Latest / AST SpaceMobile Podcast / Anpanman - Beyond the Burn: Conviction in the Face of Satellite Setbacks

Transcript

Anpanman - Beyond the Burn: Conviction in the Face of Satellite Setbacks · AST SpaceMobile Podcast

• 0:06
  This is the AST Space mobile podcast.
• 0:10
  We just basically come your phone be seamless regardless of
• 0:14
  where you are. We don't want the user even to
• 0:16
  know that it's connected by satellite.
• 0:21
  Listen, the opportunity that we have is very, very, very large.
• 0:28
  Everyone, thanks for joining. I decided to start a space after
• 0:32
  getting some sleep last night a little better, although I was a
• 0:36
  headache. But yeah, new day, new dawn and
• 0:42
  just wanted to talk about additional thoughts around AST
• 0:46
  what happened overnight. We learned a few more things and
• 0:50
  maybe I'll I'll just briefly cover what I did last night as
• 0:53
  well because it's it's relevant. But but yeah, thanks everyone
• 0:57
  for joining. I guess first I'll just start
• 1:01
  off and oh, by the way, I'm, I'm going to take questions.
• 1:04
  So if you have a question, just comment on the space and then
• 1:07
  I'll try to answer them, whether it's related to the company or
• 1:11
  Blue Origin or, or whatever it is, right.
• 1:14
  So feel free to leave a comment and I'll try to get to those.
• 1:18
  But yeah, it's a new morning. Last night we saw overnight
• 1:22
  trading there was really high volumes like I think the stock
• 1:26
  and cut down to 72, 71 at one point.
• 1:29
  And I, I bought some shares at 7250 out of defiance, I guess,
• 1:35
  But I, you know, more so that I, I thought the price was cheap
• 1:39
  relative to, you know, what had transpired obviously.
• 1:42
  And, you know, there's some uncertainty with Blue Origin as
• 1:46
  one of our primary launch vehicles, but I think they're
• 1:49
  going to solve it and they're going to fix it.
• 1:50
  And, you know, I, I think, I think the concerns at this point
• 1:56
  are overly priced in, especially after Rakatin had sold and some,
• 2:02
  some portion of its position and, and put down more pressure
• 2:05
  on the stock. And so I think quite a bit of
• 2:08
  negativity is priced in. And so I'm, I'm bullish at these
• 2:11
  levels. And so overnight I bought stock
• 2:13
  on Robin Hood. I have a Robin Hood account in
• 2:15
  order to do so. I'm not, I'm not sponsored by
• 2:18
  Robin Hood, but I also bought shares today and I don't often
• 2:23
  do this, but I also bought some of the levered ETF just for,
• 2:26
  sorry levered. I think it's an ETN for ASTI.
• 2:32
  Don't often do that. But today I decided why not just
• 2:35
  give it a shot. But for anyone who does trade
• 2:38
  levered products, it is for a trade like don't ever hold them
• 2:42
  for any long period of time. But if you're looking to do a
• 2:47
  short period of time, they can give you some additional
• 2:49
  leverage. But anyway, I did want to cover
• 2:53
  a few things and again, answer questions.
• 2:56
  First, I'll just say this morning, all your usual
• 3:00
  suspects, the haters, they were out in full force, the doubters.
• 3:05
  And of course, like these are people, you know, it's it's very
• 3:09
  clear, like what their objectives are.
• 3:11
  I mean, there's some people who just like rebel in others misery
• 3:15
  and they like try to get under people's skin and get
• 3:19
  engagement. But the the pretty sick ones are
• 3:22
  the ones who try to prey on your vulnerabilities.
• 3:25
  And so the ones who are like, yeah, AST it's it's negative.
• 3:29
  And here's why you should buy this other company or this
• 3:31
  company's better. And so it's pretty clear, you
• 3:35
  know what ploy they're trying to take.
• 3:37
  And it's like, yeah, you should just take losses and invest in
• 3:41
  this other company. And yeah, I just find it, like,
• 3:45
  pretty disgusting. But.
• 3:48
  But I guess that's how some people choose to live over their
• 3:50
  lives, Right. And I think one thing about the
• 3:54
  space community is that this tribalism is pretty, pretty sad.
• 3:58
  Like the fact that people celebrate when another company
• 4:03
  has, you know, had some difficulty.
• 4:05
  And then they will, you know, tell that perhaps their
• 4:10
  executives are better or whatever it is.
• 4:12
  But yeah, I mean, if that makes you feel better, like if you at
• 4:17
  the, if that makes you feel better about your investment
• 4:19
  that perhaps like, you know, this other company has gone
• 4:21
  through is going through some difficulties, I guess in
• 4:24
  particular for AST. You know, they, I I don't put
• 4:28
  fault on them for the loss of the satellite yesterday.
• 4:32
  Could you fault them for accepting this particular
• 4:34
  mission profile? Yeah, I guess they take some
• 4:37
  level of blame, but they also were smart about it, right?
• 4:40
  Like they got insurance, which is more than going to cover the
• 4:44
  cost of the satellite. They also get another flight
• 4:46
  credit with Blue Origin. But you know, one thing that
• 4:50
  came out overnight, which I didn't really think about and is
• 4:54
  important is that I think it's, let me just look here.
• 4:58
  I think it was Scott Manley who was saying that.
• 5:02
  And Robert, I think his name is Robert McDowell that had this
• 5:05
  mission, the second stage just it had it just done a single
• 5:10
  burn to get to a higher orbit, so say like 5 or 600 kilometers,
• 5:16
  it would have been successful. But Blue Origin, New Glenn, part
• 5:20
  of, you know, rolling out a new vehicle is testing.
• 5:23
  And so in this test, there was a focus on doing a dual burn of
• 5:29
  the second stage. And so in order to, you know,
• 5:33
  deliver the payload into 460 kilometers orbit.
• 5:36
  And so for those that remember, Bluebird 6 was actually inserted
• 5:40
  into, I believe it was 600 kilometers.
• 5:43
  And so here we actually accepted a mission profile where the the
• 5:49
  orbit was going to be lower and it was going to be riskier
• 5:52
  because of those two burns. And of course, as we know, the
• 5:55
  second burn didn't happen. And so yeah, things happen like
• 5:59
  space. In space, things can and do go
• 6:01
  wrong. And as you try to push the
• 6:06
  envelope of what a vehicle is capable of, you're going to have
• 6:09
  situations where things don't hand out, you know, come out the
• 6:12
  way that you expect them. But I have full confidence that
• 6:16
  Blue Origin will figure it out. You know, they for those that
• 6:21
  may have missed it, David Limp, I think gave an interview with
• 6:24
  Bloomberg. And you know, they ahead of
• 6:27
  this, this launch, obviously they were targeting anywhere
• 6:30
  between 8:00 to 12:00 launches this year.
• 6:32
  And in order to achieve that, you know, they have two boosters
• 6:36
  now that are working first stage and those two are if they can
• 6:43
  get to the 30 day reuse cadence, then you're looking at a launch
• 6:46
  every two weeks. But obviously the second stage
• 6:48
  is not reusable. So you need to manufacture as
• 6:51
  many of those as you can. And I think their goal is to,
• 6:55
  and Katzie has talked about this, which is, you know, for
• 6:58
  example, Bluebird 6 and Bluebird seven were developed and that
• 7:04
  whole process was to build a machine that builds a machine.
• 7:06
  Meaning in order to stand up manufacturing, you have to build
• 7:10
  this new, this new spacecraft, which was Bluebird 6 and seven
• 7:14
  and 6-7 anyway. But Bluebird 7 was actually a
• 7:20
  back up plan to Bluebird 6. And so had they got Bluebird 7
• 7:24
  into orbit, that would have been kind of like gravy.
• 7:28
  But the fact that we lost it, it doesn't impact the the mission
• 7:32
  for SDA and and the department defense work that we're doing
• 7:34
  from what I understand. So, but going back to Blue
• 7:39
  Origin, you know, they are in the process of ramping up
• 7:43
  production and Dave Lim talks about this is, you know,
• 7:46
  building the machine that builds the machines.
• 7:48
  And so their their key constraint is going to be
• 7:52
  building many but and of course highly reliable Ng 2 boosters,
• 7:57
  right? And so I think this is the
• 7:59
  second stage. And so those I think they've
• 8:02
  built like 6 or 7 or maybe 8 of them so far.
• 8:05
  And in order, you know, those are one off uses.
• 8:08
  So they are talking about getting to a point where they
• 8:11
  can launch every week. And so that's building 52 second
• 8:16
  stage boosters in a year. And so they're hold on one
• 8:21
  second, someone's saying that I'm cutting out.
• 8:23
  Am I cutting out? OK, maybe it's just one person,
• 8:28
  but but yeah, they're getting to a point where they can build.
• 8:31
  They want to get to a point where they can build these on a
• 8:33
  weekly basis. And so, yeah, they, you know,
• 8:38
  they, the first burn was successful.
• 8:40
  The second burn was not, as I mentioned last night, after you
• 8:44
  do the first burn to get to raise the apogee, the, the
• 8:48
  booster coasts for a while. And some things, you know, some
• 8:51
  things can get complicated when it's coasting.
• 8:53
  Because if you have a leak or some of the, the fuel freezes
• 8:58
  then reigniting for a second burn in order to achieve the
• 9:01
  pedigree that which is what happened yesterday.
• 9:06
  You know, you're, if you fail that, then you're going to be in
• 9:09
  elliptical orbit. And of course, the lowest point
• 9:11
  of that elliptical orbit, I think it's like 150 kilometers.
• 9:15
  And so if you don't turn that into a circular orbit, then
• 9:18
  you're going to have obviously the satellite, you know, come
• 9:21
  down in a very short period of time, which is what's going to
• 9:24
  happen. But but yeah, that's, I mean,
• 9:28
  Blue Origin, I, I think they're going to figure it out.
• 9:30
  Obviously there's going to be an FAA review.
• 9:32
  And depending on what they find, it could be a pretty quick turn
• 9:36
  around. It could be, you know, they
• 9:38
  could close their investigation in a month or two, or it could
• 9:40
  be longer. And so if it is longer, that's
• 9:43
  where the timeline for getting, for example, 45, approximately
• 9:47
  45 satellites which they've they've softened that language.
• 9:50
  Originally it was 60, then it was 45 and now they're saying
• 9:53
  approximately 45. So obviously there's like some
• 9:55
  wiggle room, perhaps they won't get there, but it's going to be
• 9:58
  dependent on Blue Origin fixing this problem.
• 10:01
  That said, you know, we do have two Falcon 9 launches, I
• 10:05
  believe, which are going to take the next two batches in.
• 10:08
  And that's the timing. That's probably probably looking
• 10:11
  at June, July launch for those. And then from that point on,
• 10:17
  you're probably looking at Blue Origin again.
