Latest / AST SpaceMobile Podcast / Anpanman - Food for Thought - Industry Dynamics

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Anpanman - Food for Thought - Industry Dynamics · AST SpaceMobile Podcast

• 0:06
  This is the AST Space Mobile podcast, just basically.
• 0:11
  From your phone, be seamless, regardless of where you are.
• 0:15
  We don't want the user even to know that it's connected by
• 0:17
  satellite. Listen, the opportunity that we
• 0:22
  have is very, very, very large. Hi everyone, if you guys can
• 0:29
  hear me please give me a thumbs up.
• 0:32
  I want to make sure this is working before I start.
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  I'm sorry for the background noise.
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  I'm actually in my car, the window open, so I don't, I have
• 0:44
  some error in here, but yeah, OK, I see.
• 0:48
  Thumbs up. It's kind of weird because when
• 0:50
  you do, when you host a Twitter Space and you speak, there's a
• 0:54
  delayed reaction. So there must be, I don't know,
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  four or five seconds delay. And so when you're talking, you
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  don't see reactions until several seconds later.
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  And then when you end a space, like you guys know Kook does
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  this similarly, you have to wait once you say that you're ending
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  part, then you have to wait for the space to to actually end
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  because it's on delay. Before we didn't know this.
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  And so when you would end a space, it would you would
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  actually cut off yourself speaking.
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  And then people be like, what, what, what were they trying to
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  say? But but yeah, but anyway, but
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  thanks to everyone for joining kind of last minute.
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  I figured I'd just toast a space and talk about some industry
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  dynamics and we can talk about some of the news today and the
• 1:45
  stock price move and just the markets in general.
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  But but yeah, I, I, I did want to, as part of today, talk about
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  some industry dynamics. I was fortunate enough to speak
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  with an industry consultant who's not named rhymes with dim
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  Spacebar, but somebody else who's actually quite
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  knowledgeable and was able to get a few interesting Nuggets,
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  which I'll go through, which I think is very helpful in terms
• 2:11
  of thinking about AST space mobile and the competitive
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  landscape and kind of the market in general.
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  But you know, first I'll start off with, you know, there was
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  some news today that the Verizon CEO was replaced by Paul
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  Schumann, I think is his name. The he's a former PayPal CEO.
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  He's been on the Verizon board for quite some time.
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  He also has had experience in the telecom industry.
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  For the very surface level reading that I did on him, he
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  sounds like a pretty decent executive.
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  I mean, he's not without controversy.
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  I guess people have questioned his effectiveness, but he seems
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  to be kind of a high level thinker, big ideas guy.
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  And so maybe it's someone that Verizon needs, especially as
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  they think about their branding and, and, you know, marketing to
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  the consumer. Because I think quite candidly,
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  Verizon's probably viewed as a kind of a stodgy brand.
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  I mean, a very reliable, I I use Verizon, very reliable service
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  that is probably priced on the premium side, but then I'm not
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  really memorable in terms of brand awareness.
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  I think T-Mobile and AT&T do a much better job.
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  But it was interesting that the former CEO was replaced by the
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  by this new CEO Paul Schumann, who is actually, he used to run
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  PayPal. And you know, one of the things
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  that I did immediately, which I'm sure a lot of you did this
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  morning, is just try to figure out what his relationship is
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  visit vis A vis Elon Musk. And it sounds like, you know,
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  Elan was quite critical of his stewardship at PayPal.
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  And so it seems at least at the surface level that there's no
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  love loss between the two. If anything, sounds like their
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  relationship with so much strained.
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  And then the other thing I would say is that Paul's been on the
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  board of Verizon for quite some time.
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  So he's well aware of the company's strategic initiatives
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  and, and obviously the AST space Mobile relationship.
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  So I don't have any concerns about whether that relationship
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  is going to change. And, and who knows, maybe maybe
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  don't get tighter. We'll see.
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  But but yeah, that was that was like the one piece of
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  interesting news today. Outside of that, it was somewhat
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  of a quiet day for his D Space Mobile in terms of actual news.
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  But then of course, the stock price hit a high today of, you
• 4:37
  know, we, we finally breached 70 and we didn't just breach 70.
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  We then went, well, you know, north of 74 and change and then,
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  you know, closed at 72 and change, which is kind of crazy,
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  right? Because I think if you were to
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  ask, I was, I was talking with some other people today.
