
  it unless there's something really material like announcing
• 16:02
  news that's positive is not really going to change things,
• 16:05
  right, 'cause you when you, when you have these periods where
• 16:08
  correlations are, when you know everything's moving together.
• 16:11
  Like if you looked at across the board at high beta names, there
• 16:13
  were, there were plenty of stocks that were down
• 16:15
  56789101112 percent. And I, I looked at some of these
• 16:20
  winners for the year and compared them to AST space
• 16:23
  Mobile. So if you look at like Iran or
• 16:26
  NBIS or OCLO or you know, Robin Hood, Palantir, any of these
• 16:33
  names, like they've all had a huge drawdown in terms of stock
• 16:37
  price. And and so it's not as if any
• 16:40
  company is going to be immune to that, especially companies that
• 16:44
  have been big winners for the year that are high beta.
• 16:46
  And so I think it's important for people to recognize like
• 16:50
  there's unless of course, like there's something game changing
• 16:53
  that the company puts out and it's new to the market.
• 16:57
  Is is our friend Kevin Mack would say it's not priced in.
• 17:01
  Even then that like those things, people kind of throw,
• 17:04
  throw it aside. Like if the market is is going
• 17:06
  down and people are de risking and and margins are getting
• 17:09
  called like it's not going to matter.
• 17:11
  And so I know I, I was just looking at some, some tweets
• 17:15
  yesterday and I didn't even check Reddit because someone
• 17:19
  said that Reddit was like, it was a, a full death spiral in
• 17:22
  terms of negativity, which usually is a positive sign.
• 17:26
  But yeah, there were people asking for management heads and
• 17:31
  like, why, why isn't, why, why isn't Israel launching?
• 17:34
  Which by the way, like the company sent the satellite to
• 17:37
  ISRO. It's, it's in their hands.
• 17:39
  It's kind of out of our hands at this point.
• 17:41
  But but on the flip side, you know, why isn't the company, why
• 17:44
  isn't they shipped FM 2, which you know, is a fair question.
• 17:48
  And I think we've talked about how FM two, FM 1 and FM 2 are
• 17:54
  actually what seemed to be experimental military
• 17:58
  satellites. And so who knows, like changing
• 18:01
  customer requirements has delayed that and it'll go when
• 18:04
  it goes, right when the government wants to send the
• 18:08
  satellite, when they're comfortable with whatever
• 18:10
  requirements they, they have, then they'll sign off and then
• 18:13
  and we get shipped. I think the more important thing
• 18:17
  to focus on are the block or sorry, Bluebird 8 and and up.
• 18:23
  And so the next two batches of three, that's going to be kind
• 18:27
  of the key, the key satellites to look out for which are going
• 18:30
  to, you know, signal the the launch of commercial service.
• 18:34
  And so I think, you know, if I, if I was a betting man, which I
• 18:38
  am, I think I think those two batches will probably, you know,
• 18:42
  ship sometime before the end of December in order for them to
• 18:45
  meet the February launch. Yeah, launch plans.
• 18:50
  So, but yeah, I think I think it's important, you know, when
• 18:54
  we have these periods of volatility that people remember
• 18:58
  that there's not much you can do as an investor or or
• 19:02
  particularly as an investor, but also for the company.
• 19:05
  Like macro backdrop is going to be what it is.
• 19:08
  Abel Avalon is not one of these guys who's staring at his phone
• 19:14
  all day, look at the stock price and then figure out what kind of
• 19:16
  PR he can put out to, you know, triage it.
• 19:21
  You know, I think we're all familiar with some of these
• 19:23
  companies that do that, where the CEO is is actively engaged,
• 19:26
  trying to manage the stock price.
• 19:28
  Bells only focus on one thing and that's execution on
• 19:30
  producing these satellites, which are really, you know, it's
• 19:33
  they're hard, they're hard to build.
• 19:35
  They're like, you know, 1 they're 6000 kilograms, 5 you
• 19:41
  know, five and a half, 5 1/2 to 6 ton satellites.
• 19:44
  And so the key thing for them is just focus on production.
• 19:47
  And I think you know, the, the, when, when, when you have that
• 19:53
  level of volatility in the market, like the last thing you
• 19:55
  want your CEO to do is, is flip out and, and focus on putting
• 19:58
  out PR when indeed they're not ready, right?
• 20:02
  And so I think for individual investors, if you're sweating
• 20:05
  every movement in the stock price, that probably means like
• 20:08
  you're too big, right? And so in terms of your risk
• 20:11
  tolerance and and your ability to cope and deal with volatility
• 20:16
  if, if 11% drop and for those people.
• 20:20
  Just just so that people know, like the entire market cap of
• 20:25
  AST Space Mobile, you know, yesterday the move was like 6 or
• 20:31
  7 market caps of AST Space Mobile in April of 2024.
• 20:35
  And so, yeah, it's, it's obviously a bit discerning, but
• 20:39
  then put things in perspective like the company's market cap in
• 20:44
  April of 2024 was like $700 million.
• 20:47
  And now, you know, now we're looking at a, a company that's,
• 20:49
  you know what, 3030 billion. And so, yeah, so I think it to,
• 20:54
  to put things in perspective, This is why it's important not
• 20:58
  to go on margin and be long high beta stocks.
• 21:01
  And this isn't just for ASD, it's for any, any company.
• 21:03
  Because if you're going to go on margin and be leveraged, that's
• 21:08
  when people lose like you're, you're going to win some bets,
• 21:11
  but you're going to lose because just the volatility itself,
• 21:15
  you're going to have drawdowns and you get tapped down at the
• 21:18
  bottom, right. And that's probably, I think we
• 21:20
  saw some of that selling yesterday and the day before.
• 21:24
  And for what it's worth, like often times the mark, the short
• 21:29
  sellers have been, they've been wrong and they've been often
• 21:33
  wrong. But recently they've actually
• 21:35
  been covering pretty significantly.
• 21:37
  As of yesterday, the real time short interest was 36 million
• 21:41
  and that's down from the recent high of 42,000,000 shares, which
• 21:46
  is December 5th. And so it seems to me like
• 21:51
  perhaps some of them have gotten smart and they see some of these
• 21:54
  calluses are coming up. But but yeah, short interest has
• 21:57
  come down quite a bit even. I mean, I guess folks have been
• 22:00
  taking profits with this drawdown.
• 22:02
  So yeah, it's, I, I think it's important to take a step back.
• 22:06
  You know, I mentioned this, there was a, there was a chat
• 22:08
  that I'm involved in and people wear scream bloody murder and
• 22:12
  why is this happening to me and blah, blah, blah.
• 22:14
  And it's like, look, just, and I, I recommend this to everyone,
• 22:17
  put a number of other space companies, you know, Rocket Lab
• 22:21
  is a good one. You know, Planet Labs, red wire,
• 22:24
  intuitive machines, put a lot of them up, like global Star.
• 22:29
  I mean, Global Star was down like 12% yesterday Echostar, but
• 22:33
  put a lot of these tickers up. So you can see how the company's
• 22:36
  stock is, is trading relative to the sector.
• 22:39
  But then also follow some of these higher beta names, which
• 22:41
  are, you know, companies in smart modular nuclear reactors,
• 22:46
  quantum companies like Ion Q, you know, some of the the data
• 22:53
  center companies, whether that's Iran and BIS, some of these
• 22:57
  others. But I think it's important to
• 23:00
  track the rest of the market and especially these high beta names
• 23:02
  because yesterday momentum and growth got completely slacked
• 23:06
  and the the so those companies were all down, you know, several
• 23:11
  times the market versus some of the, you know, value income like
• 23:18
  dividend names, low volatility names.
• 23:20
  Those were actually those actually outperformed yesterday.
• 23:23
  And so I think it's the important apps perspective
• 23:26
  because when you, yeah, when you're, when you're involved in
• 23:30
  a particular name like AC space, mobile, and of course things
• 23:33
  take longer than you think and they take longer than the
• 23:36
  company thinks, which is the whole premise of space.
• 23:40
  Like this stuff is hard. And, and then you see the stock
• 23:43
  down 1011%. If you're only following your
• 23:48
  company, then you, you think that something is something is
• 23:50
  wrong. Whereas if you zoom out to the
• 23:53
  sector, oh, every, every company's down pretty maturely.
• 23:56
  Yeah, maybe AST is down a little more than Rocket Lab, but then
• 24:00
  it's actually down less than global start.