• 10:19
  And hopefully by that time, of course, like when you have a
• 10:23
  failure like this, you don't want to be the first customer on
• 10:26
  Blue Origin. But, and so my assumption is
• 10:28
  that New Glenn 4 is probably going to take Amazon Leo
• 10:33
  satellites to to orbit. And if that's successful, then
• 10:36
  then we'll move on to sending up 6 Bluebirds and eventually ate
• 10:40
  at a time. The other thing about last night
• 10:44
  or sorry, yesterday is that this was going to be for some of the
• 10:47
  conspiracy theorists are like, well, they, they probably
• 10:49
  sabotage the rocket themselves. That makes like no sense because
• 10:54
  for Blue Origin becoming a, an industrial, you know, reliable
• 11:00
  heavy, heavy lift rocket is really important to them.
• 11:03
  This was their third certification flight with the US
• 11:05
  government. And so by not achieving that
• 11:08
  success, they're going to have to they have to wait, right?
• 11:11
  The USI think the US government has quite a few payloads booked
• 11:15
  with Blue Origin. And so until they achieve a
• 11:17
  successful 4th sort of certified flight, they won't be able to
• 11:20
  take any of those. And so in terms of silver
• 11:23
  lining, it actually that opens up their manifest.
• 11:27
  And so that in a weird way, once the the rocket is successful,
• 11:33
  they might end up taking more ASD satellites up.
• 11:37
  But you know, the company, the company does have some backfill
• 11:41
  capacity with with Falcon 9. And so, you know, ideally Blue
• 11:46
  Origin gets gets everything in order and we can do to launch
• 11:49
  with them. But if they don't, then you
• 11:51
  still got the alternative, which is Falcon 9 and of course this
• 11:55
  new heavy launch vehicle where they're on standby.
• 11:58
  And so I'm not sure you know, something speculated that maybe
• 12:02
  that's Mitsubishi, it could be Ariana or Ulay.
• 12:05
  But from what I understand by going on standby, if that, if
• 12:10
  that vehicle has customers who are not ready, then we can step
• 12:13
  in and take take that launch. So, so that's another, you know,
• 12:19
  alternative as well. But yeah, so I think let's see
• 12:25
  here. Just going through some of my
• 12:26
  notes, you know, I did cover the failure of the second stage and
• 12:31
  FAA review, But but yeah, I mean, we're we're obviously
• 12:36
  going to wait and see what the investigation finds.
• 12:39
  And, you know, I, I think another thing too, and, and I
• 12:43
  understand where people are coming from, like it would be
• 12:46
  nice for Blue Origin to come out immediately with an, a very
• 12:49
  simple apology that they, they're sorry they lost the
• 12:52
  customer's payload. But what I don't know is like,
• 12:56
  and what we, or I guess all of us don't know is that, you know,
• 13:00
  I'm sure their conversations have happened between Bezos and
• 13:04
  a Bell and, and you know, the two teams as well.
• 13:07
  And so I'm sure there's, there's that going on.
• 13:11
  The other thing is that, you know, I, I'm not an FAA
• 13:16
  investigator and I don't know what the legal issues are, but I
• 13:21
  assume that Blue Origin is going to wait and see exactly what
• 13:26
  transpired before they put anything more formal out aside
• 13:30
  from what this they've disclosed thus far.
• 13:32
  And so I think people should just be kind of aware of that
• 13:37
  before, you know, jump to conclusions about about them.
• 13:41
  But yeah, I mean, obviously yesterday it was not good and it
• 13:45
  was negative. But at the same time, like the
• 13:49
  companies continue on, right? Like they're they're working on
• 13:52
  the next the next batches of satellites and there's a lot of
• 13:55
  things ahead. And so in space with these
• 13:58
  companies like you, you face a set back, but you don't let it
• 14:01
  get to you got to keep marching for it.
• 14:05
  But yeah, so I think you know, a few things.
• 14:09
  I did mention this yesterday. Obviously the guidance changed a
• 14:11
  bit. So the first batch of Bluebird
• 14:14
  satellites that the company was kind of indicating, you know,
• 14:18
  towards the end of April, this was as of maybe 2 weeks ago.
• 14:21
  But now we're looking at 30 days from from yesterday.
• 14:25
  And so that now you're looking at like mid-May, which coincides
• 14:29
  with the earnings update, which will be good because we'll hear
• 14:33
  if someone had asked a question about how Bluebird 6 is
• 14:35
  performing. And you know, the company
• 14:36
  actually mentioned, I think a Bell during his welcoming speech
• 14:40
  talked about how, you know, they were getting in excess of 100
• 14:44
  megabits per second performance, which is really great.
• 14:48
  And I assume that that's got to be Bluebird 6.
• 14:50
  And so we'll probably hear some performance updates in regards
• 14:53
  to that satellite. And then of course, you know,
• 14:56
  yesterday there's been multiple questions of like, you know, how
• 14:59
  are they going to get to 45 to get to approximately 45?
• 15:05
  You know, does that end up being 39384041?
• 15:09
  It's really going to depend on Blue Origin and if they can get
• 15:12
  to that 8 satellite cadence, because you only need a few of
• 15:16
  those to for that to happen. And based off what Dave Limp was
• 15:19
  saying yesterday of getting to 8 to 1012 launches this year,
• 15:25
  clearly they're pretty optimistic.
• 15:26
  Obviously there's a set back yesterday, but if they can solve
• 15:30
  it and keep pushing forward, then then I think you can get to
• 15:33
  that 45 number. But but clearly it's a stretch
• 15:36
  goal, but let's see here. But yeah, I, I think, you know,
• 15:42
  those are that's kind of the quick recap of some of the the
• 15:45
  negatives from yesterday. I mean the positives, you know,
• 15:49
  obviously Lorgen learned a lot about this flight and they'll,
• 15:52
  they'll take that back to the drawing board and, and make a
• 15:56
  few changes and hopefully solve some of the issues that were
• 15:58
  that were that occurred here. AST learned probably quite a bit
• 16:03
  as well. And then the key thing, one of
• 16:05
  the key things which I think some of this all side analysts
• 16:07
  mentioned today is that these two companies learned to work
• 16:11
  together 'cause when you bring payloads and you integrate them,
• 16:14
  it's a very complex process. And so doing that integration
• 16:18
  work together, you know, you by putting these processes in
• 16:21
  place, you're going to be able to do it much faster the next
• 16:25
  time. And so this holds true with
• 16:27
  Israel and will hold true with with SpaceX.
• 16:32
  You know, the company already has experience in delivering
• 16:36
  payloads to SpaceX. And so they can do that pretty
• 16:39
  quickly. But with Blue Origin now we've
• 16:41
  kind of unlocked this this capability.
• 16:45
  Let's see, one one thing I forgot to mention.
• 16:50
  Let's hear. Yeah.
• 16:52
  So I guess I did mention it. You know, the insurance is going
• 16:55
  to cover more than cover the cost of Bluebird 7.
• 16:58
  But of course, you can't get that time back and all the
• 17:01
  sweat, blood, sweat and tears that went into it.
• 17:03
  But at least you're getting something back, right?
• 17:06
  And so I believe the company overinsured Bluebird 7.
• 17:09
  You can do that based off of, you know what, what premiums you
• 17:12
  want to pay. And so there's that.
• 17:14
  And then also Blue Origin, what's customary in the industry
• 17:19
  is that you offer to provide another rocket launch.
• 17:23
  And so I believe the company's going to get that, which
• 17:27
  interestingly will be for, you know, the next launch, which
• 17:30
  will have multiple Bluebirds. And so in some, some ways, like
• 17:33
  it's going to be more cost effective since you're putting
• 17:36
  up more satellites versus just one, I guess a few Nuggets from,
• 17:43
  you know, various interactions with the company down in, in
• 17:46
  Cape Canaveral, someone did have a, a conversation with CTO and
• 17:50
  it sounds like they have now 2T VAX, you know, 2 chambers for
• 17:55
  testing satellites, you know, putting them through the, the
• 17:59
  temperature changes, environmental, all that.
• 18:01
  And then I believe the company also has another two that are on
• 18:07
  the way. And so the company's now going
• 18:09
  to have 4T vax in order to do multiple satellite testing.
• 18:14
  So this is part of the process of standing up production and,
• 18:17
  you know, building the machine that builds a machine.
• 18:19
  And so that that was a pretty positive nugget that I had
• 18:21
  heard. Another thing is one of my
• 18:25
  conversations with Michael Pollock, it was really cool to
• 18:27
  meet this guy, super sharp, very nice.
• 18:30
  But Michael Pollock is the the head of the defense business
• 18:33
  and, you know, he was indicating without obviously telling us
• 18:37
  anything, but apparently there's a lot of positive developments
• 18:41
  that are coming soon. I assume based off of the timing
• 18:45
  of where we are right now. One of those probably has to be
• 18:48
  like Golden Dome, Golden Dome Ward.
• 18:50
  But but yeah, perhaps there's there's other things too that
• 18:54
  are that are in the cooker. But but yeah, there was a group
• 18:57
  of us that were speaking to Michael Pollack and we're
• 19:00
  pleasantly surprised that his his positive and his how
• 19:05
  positive he was about what lies ahead.
• 19:08
  Obviously, you know, yesterday was a for him though was a gut
• 19:12
  punch because FM 1 and FM 2 are part of some of the government
• 19:16
  work and so losing FM 2 is not ideal.
• 19:18
  But as I mentioned before, FM 2 was a backup to FM one in case
• 19:23
  FM one was not discussable. And so the fact that it was
• 19:26
  successful and then of course, FM 2, the one that we thought
• 19:28
  was gonna be successful but wasn't, it doesn't impact, you
• 19:33
  know, the company's ability to meet its financial performance
• 19:37
  obligations related to some of this government work.
• 19:41
  I did. One thing that was kind of
• 19:43
  interesting is I did ask the company about whether it made
• 19:46
  sense to build another FM 2 and put it up in space and maybe if
• 19:51
  that would be a requirement and response was that they're
• 19:55
  actually, they've already moved on to the next platform.
• 19:58
  And so that tells me that perhaps they're, you know, maybe
• 20:04
  they're building. Obviously another experimental
• 20:08
  satellite for the government, but then perhaps that is going
• 20:11
  to lead to this concept of a completely government focused
• 20:16
  shell of, you know, constellation.
• 20:18
  So something similar to what Star Shield is for SpaceX.
• 20:22
  But that was a pretty interesting, you know, nugget
• 20:24
  that that I learned. But yeah, what lies ahead?
• 20:28
  I mean, I, I saw a bunch of negativity from, from people,
• 20:32
  which is again, it's understandable for some of the
• 20:34
  people who, who've gone out in the deep end and, and lashed out
• 20:37
  at others. You know, some of the people
• 20:42
  who've been toxic for quite some time, instead of trying to talk
• 20:45
  them down or interact with them in a rational manner.
• 20:50
  I, if you find yourself blocked, it's probably because I just, I
• 20:54
  just don't want to deal with people who are toxic on this
• 20:57
  platform. Because for me, I'm doing this,
• 21:02
  I'm doing this just out of, you know, fun and camaraderie 'cause
• 21:06
  I, I get just as much as I do as I put into the community, 'cause
• 21:09
  I think as I met like a number of people this weekend, you
• 21:14
  know, I, I wouldn't have been able to make it this far if it
• 21:16
  wasn't for other people's due diligence and some of the
• 21:20
  friendship. But during the obviously the
• 21:21
  difficult times, but also the good, the good times.