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  Sorry for the noise. I'm going to close my sunroof
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  here. Yeah, if you were to ask
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  yourself a year ago, a year and a half ago in May and when the
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  stock was under $2.00, if your future self had would tell you,
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  hey, just hang in there. I know being under $2.00 and
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  having this massive drawdown is brutal, but you're going to the
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  stock is going to be well north of $70.00 in a year and a half
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  time. You would have told your future
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  self to to screw off because that seemed like an
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  impossibility back then. But you know, Fast forward to
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  today, we've had a tremendous amount of, you know,
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  accomplishments that have transpired since then.
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  We've obviously, you know, signed Verizon locking up two of
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  the top three carriers in the US and you know, obviously had a
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  strategic investment for them. We made a tremendous amount of
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  progress with the FCC towards getting commercial US commercial
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  access. And then of course the
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  administration changed where now we have a very supportive F and
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  we had to support FCC before, but now we have a very
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  aggressively supportive FCC that wants to compete with China and
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  understands the strategic importance of what AC space was
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  doing. And then you know you also have
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  an administration that's focused on the defense use cases for
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  space assets. And so that's another big
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  positive. And then of course, we've got,
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  you know, we're, we have satellites that are already in
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  the earth. We have a large quantum of
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  capital to get us to our initial consolation.
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  And then we also have we we're on the cusp of launching
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  commercial service through the multi launch campaign, which is
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  coming up in, in basically, you know, in the next month or two.
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  So, so we made a ton of progress.
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  And so I think it's, it's important to take a look back
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  and just remember where we were and, and to see how much has
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  changed and the milestones that the company has achieved.
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  And now to finally to be at this point, we're almost about to
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  breach $75. It's just an amazing journey.
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  Obviously, you know, there was a lot of pain in that journey, but
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  for those who knew what they owned and we're able to stomach
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  volatility and how that conviction days like today are,
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  are why you invest, right? But yeah, so, so here we are.
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  I mean, I think it's probably important to say because I know
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  we're all thinking this, you know, how much is the stock
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  price? How much of the stock price is
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  pricing in fundamentals versus like frothiness from the overall
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  market and speculation? And I think that's a fair
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  question that everyone should ask themselves.
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  It's important that when you have a a large size position
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  that is speculative and, and obviously the opportunity is
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  massive. I know, and I'll talk about it a
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  little more later, but reformed trader tweeted out a post just
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  talking about the current market conditions and how he sees based
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  off of, you know, his charts and technical analysis that we could
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  actually, the ingredients are there, right?
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  That the stock could even get to $500, which is the first time
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  I've seen the five handle by somebody.
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  And I'll be kind of like, I'm not a technical person.
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  I, I would take what he's saying with a big grain of salt, But I
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  also, I also could see that happening if things do become
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  very frothy and, and people are very excited and they, you know,
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  if the company starts announcing all these different catalysts
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  that we, we see coming in the near term and people start
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  pulling, basically pulling forward expectations, then you
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  could see something like that happen.
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  I'm not saying it will, but I think the important thing, what
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  I'm trying to say today is have a plan.
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  So know what your goals are financially and know, you know,
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  I, I've talked to a number of people and also how, you know, I
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  think about myself like what's the N number of shares that you
• 8:58
  want to own for the long term, right.
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  And so if you have an outside position today, congratulations
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  and for holding. But then, you know, as you think
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  about your plans for the, your, your financial plans and you
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  know, independence and all these different things, what number is
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  important to you to set aside where you're going to be
• 9:18
  comfortable. And like I've said before, be
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  able to ride the rest of it, right?
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  Be there, be able to ride the volatility 'cause then once you
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  do that from a mental perspective, then you kind of
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  don't care if there's draw downs or there's volatility because
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  you've set aside, you've basically taken part of your win
• 9:35
  and you've locked it in. And then the rest you can pretty
• 9:38
  much ride. And I think having a plan
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  whether you know, oh, I'm going to sell a little bit at 75 and
• 9:46
  or in some at 100. And then, you know, beyond that,
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  maybe I'll come up with a different plan, but I'll sell
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  some portion that where I can pay off my mortgage.
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  I can set aside all the money that I need.
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  I mean, God, college is super expensive, right?
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  And so if you have kids, I'm going to set aside money for
• 10:03
  their college and, and never touch that.
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  I'm going to put that into like, you know, the S&P or something
• 10:09
  safer then then do that, right? And, and of course, make sure
• 10:13
  that you set aside money for taxes because I think some, some
• 10:16
  people have learned when you're upside down, when you've
• 10:18
  generated a ton of capital gains, especially short term
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  gains. If you're trading some things
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  too, make sure you set aside that money because if you, what
• 10:29
  a big mistake people make is that they, they, they put, they
• 10:33
  reinvest everything, right? And then you have a big draw
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  down near a tax time and also you can't pay your bills.