• 24:03
  And then you zoom out even further and you look at some of
• 24:05
  these other sectors and you're like, oh, OK.
• 24:07
  So yeah, it's, it's pretty widespread.
• 24:09
  There's there's nothing special about AST.
• 24:11
  And so, so, yeah, I think it's important make sure that you
• 24:15
  have that perspective because then it, it keeps you from
• 24:19
  thinking, you know, thinking weird thoughts or thinking the
• 24:23
  most negative things. I mean, one of the one of the
• 24:25
  things that yesterday as the stock was down, I was actually
• 24:28
  out, which is good because I was busy doing stuff in real life,
• 24:31
  which I recommend people do as well, like get off your phone.
• 24:34
  But the other thing is, you know, the I as the stock was
• 24:39
  down, I was like, oh, well, that's, that's funny.
• 24:41
  Like I'll buy some here because I know that, you know, Golden
• 24:45
  Dome is going to be getting signed into law.
• 24:47
  We've got this multi launch campaign.
• 24:48
  We're going to be signing some additional definitive
• 24:52
  agreements. I mean, you can just go through
• 24:54
  the laundry list of all the things that are happening at the
• 24:57
  company. And so on the one hand, yeah,
• 24:59
  the stock price is down. It sucks.
• 25:00
  Like there's no, there's no getting around that.
• 25:03
  It's it's not fun. But at the same time, you kind
• 25:06
  of have to go back and think about re underwriting your
• 25:09
  investment and thinking about why you're invested.
• 25:12
  And yeah, the risks are there, you know, delays, delays are the
• 25:16
  big risk. But is funding a risk though?
• 25:19
  Is does the technology work? Is that a risk?
• 25:21
  No. Are they signing M and OS
• 25:24
  definitive commercial agreements?
• 25:26
  Yeah, they signed Verizon and Saudi Telecom back in October.
• 25:31
  And so you kind of have to go through this checklist of, of
• 25:33
  things just to make sure that your emotions are not driving,
• 25:38
  driving what you're doing right. And so I've seen this like
• 25:42
  several times where people get tapped out at the bottom, you
• 25:45
  know, whether by choice or not, when by choice, meaning they,
• 25:49
  they psyched themselves out and they're like, OK, I'm done.
• 25:51
  I'm out of a year because things don't seem to be going well
• 25:55
  because. And they forget like the
• 25:56
  progress that's been made and how the company is, is
• 25:58
  positioned. Or on the flip side, they get
• 26:01
  tapped out because they have no choice.
• 26:02
  They, they, they are margined. And they thought that and look
• 26:06
  like you can be right about you can get every single thing right
• 26:10
  about a company that it's going to hit this milestone or this
• 26:14
  contract comes in and all these things.
• 26:15
  But then if the macro is not in your favor, then you'll get
• 26:18
  demolished, right? And so that's why having going
• 26:22
  on leverage or playing options like you have to be acutely
• 26:25
  aware that the last thing you want is to be forced out of your
• 26:29
  position. And so just like today, like we,
• 26:32
  we have CPI numbers that come in that are, that were a huge
• 26:37
  surprise the downside, right? And so you've seen this like
• 26:40
  huge rally and risk names again, of course, it seems like to be
• 26:44
  the pattern where we have this big rally and then things come
• 26:46
  back down. But the macro matters and, and I
• 26:50
  think that's important, you know, when looking at your
• 26:53
  investment, is the rate environment going to be good?
• 26:56
  Is, is defense spending going to be good?
• 26:59
  You know, it seems like as I mentioned before, 2026 is going
• 27:02
  to be, I think thematically like the year for space, right?
• 27:06
  And so you got to put all these things in your head to remind
• 27:09
  yourself as the stock is down 11%, like, OK, like I'm used to
• 27:14
  this. I mean, I think for old hands
• 27:17
  who've owned Space Mobile since by the way, I actually thought
• 27:21
  about this from from now on, I'm going to try, I'm going to refer
• 27:23
  to the company as Space Mobile because it's just easier to say
• 27:26
  versus AST Space Mobile. Just like people say Starlink,
• 27:29
  they don't say SpaceX Starlink, but anyway, but for people
• 27:32
  who've held space mobile for five years, four years, like
• 27:36
  they're used to volatility, but the swings were in a in terms of
• 27:39
  absolute dollars were smaller, but they're no different in
• 27:43
  terms of percentages, right. And so that's, that's what you
• 27:46
  get with a a promising high growth company that hasn't
• 27:49
  generated material revenues yet, which we are this coming year.
• 27:54
  And you know, as a reminder, we've got a billion dollars of
• 27:57
  committed contracted revenue. And so that, you know, you can
• 28:01
  put put hang your hat on that. But at the same time it's like,
• 28:04
  OK, but they've got to get the consolation up.
• 28:06
  And that's going to take time. And, and we talked about this
• 28:08
  whole notion of inevitability, right?
• 28:11
  Like it's going to happen. It's whether it happens within
• 28:16
  the time frame you think or it's going to take an additional
• 28:18
  week, additional month, additional quarter, additional
• 28:22
  two quarters at this point is almost irrelevant, right?
• 28:26
  It, it, it would be a bigger factor if the company was short
• 28:31
  on funding where perhaps like, Oh my God, the company only has
• 28:35
  12 month runway, then then timing really, really matters.
• 28:38
  But here when you've got the, you've got the, you know, the
• 28:44
  benefit of 3 / 3 billion in funding and you've got
• 28:48
  government contract work coming in, you've got, you know, just a
• 28:52
  little reminder, Saudi Telecom's making $175,000,000 revenue
• 28:57
  prepayment that's going to drop on the balance sheet this
• 29:00
  quarter or the end of the year. Then when you have money, you
• 29:04
  can do things right. You take your time because you
• 29:06
  don't want to screw them up, right?
• 29:08
  You don't want to send a satellite up to space and then
• 29:12
  it gets bricked. That would be, that would be
• 29:14
  bad. And by the way, like that's over
• 29:16
  the course of a, a campaign to launch, you know, 100 satellites
• 29:22
  plus you are going to have some mishaps, right?
• 29:24
  Like I think Starlink today just had a, a, one of one of their
• 29:29
  satellites, which is when you think about it in terms of
• 29:31
  percentages is actually not bad, but they do have satellites that
• 29:35
  fail. And so at some point in time,
• 29:37
  you might have that come up as well, but but just be prepared
• 29:42
  like it's just normal course. It's part of doing stuff in
• 29:45
  space, which is why it's highly valuable and not everybody can
• 29:50
  do it right. And so all these data center
• 29:52
  guys, they're going to, it's not as if they're going to develop a
• 29:56
  satellite making program tomorrow and be able to compete.
• 30:00
  They're going to partner with people who know how to do this
• 30:02
  stuff. Wait, before we jump to data
• 30:06
  real quick. Sorry, I was like, I was, I just
• 30:09
  simply brought up earlier so on and it's kind of to do with the
• 30:12
  launch portion. So after these satellites are up
• 30:14
  and they launched them, right. I, I was just thinking about
• 30:17
  like they had, you know, the entire team focused on the five
• 30:20
  Bluebirds that, that launched and then they did that, you
• 30:22
  know, unfolding everything else. It's going to be, I mean, the,
• 30:26
  the rate at like op, the op side, the operation side of
• 30:29
  this. When they, you know, when
• 30:30
  they're starting to launch these at, like if they're, if they're
• 30:33
  building them six months, 6 satellites a month, at some
• 30:35
  point, you say that the parity is roughly going to be, you
• 30:38
  know, launching 6 satellites a month, you know, plus or minus
• 30:41
  in a little bit. But if they're good at that rate
• 30:43
  of, if they're getting at that rate of, of putting them up
• 30:47
  there, there's a huge I, I guess I'm, I'm wondering, have you
• 30:50
  heard anything? This is just a bad look to for
• 30:52
  around the operation side. Like I, I mean, they're hiring a
• 30:55
  ton of extra. I, I don't know if this is
• 30:57
  actually any concern of a ball ball neck man at that.