• 21:23
  And so if you're toxic and you, you know, you're not adding
• 21:30
  anything to the conversation. And by the way, like there were
• 21:34
  some people yesterday who aren't AST shareholders, or maybe they
• 21:37
  are, but there were some people calling, calling me names.
• 21:44
  You know, some guy was claiming that I was a scammer, which,
• 21:46
  and, and today I saw one of our haters saying AST is a multi
• 21:51
  level marketing scheme, which didn't make sense to me because
• 21:54
  in a multi level marketing scheme, people sell products,
• 21:57
  they take a cut and then, you know, you have to get more
• 21:59
  people to buy the product and take a cut, which doesn't make
• 22:02
  any sense. AST is a publicly traded
• 22:05
  company. They're obviously trying to
• 22:06
  achieve a very big objective. They created this market of
• 22:09
  directed device. You know, they're working with M
• 22:12
  and OS globally, They're working with the US government.
• 22:15
  They have a Department of Defense work.
• 22:18
  So it's a real company and, and I happen to be invested in it
• 22:22
  and I and I research and I talk about it.
• 22:24
  So not sure how that relates to being a multi level marketing
• 22:30
  scheme. But, but like I said before,
• 22:33
  like these haters are going to come out and they're going to
• 22:35
  throw everything against the wall to make you feel bad or
• 22:38
  revel in your misery. But yeah, I this morning I woke
• 22:41
  up and I was like, you know what?
• 22:43
  I know a lot of these guys have shorted in the whole I'm going
• 22:46
  to buy stock because I believe in the company.
• 22:48
  I think it's like at a good level.
• 22:49
  And so I'm going to add to my position.
• 22:51
  When they got, oh, there was this one guy.
• 22:54
  He's, he's kind of I might read about later because I think it's
• 22:58
  a good, it's, it's something good for people to learn.
• 23:02
  But if you're not feeling good and you need to sell, you know,
• 23:07
  you need to like mitigate your losses or you need to raise
• 23:10
  liquidity, perhaps you got over your skis.
• 23:12
  I'm all for that. You know, like when I was
• 23:15
  working in the hedge fund industry, when I suffered like a
• 23:17
  big loss or things were going against me, one of the best
• 23:20
  things that I could do back then was to gross down my book,
• 23:24
  meaning take risk down, you know, take losses, maybe sell
• 23:28
  some of the winners too, but get to a point where you have some
• 23:32
  mental stability and you can think clearly.
• 23:35
  And that was often encouraged by, you know, chief risk
• 23:39
  officer, chief investment officer of my firm.
• 23:41
  And so sometimes you need to do that to kind of clear the decks
• 23:45
  and get back to a balanced mental state where then you can
• 23:48
  start making good decisions, right?
• 23:51
  Sometime, and, and at least for me, it may not be for you, but
• 23:54
  you know, personally, sometimes taking losses can be very
• 23:57
  therapeutic because then you're not tied to something anymore
• 24:02
  and it's not weighing on you. You can like start with a fresh
• 24:04
  slate and move on. But it's important to, you know,
• 24:09
  if you decide to do that, that's fine.
• 24:11
  And, and I encourage that if that's if that's what it takes.
• 24:14
  But I did see, like, for example, there's this one guy
• 24:17
  who, you know, he's been long ACI don't know how long, but
• 24:21
  he's been, he's been positive. But as the stock price came
• 24:23
  down, he became quite negative. And then of course,
• 24:27
  understandably, like the Blue Origin set back BB7 being lost,
• 24:31
  like this guy lost it, right? And so he lashed out on Twitter,
• 24:35
  you know, complaining about the company and and you know, not as
• 24:39
  if like anything's competitively changed with the company, but
• 24:43
  we've lost the satellite and it sucks.
• 24:45
  But this guy overnight sold his shares, you know, when he was
• 24:48
  trading the low 70s and then he went short.
• 24:50
  He said, I'm all in short. And so I guess out of a spite
• 24:55
  decided to do that, which, you know, my key recommendation is
• 24:59
  like, do not if you're on tilt, just like in poker, I guess our
• 25:05
  friend Taylor would tell you the same thing.
• 25:07
  Like do not go on tilt. Like don't make big financial
• 25:11
  decisions while you're not in the right mental state.
• 25:13
  And so this guy shortened the hole and now he's down.
• 25:17
  You know, at one point he was down like 10%.
• 25:20
  Not only did he like sell at the Lowe's, but then he shorted and
• 25:22
  now he's, he's like losing more on the way up.
• 25:24
  And so, yeah, just be careful mentally, you know, it, it, I, I
• 25:30
  think Cook was telling me this morning, you know, he was in a,
• 25:34
  in a rough state overnight. He's like I'm when I wake up,
• 25:37
  I'm not going to open the app and I'm just going to go do push
• 25:39
  ups and do some work, do his workout or whatever, which I
• 25:42
  think is great. Like that's if that's what you
• 25:43
  need to do, then then great. But but yeah, don't just like
• 25:48
  don't drink and drive, like don't be on tilt and trade
• 25:51
  'cause then that's like one of the quickest ways to financial
• 25:55
  ruin. But let me take a look here.
• 25:59
  I'm going to see if anybody has questions or comments.
• 26:07
  Let's see how quickly do you think we will get to 25
• 26:10
  satellites? What does break even do for the
• 26:12
  stock in your opinion? If we get to 25 satellites, then
• 26:15
  you know our operating costs are covered at that point.
• 26:18
  And I think it's important to understand that, you know, we
• 26:21
  have 6, sorry, we have 7 satellites in orbit.
• 26:24
  And so when you think about the total, we think about 25, that
• 26:27
  includes everything we've already launched right now,
• 26:30
  Blue, ARCA, three. That might be on the margin, it
• 26:33
  may not be enough performance. So maybe maybe you don't count
• 26:36
  7, maybe just count 6. So BB one through BB 6.
• 26:42
  But you know, when getting to 45, we need to get another 39
• 26:47
  up, right? And so, but 20, how quickly can
• 26:51
  we get to 25? I mean, it's pretty simple math
• 26:54
  like if it's all blue or if you get 2 Falcon 9, so that's six.
• 26:58
  And then you get let's see if you get like 2 blue origins or
• 27:05
  three blue Origin launches or put in another Falcon 922 blue
• 27:09
  origin launches that that will get you to the 25 pretty fast,
• 27:13
  right? Or more than well, more than 20.
• 27:15
  Well, actually, wait, what am I saying?
• 27:19
  Sorry, I'm a bit my, my head is a bit cloudy.
• 27:22
  So, so let's say let's do the math together.
• 27:24
  So 6 satellites already in orbit, let's not count Blue Arca
• 27:27
  3. So now you've got 19 that you
• 27:31
  need to get up right and then 2 Falcon 9 launches so that gets
• 27:35
  you to you need 13 and then if you can get 2 Blue Origin
• 27:39
  flights up there successfully, you know so that's 16 then
• 27:48
  you're going to get 228 satellites.
• 27:50
  So if you're again, if you're able to do from this point on 2
• 27:55
  successful Falcon Nines and then two successful Blue Origin
• 28:00
  flights then or sorry, actually not 16, what am I doing 12/2
• 28:05
  successful Blue Origin flights that gets you to around 24.
• 28:08
  So that's pretty close. But what that unlocks for you
• 28:12
  is, is, you know, intermittent service, some service with the
• 28:16
  government that gets you to cash flow break even on the operating
• 28:21
  business. But obviously, you know, you
• 28:24
  have to still dole out a lot of CapEx in order to build the
• 28:29
  satellites and launch them. But but yeah, so in terms of
• 28:33
  timing, I mean, so we should have two Falcon 9 launches over
• 28:37
  the course of June, July. And then if you can get 2 Blue
• 28:40
  Origin launches with six a piece on them, you know, over the next
• 28:45
  two months after that, then you're almost there, right?
• 28:48
  You're, you're, you're looking at probably sometime in Q3, but
• 28:52
  knowing how space is hard, let's just say Q4.
• 28:55
  And so in order to get to approximately 45, you obviously
• 28:58
  need to get Blue, Blue Origin, new Glen to reach a point of
• 29:03
  eight satellites and maybe launch, you know, two to three
• 29:08
  more of those, right? But, but that's the math.
• 29:12
  Let's see. What do you imagine Vodafone
• 29:14
  execs are thinking today? How do they digest the news and
• 29:18
  update their service offering schedules?
• 29:20
  They're very public partners with AST have lots of getting
• 29:23
  loose given Satellite Connect Europe, our portfolios are
• 29:26
  riding along theirs as well. Yeah, they obviously it's not
• 29:30
  good. It's a set back right.
• 29:31
  But they sit on the board. So they're intimately aware of
• 29:35
  the issues and they know it's not as if like AST is going to
• 29:40
  AT&T or Vodafone or Verizon and saying, hey, this is where we
• 29:43
  are on the schedule. This is where we are in terms of
• 29:47
  rolling out the service. They also on the board, Verizon
• 29:50
  is not a an active board board, but they have board observer
• 29:54
  rights and so they know what's going on.
• 29:55
  So none of this stuff is is a surprise to them.
• 29:59
  Is it good in terms of the service getting delayed?
• 30:02
  No, But also is there a competitive service offering out
• 30:08
  there and should they wait? There isn't a competitive
• 30:11
  service offering and should they wait?
• 30:13
  Yes, right. Because I think for Starlink,
• 30:16
  you know, V2 is not going to be available until probably 2029.
• 30:21
  That's if all those everything goes well for them, right.
• 30:24
  And they have similar issues in terms of iterating the Starship
• 30:30
  itself and then of course the satellite, you know that that
• 30:33
  means like getting regulatory approval for AWS 3 spectrum.
• 30:38
  It also means that they're successful in spinning up their
• 30:40
  ASIC, which we know that's a really long and tough process.
• 30:43
  So, so yeah, it's going to take them time.
• 30:46
  And then if you look at Amazon, you know, we've talked about
• 30:48
  this before, but like they're going to be using global stars,
• 30:54
  the X-17 replenishment satellites and then the Aurora
• 30:58
  50, you know, 50 satellite consolation from MDA space,
• 31:01
  which I don't, I don't off the top.
• 31:04
  I had know what the performance is.
• 31:06
  They haven't really specs, but I, I pretty certain like that's
• 31:08
  not going to be a broadband consolation and that's going to
• 31:11
  be an interim solution until they can develop a, a satellite
• 31:15
  from scratch that can do direct to device.
• 31:18
  And so you're probably looking at something 20-30 maybe, you
• 31:22
  know, in order to achieve proper performance, they'll, they'll
• 31:25
  need to develop an ASIC as well. And so as long as we aren't off
• 31:31
  by a magnitude of years, but you know, we, we get service up and
• 31:35
  running within some reasonable time frame and are able to
• 31:39
  leverage our M&O partners to pretty much lock in service.
• 31:43
  And you know, I've, I've talked about like how because the way
• 31:46
  that our service works, that M and OS integrated into their
• 31:50
  core network, once you're integrated, it's really hard to
• 31:53
  move on and utilize another service.