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  So, so anyway, the responsible side of me, just that just
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  putting that out there that it's important to have a plan,
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  especially when you're when you've done extremely well and,
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  you know, as part of that plan, also how they recommend thinking
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  about charity and and making donations, But you know, to keep
• 10:55
  the positive Doo Doo going. I think that's important too.
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  And it'll make you feel better as well as a, as a person who's,
• 11:03
  you know, come into a great fortune of being blessed.
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  But but yeah, I think there's always going to be this like
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  this weighing of whether or not this I, you know, this company
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  in particular is doing well based off fundamentals, which I
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  think, you know, I mentioned before and I put this on a, I
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  guess my pin tweet where I discussed, you know, the
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  previous launch campaign resulted in the stock going up.
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  Let me just take a look here. I think it was like from $13 to
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  a high of $39.00, but then kind of settling at 26.
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  I just like did a very simple fitting, right?
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  Like, oh, if we at the time of the tweet, $49.00, if it goes up
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  61 percent or eventually settles up 61% on a successful launch,
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  then that would get us to was it $79?
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  But then of course there's going to be volatility in between
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  where previously we'd hit a high of $39.00, which was from 13.
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  That's like up to 100%. And so, you know, do people in
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  terms of markets, whether it's, you know, the the algos and, and
• 12:08
  excitement and, you know, do you overshoot 79?
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  Yeah, it's certainly possible. And then what does that mean
• 12:14
  after the successful launch? Like, you know, here we're
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  talking about, I see Ryan O'Connor in the crowd.
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  We're talking about like multiple launches.
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  It's not just like, you know, one launch and then you're going
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  to have to wait several months, quarters for the next one.
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  It's going to be 1 after the other.
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  And it's going to be continuous until commercial service is
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  actually the the, you know, the switches flicked on and then all
• 12:37
  the sudden you got this cash flow printing machine, which is
• 12:40
  going to be pretty. I think it's going to be pretty
• 12:42
  awesome to behold, to be to be quite honest.
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  But but yeah, I think I think making sure that you have a plan
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  and so you know, whether you have shares in your retirement
• 12:53
  account so you can actually trade those a bit more, or in a
• 12:57
  taxable account, you know, thinking about short term gain,
• 13:00
  capital gains and long term capital gains.
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  This is all stuff that I think you need to make sure you have a
• 13:05
  plan before the stock price gets to certain levels or if it
• 13:09
  falls, you know, and then maybe because you have capital you're
• 13:12
  able to add back. But anyway, that's my public
• 13:16
  service message for the day. I think it's important to
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  mention that because obviously there's a lot of sectors, you
• 13:23
  know, the market where it's frothy and it's interesting.
• 13:25
  I think when you look at there's a, there's a index Goldman Sachs
• 13:31
  VIP versus the most short names where they take the the most
• 13:37
  popular hedge fund longs. And so that's like the long part
• 13:40
  of the index. And then there's, there's they
• 13:42
  take the, the most heavily shorted names, which is the, the
• 13:46
  denominator of that index. And you've actually seen that
• 13:50
  that index underperformed significantly in, in, in now
• 13:54
  Burke, actually we're, I think we're reaching back to levels of
• 13:58
  last year. But you know, if you look at
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  like small caps, like IWM performance, it's now just
• 14:04
  catching up with, you know, where large caps have been,
• 14:08
  which is primarily, you know, obviously the, the primary
• 14:10
  driver of S&P has been Max 7. So, you know, I, I think, I
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  think, you know, from an honest perspective, I think the market
• 14:18
  is frothy. And so we've got to be careful.
• 14:20
  And so just keep that in mind as you invest in trade and think
• 14:23
  about positioning and your AST space mobile position, which is
• 14:28
  the one that, you know, I'm talking about primarily here.
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  But just be mindful of again, what your goals are, You know,
• 14:34
  try not to be that person that moves the goal posts.
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  It's like, well, gosh, I would, I would do this if the stock
• 14:40
  ever got to 50 and all the somewhere at 75 and you're still
• 14:43
  moving the goal posts. Just be honest with yourself.
• 14:45
  And I, I, I know it's painful, like when stocks continue to go
• 14:49
  up after you've sold some, but you know that I think also when
• 14:54
  you have a draw down, you feel good that you did something and,
• 14:56
  and you're in a great mental place where you can just keep
• 15:00
  writing in. So anyway, but that will be
• 15:03
  enough of my, my PSAI know there's been some people out
• 15:08
  there who have accused me here or kook of like pumping stuff.