• 31:00
  But like, let's, let's say they get to the point where they, you
• 31:02
  know, they're popping them up there constantly because, sorry,
• 31:07
  the reason I'm asking this question is like, I'm like, I
• 31:09
  don't care if the, if a lot, if one launch moves plus or minus a
• 31:12
  month or two. It's more about like the when
• 31:14
  does, when do they get the minimum, minimum viable product
• 31:17
  up there for commercial service? And so if, if they can move
• 31:20
  around beforehand, it doesn't really matter whether the
• 31:22
  satellite was up there as long as, as long as them, all of them
• 31:24
  are up there by close to, to whatever their end date was,
• 31:27
  right. So I was just curious if you had
• 31:29
  thought about or heard about or know anything about the, the
• 31:32
  operation side of like is there is there a capacity limit to
• 31:36
  like to how many they can, you know, I guess spin up or unfold
• 31:42
  at the same time up there? I don't know what I'm trying to
• 31:43
  say that makes sense a little bit.
• 31:45
  Yeah. No, that makes sense.
• 31:47
  I don't, I don't think. I mean, I, I haven't, I guess
• 31:51
  it's a good question. But at the same time, like
• 31:54
  they're, so they have 6 satellites in orbit that they've
• 31:58
  been, you know, they, they learned how to unfold them and
• 32:03
  then to fly them, right? Because they're essentially
• 32:06
  spacecraft. And so as they continue to put
• 32:08
  these up there, they're going to leverage previous knowledge.
• 32:12
  But you know, obviously this new satellite is a different form
• 32:15
  factor. And so they'll be a learning
• 32:16
  curve there. But, but yeah, I mean, they're,
• 32:19
  they've hired, they've hired additional people.
• 32:21
  They've, they basically more than triple their workforce.
• 32:24
  And so are they going to run into bottlenecks in terms of
• 32:30
  managing these things? That's a good question.
• 32:32
  I'm not sure. I, I don't, I guess I would say
• 32:35
  like, I don't think that's going to be a bottleneck just given,
• 32:39
  you know, it's not 1960 when you needed like a few people to
• 32:44
  manage each satellite. Now with the with, you know, the
• 32:48
  prevalence of AI and and software, they probably can
• 32:52
  manage the fleet pretty well is my guess.
• 32:55
  But but yeah, that's a good question.
• 32:56
  I mean, it's something that we could ask management on the next
• 32:59
  earnings call. It's.
• 33:00
  It's probably low priority. It was just a thought I had.
• 33:03
  When you're talking, we're talking about like, you know,
• 33:05
  like what if, if their launch is out of their hands, the, the
• 33:09
  production's in their hands and then the actual OPS of, of, you
• 33:12
  know, the initial, I'm sure they'll, they'll iron it out and
• 33:16
  have it and have it down. Like, you know, like it'll be
• 33:19
  down. It'll be really smooth by the
• 33:21
  time we get to the last, the last launch for the minimum mile
• 33:24
  product kind of thing. But I was just curious if you
• 33:26
  thought about it at all. Yeah.
• 33:28
  So we'll certainly I will say this, their their consolation
• 33:31
  will be easier. A few hundred 1200 satellites
• 33:35
  will be easier to manage than a consolation of 30 to 40,000
• 33:38
  satellites. I'll just yeah.
• 33:41
  And, and I guess the other thing I would add there is that
• 33:42
  Starlink's V3, that thing is a honking monster.
• 33:46
  Like it's going to be, it's funny, like they complained to
• 33:49
  the FDFCC that Bluebird satellites are, are big, but the
• 33:54
  wings band is going to be 60 meters on that satellite.
• 33:57
  And so it'll be interesting to see what orbital debris like
• 34:02
  analysis they do for V3 and then how they plan on mitigating
• 34:07
  potential collisions and all that stuff.
• 34:10
  You know, I, I, I not that I spend every waking minute
• 34:13
  thinking about this, but I have thought about how a lot of
• 34:16
  Starlinks and SpaceX are, you know, arguments that they put
• 34:19
  forth at the FCC is really going to come back and bite them in
• 34:22
  the ass because it's, it's like, OK, well, let's, let's talk
• 34:25
  about your satellites. Like let's talk about ME3 if
• 34:29
  you, if you have these concerns and you know, what does that
• 34:33
  mean for your next generation? But I digress.
• 34:37
  Yeah, I feel like some I'm reading back, back and forth all
• 34:40
  those FCC filings and the complaints and the and the
• 34:43
  comments from other companies. It it feels very school, school
• 34:47
  or like playground like bullying a little bit.
• 34:49
  I don't know. It's it's just it's hilarious or
• 34:51
  cat sees interpretation of them or is probably where I'm really
• 34:53
  getting it from. Yeah, yeah, cats cat sees an
• 34:57
  unbiased source to analyze those.
• 35:00
  But no, his commentary is is quite, quite funny.
• 35:03
  And and actually, I mean, as we all know, like law fair is an
• 35:08
  angle. It is a business.
• 35:11
  You know, it's it's something that businesses use and and in
• 35:13
  particular for for space and providers of these consolations
• 35:20
  going to the FCC and engaging in law fair, slowing trying to slow
• 35:25
  down your competitor. It's it's par for the course.
• 35:29
  One thing that I, I learned as an event driven investor focused
• 35:33
  on telecom, media, telecom and you know having some experience
• 35:37
  in, in looking at matters at the FCC.
• 35:41
  One thing you, and this was true back in 2018-2019 when in 2020
• 35:49
  when the company you first started putting forward filings
• 35:52
  at the FCC about the plans to develop this new constellation
• 35:56
  that was going to focus on putting up a large phased array
• 35:59
  that was going to deliver broadband connectivity to
• 36:02
  unmodified, you know, cellular devices.
• 36:07
  That initial filing it, it set off like a complete war like
• 36:11
  Verizon and T-Mobile and even AT&T did.
• 36:15
  AT&T put in a little a small response saying like they had to
• 36:18
  learn, They had to, you know, dig in further and learn about
• 36:21
  what the company was doing, which of course then they ended
• 36:23
  up partnering. But Verizon, AT&T threw their
• 36:26
  arms up and they were at, you know, they complained and, and
• 36:29
  said, like technology is not feasible and say it's dangerous.
• 36:31
  It's going to have like all this interference.
• 36:34
  And then of course, over the course of the years, Verizon
• 36:37
  ended up partnering with AST and and T-Mobile ended up partnering
• 36:41
  with Starlink And all of a sudden no one has complaints, at
• 36:44
  least for the amounts. And so one, the reason why I
• 36:47
  bring that up is that when, when someone files at the FCC, the
• 36:52
  last the thing that you don't want to see is no one
• 36:55
  complaining, no one caring, because that means that no one's
• 36:59
  taking you seriously and, and, or perhaps what you're putting
• 37:02
  forward doesn't make sense. And so the fact that Starlink is
• 37:08
  so active and T-Mobile is so active in trying to slow down
• 37:11
  AST space mobile, that speaks volumes.
• 37:14
  Like that's what you want to see.
• 37:16
  You want to see your competitors throwing spaghetti against the
• 37:19
  wall, basically saying like, oh, this company is a meme stock
• 37:23
  and, and you've got all these like foreign entities that are,
• 37:27
  that are messing with the US and you know, their, this, their
• 37:33
  technology could cause interference.
• 37:35
  And, and by the way, like all these things that they're
• 37:37
  bringing up, actually, they don't apply to AST, but they
• 37:41
  actually do apply star languages.
• 37:42
  And that's, that's the whole like satirical side that Katzie
• 37:47
  brings up, which is like you're complaining about interference,
• 37:50
  but you actually interfere your, your architecture like bleeds
• 37:55
  noise and causes interference. Ours doesn't.
• 37:57
  You talk about foreign investors, but Starlink and
• 38:00
  SpaceX has like, you know, I mean, there's, it's been well
• 38:04
  documented in the Wall Street Journal, but there's like
• 38:07
  Chinese investors, you know, Chinese nationals.
• 38:10
  There's like Saudi Arabia invested, which, you know, I
• 38:12
  don't have a problem with, but you know, it is what it is just
• 38:15
  putting out there. There's like, and of course,
• 38:18
  like that argument really falls when when considering the fact
• 38:22
  that T-Mobile is controlled and owned by Deutsche Telekom, which
• 38:25
  is a foreign entity, right? Like there's been, you haven't
• 38:29
  seen any politicians in the US bringing up yet.
• 38:31
  But you know, if we were ever in to get ever to get in a boil
• 38:35
  with European Union, that's probably one of the first things
• 38:39
  that comes before which is like, does it make sense that Deutsche
• 38:41
  Telekom owns all this terrestrial spectrum in the
• 38:45
  United States, a strategic asset?