• 31:57
  And so, and that's part of the the beauty for the operators
• 32:00
  too, because it's integrated, they can, they can provide the
• 32:03
  service offerings that they want to their customers.
• 32:05
  They own the customer versus passing it on to Starlink, for
• 32:09
  example. So yeah, once the service is up
• 32:13
  and running, then you're good. But, but obviously you got to
• 32:15
  get there. And so for Vodafone, they're
• 32:19
  probably frustrated, but they understand how difficult this
• 32:23
  is. And it's not easy.
• 32:24
  And this is part of the the Moat, right?
• 32:26
  Like if it was easy, everybody would be putting up directed
• 32:29
  device consolations. Like imagine Biasat talking with
• 32:35
  equitis and trying to put up a direct advice consolation and
• 32:39
  they're, they're committing a billion dollars.
• 32:41
  It's not enough money. I, I guess you could put
• 32:44
  something together for SOS messaging and, and some
• 32:48
  narrowband applications. But if you're going to compete
• 32:51
  offering, you know, broadband connectivity to unmodified
• 32:55
  devices, then that's going to be really tough.
• 32:59
  So, but yeah, I think they're frustrated, but they understand
• 33:02
  this is part of the process and they're probably and continue to
• 33:06
  be supportive of the company. Let's see.
• 33:10
  Do you believe the end of the 45 satellites end of your target is
• 33:14
  a reach? If not, does that have a
• 33:16
  significant impact on when Commercial Services start?
• 33:19
  I do think it is a stretch goal, right?
• 33:22
  And so the company softened the language before it was like 6045
• 33:26
  to 60, then it became 45 and now it's become approximately 45.
• 33:31
  And so it is a stretch goal and it's something that they should
• 33:35
  be running towards and hopefully can execute and and obviously a
• 33:40
  lot of things have to go right in order to get there.
• 33:43
  But is it going to impact when Commercial Services start?
• 33:47
  I think commercial service is going to start on an
• 33:50
  intermittent basis, but the robustness and the user
• 33:55
  experience is, is dependent on getting enough satellites into
• 33:58
  space. And so I think like for example,
• 34:01
  you, you might have a situation similar to Starlink where when
• 34:04
  they got the initial satellites out, they did offer a service,
• 34:08
  but then they told people, you know, as we as we add to the
• 34:11
  consolation, it will get better. So you're probably going to have
• 34:14
  some type of marketing effort, I think probably around there.
• 34:20
  Let's see, BB 6 was inserted at 521 kilometers against the ask
• 34:24
  of 523 kilometers, which was declared as a global record.
• 34:28
  Yeah, actually I think I misspoke before I said 600.
• 34:30
  This person's right. So when Israel inserted BB6 at
• 34:34
  521 versus the mission parameters, the exact, you know,
• 34:39
  ask of 523, I I believe I read that too.
• 34:43
  That was a global record within a 2 kilometer insertion.
• 34:47
  So. So that's, I know people before
• 34:49
  were kind of worried about Israel and, and, but Israel,
• 34:54
  they, they're good at what they do and they, they deserve praise
• 34:59
  and kudos for that. Let's see why silent no official
• 35:04
  unofficial post PR communications.
• 35:06
  Well, we are in the process and they are in the process like
• 35:10
  they're trying to figure out what happened with the booster,
• 35:13
  right. And so part of the issue is that
• 35:15
  the booster is like still out there in space and unfortunately
• 35:18
  it's going to get, it's going to come down this massive multi ton
• 35:22
  in addition to our satellite, but the booster is even bigger.
• 35:25
  It's going to deorbit. And so based off of data and
• 35:30
  information, you know, mission information, they're trying to
• 35:32
  figure out what happened. My guess is that they're going
• 35:36
  to be quiet until they fully know.
• 35:37
  And if for those that don't, I guess forget, for those that
• 35:43
  have forgotten, if you recall Blue Origin, New Glen one, when
• 35:46
  the booster did not return successfully, they pretty much
• 35:50
  went into complete dark mode, right?
• 35:53
  Like there was no videos. Obviously it was done at night
• 35:56
  time and there were no videos of Booster 1 coming down.
• 36:00
  It wasn't, you know, it wasn't done live.
• 36:03
  And then of course, like they didn't share any information
• 36:05
  around that. What we learned later, which I
• 36:08
  don't think was something formal, but people kind of
• 36:11
  figured out is that obviously there was like some issues with
• 36:16
  the fuel reuniting that that burn for the stage 1 booster,
• 36:21
  but they figured it out and they fixed it, right?
• 36:23
  And so in this instance, I think they're probably going to stay
• 36:27
  quiet until they truly know what happened.
• 36:30
  And then I would expect, and I can be wrong, but I would expect
• 36:33
  that you'll see some more official news from them around,
• 36:37
  you know, what happened and what they're doing to fix it.
• 36:41
  And as I mentioned before, like I think it would be a nice touch
• 36:44
  to say, hey, sorry to the team at AST and, and also obviously
• 36:49
  the team at Blue Origin disappointed perhaps saying
• 36:52
  something like that, but I'm sure they probably have the
• 36:54
  reasons for holding that back for now.
• 36:58
  But we'll see. But I, I'm, I'm fairly confident
• 37:01
  like they probably, I mean, they, they certainly have talked
• 37:04
  to AST management and they probably have, you know, giving
• 37:08
  them, giving them an apology for, for what happened.
• 37:12
  But yeah, we'll see. Let's see.
• 37:16
  Have you heard any update about other launch providers,
• 37:18
  Mitsubishi or others? I have not.
• 37:20
  But I do know, as I mentioned before, that the other heavy
• 37:24
  launch provider is that's going to be a standby platform.
• 37:28
  So if customers to that heavy launch platform do not aren't
• 37:32
  ready by the time that the Rockets are ready, then we can
• 37:35
  step in to replace those customers.
• 37:37
  And but that's probably something that's not going to be
• 37:41
  available until closer towards the end of this year and then
• 37:44
  over 2027. I think that's when things
• 37:47
  really kick in. But I'm not sure it I, I would
• 37:50
  by the way, like I was talking to some space mob this weekend
• 37:54
  and I forgot to mention this, but and I talked about
• 37:56
  yesterday, I really enjoyed meeting everybody.
• 38:00
  I guess some people figured out who I was and just from the
• 38:03
  voice of talking, but it was it was.
• 38:07
  I mean, aside from losing Bluebird 7, the the event was
• 38:10
  amazing. It was great to see Blue Origin
• 38:12
  New Glen go up and the booster come down.
• 38:15
  It would have been obviously better for Bluebird 7 the
• 38:19
  mission to be successful, but but putting all that stuff aside
• 38:22
  like it was, it was great to see old friends and new faces.
• 38:26
  And yeah, I'm looking forward to the next.
• 38:28
  One reason why I mention this is that I would love for that other
• 38:33
  heavy launch provider via Mitsubishi because you know, we
• 38:35
  talked about this concept with some friends.
• 38:37
  Like it would be absolutely amazing to be able to go to
• 38:40
  Japan and see that launch and of course, obviously enjoy the
• 38:44
  culture of Japan, the food well going to this great event.
• 38:47
  But but yeah, my my guess is obviously or not obviously, but
• 38:52
  you know, the company did mention Mitsubishi Heavy on one
• 38:55
  of their calls referring to these other providers that are
• 38:59
  becoming available. And so my guess is that it's
• 39:02
  probably Mitsubishi, but you could also be looking at Ariana
• 39:05
  or ula let's see. My understanding is the latest
• 39:10
  satellite was aimed for government defense test
• 39:12
  purposes. Do you have an idea of potential
• 39:13
  impact? Yeah.
• 39:15
  So this was, as I mentioned before, this was a backup to
• 39:18
  BB6. So if BB6 didn't succeed in
• 39:21
  getting to orbit, then BB7 was the backup to that.
• 39:26
  And so it would have been gravy. But from what I understand, I
• 39:29
  don't think it impacts the government mission because I
• 39:32
  believe you only need one satellite.
• 39:34
  But of course, 2 would have been better.
• 39:36
  But I don't think, I don't think that really impacts things.
• 39:40
  Let's see. Can you talk more about the FCC
• 39:42
  application? Is approval contingent on
• 39:44
  anything? What is the FCC waiting on given
• 39:46
  a fully support ASD? That's a good question.
• 39:49
  I, I think we're in the strike zone right of, of approval.
• 39:53
  It could happen any day, any hour now.
• 39:56
  And we've seen Brandon Carr publicly support the company.
• 40:00
  And so I'm not sure, you know, the FCC is like a big
• 40:03
  bureaucracy, even though they're trying to cut down on and speed
• 40:07
  up the process for these approvals.
• 40:08
  So, but yeah, we could see that anytime now, which I think is a
• 40:12
  pretty big watershed event for the company.
• 40:16
  You know, moving from special temporary authorities to put
• 40:20
  consolations up to actually having full authority to put up
• 40:24
  a, you know, a large consolation for this service and having
• 40:27
  approval for market access in the USI think that's going to be
• 40:31
  a pretty big event. So as we see in the docket the
• 40:34
  FCC filings, it looks like we're kind of in the last strokes of
• 40:39
  the brush here. I think that approval will be
• 40:42
  soon. Let's see this person.
• 40:50
  Let's see you said it to cook this morning.
• 40:51
  Wanted to say to you thank you for everything.
• 40:53
  Without you, both others have been bounced years ago.
• 40:55
  Oh, others I'd have been. I would have bounced years ago.
• 41:00
  And this has changed my life. Thanks for the good comment or
• 41:03
  nice comment. Yeah, I've I've heard this from
• 41:05
  people and it's pretty. It's pretty amazing to hear
• 41:09
  personal stories of people who lives have been changed by
• 41:13
  having conviction in holding this this company over the
• 41:18
  years, which has not been easy and it's not been easy for
• 41:20
  anybody. And I while people have thanked
• 41:23
  me for, you know, sharing my due diligence and I guess helping
• 41:28
  people have some level of conviction, I also think the the
• 41:31
  community, whether that's Kook or especially Katzy or Tanner,
• 41:37
  Kevin, I mean, there's a whole host of people.
• 41:39
  But but yeah, I've, I've benefited just as much as
• 41:43
  perhaps we will have benefited. Benefited for me because there's
• 41:46
  no way I would have held on to this doc with conviction if it
• 41:49
  wasn't for some of the amazing people who've done research work
• 41:53
  around the company. Let's see here.
• 42:02
  So I pilot Omni aeronautic. I was pointing out.
• 42:05
  Yeah. So, yeah, Yep, that's right.
• 42:09
  If you look at the transcript of a bell at the welcome event, it
• 42:14
  sounds like BB6 is doing well north of 150 megabits per
• 42:18
  second. So that's a big positive news
• 42:20
  development. So eventually, my guess is that
• 42:23
  the company's going to be counting higher speeds.
• 42:25
  And as we know with AI optimization, they're talking
• 42:29
  about getting, I think in the near term 3X the performance of,
• 42:34
  of what they thought was possible before and eventually
• 42:36
  getting that to 11 times more performance.