• 15:11
  And it's like, no, I've actually held this stock for five years
• 15:15
  and my core position I've never touched.
• 15:18
  And yeah, I've, I've, like I've said before, I've, I've been
• 15:22
  bullish about it even during the darkest times.
• 15:24
  And so my tune hasn't changed. And we're at 75, I still think
• 15:28
  there's a tremendous amount of upside.
• 15:31
  And so, you know, one of the questions that we always talk
• 15:33
  about is, is the market actually just rewriting and, and giving
• 15:38
  the company credit for its progress.
• 15:39
  Like people are now, you know, Cook and I were talking about
• 15:42
  how institutions are now asking like, oh, what is this?
• 15:45
  What is this company? What are they doing?
• 15:46
  And and of course, they, the first question is like, oh,
• 15:49
  they're competing against SpaceX.
• 15:50
  So how are they going to survive?
• 15:52
  But then as they peel back the layers of the onion, I think
• 15:55
  people are starting to get the story.
• 15:58
  And so once you have real institutional buying, you know,
• 16:02
  that's when you see a real re rate in stocks.
• 16:06
  And so question is how much is being discounted today versus,
• 16:11
  you know, the level of risk and and yeah, obviously the
• 16:15
  company's pre revenue, but but hey, look, this coming quarter
• 16:18
  is going to be the first quarter of true revenue from gateway
• 16:22
  sales. And then obviously we've got our
• 16:25
  military contracts as well that that have kicked in.
• 16:27
  And so now we should start staying seeing a true
• 16:30
  progression of, you know, revenue generate generation for
• 16:34
  the company. And so it's a pretty exciting
• 16:37
  time. But as I said before, I, I did
• 16:40
  want to talk about industry dynamics.
• 16:42
  And there, you know, I did speak with this really great
• 16:47
  consultant today who's done their own independent work.
• 16:50
  And I just wanted to share some of the views or some of the, you
• 16:53
  know, notes that I took, which I'll go through in no particular
• 16:58
  order, but these are data points of that was pretty interesting.
• 17:00
  Actually. Folks can hold on with me for 10
• 17:03
  seconds. I'm going to do something.
• 17:04
  I'll put myself on mute. OK, OK, you can hear me.
• 17:08
  Sorry, I apologize. I'm.
• 17:11
  I'm actually waiting. My son has soccer and I'm
• 17:15
  waiting in the car. And then there's like this whole
• 17:18
  weird interaction that happens with your Airpods.
• 17:23
  And then, you know, connect. I have my laptop open and my
• 17:26
  phone. And so it doesn't know what to
• 17:27
  connect to. And then also the phone tries to
• 17:29
  connect to the car hands free. So apologize, but OK.
• 17:36
  Well, I need to start over the consulting call.
• 17:38
  Sorry, everyone. Yeah, no.
• 17:39
  So I had a call with this consultant.
• 17:42
  This person's background is in the wireless industry.
• 17:46
  They've, they've been working in the area for, for decades.
• 17:49
  And, and I, I, you know, I want to share a few things that,
• 17:54
  that, that we discussed, but I also want to be cognizant of not
• 17:58
  giving away their service, which is, you know, their, how they
• 18:02
  earn a living. So I just wanted to share a few
• 18:05
  different Nuggets, but it was very helpful in a sense that,
• 18:08
  you know, they come at it from the M and OS perspective, having
• 18:13
  a meeting in the industry for a really long time, which quite a
• 18:16
  few of the things that they share with me line up quite
• 18:20
  nicely with how we think about AST space mobile.
• 18:22
  But then there were some additional insights which I
• 18:24
  thought was very helpful. So let's see here.
• 18:31
  So yeah, I the way that this consultant thinks about the
• 18:34
  industry is that an infra wireless in general is that you
• 18:37
  should focus on what the cost per GB delivered is, right?
• 18:42
  And so they talked about how in 3G, you know, the cost per GB
• 18:48
  was about $10. And then once we moved to 4G, it
• 18:52
  was $1.00. And then when you moved to 5G,
• 18:56
  that went all the way down to $0.27.
• 18:59
  And so similar to Moore's law, with the increase in bandwidth
• 19:03
  and spectral efficiency over time, the cost per GB went down.
• 19:07
  And so when looking at this industry, it's, it's, it's
• 19:12
  really no different in that, you know, if you were to rent a
• 19:15
  movie, this was kind of the example they used to deliver a,
• 19:19
  a movie is about 5 gigabytes of data.