• 38:47
  And the answer if if you really wanted to get nasty about it is
• 38:51
  no, it doesn't make any sense. So hold on one second.
• 38:56
  Actually, I'm going to. That's cool, I'll cover.
• 39:02
  So side note, personal note, I now finally reinvested in ASTS.
• 39:06
  I was, I got my calls shared, but pulled.
• 39:09
  I got my shares pulled away in May and I've been kicking myself
• 39:12
  and watching with the, you know, sad face on the outside of the
• 39:16
  windows for months now. So yesterday I finally pulled
• 39:19
  the trigger. Not that anybody cares about
• 39:21
  that, but I don't know. I'll probably let Anthem cover
• 39:25
  that, cover more stuff. Actually, Jacob, you keep going.
• 39:30
  I guess. Step away for a minute.
• 39:31
  I'll be right. Back.
• 39:32
  How sweet. I'm not good at solos, so sorry
• 39:35
  for anybody who's forced to listen to this.
• 39:38
  Well, I guess we were about to touch on AI day centers and
• 39:40
  space. So I guess I can comment on that
• 39:43
  a little bit more. Just Andrew shoe wise stuff,
• 39:45
  don't have to make cover AST specific stuff.
• 39:48
  But last week there was a they call it a Bank rate Bake Off.
• 39:55
  So for I for SpaceX IPO coming up, that's supposed to happen
• 39:59
  next year. Again, we wasn't wasn't aware.
• 40:02
  There's rumors going around that they're going to try to IPO at
• 40:04
  about 1.5 trillion, which is just an insane evaluation.
• 40:08
  But I'm I'm for one personally really excited about that.
• 40:13
  I think it'll it'll drive more and more.
• 40:17
  Revenue, funding, catalyst sentiment, everything into the
• 40:20
  into the sector and we get ETFs involved as SpaceX, AST, Rock,
• 40:26
  LASMA and the other names and stuff like that.
• 40:28
  I feel like it's going to drive more institutional ownership or
• 40:30
  more more money into the thoughts.
• 40:32
  So that'll be good to see yeah. So I mean that's I mean the
• 40:36
  reason why we'll cover multiple full.
• 40:39
  But they're one of the big things that Elon's pushing for
• 40:42
  the reason why they're IPO ING is to pursue this whole data
• 40:45
  center. And the idea is centers and
• 40:47
  space angle. So that'll that'll be
• 40:51
  interesting. And in fact, I'll do another
• 40:53
  plug. We're on here.
• 40:55
  Space investor. Maybe it wasn't familiar.
• 40:58
  It's at space investor under score D He's doing a interview
• 41:01
  with Red Wire's chief technology officer tomorrow.
• 41:06
  He's doing spaces on that at the 2:00 PM Eastern Time.
• 41:11
  So that'll be another interesting people curious about
• 41:13
  the technology behind or you know, have some more interesting
• 41:17
  questions around like the viability of the technology
• 41:20
  around it, that'll be interesting.
• 41:22
  Yeah, he, he actually did a great space.
• 41:25
  I'm sorry, I'm back. My wife was asking me if I
• 41:28
  wanted anything for lunch. But I think, I think the what
• 41:34
  you were saying before. Yeah, space investor.
• 41:37
  He's actually had a great, a great number of guests.
• 41:41
  I think it was like a week ago he did one with Voyager which
• 41:44
  was great. So definitely recommend people
• 41:47
  listening to that one. I think the Voyager CEO did a
• 41:50
  great job of answering questions, but also given he
• 41:54
  gave some pretty great insights on data centers in space and and
• 42:00
  a few other topics. So definitely worth listening to
• 42:02
  that one. I don't know if you maybe I'll
• 42:06
  I'll try to find it. Oh, I didn't like it now, but I
• 42:10
  can't or I'll add it to the comments if you don't find it.
• 42:13
  Yeah, yeah, it's, I think, I think SpaceX going public, going
• 42:21
  back to the theme of 2026 being the year of space, I think
• 42:26
  that's going to be true. And I guess echoing what you
• 42:29
  said, there was a friend I got to look at.
• 42:33
  Someone texted me this yesterday.
• 42:35
  There was a friend that gave me some insights.
• 42:39
  And so you know, like like normal, there's, there's a bunch
• 42:43
  of SP VS that are floating around special purpose vehicles
• 42:46
  that allow people to indirectly invest in SpaceX.
• 42:50
  And so currently they're raising money at these SP VS are raising
• 42:55
  money at 800 billion. And the expectation is that
• 42:59
  let's see that the company is going to go public next year at
• 43:01
  1.5 trillion. The story has at least this next
• 43:07
  leg of growth has has shifted. So the focus will be you know
• 43:10
  that the whole push to go public and to raise the $30 billion is
• 43:15
  this focus on data centers and in Leo and and powering those by
• 43:19
  solar energy. And so, yeah, I mean, I guess
• 43:24
  from AST space mobile perspective, it is kind of good
• 43:28
  that they're getting to data centers as well, because then
• 43:31
  maybe perhaps their focus, they won't be that they'll they'll
• 43:36
  lose focus or might, you know, off the ball a little bit in
• 43:39
  terms of direct to sell, which I mean, I don't expect that I
• 43:42
  expect SpaceX to continue to be very competitive in that arena.
• 43:46
  But I do think for all space companies, including is the IT
• 43:52
  opens up another path of growth where the biggest like criticism
• 43:56
  of space is that there haven't been really large Tam market
• 44:00
  opportunities. One, of course, is launch.
• 44:03
  The second is communications. And then beyond that, it's been
• 44:06
  a lot more kind of bespoke, smaller niche markets, whereas
• 44:11
  data centers, you know, once then there's plenty of debate,
• 44:15
  which, you know, I, I think obviously there's a lot of
• 44:17
  problems that you have to overcome.
• 44:18
  But eventually, when you look at resource constraints here on
• 44:22
  Earth and you know, are we going to provide resources to humans
• 44:27
  or we're going to provide resources to data centers, I
• 44:29
  think that trade off becomes abundantly clear that you can't
• 44:33
  forever, you know, allocate land, water energy to these data
• 44:39
  centers. Like at some point it probably
• 44:41
  makes sense to put these off off the Earth and into space on the
• 44:46
  moon, You know, you, you pick. But but I do think eventually it
• 44:51
  it will happen. And there's, again, there's
• 44:52
  problems that are going to be skeptics, but it's akin to
• 44:56
  people talking about, you know, launch not being something that
• 44:59
  would be like a taxi service or putting up a consolation that
• 45:04
  could connect directly with an unmodified phone.
• 45:06
  That was what, 7-8 years ago, people thought that that was an
• 45:10
  impossibility. And now, now people just accept
• 45:13
  it as something that's, that's happening and will happen.
• 45:15
  And, and Starlink, you know, to their credit, they've, they've
• 45:18
  helped see the market as well. And AC is, is going to have it
• 45:23
  serviced in 2026. And so, so I think like,
• 45:28
  especially as retail investors, we have this, this luxury of
• 45:32
  being early, we would say like, hey, we're early and sometimes
• 45:37
  being early is not good, at least for your mental health and
• 45:39
  your money. But you do have the ability to
• 45:42
  be early and, and having that flexibility and not having to go
• 45:46
  to investment committee being, you know, managing risk
• 45:49
  parameters. I mean, obviously need to manage
• 45:52
  risk relative to your partner, your spouse, whether they know
• 45:56
  or or don't know what's in your portfolio and how volatile it
• 45:59
  is. But one of the things that as a
• 46:02
  as a retail investor, you have the as long as your position
• 46:06
  properly, you have the staying power, right?
• 46:07
  And so making sure that you invest, you know, prudently in,
• 46:13
  in terms of what you're willing to lose and the volatility
• 46:16
  weight can stomach and your financial outlays for the coming
• 46:19
  years. You know, you can probably
• 46:21
  relative to other other entities, especially public
• 46:24
  investors, you can stomach some of these bets.
• 46:27
  And that's why for example, for years, and this probably applies
• 46:32
  to Rocket Lab and other companies too.
• 46:34
  But for for space mobile, like in the early years, no
• 46:39
  institution would touch this, right?