• 42:40
  Let's see when do we anticipate more government contracts will
• 42:43
  be announced? I think we're kind of there like
• 42:47
  I know the company seemed pretty confident that they were going
• 42:50
  to get more awards in this quarter, meaning Q2.
• 42:53
  So we're what April 20th? We're we're, we're into the
• 42:58
  early part of Q2. So I think we might hear
• 43:01
  something. I I don't know when exactly.
• 43:03
  And perhaps that's why Michael Pollock was, was very happy, of
• 43:06
  course, before launch, but we should be we should be finding
• 43:10
  out soon. Let's see, I've always been
• 43:14
  curious. You say you talk to the company.
• 43:16
  Are you reaching out to investor relations?
• 43:18
  Do you have personal relations with employees at this point?
• 43:20
  Generally the curse. Yeah.
• 43:21
  So let me let me address this part.
• 43:23
  So when I first started researching the company, you
• 43:28
  know, part of the initial due diligence I did is I had AI had
• 43:31
  a call through a banker with, with a bell.
• 43:34
  This was like in I think it was like January of 2021.
• 43:40
  And so I've built a personal relationship with the bell.
• 43:42
  I also built relationship with Scott as well.
• 43:44
  And so as my experience as an institutional investor, part of
• 43:49
  your job is to build these relationships with executives.
• 43:52
  So not only, you know, you have touch points with executives of
• 43:56
  the company, you're also talking to your investor relations.
• 43:58
  And for many years, by the way, like that was primarily just
• 44:00
  Scott. So he was doing chief strategy
• 44:02
  officer and he is doing investor relations, but they obviously
• 44:05
  hired Max who who does investor relations as well.
• 44:08
  And so this is something that probably most retail people
• 44:12
  don't know. But, and I saw this this past
• 44:14
  week where people were giving me a hard time.
• 44:17
  They're like, well, how do you know how you, you claim that you
• 44:20
  talked to the company? How's that possible anybody if
• 44:24
  you're a public investor or you're not you, you may not even
• 44:27
  own shares of ASD, but you're more than welcome to call IR.
• 44:31
  There's a phone number you can e-mail them to.
• 44:33
  I mean, some of you have astutely sent questions during
• 44:37
  quarterly updates of which you know could be addresses those
• 44:40
  questions, but but anybody is free to reach out to the company
• 44:45
  now, will they respond? You know, it's unclear like if
• 44:48
  the company's $30 billion in size and they've got a ton of
• 44:52
  institutions to deal with who are contacting them, asking the
• 44:56
  questions also sell side research, then they may not get
• 45:00
  back to you. But if you felt like a rapport
• 45:02
  over the years, then you might have the ability to still
• 45:05
  interact with management. That said, when you do talk to
• 45:10
  company management and it's not just AST, you know, like I've,
• 45:12
  I've built a relationship with some of these other companies
• 45:15
  like T1 Energy, Bridger, Strata, you know, over the years I've
• 45:20
  inter interacted with many management teams.
• 45:22
  Pagaya, another one. But yeah, over over time, I
• 45:27
  guess like the the shtick for me for some of these companies that
• 45:31
  I haven't built a relationship with, but then they pick up the
• 45:33
  call is that I told them like, hey, I'm formerly an investment
• 45:37
  banker. I was in the hedge fund
• 45:39
  industry. So I kind of try to lay out my
• 45:41
  credentials like I'm, I'm somewhat of a sophisticated
• 45:44
  investor, right? I've, I'm, so I'm not like some,
• 45:47
  I guess Yahoo and I'll tell them like, you know, I, I personally,
• 45:53
  I also like, I'm on social media.
• 45:55
  And so I will, you know, tell them that I, I, if I invest in
• 46:00
  companies, I often write about them.
• 46:02
  And so I wanted to, you know, engage and, and just get an
• 46:04
  overview of what your company's doing and, you know, have the
• 46:08
  ability to ask questions over time.
• 46:10
  And most companies are pretty receptive to that, right?
• 46:12
  And so that's how I kind of build, that's how I build
• 46:15
  relationships with a lot of these companies.
• 46:17
  And, you know, obviously I respect the, the boundaries.
• 46:20
  And so for example, with AST, like I'm not calling them every
• 46:24
  day every it, it may be weeks, like months before.
• 46:28
  If there's something important and I want to reach out and, and
• 46:32
  get some clarity on something, then then I'll reach out to
• 46:34
  them. And this is similar to, you
• 46:36
  know, how it works on the institutional side of investing,
• 46:38
  right? And so the other thing is like
• 46:41
  when you build a relationship with management team, you also
• 46:44
  have to respect that, meaning, you know, there's, there's like
• 46:48
  this balance, right? Like if I, if I were to go out
• 46:51
  and like start talking really negatively about a company, then
• 46:54
  are the chances of them picking up my phone call to do those
• 46:57
  chances go up or go down? They probably start going down,
• 46:59
  right? And so, you know, you want to be
• 47:02
  careful in like what how you manage that relationship.
• 47:05
  And, and the same goes on the other side as well.
• 47:07
  That said, like there is clear lines like what what we call Reg
• 47:11
  FD, where, you know, these companies will not be sharing
• 47:15
  material, non public information with you.
• 47:16
  They, they will tell you what they're telling everybody else.
• 47:20
  And so it's not as if like you're getting, you know,
• 47:23
  cutting edge insight. That's that's, you know,
• 47:26
  material. You're, you're actually getting
• 47:29
  some level of color, but it's going to be within the realms of
• 47:32
  Reg FD. So, and often, you know, it's,
• 47:36
  are there companies out there that can break that or, or they
• 47:38
  go beyond that? I guess there are.
• 47:40
  But if you're a public company, obviously that's the quickest
• 47:43
  way to, to trouble for you and also for an investor, right?
• 47:47
  And so you know that one way that companies do get some
• 47:54
  information out there that's not part of a quarterly update is
• 47:58
  they'll talk to research analysts and then research
• 48:00
  analysts will publish. And so sometimes like research
• 48:02
  analysts will have good insight from the company.
• 48:05
  But, but yeah, for me, I, you know, I, I build relationships
• 48:09
  with companies and, and so I'm able to have some conversations
• 48:12
  and, and you know, within the realms of, of public, you know,
• 48:16
  proper public disclosure, like I'm able to get some insights,
• 48:19
  but it's no different than what an institution can do.
• 48:22
  And, and so part of my part of what I do is I being someone who
• 48:29
  interacts with retail investors, I try to provide some of those
• 48:31
  insights like in my previous job as an institution, this is how I
• 48:34
  look at things or this is, you know, based off of my
• 48:36
  conversation with the company, this is what I think is relevant
• 48:40
  or how I'd look at it, right? And so even my early days when
• 48:44
  I, when I started this account and people were all crazed about
• 48:48
  SPAC's and there was so much misinformation 'cause people
• 48:51
  didn't understand the product. That's when I started posting
• 48:54
  about them 'cause I was like, Oh, well, this is how you value
• 48:56
  a company. And, and this back has, you
• 49:00
  know, this pipe is, is going to go effective in, in a few weeks
• 49:03
  and these shares are going to come up for sale.
• 49:05
  And, and this is, you know, this particular sponsor doesn't have
• 49:10
  ability to short stock. And so you know that that was
• 49:13
  like part of the early, early days of this account.
• 49:17
  I also would talk about like M&A, which is my background as
• 49:21
  well. But but then of course, like
• 49:24
  overtime, you know, I, I started sharing ideas, this stuff that I
• 49:28
  was invested in which, you know, I, I, anybody who followed what
• 49:34
  I did either made money or lose, lost money along with me.
• 49:37
  It's like, but yeah, I mean, for me, this is just, I do this out
• 49:42
  of fun because I especially for for someone who is managing
• 49:46
  their own own investments, it can be a lonely endeavor, right?
• 49:49
  Which is why social media is so popular.
• 49:51
  Like if it was just me staring at Bloomberg screens all day and
• 49:55
  just going through ideas, that would be boring.
• 49:57
  But you know, it's like, for example, I talk with Kook from
• 50:01
  time to time and we'll talk about ideas and obviously we're
• 50:04
  not like invested in all the same things, but but that's
• 50:07
  that's what makes investing. Like part of investing is stress
• 50:11
  is very stressful, right? But when you have friends that
• 50:14
  are doing it just like, I don't know, a book club or some of
• 50:17
  these other things, it just becomes more interesting and fun
• 50:20
  and, and hopefully by having a community, you can make better
• 50:23
  decisions. That's not always the case, but
• 50:26
  that would be the goal, right? Like to have fun while you're
• 50:29
  doing it. But also, you know, in space
• 50:31
  mod, for example, you've got lawyers, accountants, engineers,
• 50:37
  you know, people from all walks of life, people doing
• 50:39
  production. And so when people have views
• 50:42
  about, you know, anything related to an investment, that
• 50:46
  unique insight is really helpful.
• 50:48
  Like if you can imagine going toe to toe with a hedge fund and
• 50:52
  all these guys are like finance Bros, but they have no
• 50:55
  background in in medicine or actual production.
• 51:01
  But then you've got people on your side who have that
• 51:04
  experience that can be a very useful tool in understanding and
• 51:08
  underwriting an investment. But yeah, that's, that's a quick
• 51:11
  and dirty. Like that's how I, when I,
• 51:14
  that's how I'm able to talk to companies.
• 51:15
  And sometimes like I'll, I'll do spaces and host people.
• 51:18
  AST is not, it's not accepting my offer to do that.
• 51:21
  Maybe they will at some point. But but yeah, that's, that's the
• 51:25
  quick background. Like when people find out that
• 51:27
  about my experience, they, they decide to engage And because I
• 51:30
  understand, because I, I think the other thing too is like for
• 51:34
  some of these people on Twitter who perhaps are younger or
• 51:38
  didn't, you know, come up in the finance industry, which by the
• 51:41
  way, like you don't have to, But I think some of the folks who,
• 51:45
  who haven't interacted with, with companies and then over
• 51:48
  time they kind of abuse that relationship or they, you know,
• 51:54
  I, I think for a company, it's always, you're always wary about
• 51:57
  that, right? Because if you have retail
• 51:59
  investors who you're talking to who might own a few hundred, a
• 52:02
  few 1000 shares and you're spending a lot of time on a
• 52:05
  handful of these accounts, that's tough, right?
• 52:08
  Because you should be talking to probably spending your time
• 52:11
  better talking to like Fidelity or, or, you know, Vanguard or
• 52:16
  BlackRock, right? And so talking to accounts that,
• 52:19
  you know, if they're, they're so disposed and they like your
• 52:22
  company, they might buy 5678 percent of your company versus,
• 52:26
  you know, talking to Joe Schmo who, who requires, you know,
• 52:31
  often times retail investor require a ton of hand holding.
• 52:34
  Like you interact with one guy and then the stock is down 2%
• 52:36
  one day and you're going to e-mail that person's emailing IR
• 52:39
  and it's like, what's going on? You know, why is the stock down
• 52:41
  or stock Down's 5%? It's like the company needs to
• 52:43
  do something about this. They need to issue APR like my,
• 52:46
  my, my shares are down. And so whereas institutions
• 52:49
  like, OK, this is kind of, you know, just day-to-day
• 52:52
  volatility, I'm not really worried.