• 19:22
  And so that cost about say, you know, $0.80 a GB or if the the
• 19:27
  movie cost $4.00 to rent, that's about maybe $0.80 a GB to
• 19:32
  stream. And so if you're doing that over
• 19:34
  fiber, that's great because basically fiber is really cheap.
• 19:38
  I mean it doesn't really cost you anything, but on 5G the
• 19:41
  video, the business case for, you know, delivering video still
• 19:44
  works. And So what was interesting is
• 19:48
  that based off of their analysis, what they were saying
• 19:51
  is that it, you know, when you take an account the the cost to
• 19:55
  deliver that service, which includes the CapEx required to
• 19:59
  build satellite and go launch it into space and then you know,
• 20:03
  operate the satellite. And then eventually obviously it
• 20:06
  has to be, you know, the orbited.
• 20:08
  The cost for for SpaceX, they, they calculated was around $4.00
• 20:13
  a GB. However, you know, now that
• 20:16
  SpaceX acquired Echostar Spectrum, they thought that
• 20:21
  range was maybe perhaps now going to be around 2 to $3.00
• 20:25
  per GB. And then based off of their,
• 20:28
  their math, when looking at AST, they estimated that the cost per
• 20:32
  GB for, you know, for us for ASTC mobile to deliver a GB
• 20:36
  data, it was around because of the, the large phased array and
• 20:41
  spectral efficiency. And, but taking account all the
• 20:43
  costs, meaning, you know, for example, the fact that HTS to
• 20:47
  pay full retail price for, for launch their, their calculation
• 20:51
  was around $1.50 to $2.00 per GB.
• 20:55
  So even with SpaceX and you know, their, their financial
• 20:59
  huffed and might and, and, you know, being able to launch
• 21:02
  things at cost, the fact that they have to launch so many
• 21:06
  satellites, they're, they're, they, you know, they orbit the
• 21:10
  Earth much closer than we do. Their arrays are smaller in
• 21:14
  terms of capacity per satellite. You know, they, they, it's, it's
• 21:18
  not obviously they have more satellites, but then the
• 21:21
  capacity is not as much as as AC space mobile.
• 21:25
  You know, we're, we still have a pretty good cost advantage of
• 21:28
  $1.50 to $2.00, which is great. And so to me, that was pretty
• 21:34
  eye opening. I know people have done their
• 21:37
  own analysis of how much it cost per GB, but this is the first
• 21:40
  time that I'd heard from, you know, a well respected industry
• 21:44
  consultant, you know what that cost is.
• 21:47
  And so to me that was pretty eye opening because I think, you
• 21:50
  know, for SpaceX to deliver this service at $4.00 a gig And then,
• 21:55
  you know, with the new Echostar purchase, I could send down to
• 21:58
  two to three. I mean, we're still
• 22:01
  significantly lower than them and that that's just delivering
• 22:04
  data. Obviously the quality of service
• 22:06
  is going to be very different, which I'll talk a bit more about
• 22:09
  in a little in a little while. But but yeah, that's to me that
• 22:13
  that's stood out quite a bit. Because I think when you look at
• 22:16
  the, the models, you know, if the company is pricing a GB of
• 22:21
  data, let's say, if there's like a day pass or something and, and
• 22:25
  you know, the MNO is charging $15 or, you know, $20.00 for a
• 22:29
  day password, They just put it as part of the premium plan or
• 22:33
  you, you pay monthly for it. And obviously you're not going
• 22:35
  to use it all the time, right? Because you're going to be, this
• 22:37
  is like for dead zones or in areas where there's no service,
• 22:42
  then you know, you'll use it at that time.
• 22:44
  But the pricing is really attractive in terms of the
• 22:47
  actual cost. And so the premium that you're
• 22:49
  able to command, if it's a day pass, you know, if it's $20.00
• 22:52
  for a gig or, or whatever, and then you get throttled.
• 22:55
  That's quite impressive. And so it was actually for me,
• 22:59
  it was, it was very, again, very eye opening to to to see those
• 23:02
  numbers on paper and to actually see, you know, the fact that we
• 23:08
  have this big cost advantage. Even though, you know, everyone
• 23:11
  talks about SpaceX and their scale and all these advantages
• 23:15
  of of having lunch, it's not really that apparent how much of
• 23:19
  A advantage they have. Let's see.
• 23:24
  And I think the other point that was brought up is that with the
• 23:27
  addition of MSS spectrum, it's not just about the zones.