• 46:40
  And it was really like two or three, a handful of crazy
• 46:43
  institutions that were long term focused like Hennessy and then a
• 46:47
  bunch of retail investors who had the stomach to go through
• 46:51
  the volatility. Stick with the company that was
• 46:54
  pre revenue, which, you know, we've talked about it before,
• 46:56
  but you know, the company, arguably you probably shouldn't
• 46:58
  have been a public company. It should have been still
• 47:00
  private for a number of years and then gone public.
• 47:04
  You know, it would have been, it would have been a story just
• 47:06
  like SpaceX, like, oh, this company is changing the world
• 47:09
  and it's going to go public at $100 billion valuation next
• 47:12
  year. When you know, you have a, you
• 47:16
  have a level of revenue in financial, demonstrated
• 47:21
  financial performance where you know, traditional investment
• 47:24
  banks would be comfortable taking it public.
• 47:27
  But that's, that's the, the, you know, the luxury that retail
• 47:31
  investors have, which is that you can take these bets, you can
• 47:35
  stomach the volatility. And if you pick the right ones,
• 47:37
  you're will be highly rewarded if you pick the wrong ones.
• 47:41
  Unfortunately, as we've seen from the 20/21/2020 through 2022
• 47:46
  SPAC classes, like a lot of those companies failed and they
• 47:49
  went belly up. And so, so, yeah, I mean, I
• 47:53
  think, I think as we're, we in this instance, we are early AST
• 47:59
  Space mobile is a company that probably many investors even to
• 48:04
  now to this day, like institutions probably can't
• 48:06
  touch. But once the revenue start
• 48:09
  coming in like once a golden Dome ward comes and people are
• 48:12
  like, oh, what's this, What's this company?
• 48:14
  What are they doing? Like I, I've read about some of
• 48:16
  these other new space companies that were likely going to be
• 48:19
  involved in Golden Dome, but like, why are these guys
• 48:22
  involved in what makes them special?
• 48:24
  You're going to have this, this groundswell of institutional
• 48:27
  investors who as a result of SpaceX kind of validating the
• 48:33
  market, they're going to come in and start researching all the
• 48:36
  different players and potentially allocating dollars.
• 48:39
  And that's, that's what you want to see.
• 48:41
  Like that's a sector maturing And you know, I think, I think
• 48:46
  they're when you go from institutional ownership.
• 48:50
  Let me just see, I know AST is, is always low.
• 48:55
  AST's institutional ownership is at, let's see, 37%, whopping 37%
• 49:03
  of shares or 47% of the float, which is more accurate because
• 49:08
  low as we know a bell has, you know, avoiding your 12 class E
• 49:12
  shares and you've got a number of strategics that own shares.
• 49:16
  So the actual float is 47%, which is not very high.
• 49:21
  If you compare that to more widely held institutional names,
• 49:26
  you know that that tends to be for a well held name that would
• 49:29
  be more in the 70s and up, right.
• 49:31
  So I mean, I'll just use Google as an example.
• 49:34
  Google is held 83% by institutions.
• 49:38
  And so, so, yeah, if you have a shift of institutions coming in
• 49:42
  to own the stock that would drive the valuation and, and re
• 49:47
  rate the name of hire. So that's something I look
• 49:50
  forward to you just here. It's going to, oh, and I guess
• 49:55
  our, our friend Rocket Lab, just to give you an idea, is that 59%
• 49:59
  institutional ownership of the float.
• 50:01
  So Rocket Lab, of course it has is more mature in terms of their
• 50:07
  financial performance. You know, they, they I guess
• 50:11
  Rocket Lab this year is projecting to do 600 million of
• 50:13
  revenue the next year 880 million.
• 50:17
  And so, yeah, you would as as AST space mobile ramps up in or
• 50:22
  space mobile ramps up commercial service.
• 50:25
  And you have these institutions who are able to then go to their
• 50:30
  whether it's like a long only fund, they go to investment
• 50:33
  committee and they're like, This is why I want to own this
• 50:35
  company. You know, they, they can make
• 50:38
  that pitch versus something that was pre revenue previously or at
• 50:42
  a hedge fund, you know, having an analyst pitch it to their PM,
• 50:48
  it probably was a much harder pitch at $2.00 is where it is
• 50:51
  now. And then if you, if you layer on
• 50:54
  military applications, it's like, oh, this company has a
• 50:56
  tremendous Sam, I agree with you.
• 50:58
  And we're on the cusp. We're right at the right at the
• 51:02
  beginning of commercial service. Like, yeah, this makes sense.
• 51:04
  I'm going to own it. So.
• 51:06
  But anyway. Quick question, yeah, earlier so
• 51:10
  you brought up, I knew the Class C share were like like a 10X
• 51:13
  voting rights, right? Are the Class A&B shares all one
• 51:16
  share one vote? Yeah, that's right.
• 51:19
  OK so the barrack tower thing I was like there's class BS too, I
• 51:23
  just wasn't certain. Yeah, so that's that was like
• 51:26
  some fun out there. I think SAT news I I have no.
• 51:30
  Idea SAT news I had I had to go and I I wouldn't like because
• 51:33
  somebody reposted it who who I know knows would know better if
• 51:36
  they if they like if they had the information in front of
• 51:39
  them. So I I wouldn't commented on
• 51:41
  that too. And yeah, but that's SAT news,
• 51:43
  man. They, they are, they sometimes I
• 51:46
  like them 'cause they're broad and they cover a lot of things.
• 51:48
  But I never like it's always like I offered to double check
• 51:50
  what they what they put out or like, is I'm like the whole
• 51:53
  story or is this new kind of thing?
• 51:56
  Yeah. And to be fair, like it's not,
• 51:58
  it's obviously not something fully like it's not as if
• 52:02
  they're bad actors, right? Like it's not something that as
• 52:05
  a outsider look in who's not eating, living, breathing this
• 52:08
  stuff. It's probably hard to, or it,
• 52:12
  it'd be easy to make a mistake. Although if you looked at the
• 52:14
  filing, you should know that beneficially they still own
• 52:18
  shares, right? But, but for those that don't
• 52:20
  know, you know, there's currently 279 Class A shares,
• 52:24
  which are the shares that are publicly traded that that all of
• 52:26
  us own. There are 11.2 million Class B
• 52:30
  shares, which are a vestige of venture investments.
• 52:33
  Back in the day, the only owners of Class B shares are Vodafone
• 52:38
  and American Tower. And so American Tower still
• 52:41
  owns. Just look here.
• 52:44
  I was looking at the old Bloomberg American tower of
• 52:48
  Class B shares still still owns 2.2 million shares and they're
• 52:52
  essentially this, the equivalent of Class A shares.
• 52:55
  Vodafone has 9 million shares of Class B and so they've got 80%
• 52:59
  of Class B and American towers, you know, 20% of class Class B
• 53:03
  shares. And then, of course, you've got
• 53:05
  A Bell who owns 78 million of the Class C shares, which have
• 53:09
  super voting. And some people may ask, you
• 53:13
  know, why, why does a Bell get super voting shares?
• 53:15
  What why does he get to effectively control the company?
• 53:19
  For those that don't know, back in the day before the company
• 53:22
  went public, and I believe that, you know, this was from one of
• 53:26
  the discussions with the bankers back before they went public, I
• 53:29
  had asked like, oh, why, why do they put in the high vote, low
• 53:32
  vote structure? And the whole idea behind that
• 53:35
  was to make sure a Bell wanted to have control of the company,
• 53:39
  to make sure that his vision could he could see his vision
• 53:42
  out to the end. Because what happens is if you
• 53:45
  had a public company that did not have high vote, low vote and
• 53:49
  had did not have what we call, you know, takeover defenses,
• 53:51
  meaning. And so takeover defenses, if
• 53:55
  it's like, if you're talking about that in the context of a
• 53:58
  bad management team doing bad things, then takeover defenses
• 54:01
  are bad because it allows them to be entrenched and allows the
• 54:04
  board to be entrenched and stick around.
• 54:06
  And so as a former banker, I would tell you like take our
• 54:09
  defenses like having a staggered board, you know, not having the
• 54:13
  ability of shareholders acting by written consent and having a
• 54:16
  poison pill. You know, these are all
• 54:18
  different mechanisms. And then having a high vote, low
• 54:21
  vote stock is another one. Last thing you want if you're an
• 54:26
  early stage company with a big vision is to have be vulnerable
• 54:31
  to takeovers or influence, right?