• 52:53
  And, and they're, they're obviously they've got other fish
• 52:56
  to fry in the portfolio. And so they're probably
• 52:59
  thinking, you know, they're doing work on the next
• 53:01
  investment or they're, they're focused on an actual issue with
• 53:04
  the company. They don't really care if like
• 53:06
  this position, ASD is up 345 percent, 10% even.
• 53:10
  Like I'm sure there are some institutions that are concerned
• 53:13
  about what happened and they're talking to management.
• 53:15
  The others are like, well, this is just part of, you know, this
• 53:17
  is part of being a space company and part of the risk.
• 53:19
  And so I'm just going to hold or I might buy more or maybe
• 53:22
  they're selling. But then if you can imagine,
• 53:25
  like if, if the company's talking to 10 retail investors
• 53:29
  who you know, that, that have the, the company's attention,
• 53:33
  there's probably a lot more hand holding that has to happen on a
• 53:37
  day like today. And so this holds true for all
• 53:40
  these other companies as well. You know, where if you for, for
• 53:45
  any company that decides to engage with retail, you know,
• 53:48
  it's, it's almost like on the one hand, it can be a huge asset
• 53:52
  in terms of, you know, people who are willing to take more
• 53:55
  risk and can be fervent supporters.
• 53:58
  But it can go the other way too. Just like we're seeing over the
• 54:01
  course of today where people who are believers in the company one
• 54:04
  day and then the next day, you know, you have a negative event
• 54:07
  happen, they turn into something completely opposite of that,
• 54:12
  right. And so for a company investing
• 54:16
  their time and resources, do you go out, Do you pursue large
• 54:19
  institutions or do you pursue, you know, retail investors?
• 54:23
  So that's, that's, that's a trade off that that people have
• 54:26
  to make. Let's see.
• 54:32
  Any guidance on what is pushing off BB8BB10 shipment from March,
• 54:37
  April to May June. So BB810 shipment that is
• 54:42
  targeted for mid-May and, and obviously that's pushed it back.
• 54:46
  We've, we've talked about it at length that stacking was a
• 54:48
  primary issue, right? So this is something that they
• 54:50
  solved in February, the existing composite rings for BB89101112,
• 54:59
  those rings, I think. So I, I'm just going to make
• 55:02
  something up here, right? But this is how I can play it
• 55:05
  off my head. They probably got two or three
• 55:08
  rings from the factory in India. They tested them in terms of how
• 55:15
  much load they could bear, you know, vertically and
• 55:17
  horizontally those rings failed or, or maybe you, you know, 1
• 55:21
  ring failed and they're like, OK, let's check another one.
• 55:22
  And then the second ring failed and they're like, OK, this is
• 55:24
  not good enough. So then they, they had to come
• 55:28
  up with a workable solution to reinforce that ring.
• 55:31
  And so Cassie's talked about this idea of putting tubes, a
• 55:36
  bunch of little tubes all around the ring so that that gives you
• 55:40
  a bunch of vertical strength and then you're able to stack these
• 55:43
  things. And so they solved that in
• 55:45
  February. And then they probably ordered
• 55:48
  some additional rings in order to fill out those first six.
• 55:52
  And that ring is going to be the original design, which then they
• 55:55
  will retrofit like some some tubes to make sure that
• 56:00
  vertically it's strong enough. And So what, what did I mean by
• 56:04
  that? Like if you're going to stack
• 56:05
  these things and you put them into a rocket, like imagine the
• 56:09
  amount of pressure and force that goes on to one of these
• 56:14
  structures, right? So seven were metal, metal made
• 56:19
  out of like metal. And so they, they could, they
• 56:22
  were super heavy, but they could withstand a lot of pressure with
• 56:24
  composites. Like you're, you're going to try
• 56:26
  to balance weight versus strength, right?
• 56:28
  Like you can over engineer and put a ton of composites, but
• 56:31
  then you're going to lose out on what you're trying to achieve,
• 56:32
  which is, which is a weight savings, right?
• 56:35
  And so for, for BB, you know, Bluebird 8-9 and 10/11/12, those
• 56:44
  are going to be the old rings. And then based off of the
• 56:46
  learnings from there, the company then you know, they're
• 56:50
  like, OK, these are the areas where it needs to be enforced.
• 56:52
  And so they sent that new design or, or redesign to the factory,
• 56:59
  which we believe is in India for the, for new composites.
• 57:02
  And so those new composites, the next seven rings showed up, I
• 57:08
  think it was what, I guess it's been a week ago or two weeks
• 57:10
  ago, so that then they're going to start it using those rings
• 57:15
  for the next set of, of satellites.
• 57:17
  But in the meantime, for BB8910111213 or sorry, 1112,
• 57:25
  they're integrating all the payload into those.
• 57:27
  And then, you know, once they do that, they've got to like test
• 57:29
  it. And so at any point in time, and
• 57:32
  this is where slips and delays can happen, while you're putting
• 57:35
  together the satellite, you might run into issues.
• 57:38
  Once you've put the satellite together, you might, when you're
• 57:40
  testing it, like, you know, for electronics and all these
• 57:43
  things, like you might run into issues.
• 57:44
  And then once you're done doing that, you put it into a tea bag.
• 57:48
  So you bake this thing you like, freeze it, you do all these
• 57:50
  things and you might run into issues there too.
• 57:52
  And so throughout that process, you're going to learn how to
• 57:56
  build these things. And over that time, you might
• 58:01
  run into some issues and you fix them.
• 58:04
  And this goes back to, you know, yesterday.
• 58:06
  If there is a silver lining, which there always is in space,
• 58:11
  because the, you know, because Bong failed, Blue Origin, New
• 58:14
  Glen failed, they're going to it.
• 58:16
  It's it's almost akin to like I used to say this to people.
• 58:20
  I remember when these like low cost carrier airlines, whenever
• 58:23
  they were having a crash or like US air would have a crash.
• 58:27
  My, my inclination would be like, oh, maybe I should go fly
• 58:29
  that airline because because they've had a crash, they're
• 58:32
  probably extra focused on making sure that the next flights, any
• 58:36
  flights that they have, you know, they don't suffer another
• 58:38
  crash, right? It's like one of these Maxim's
• 58:41
  where if a company fails, like they'll be extra focused on not
• 58:45
  failing again. And so with, with Blue Origin,
• 58:48
  New Glen, you know, it's better that we had a failure with one
• 58:53
  satellite versus a failure with six, right?
• 58:55
  And so fixing this, the second stage is important.
• 58:58
  And you know, they're, they're obviously doing that and that's
• 59:01
  how they improve the vehicle, right?
• 59:03
  And so with, with ASC space mobile, once you build a few of
• 59:09
  these satellites. And so BB6 and BB7 were
• 59:11
  important because they created the process to build the block 2
• 59:16
  satellites, right? Learning how to put those
• 59:18
  together, doing it efficiently. As you build more and more these
• 59:21
  things, you're going to get into this, this which management just
• 59:25
  talked about, it's like you, you get into this, this point where
• 59:28
  you get like exit velocity, right?
• 59:30
  Like there's a hockey stick in, in terms of production cadence.
• 59:33
  And so we're not there yet, but I believe the company is on the
• 59:37
  cusp of that. And we'll find out, you know,
• 59:39
  once the first batch comes out, we'll see how quick the next
• 59:41
  batch comes out of three and then see how quickly like that
• 59:46
  cadence after that second batch is done.
• 59:49
  How, how long does it take to get the third batch out?
• 59:51
  And is that third batch going to be 3 or is it going to be 6?
• 59:55
  And so we're still waiting. We're still waiting for that to
• 59:58
  happen. But when it does happen, that's
• 59:59
  going to be reflected in the market because at the end of the
• 1:00:02
  day, like for Blue Origin, New Glenn and for AST, it's all
• 1:00:06
  about building, building the machine that builds a machine.
• 1:00:10
  And once you do that and you get it down, then, then these things
• 1:00:13
  will start popping out like hotcakes.
• 1:00:15
  And that's, that will be the exciting time.
• 1:00:19
  Let's see. It's amusing how when we're
• 1:00:26
  experiencing rapid growth, bears remain completely silent.
• 1:00:28
  However, as soon as we encounter any setbacks along the way, they
• 1:00:31
  all rush and share their latest insights on how they
• 1:00:32
  successfully sold or bought ideal options the week.
• 1:00:35
  Because they knew, yeah, this is this is part of the the social
• 1:00:39
  media game, right? It's like people, people looking
• 1:00:42
  for opportunities to dunk on others.
• 1:00:45
  There's this guy, for example, cyber Prince.
• 1:00:47
  His whole shtick is like he he's like, if you want to be a
• 1:00:51
  millionaire, you got to follow what I do and and whatever
• 1:00:53
  you're invested in this crap. So just follow me.
• 1:00:56
  And and his fall from grace in terms of absolutely blowing up
• 1:01:00
  Nuki's account. He was a big like rocket lab guy
• 1:01:04
  in the beginning and hishic was like to say how Rocket lab is
• 1:01:07
  much better than AST when when I've talked about it at nauseam,
• 1:01:10
  like these are two separate companies.
• 1:01:12
  They have nothing to do with each other.
• 1:01:14
  But but he was able to get a lot of people on board who kind of,
• 1:01:18
  I guess followed that same toxic narrative.
• 1:01:21
  And he did well. He did well.
• 1:01:23
  And he kept telling people like, this is a holding that I'm going
• 1:01:26
  to have for for life. And and then, you know, he was
• 1:01:30
  levered up to on options. I think the stock, when it went
• 1:01:33
  on his first run, I think it went to like it peaked at 40 and
• 1:01:36
  then it came back and he kept kind of leveraging into that.
• 1:01:38
  And then he got wiped out pretty bad, which I don't, I don't like
• 1:01:42
  it when anybody loses money. I don't revel on that stuff, but
• 1:01:47
  you know, he sold down. He still had a lot of money and
• 1:01:48
  then he started shilling like meme coins.
• 1:01:52
  And then, you know, I guess he suffered some things there and
• 1:01:56
  now he's back in stocks. And then of course, one of the
• 1:01:57
  first things he posted yesterday was like, or the day before, you
• 1:02:00
  know, who are all these AST shareholders?
• 1:02:03
  They're a bunch of mid twits or something like that.
• 1:02:06
  And so, yeah, there's always going to be people like that.
• 1:02:08
  They're, they're often times people, the detractors from AST,
• 1:02:12
  they'll say, they'll tell you why AST is crap.
• 1:02:14
  And then they're going to tell you about this new company
• 1:02:16
  they're invested in or, or the company that they prefer, right.
• 1:02:19
  And so that's a very normal ploy that that people take.
• 1:02:24
  And so especially like during periods of time of
• 1:02:27
  vulnerability, right, where if you're there's uncertainty or
• 1:02:29
  the stock is down, they're going to tell you, hey, here's a quick
• 1:02:32
  fix, here's how you can make your money back.
• 1:02:35
  And so, yeah, just ignore them. I mean, they are part of
• 1:02:39
  actually they're part of like an important signal.