• 23:31
  The way the MN OS are thinking about it and how they're
• 23:33
  evaluating these new direct advice players is whether or not
• 23:37
  a satellite guy is bringing spectrum to the table.
• 23:40
  And so for Starlink, you know, obviously they're they're bought
• 23:44
  40 megahertz of spectrum from Echostar.
• 23:47
  And so can offer that at least in US to, to obviously T-Mobile,
• 23:52
  but then they're going to go out and try to get has been spectrum
• 23:56
  rights around the world similar to what we're doing.
• 23:59
  But for us to be able to deliver, for example, 45
• 24:02
  megahertz of spectrum in the US and Canada to Bell Canada, AT&T
• 24:06
  and Verizon, it's not just about dead zones, but it's also about
• 24:10
  giving additional capacity even in dense areas.
• 24:14
  So if it's like at a football stadium or, or if you can
• 24:18
  imagine areas where the terrestrial network is in the
• 24:24
  capacity is being utilized and then and it's getting, you know,
• 24:26
  the the network is getting hit pretty hard.
• 24:30
  Being able to then offload some capacity to AST space mobile as
• 24:34
  this super wholesaler on on MSS spectrum is going to be very
• 24:38
  helpful. And, and the key differentiate.
• 24:40
  And I think some people made this point before, which makes
• 24:44
  sense that in order to compete in this market, the table stakes
• 24:48
  are much higher, right, where you have to bring some level of
• 24:52
  your own spectrum incapacity in order to win M and OS
• 24:58
  businesses, right, or business. And so that cost, you know,
• 25:03
  Starling just paid $19 billion. We we've paid, you know, some
• 25:08
  amount of money upfront. And of course, ongoing economics
• 25:10
  and split with Legato, you know, these spectrum assets are
• 25:15
  finite. And so for another player to
• 25:17
  enter the market, they'll need something similar in order to
• 25:21
  entice M and OS to to play with them.
• 25:23
  Basically. Let's see it.
• 25:26
  Let me just look at these notes here.
• 25:30
  But yeah, what was emphasized here is that, you know, AST low,
• 25:34
  low cost approach. The key is the technology, which
• 25:38
  is the huge arrays and the spectral efficiency.
• 25:42
  And so I think let me just go through my notes here.
• 25:45
  One of the key things that was mentioned is that is TS spectral
• 25:50
  efficiency today that's been demonstrated is about 3 bits per
• 25:53
  Hertz, three, sorry, 3 megabits per per Hertz, whereas I think
• 25:57
  Starlink is probably around 2 megabits per Hertz.
• 26:01
  But then that's not even taking into account the difference
• 26:05
  between low band and mid band spectrum.
• 26:06
  And so one of the key aspects of differentiation and the way and
• 26:11
  we talked about first principles and how the service was
• 26:14
  developed is that the bell from the outset wanted this service
• 26:18
  to work just like cellular. And it was going to obviously
• 26:21
  utilize cellular spectrum for that to happen, which is 600 and
• 26:25
  900 megahertz, you know low band spectrum.
• 26:27
  But he wanted this service to work indoors.
• 26:29
  And so if you think about a roof or a wall which has all these
• 26:34
  different materials, part of what AST architected is that
• 26:39
  they they made the raise large enough and powerful enough to
• 26:42
  have a link budget that would compensate for any single loss.
• 26:46
  And so when you look at conditions, for example inside
• 26:50
  of a house, there's a signal noise ratio that you have to
• 26:53
  overcome and that's the direct relationship of how much data
• 26:56
  that you can pass per megahertz of spectrum.
• 27:00
  And so AST, you know, when you, when you think about the signal
• 27:05
  that's passing through the roof, you probably, you know, you lose
• 27:09
  call it 60 to 70% of the signal in order to get through the
• 27:13
  roof. And then so if you are at 3
• 27:16
  megabits per Hertz sufficiency, you probably lose more than half
• 27:20
  of that, but you're still able to provide a pretty good signal
• 27:23
  and data transfer. And so for AC that's, that's
• 27:27
  important because obviously for wireless customers, having
• 27:32
  service that actually works and having a good quality service is
• 27:35
  important. That's why you might choose, you
• 27:37
  know, you might choose Verizon or AT&T over T-Mobile in a
• 27:41
  specific neighborhood because maybe they have better coverage.
• 27:43
  But imagine satellite service where if you are in a cabin or
• 27:46
  you're in a row in the Hamptons and you want to use use the
• 27:50
  phone and you're kind of an area that's covered.