• 54:33
  And so let's let's say going back to 2024, I'll paint a bad
• 54:37
  picture. Let's say that there was no, the
• 54:40
  bell did not have high vote, low vote and the stock was trading
• 54:43
  at 2:00. Well, you could have like some
• 54:46
  activists come in and buy a big stake in the company and then
• 54:49
  threaten A proxy fight. Say, you know, hey, you guys
• 54:52
  have not you guys have not executed or market is voted.
• 54:55
  You know, the stock is not worth much.
• 54:57
  So we want you to put yourself up for sale.
• 55:00
  And you know, there's tremendous value in the patents and we want
• 55:04
  you to sell the highest bidder, right?
• 55:06
  And so that, that would be a nightmare.
• 55:07
  So there where as a holder, you're like, OK, I'm down, I'm
• 55:11
  down money. And we're at 2:00.
• 55:12
  But I still believe in the company.
• 55:13
  But I'm basically somebody else is making a decision to sell the
• 55:17
  company, right? And they're putting pressure on
• 55:19
  the company and the board. And, you know, if a Bell didn't
• 55:23
  have the voter conference on the board and they they, you know,
• 55:27
  they crumbled under the pressure, then then, then that
• 55:31
  would be bad, right? And so then we would be sitting
• 55:34
  in a different place right now versus a company, you know, back
• 55:38
  then that a Bell had full voting control.
• 55:41
  And so, yeah, the company was down on hard times and the stock
• 55:45
  got to two and things were not, they were looking dicey.
• 55:47
  But the company knew and they were working on the fact that,
• 55:50
  you know, they raised the money from Google, Vodafone, AT&T, but
• 55:53
  they also knew that Verizon was coming.
• 55:55
  You know, Verizon is Verizon. It took them time, but they were
• 55:58
  coming with a partnership, $100 million investment and
• 56:02
  contribution to Spectrum. But it was going to take a few
• 56:04
  additional months, you know, months meeting from January all
• 56:07
  the way, you know, an additional four months to May.
• 56:11
  And so they needed more time, right?
• 56:13
  And so since the bell controls the company from a voting
• 56:16
  perspective, it's not as if I'll just make some names up.
• 56:20
  It's not as if Iridium could come in and buy a 20% stake in
• 56:23
  the company and then try to put force a company, you know, do a
• 56:27
  hostile tender offer and try to force a company into a sale
• 56:30
  because a bell controls the company.
• 56:32
  You can, you know, you pick like SpaceX, they couldn't come in
• 56:36
  and buy stock in the open market and then force the bell to sell
• 56:39
  because he controls the company. I mean, it's his choice, right?
• 56:42
  So he could, he could at the right price say, OK, I will sell
• 56:48
  the company and then do that. But it's going to be under his
• 56:51
  terms. And that's why his voting
• 56:53
  control is, is important, especially for a company like
• 56:56
  AST space mobile Ware. And this, this comes back to you
• 57:01
  and I where shareholders may not know what's what's best for the
• 57:04
  long term. And I think retail investors on
• 57:07
  the one hand, have been great supporters and, and in terms of
• 57:11
  due diligence and believe me in the company, but then also
• 57:15
  retail investors can be their own worst enemies, right?
• 57:17
  Where if you obviously don't have material non public
• 57:21
  information, but you, you see the stock price and the stock
• 57:24
  price, as we all know, writes the news.
• 57:27
  If the stock price got to $2.00 or you had a drawdown of 60%,
• 57:31
  it's like, oh, I don't feel good about this.
• 57:33
  Maybe something must be wrong. Like, you know, having this
• 57:35
  copium of coming up with reasons why the stock is doing what it's
• 57:40
  doing, when in fact it's just macro or, or whatever it's
• 57:42
  right. Or maybe the company does have
• 57:44
  some issues. But but, but, but having that
• 57:48
  type of structure in place is important for a company that has
• 57:51
  a long term vision that's doing something very big that is risky
• 57:56
  because then they are afforded the time to actually deliver on
• 58:00
  that, which you'll see in in previous instances where
• 58:05
  companies don't have that structure.
• 58:07
  And perhaps, you know, they're, they're in a situation where
• 58:11
  it's a bit more dicey. Then you'll have an activist
• 58:14
  come in and and force the company to put themselves up for
• 58:16
  sale or you'll have a hostile takeover offer, which in the
• 58:20
  near term, like, I, I'll tell you, like there's probably a lot
• 58:23
  in space, but a lot of people in space mob.
• 58:25
  Who if, if someone, if an interloper came in and bought,
• 58:29
  you know, 10% of the stock when the stock was at 2 and offered a
• 58:32
  hostile takeover at 5:00, I bet there were a ton of people who
• 58:35
  would have been like, yeah, yeah, yeah, let's sell, let's
• 58:37
  sell. That's great.
• 58:38
  They would have missed out on, you know, a recent all time.
• 58:42
  I have 100 and we're now at 65 and I I candidly think we're
• 58:46
  going to go well beyond 100 in near term.
• 58:49
  But yeah, that's that's why you have dual class structures
• 58:54
  because you want to you want the company to have time.
• 58:58
  I don't know Jacob, if you anything to add there.
• 59:02
  Yeah. I mean, it's, it's, well, I
• 59:05
  mean, for my background, I'm not like I, I have like, I came into
• 59:10
  the, into investing basically looking like, like Rock Lab is
• 59:14
  like the only thing I invested in mainly.
• 59:16
  So I've learned some of these different like style, like how,
• 59:19
  how shares are set up, the, the, the ownership structure and
• 59:23
  stuff like that. And so it's like every time I I
• 59:25
  inevitably compare, I'm like, well, OK, well, Rock Lab, it did
• 59:28
  it this way. So why is AST different?
• 59:30
  And I mean, I would, I don't know.
• 59:33
  I'm looking at it going like, wow, that's a fucking great
• 59:34
  position to be. And you got the founder who has
• 59:38
  control of the company and like it, you know, so he's, he's he,
• 59:42
  he has the most, the most stake in it.
• 59:43
  And once it wants to come to you the best.
• 59:46
  And so I I always think about, I am like, huh.
• 59:47
  I wonder what it have been like to have like Peter Beck had the
• 59:50
  same position where the voting control, he hasn't had needed
• 59:53
  to, but he only owns like 10% of Rock Lab.
• 59:56
  So it's, it's kind of it, it yeah, it's it's I don't know if
• 1:00:00
  in my mind it's better. It's better for AST that, that,
• 1:00:02
  that Appel has a larger position.
• 1:00:04
  And then obviously the the voting control as well.
• 1:00:07
  Yeah. And I I think also this is a
• 1:00:10
  good point to bring up, I guess as we as we talk about Rocket
• 1:00:13
  Lab a little bit, you know, recently Peter Beck has sold
• 1:00:17
  some shares and I think, I think it's part of a 10B51 plan.
• 1:00:20
  I could be wrong there, but there's that don't know that
• 1:00:23
  10B5 time. Well, A10B51 plan is something
• 1:00:28
  that you put in place and it, you tell your financial advisor,
• 1:00:31
  you give them some parameters which aren't publicly disclosed.
• 1:00:34
  It could be like if you get the price gets to here or based, you
• 1:00:38
  know, in, in six months I want to sell this and then another 12
• 1:00:41
  months I want to sell this. But you do something well in
• 1:00:44
  advance and it's telegraphed meaning, oh, I'm, I'm putting
• 1:00:47
  this 10B51 plan in place, but I'm going to have no control
• 1:00:51
  over it, right. And so you, you basically like
• 1:00:54
  program this thing and then you let it go do its thing,
• 1:00:56
  regardless of what the news is, because at that point it's, it's
• 1:00:59
  really for like estate planning purposes where it's almost like
• 1:01:03
  keeping you from your own devices.
• 1:01:05
  Because obviously if you're, and we all know this, like it's hard
• 1:01:09
  to buy it, It's hard to buy and hard to sell.
• 1:01:12
  And you know, like, or a company insider, it's imagine like it's
• 1:01:16
  way, way harder, right? Because they're in, they
• 1:01:19
  actually have material, non public information.
• 1:01:21
  And so it's something big and positive was coming.