• 1:02:41
  Like when originally today, I'll be honest, like I wasn't
• 1:02:45
  planning to buy much. But then when I they're all
• 1:02:48
  these like haters and detractors came out and people were
• 1:02:52
  gloating. And then of course, like you had
• 1:02:54
  some ASD space mobile shareholders who, you know, they
• 1:02:57
  probably haven't been around that long when they were
• 1:03:01
  calling, you know, for blood and, and, you know, shitting all
• 1:03:04
  over Blue Origin and, and of course, you know, crappy on
• 1:03:08
  management. To me, that was a signal.
• 1:03:10
  I was like, OK, we're at like pretty heavy negativity here.
• 1:03:13
  And so maybe now it's like bottom.
• 1:03:15
  And so that's, you know, the stock was trading at 7374.
• 1:03:19
  I didn't buy at that point. I, I bought some overnight on
• 1:03:22
  Robin Hood at like 72 to 73. But then, you know, this morning
• 1:03:28
  I don't have infinite amounts of capital.
• 1:03:30
  And so this morning I had to shuffle some things, right?
• 1:03:32
  I did sell some things to make room.
• 1:03:35
  And then I was like, I'm going to buy AST.
• 1:03:36
  So I bought some stock. Let me see here.
• 1:03:41
  I bought in the 75 to 76 range. And then I don't do that.
• 1:03:46
  As I mentioned, I don't do this often.
• 1:03:47
  I bought some ASTX as well. And so I think in total, yeah, I
• 1:03:52
  bought a few 1000 shares of AST and also ASTX because of all the
• 1:03:58
  like, the negativity, right? And so if these guys, by the
• 1:04:01
  way, who are truly, you know, big haters, if they shorted in
• 1:04:05
  the hole this morning, they're not happy, which you know, it's
• 1:04:10
  almost like human psychology where people buy the top.
• 1:04:12
  It's like these haters, they short the bottom and then and
• 1:04:16
  then they get upset right when the company bounces back.
• 1:04:19
  And that just drives their hate, I guess.
• 1:04:20
  Like then later, you know, they're short, they lose money,
• 1:04:23
  they eventually cover and they're pissed with themselves.
• 1:04:25
  But then when the stock is like, I don't know, I think it goes to
• 1:04:28
  like 13140 and then it goes down to like 120, they'll they'll be
• 1:04:32
  back out and say why they were right.
• 1:04:34
  And so it's just, it's like a tale as old as time.
• 1:04:38
  I would encourage, you know, if you're out there, obviously
• 1:04:41
  there's, there's people who have constructive criticism and it's
• 1:04:44
  fair, right? And you should read those things
• 1:04:46
  and obviously make your own decisions.
• 1:04:48
  But when you have all the vitriol and hate coming out,
• 1:04:52
  usually that's a signal like we're pretty close to the
• 1:04:54
  bottom, like these guys doing touchdown celebration dances
• 1:04:57
  that you know, the company lost a satellite and they're rubbing
• 1:05:01
  in your face like this guy deep value bagger like is is is like
• 1:05:05
  clockwork. He whenever AST stumbles, he
• 1:05:07
  comes out and says, see, This is why I don't think the company is
• 1:05:10
  good. He's another like one of these
• 1:05:12
  toxic rocket lab Bros. He'll he'll say like This is why
• 1:05:15
  rocket labs are way better, which by the way, like I like
• 1:05:18
  the company Rocket lab. There was a point in time when I
• 1:05:21
  consider investing, but it was like some just the handful of
• 1:05:24
  these small like toxic guys. It was just like, I just don't
• 1:05:27
  want to deal with these people. But for the most part, like
• 1:05:30
  rocket lab holders, like there were quite a few who came to ASD
• 1:05:33
  like they're great. They're great and I hope that
• 1:05:35
  Neutron does well, right. I hope that that they're
• 1:05:39
  successful because their success means that launch prices are
• 1:05:43
  going to come down. They might they might become a a
• 1:05:45
  supplier for ASD. So that's great.
• 1:05:47
  Like they're also doing really cool things around Mars and
• 1:05:52
  lunar. And then of course, you know,
• 1:05:55
  they they have ambitions to start producing direct to device
• 1:05:58
  satellites for any number of customers and more power to
• 1:06:01
  them. Like if you have paying
• 1:06:02
  customers, then you should go produce things for them.
• 1:06:06
  And can they be competitive? You know, who knows, right?
• 1:06:09
  But the market is huge. And, and of course, like years
• 1:06:14
  ago when ASD, when a bell had this vision and, and put it
• 1:06:18
  together, as I've mentioned before, like all these legacy
• 1:06:20
  guys were like, there's no way that that that whole sector is
• 1:06:23
  the technology is not going to work.
• 1:06:24
  And even if it doesn't work, there's no market.
• 1:06:26
  Well, Jeff Bezos and, and Elon Musk are telling you something
• 1:06:30
  totally different. And they're, they're not just
• 1:06:32
  telling you differently. They're they're putting, you
• 1:06:34
  know, 13 billion, $23 billion to work at it.
• 1:06:38
  So, so I think this about guy, he's on to something.
• 1:06:42
  Let's see, volume is absolutely huge today.
• 1:06:45
  Looks like we might bounce back to normal sooner than we
• 1:06:47
  thought. Yeah, I agree with you.
• 1:06:48
  I mean, if there were short guys, So when you have a bad
• 1:06:53
  event, that's that's a hard catalyst, which is what we're
• 1:06:57
  currently experiencing. This is where short sellers can
• 1:06:59
  become your friends because they will they have now realized a
• 1:07:05
  profit. And so they will most likely be
• 1:07:07
  covering to some extent. Obviously there's like high
• 1:07:11
  conviction shorts, we won't be doing that, but but often times
• 1:07:14
  on down days, some of the support you have will be coming
• 1:07:17
  from shortcoming. So it'll be interesting to see
• 1:07:19
  like for short interest is tomorrow.
• 1:07:21
  But but yeah, there's a ton of volume.
• 1:07:23
  So this is the fact that the stock is here.
• 1:07:26
  You know, I, I thought going down 15% was an overreaction to
• 1:07:30
  losing 1 satellite out of what will be hundreds of satellites.
• 1:07:33
  But you know, the market sentiment is what it is and
• 1:07:36
  people are going to extrapolate what this means with Blue
• 1:07:38
  Origin. I personally think the Origin is
• 1:07:40
  going to figure out and it's going to be a successful
• 1:07:42
  vehicle. If I didn't then if I didn't
• 1:07:45
  think so, then I wouldn't be buying AST stock today.
• 1:07:49
  Let's see, why doesn't Blue Origin owe us a refund on launch
• 1:07:52
  and why does AST insurance? Doesn't AST cut insurance cover
• 1:07:56
  this and not PO Blue Origin? I already talked about this.
• 1:08:00
  So AST did get insurance because this was a risky mission.
• 1:08:04
  It included a dual burn for the second stage.
• 1:08:07
  And this was part of the reason why Blue Origin did this flight.
• 1:08:12
  They wanted to see if that could work.
• 1:08:14
  And, and so AST was like, OK, this is new to you.
• 1:08:17
  So I'm going to get insurance and they got insurance and
• 1:08:19
  they're going to get paid back for it.
• 1:08:22
  And then, as I mentioned before, Blue Origin does owe us a on
• 1:08:27
  launch. They're not going to refund you
• 1:08:28
  money. That's, I mean, it's just like
• 1:08:30
  going to a restaurant or, you know, it it, it's more cost
• 1:08:35
  effective. Like they're not going to give
• 1:08:36
  you your cash back. They're like, OK, here's here's
• 1:08:38
  like a credit for meal in the future.
• 1:08:41
  That's what Blue Origin's doing here.
• 1:08:42
  They're saying, we're sorry we lost your satellite.
• 1:08:45
  We learned a lot. We also learned how to work
• 1:08:48
  closely with you. So it'll be faster next time.
• 1:08:50
  But for your troubles, we're going to give you this coupon
• 1:08:54
  for a future Blue Origin New Glen flight.
• 1:08:57
  And that's typically how the industry works.
• 1:09:00
  Let me see here. SPAC SPAC man put on.
• 1:09:10
  Yeah, so there there is this Bloomberg podcast.
• 1:09:12
  I'll share it. There's actually a video too,
• 1:09:14
  but it was a good interview with Ed Ludlow.
• 1:09:17
  Before this mishap, Blue Origin was was looking to get to a
• 1:09:20
  cadence of 1 per month. And they probably are still
• 1:09:25
  doing that. So before it was they're looking
• 1:09:28
  at 8:00 to 12:00 flights this year.
• 1:09:29
  You know, does that get reduced to 6?
• 1:09:32
  Probably. But then also, you know, some
• 1:09:35
  people might be concerned, well, if it's reduced to six, like how
• 1:09:37
  will we get our cargoes up? Well, the reduction is actually
• 1:09:41
  going to impact U.S. government mission missions because because
• 1:09:48
  Blue Origin did not get their certification, then, you know,
• 1:09:51
  they, they need to fly successfully 2 more times.
• 1:09:54
  And then my guess again is Amazon Leo is going to be the
• 1:09:57
  next one. And then if that's successful,
• 1:09:58
  then perhaps we could be the next one after that.
• 1:10:01
  Or maybe they'll do a lunar Lander.
• 1:10:02
  But look, we don't need Blue Origin, New Glenn until probably
• 1:10:07
  the August, September time frame.
• 1:10:09
  And if we can get man, if we can get like 2-3, four of those
• 1:10:12
  done, that would be amazing. I'm not holding my breath, but
• 1:10:15
  but that would be that would be like the optimal outcome.
• 1:10:19
  So see what do you consider as a main catalyst milestones,
• 1:10:26
  financial, regulatory, operational for new and existing
• 1:10:28
  institutions to meaningfully accumulate chairs, FCC approval,
• 1:10:33
  recurring government contracts. Yeah.
• 1:10:36
  So obviously getting, I think a big catalyst is getting that
• 1:10:40
  first batch out the door and then the second batch as well,
• 1:10:42
  like how how quickly the second batch comes out.
• 1:10:45
  FCC approval is huge. Any additional M&O contracts
• 1:10:50
  would be big. Firstnet we we talk about that
• 1:10:52
  being soon, but that coming I think Golden Dome we should
• 1:10:57
  expect to hear about some awards in this quarter.
• 1:11:01
  And so, yeah, there's quite a bit that that are in play.
• 1:11:05
  Let me see Rakordan has to be done selling now, right?
• 1:11:09
  Any updates, education, educated guesses on that?
• 1:11:11
  We should get a form for filing for any sales that happened
• 1:11:15
  towards the end of the last, last week and then probably
• 1:11:18
  today. I don't know how much they're
• 1:11:20
  selling with stock down, but they could be and you know,
• 1:11:23
  that's going to be an overhang on the stock or the, the fact
• 1:11:26
  that, you know, they've got half of their position to sell.