• 27:52
  Or more importantly, I think the killer use case for, you know, a
• 27:58
  phone that has satellite connectivity is being in your
• 28:00
  car, right? Because I think the statistic is
• 28:03
  that we spend about 80% of our time indoors, but then for that
• 28:07
  20% we're outdoors, about half of that is in your car.
• 28:10
  And so having a satellite service actually works through,
• 28:14
  you know, the roof of your car, their house is important.
• 28:17
  And so with AST you, you get 3 mega, 3 bits per three megabits
• 28:21
  per Hertz. And then that probably gets kind
• 28:23
  of half of the signal is going to be good enough where you're
• 28:26
  still going to have some level of data capacity delivered to
• 28:29
  your phone. Whereas Starlink at 2:00, it's
• 28:32
  going to be indoors, it'll be probably less than one, you
• 28:35
  know, megabit per Hertz in terms of efficiency.
• 28:39
  And so, and of course, you know, as we, as most of you guys know,
• 28:43
  Starlink is primarily their service today is architected to
• 28:46
  only work on 1.9 gigahertz. And then eventually that's going
• 28:52
  to, you know, also be architected to work on the
• 28:56
  spectrum that they've purchased from Echostar, which is also mid
• 28:59
  band spectrum, 2 gigahertz. Whereas AST, the first, you
• 29:02
  know, consolation is focused on low band spectrum, which is
• 29:05
  great for propagation and coverage, which is 600 and 900
• 29:09
  megahertz. And then you will then have the
• 29:13
  next consolation which will be focused on L&S band, which is,
• 29:17
  you know, the way the company defines that range would be 1.5
• 29:20
  gigahertz all the way up to I think we've seen his vice 2.6
• 29:24
  gigahertz. And so with AST, you're going to
• 29:28
  have this, this, this beautiful cake, this the layers of
• 29:31
  spectrum where the bottom layer is like the fattest and it gives
• 29:34
  you coverage and propagation signal.
• 29:37
  And then, you know, then the upper layer will give you
• 29:40
  capacity, which is the mid band spectrum.
• 29:42
  Whereas, you know, for Starlink, they only have mid band spectrum
• 29:47
  today and that will expand, it'll become slightly wider mid
• 29:50
  band spectrum with the addition of Echostar.
• 29:52
  But I think the way that the solutions are detected, if you
• 29:56
  can imagine, you know, AST going to M and OS, you know, being
• 29:59
  able to util basically reuse their cellular spectrum and not
• 30:03
  do and do that on a non interference basis.
• 30:06
  I think it's really important because it's for them, for the,
• 30:09
  the mobile operators being able to leverage that cellular
• 30:13
  spectrum and give users a cellular like experience is
• 30:17
  going to be really important and highly differentiated, which you
• 30:21
  know, I'll talk a bit more about the differences between the two
• 30:24
  because I think as we, you know, somebody, I guess some of you
• 30:28
  guys know Starlink, their network actually is a completely
• 30:32
  separate network. It's it it's imagine like if
• 30:35
  you've travelled to foreign countries and you want to
• 30:38
  utilize some of these E SIM services, you, you basically
• 30:42
  install an E SIM or actual physical SIM into your phone and
• 30:46
  you basically then join a separate network that's not your
• 30:50
  home network. And so while that's great you
• 30:53
  can like browse and use the services in that country, you
• 30:56
  basically don't have access to your phone number.
• 30:58
  If people send you texts, you don't get them.
• 31:01
  So a lot of native stuff that you have just basically goes
• 31:04
  away until you you go back to your home network.
• 31:08
  Whereas HD space mobile, the way the system is going to work is
• 31:11
  that it's actually integrated into the core of the MNO, the
• 31:17
  MNO score. And so when you go from
• 31:20
  terrestrial to satellite that there will be a hand off where
• 31:24
  you, it should be seamless to you.
• 31:26
  Like it's not going to say a totally separate network that is
• 31:30
  has ASD space mobile on it. It's just going to say AT&D and
• 31:33
  then it's going to say AT&T satellite.
• 31:35
  But everything that you do when you're on the existing network,
• 31:39
  you can do or sorry on the Treasure network, you can do on
• 31:42
  satellite network. And so it's going to be fully
• 31:44
  integrated. It's not going to be separate.
• 31:47
  I think, you know, we've talked about sovereignty and who has a
• 31:50
  customer's data in the, in the Starlink model, the MNO
• 31:55
  basically the customer runs onto the Starlink network and, and
• 32:00
  you know, the MNO says goodbye. Like they, they have you as a
• 32:03
  customer, they can track where you are.
• 32:05
  And you know, I'm not sure how much information the MNO has to
• 32:09
  give to Starlink for that to, to happen.