• 1:01:23
  They might wait to sell and sell on that day or if something
• 1:01:26
  negative was coming and they sold before, it would look
• 1:01:28
  really bad. And so often times company
• 1:01:32
  insiders will have a 10B51IN plan, 10B51 plan in place, which
• 1:01:38
  then is is programmatic based off of whatever parameters they
• 1:01:41
  had set before. And, and and so when companies
• 1:01:45
  do that, like there's not really much to read into it, but for
• 1:01:49
  companies or sorry for employees who choose to sell, you know,
• 1:01:54
  stock at any given time, like you can read into that to a
• 1:01:58
  degree, but like if it's five, ten, 1520% of their stake, you
• 1:02:03
  know, it's not, that's just like that's just ongoing needs.
• 1:02:06
  Like people, especially for these companies where people are
• 1:02:09
  not earning large salaries, like a majority of their compensation
• 1:02:13
  is going to be stock. And, and you've got like these
• 1:02:15
  Ding dongs who will be out on Twitter retail people who have
• 1:02:18
  no idea. I don't say retail in a, in a
• 1:02:20
  bad way, but it's just like, I guess people who just aren't
• 1:02:23
  used to kind of Wheeling and dealing in this area.
• 1:02:26
  But it's, it's like you'll, you'll see people say, well, why
• 1:02:29
  don't they just take a big margin loan to get their stock?
• 1:02:31
  If they're so bullish on their stock, they should just hold it.
• 1:02:33
  And it's like, well, just like you as a public investor, if you
• 1:02:37
  have a high beta stock and you take a margin loan, bad things
• 1:02:40
  can happen. And, and when I was an
• 1:02:42
  investment banker, I, I covered a lot of tech companies in
• 1:02:45
  Silicon Valley back during, during the, the, the first
• 1:02:48
  Internet bubble and people got shellacked, right, taking out
• 1:02:51
  margin loans, you know, not paying their taxes upfront, like
• 1:02:57
  getting huge stock grants when, when companies were, you know,
• 1:03:00
  during the heyday of the bubble. And, and then, you know, they
• 1:03:04
  got huge stock grants in 2000. And then when the bubble
• 1:03:06
  collapsed in 2001, they didn't have money to pay for it, right?
• 1:03:09
  They didn't have money because they didn't pay, they didn't
• 1:03:11
  sell stock at that time to pay for their tax.
• 1:03:14
  And then Fast forward to 2021 or sorry, 2001, they owe this
• 1:03:19
  massive, huge tax bill. And then the stock that they
• 1:03:21
  owned was, was worthless. And so, so similarly, like you
• 1:03:27
  don't take margin loans out on your stock holdings.
• 1:03:30
  I mean, you might for some small percentage, but we have to
• 1:03:33
  remember like these these people, these executives are
• 1:03:35
  human too. And they have needs and they,
• 1:03:38
  you know, if you were going to, and imagine like the people at
• 1:03:40
  the AC space mobile, like these executives are sleeping on the
• 1:03:43
  factory floor, they're flying around trying to do deals.
• 1:03:46
  They basically probably see their, their family like rarely.
• 1:03:52
  And that's a sacrifice you make. You know, when I was an
• 1:03:54
  investment banker, that was part of the sacrifice.
• 1:03:56
  I mean, I, I sacrificed my personal life to, for long term
• 1:04:00
  rewards, right? Financially position myself when
• 1:04:02
  I was out of college. But that's the trade off they're
• 1:04:05
  making, right? And so with that trade off comes
• 1:04:08
  some, you know, when the stock was at two or three or four,
• 1:04:10
  that was brutal 'cause they're like, oh, what did I do with my
• 1:04:12
  life? The stock's not working and I'm
• 1:04:14
  working my ass off. But then now they have the
• 1:04:16
  rewards. It's like, OK, my wife who's
• 1:04:19
  taking care of two or three kids or my husband who's taking care
• 1:04:22
  of our two or three kids, I'm going to sell some stock and get
• 1:04:25
  some help because we as a family have endured this.
• 1:04:29
  Everybody contributed. And as part of that financial
• 1:04:31
  success, I owe it to my family to sell some stock and, you
• 1:04:36
  know, hire a nanny, do whatever it is to make our lives a bit
• 1:04:39
  easier because I've been working my ass off.
• 1:04:41
  And so for anybody who like criticizes that, like you're
• 1:04:45
  just full of shit. Like they're, I think some of
• 1:04:48
  these people who are on Twitter are anonymous who, who criticize
• 1:04:52
  executive resalience, like they're probably some 18 year
• 1:04:55
  old or 20 year old single person who can work and is, is
• 1:04:58
  obviously has the ability to take more risk.
• 1:05:01
  And the, you know, your ability to take risk, you know, at, at
• 1:05:06
  18 or 1920 is very different than your ability to take a risk
• 1:05:09
  at 4045 when you've got kids who are just about to go to college.
• 1:05:13
  And it's like, oh shit, how much do, like back when I was in
• 1:05:16
  college, going to a full boat for university was like $30,000,
• 1:05:21
  which at the time was nuts. And now it's like 100,000 or
• 1:05:24
  $110,000 to send a kid to school.
• 1:05:27
  And then by the time like, you know, your kids get to college,
• 1:05:31
  it's going to be 150,000 or 200,000 a year, which is insane.
• 1:05:36
  And so I think it's, it's important to take a deep breath
• 1:05:39
  and just recognize that people have to live.
• 1:05:43
  And these the executives are not like NFL players who, who, who,
• 1:05:47
  you know, got into $120 million five year contract, like full
• 1:05:53
  cash. Like they're no, their
• 1:05:54
  compensation is stock. And they're in terms of
• 1:05:57
  diversification, like they work at this company, they're getting
• 1:06:00
  a salary, they, they sleep and eat and live and breathe at this
• 1:06:05
  company and they're receiving stock for the company.
• 1:06:07
  Like one of the, one of the things that I learned when I,
• 1:06:11
  one of the senior partners of the investment bank I worked at,
• 1:06:13
  when I got my first stock grant, he was like, you need to go out
• 1:06:16
  there and sell it immediately. And I was like, well, why?
• 1:06:18
  Like, why, why should I sell it? And he's like, well, you are
• 1:06:21
  100% exposed to this firm. And so you should go sell that
• 1:06:26
  stock and go invest in other stuff because you're for
• 1:06:29
  investment bankers, you, you make a pretty high amount of
• 1:06:31
  cash compensation. So you, you know, your salary,
• 1:06:34
  you might make multiples of that in your in bonus, but if the
• 1:06:37
  investment bank doesn't do well, then you can some years get 0
• 1:06:42
  right? And, and sometimes that's out of
• 1:06:44
  your hands. Like as someone who advises M&A,
• 1:06:47
  corporate finance, the, the investment banking side of the
• 1:06:51
  house might be doing well, but then on the trading side, if
• 1:06:53
  some idiot loses like several billion dollars on a fixed
• 1:06:56
  income trade in some emerging market, then everybody suffers.
• 1:07:00
  And so the point of what what this this partner was telling me
• 1:07:04
  is like, you're already exposed to this firm.
• 1:07:06
  Oh, at the risk of interrupting you, can anybody else not hear
• 1:07:09
  him? Oh, am I out?
• 1:07:12
  I can hear you now. Maybe it was just me, I don't
• 1:07:15
  know. You said at the risk of of of
• 1:07:19
  you were basically saying at the risk of the investment side
• 1:07:22
  doing well or something like that, but the trading side
• 1:07:24
  wasn't doing well. That was the last thing.
• 1:07:25
  Yeah, yeah. So, so sorry, I might have been
• 1:07:28
  away from the mic. But yeah, like in those, there
• 1:07:30
  were certain instances, especially when I was working in
• 1:07:34
  investment banking, where the trading side would lose money.
• 1:07:38
  Like you would have fixed income, lose like a few billion
• 1:07:41
  dollars on some stupid emerging markets trade.
• 1:07:44
  And then all of a sudden everybody had to suffer like the
• 1:07:46
  trade, like, you know, the, the investment banking side, you
• 1:07:49
  generated, you know, billions of dollars in revenue, but it was
• 1:07:52
  wiped out by the trading side. Then no one got paid.
• 1:07:54
  And so that's where I think making, you know, when, when a
• 1:07:59
  company in terms of like mentality, right, when people
• 1:08:02
  are fully exposed to one company, which are what, you
• 1:08:06
  know, anybody work at Space Mobile, they're exposed to this
• 1:08:08
  particular company. They get stock compensation
• 1:08:11
  primarily and they get a salary, they get benefits when people
• 1:08:15
  sell, they, they, they obviously still see upside in the company,
• 1:08:18
  which is why they've got additional stock that's vesting
• 1:08:20
  and you know, they get additional grants on an ongoing
• 1:08:22
  basis, But you also need some level of diversification.