• 1:11:29
  But once they're done, like if we start seeing they only have
• 1:11:32
  two to 3,000,000 shares left for clean up, those stocks going to
• 1:11:34
  bounce off that because that's the only pressure's going to be
• 1:11:37
  going away. And you'll have guys who trade
• 1:11:39
  technicals and event guys that will say, oh, I'm going to take
• 1:11:43
  a, a shot on, on this because the overhang is gone.
• 1:11:49
  Let's see. Sorry, you covered already.
• 1:11:54
  Any thoughts on 150 megabits and what that potentially means for
• 1:11:56
  future service? Well, more capacity and speed is
• 1:12:00
  better, right? And so that's going to be good
• 1:12:02
  for service. And then, you know, I, I talked
• 1:12:04
  about this concept where a bell has through the use of AI in
• 1:12:08
  managing capacity and improving performance.
• 1:12:11
  They think that they can get to near term three times
• 1:12:15
  performance of what they're what they have been projecting before
• 1:12:17
  and then over the long run potentially up to I think 10 or
• 1:12:20
  11 times. So, so that's really good for
• 1:12:22
  service, especially if it's just using your, your hardware more
• 1:12:26
  efficiently and improving. Yeah, software from a software
• 1:12:32
  perspective, improving performance.
• 1:12:34
  So imagine getting 3X more performance for the same dollar
• 1:12:39
  cost of hardware. That's that's pretty impressive.
• 1:12:46
  Let's see, I think that's probably oh, someone's saying,
• 1:12:49
  do you think it's a bad idea that I have half My Portfolio in
• 1:12:52
  AST? Well, coming from someone who
• 1:12:54
  has a majority of the portfolio, I would say it is a bad idea
• 1:12:58
  unless you're unless you know what you own and and you know,
• 1:13:00
  it depends on what your financial situation is, right.
• 1:13:02
  So my public portfolio is, is very large, the majority of my
• 1:13:07
  net well worth, but then I also have some private investments,
• 1:13:10
  some real estate and you know, the house that we live in and a
• 1:13:13
  few other things. And so the public portfolio is,
• 1:13:17
  is, is pretty big relative to all that.
• 1:13:19
  But then, you know, if, if I get naked on ASD, it's not going to
• 1:13:22
  be the end of the world. But you know, if you're, if you
• 1:13:26
  have half your portfolio in AST and that represents all your net
• 1:13:30
  worth and, and if you, if you, you know, we're to ask yourself
• 1:13:35
  what happened, what would happen if ASD went, got cut in half or
• 1:13:38
  something like that. And, and if that would impact
• 1:13:41
  your ability to be financially comfortable, then perhaps maybe
• 1:13:44
  it is too big. But if, for example, if you're
• 1:13:47
  young and you've got a ton of earning years ahead of you, then
• 1:13:51
  you might be willing to take that risk, right.
• 1:13:53
  So it all depends on where your situation is.
• 1:13:57
  Let's see what is the lifespan of Block 2 satellites?
• 1:14:02
  What's realistic revenue, 2027 revenue target?
• 1:14:07
  Well, I'll tell you what the revenue targets are.
• 1:14:09
  So the street which is the accumulation of the best guesses
• 1:14:15
  of of all these research channels have 2026 revenue at
• 1:14:18
  176,000,000, then 2027 at 710 million and then 20281.6 billion
• 1:14:25
  and then 20292.5 billion. So but those are the the revenue
• 1:14:31
  targets like will we get to 710 million in 2027?
• 1:14:35
  It depends right? It depends on if we can get the
• 1:14:37
  consolation up and then what other government, you know,
• 1:14:40
  contracts are coming in. But 2026 I think the company
• 1:14:46
  feels pretty comfortable about you know, this is by the way,
• 1:14:49
  this is St. production 176. I think they feel comfortable of
• 1:14:52
  the range of something like 150 to 200.
• 1:14:56
  And so, you know, obviously probably part of that depends on
• 1:15:00
  if we can get consolation up. And so the risk is that their
• 1:15:03
  slippage. But but also, you know, as we've
• 1:15:06
  discussed, like if things slip out by 1/4 or two, like in the
• 1:15:09
  grand scheme of things, that's not a big deal.
• 1:15:15
  Let's see, I think maybe there's a few more questions here, but
• 1:15:23
  I'm starting to to Peter out here.
• 1:15:25
  So I'm going to end it there. Maybe I'll try to do another
• 1:15:30
  space in it in, you know, today or tomorrow.
• 1:15:32
  But yeah, I hope that that's helpful.
• 1:15:35
  I think, you know, the next day after you have something like
• 1:15:38
  this it it does yesterday. For those that don't know, you
• 1:15:42
  know, I was at launch. I got I got to Cape Cana, you
• 1:15:46
  know, Orlando at just past midnight.
• 1:15:48
  I didn't get much sleep. And then, you know, I was I was
• 1:15:50
  on full adrenaline, met a ton of people.
• 1:15:53
  We all went out to launch it got on a bus at like 4:15 AM, went
• 1:15:58
  out to the launch site at by 6 and then had breakfast, got to
• 1:16:01
  hear a bell. And then we were out there.
• 1:16:02
  We got to see Blue Origin, New Glen, this amazing rocket go up,
• 1:16:06
  it's guessed with the booster. And then we were all elated and
• 1:16:10
  happy. And then once we got back to the
• 1:16:12
  hotel, it started sinking in like, Hey, we haven't heard, you
• 1:16:15
  know, what happened to Bluebird 7.
• 1:16:17
  And I think part of the, at least for me, you know, it's
• 1:16:21
  it's I got used to like Falcon 9 being such a successful vehicle
• 1:16:25
  that sometimes it doesn't dawn on you like how much risk there
• 1:16:28
  is for these new platforms. But we saw it, we saw it happen.
• 1:16:31
  And so because of that, you know, yesterday I spent quite a
• 1:16:35
  bit of time trying to figure out initially like what had
• 1:16:37
  happened, you know, was it OK? And then of course, the company
• 1:16:39
  PR Ed it, which was great because they were, they were
• 1:16:41
  transparent. And then for that point, it was
• 1:16:44
  like dealing with loss, right? And so I was ejected and, and
• 1:16:49
  you know, my flight got delayed going back to New York on the
• 1:16:52
  plane, I had like bad sleep and then I got home, had to turn
• 1:16:57
  into family mode, you know, engage with wife and kids and,
• 1:17:01
  and be as calm and, and normal as possible, which I usually AM.
• 1:17:05
  And then when they heard that, when they heard that we lost
• 1:17:09
  this out, the first thing my son said is like, are we broke?
• 1:17:11
  Are we going to be broke? Which I told him no I, I was
• 1:17:14
  like, well if you, if you read some of the replies and posts on
• 1:17:18
  on, on X, you would assume that that's the case like we're going
• 1:17:22
  to be bankrupt. But I told him no, this is a
• 1:17:24
  small set back like this stuff happens in space and it's part
• 1:17:27
  of the risk, which is why me and a bunch of other investors went
• 1:17:30
  down to go cheer the company on and and hope for the best.
• 1:17:33
  And unfortunately, like it didn't go our way right.
• 1:17:36
  But the company is going to have more launches and more
• 1:17:39
  satellites up and, and the mission hasn't changed.
• 1:17:41
  And, you know, the, the thesis hasn't changed.
• 1:17:44
  I didn't obviously go into such detail with my son, but I told
• 1:17:48
  him this is part of space. It's hard.
• 1:17:50
  If it was easy, like every company under the sun would be
• 1:17:53
  doing, and they're not. And so this is the risk that we
• 1:17:55
  take. And I told him the stock's going
• 1:17:57
  to be down a lot and people are going to feel upset.
• 1:18:00
  But then maybe they'll be a buying opportunity and, and
• 1:18:03
  we'll see. But I, I have conviction in this
• 1:18:05
  company. And my wife was like, oh, OK, so
• 1:18:08
  are we going to be OK? And I told her, yeah, we're
• 1:18:09
  fine. This is just a bump the road.
• 1:18:12
  And then that was it. Like they, they, they expressed
• 1:18:15
  5 to 10 minutes of concern. My my wife like then understood
• 1:18:20
  that. And God bless her that, that,
• 1:18:22
  that I told her I was like, I need to go do a space because I
• 1:18:25
  have a lot on my mind and there's probably people who need
• 1:18:28
  to talk, hear this out, like kind of talk through thoughts.
• 1:18:30
  And she was like, go ahead, please.
• 1:18:32
  And so, so yeah, that, that's, that was my day yesterday coming
• 1:18:37
  back. And so overnight I slept and
• 1:18:39
  then decided 8:00 this morning after I saw all the vitriol,
• 1:18:43
  haters, all that stuff, I decided after buying some shares
• 1:18:46
  last night, I'm going to buy more today because that signals
• 1:18:49
  to me that we're probably at the bottom.
• 1:18:51
  So anyway, that's it. I hope, I hope this was helpful,
• 1:18:56
  useful therapy, whatever, whatever you need.
• 1:18:59
  But but yeah, I'm, I'm confident in the company.
• 1:19:02
  They're they are confident in Blue Origin, New Glenn.
• 1:19:05
  I know some people talk about whether an public apology is
• 1:19:10
  appropriate or not. I really don't care about
• 1:19:12
  apologies. I just care that they get this
• 1:19:13
  shit right. And so, you know, instead of a
• 1:19:17
  Bell, Scott, Jeff Bezos, Dave Limp coming out doing APR, you
• 1:19:24
  know, engaging with media, apologizing, I want them on top
• 1:19:28
  of every engineer at Blue Origin focused on fixing this, right?
• 1:19:33
  Because I want the next issue or sorry, the next mission to go
• 1:19:36
  smoothly. I want this platform to be
• 1:19:39
  successful so that there's there's choice, there's customer
• 1:19:41
  choice. And that's good for the nation,
• 1:19:44
  right? Like having Blue Origin, SpaceX,
• 1:19:47
  Rocket Lab, Stoke Firefly, all these companies be successful.
• 1:19:52
  And so I don't give A2 shits about apology, focused on fixing
• 1:19:56
  the problem and so we can move forward and get our consolation
• 1:19:59
  up. So I'll end it with that.
• 1:20:01
  Thanks everyone for joining. And until next time, which is
• 1:20:04
  probably going to be soon, I'll talk again.
• 1:20:08
  Thanks for listening to the AST Space Mover podcast.
• 1:20:12
  If you enjoyed this episode and you'd like to help support the.
• 1:20:15
  Podcast. Please share it with others,
• 1:20:17
  post about it on social media, or leave a rating and review.
• 1:20:21
  To catch all the latest news about.
• 1:20:23
  AST space mobile make sure to subscribe thanks again and I'll
• 1:20:27
  see you next time we're doing something very very big an
• 1:20:33
  activity technology we can really affect billion lives AFT
• 1:20:37
  space mobile is the only company that has good technology to
• 1:20:42
  deliver several of mobile connectivity directly from space
• 1:20:45
  to do everyday smartphone people will just basically turn their
• 1:20:49
  phone be seamless regardless of where you are.
• 1:20:52
  We don't want the user even to know that it's connected by
• 1:20:55
  satellite. Our role is to bring this into
• 1:20:59
  reality, always in partnership with the MMO Listen
• 1:21:14
  Waffles.