• 1:08:26
  On one hand, like you want insiders to be zealots, right?
• 1:08:30
  Like they're, they fully believe in the company and they're all
• 1:08:32
  in. On the other hand, you don't
• 1:08:33
  want them doing stupid stuff, right?
• 1:08:35
  Like you want them to be somewhat comfortable.
• 1:08:37
  They're they're taking care of their mental physical health.
• 1:08:39
  And so by selling some, some amount of stock to take care of
• 1:08:43
  their families and to make sure that they're living a
• 1:08:46
  sustainable life, which, you know, for the people who God
• 1:08:50
  bless them, who are in Midland, who are producing these
• 1:08:52
  satellites, they're they're working day and night.
• 1:08:55
  Yeah. You can't, you can't work people
• 1:08:57
  to the bone and not expect them to enjoy something, right.
• 1:09:00
  And so, so I think it's important, you know, it's one of
• 1:09:03
  the things that HD space mobile. We're all used to a bell owning
• 1:09:08
  this massive amount of stock and not selling any.
• 1:09:10
  You know, he he has entered into one small collar transaction.
• 1:09:13
  But at some point in the future, there will be a time when he'll
• 1:09:16
  need to sell something. And you know, whether that's at
• 1:09:20
  50 billion market cap, 100 billion, 150 billion two 100
• 1:09:24
  billion, I don't know. But, you know, he'll probably
• 1:09:26
  start a family office, hope like allocate some money there and
• 1:09:30
  he'll start thinking about his, the future for his, his sons and
• 1:09:34
  his, his wife and, and maybe some of the causes that he cares
• 1:09:37
  about, right, in addition to obviously changing the world.
• 1:09:40
  And you know, the company that he's, he's already built and is,
• 1:09:43
  is building. But there will be come a time
• 1:09:46
  where he'll need to, you know, take some, some amount of money
• 1:09:49
  off the table and start thinking about the long, long term.
• 1:09:53
  But anyway, I've been rambling for quite some time now and kind
• 1:09:57
  of went on a few different tangents, but I think maybe just
• 1:10:01
  to bring it all back and, and maybe we can close the space.
• 1:10:04
  But you know, this evening, as I mentioned before, it looks like
• 1:10:08
  and, and these these schedules can change, but it looks like
• 1:10:11
  Trump is going to be signing the NDAA, which is which will
• 1:10:17
  federally write into law Golden Dome.
• 1:10:20
  And I know there has been some questions about whether the
• 1:10:23
  Golden Dome can repealed. The answer is no.
• 1:10:26
  You would actually need an active Congress in order to
• 1:10:28
  repeal it. But given that the NDAA was
• 1:10:33
  passed overwhelmingly by both, both the House and the Senate,
• 1:10:37
  by both parties, I don't really see it at risk.
• 1:10:40
  And so once Trump signs it into law, I think I think we will see
• 1:10:44
  some news from the various space companies start trickling out,
• 1:10:47
  whether it's formally from the companies themselves or there
• 1:10:50
  might be some leaks. But yeah, that that I think is
• 1:10:55
  it's going to be another huge tailwind for the sector because
• 1:10:58
  a lot of the expertise and and forward thinking that's required
• 1:11:03
  and expediency is going to be needed from these whether it's
• 1:11:07
  Space Mobile, Rocket Labs and these other companies versus the
• 1:11:10
  old school primes who are used to moving slowly, charging
• 1:11:14
  additional margins, you know, charging for work order changes,
• 1:11:18
  all this other crap. I mean, to get Golden Dome up in
• 1:11:21
  three years, you're going to need a different way of
• 1:11:24
  thinking. So, but yeah, that's going to be
• 1:11:26
  signed and then. Real quick on that too just this
• 1:11:30
  something I didn't know when I first posted about it all but
• 1:11:32
  just for me who's not aware of the NDAA is like the
• 1:11:36
  instructions for how how to spend the money, but it's not
• 1:11:40
  actually the authorization of the money if that makes sense
• 1:11:43
  Those happen in appropriation bills.
• 1:11:45
  But the good news is the Department of Events, NASA, all
• 1:11:48
  those other ones already got through the House and it already
• 1:11:52
  I believe and then the Senate Republican side has already done
• 1:11:56
  all their changes. So we just need and the
• 1:11:59
  Democratic side should, should but within with hopefully before
• 1:12:02
  the recess have all their changes done.
• 1:12:03
  So we should get get the actual appropriations which releases
• 1:12:06
  the money hopefully in January. Right.
• 1:12:11
  Yeah. So that that's something in
• 1:12:13
  terms of catalyst, that's something big to look forward
• 1:12:16
  to. And then of course, we've got
• 1:12:17
  Israel launching. And then as I mentioned before,
• 1:12:20
  I'm not exactly sure when BB7 will be ready and to launch.
• 1:12:24
  But then I think the other thing, the key thing to look out
• 1:12:27
  for is BB8910. And then of course, 11/12/13.
• 1:12:32
  And I think we'll we'll have a, a nice celebration of BB8 just
• 1:12:37
  given the significance. It is kind of weird and funny
• 1:12:39
  how BB8 will be the first commercial Bluebird Block 2
• 1:12:44
  satellite. I'm sure there'll be some memes
• 1:12:46
  for that. But the other thing I would say
• 1:12:49
  is what's it going to say? Oh, the other I did buy
• 1:12:54
  yesterday, I did go out and buy a Doctor Pepper ready to
• 1:12:58
  celebrate because I think this is abuse are going to come out
• 1:13:04
  in your term. And as as some of you guys know,
• 1:13:07
  Doctor Pepper was one of my favorite drinks growing up, but
• 1:13:10
  it was the drink of choice for Steve Larrison.
• 1:13:13
  And so whenever positive things happen, I always tuck away at
• 1:13:17
  Doctor Pepper and get ready to open it to celebrate on Earth.
• 1:13:21
  So with that nice note, I will close the space.
• 1:13:24
  Thanks, Jacob, for acting as a replacement for Kook.
• 1:13:29
  We're a tremendous show. I'll call it a comedic relief.
• 1:13:36
  I don't know. No, no, I think, I think you did
• 1:13:38
  a great job. So I do think in the future,
• 1:13:40
  though, we will we'll try to reschedule the space with Kook.
• 1:13:43
  But thanks and everyone for joining And we'll we'll we'll
• 1:13:48
  catch up again, as I'm sure we will as some additional news.
• 1:13:53
  Oh my gosh, is this serious? So there's a there's a red
• 1:13:57
  headline of Bloomberg that says the Kennedy Center.
• 1:14:00
  It will be renamed the Trump Dash Kennedy Center.
• 1:14:04
  I just came up. I got it.
• 1:14:05
  What a weird he loves to. Put a name on everything,
• 1:14:08
  doesn't he? Yeah, well.
• 1:14:10
  He, he, he has the opportunity to say that the US is making the
• 1:14:15
  biggest and most beautiful satellites in Leo.
• 1:14:17
  So, so maybe we could put that on Cal Sheet like a bet.
• 1:14:21
  Is he going to talk about Bluebird satellites tonight?
• 1:14:23
  But anyway, thanks everyone for joining and we'll catch up again
• 1:14:27
  soon. Thanks, Sam, that man.
• 1:14:31
  Thanks. Thanks for listening to the AST
• 1:14:34
  Space Mobile Podcast. If you enjoyed this episode and
• 1:14:38
  you'd like to help support the podcast, please share it with
• 1:14:41
  others. Post about it on on social media
• 1:14:43
  or leave a rating and review. To catch all the.
• 1:14:46
  Latest news about AST Space Mobile, make sure to subscribe.
• 1:14:50
  Thanks again and I'll see you next time.
• 1:14:56
  We're doing something very, very big and I think with this
• 1:14:58
  technology we can really affect billion lives.
• 1:15:01
  AFT Space Mobile is the only company that has proven
• 1:15:05
  technology to deliver several of mobile connectivity directly
• 1:15:09
  from the state to the every day is much.
• 1:15:12
  People will just basically turn their phone and be seamless,
• 1:15:16
  regardless of where you are. We don't want the user even to
• 1:15:18
  know that it's connected by satellite.
• 1:15:21
  Our role is to bring this into reality, always in partnership
• 1:15:25
  with the MMO Listen. Waffles.