• 32:11
  But if I, if I was in MNO, I would be really scared about
• 32:14
  that because, you know, obviously they can track where
• 32:17
  the customer is. And then lo and behold, if I was
• 32:19
  Starlink, I would start sending them text messages.
• 32:22
  Would you like, you know, to subscribe to Starlink dish
• 32:25
  service at your home and, and all these different things,
• 32:27
  right? But when it comes to
• 32:28
  sovereignty, I think it's important because, and this is
• 32:30
  something that the consultant, you know, I brought up and, and
• 32:33
  agreed with for Starlink, when you roam onto their network,
• 32:37
  you're basically their customer. And the, you know, once you're
• 32:43
  on their network, your information gets passed on their
• 32:46
  network. It also may land in the home
• 32:48
  country, it may also land in another country because you
• 32:51
  don't really have control over that.
• 32:52
  As we know, Starlink satellites, they have optical inter
• 32:56
  satellite links and you know, once your day, once you're on
• 33:00
  their network, they decided to and choose where your data goes
• 33:03
  and where it lands. Whereas for the AST space mobile
• 33:06
  architecture, because it's integrated into the MNO core,
• 33:12
  your data stays with the MNO and that lands in the, in that MNO's
• 33:15
  country. And so this is, you know, this
• 33:17
  especially in this day and age, this is like a pretty big
• 33:20
  problem, especially in Europe. And, and you know, whether it's
• 33:25
  in US, Canada, you know, data security and sovereignty I think
• 33:29
  is important, especially as we saw, you know, in the war in
• 33:32
  Ukraine, where sometimes very powerful people can decide not
• 33:37
  to provide Internet service to change the dynamics of a war.
• 33:42
  I think that's a much bigger issue, which, you know, the M
• 33:44
  and OS have to think really hard and deep about.
• 33:46
  And so I think that's where AST has as an advantage where, you
• 33:54
  know, the, the M&O ultimately controls the customer.
• 33:56
  They own the customer. We're just like plumbing that
• 33:59
  enables the satellite service, but we're leveraging their
• 34:01
  spectrum. We're also providing our own
• 34:03
  spectrum, but we're utilizing, you know, their, their back end
• 34:06
  infrastructure, their customer support, the marketing service,
• 34:09
  all that stuff. They determine all of it, right.
• 34:11
  They determine pricing with us as well.
• 34:13
  But in the case where if you're working with Starlink, you
• 34:17
  basically are kind of at the whim of Starlink, they, they
• 34:20
  take the customer when there's a dead zone or, or, you know, some
• 34:24
  of these areas and then they figure out what to do with them.
• 34:27
  And, and, and then obviously you pay Sterling for some, some,
• 34:31
  some economics more for that to happen.
• 34:35
  So, yeah, I, I think there's a big issue there which this
• 34:38
  consultant agreed with that, you know, when, when M OS are are
• 34:42
  contemplating using either of these two companies, Those are
• 34:45
  some of the, you know, things that they've, they've got to
• 34:48
  grapple with. Let's see here it it is it was
• 34:53
  confirmed that Starlink uses Fpgas for their satellite.
• 34:56
  So which makes sense. You know, they're they're always
• 34:59
  tinkering with with the future of their satellites and because
• 35:02
  they have so many of them, you don't have to worry about as
• 35:05
  much about power and and processing.
• 35:08
  But you know, this, this, this move towards a six, it's likely
• 35:14
  when discussing this, it was in their view that they that
• 35:17
  Starlink is probably a year into spinning up in ASIC for this
• 35:21
  next generation satellite that will probably already support
• 35:25
  Echostar spectrum. And so you're probably in the
• 35:28
  lifespan of, and there's probably there's, you know, tech
• 35:31
  people who are listening to those who probably know better.
• 35:35
  It was in their view that it's, it's probably a two to
• 35:38
  three-year process to get an ASIC spun up and, and working.
• 35:42
  And so if they're a year into it, then maybe at the shortest
• 35:45
  end, the they're a year away from getting an ASIC or perhaps
• 35:49
  two years away. But but yeah, I mean, as we all
• 35:52
  know from AST, you know, development period of our own
• 35:58
  internal ASIC, the AST 5000, that took several years and a
• 36:02
  lot of R&D dollars. But I'm sure because of
• 36:05
  Spacex's, you know, financial hafts and their engineering
• 36:10
  acumen, I'm sure they can probably do that in a pretty,
• 36:13
  pretty efficient way. But but you know, an important
• 36:16
  point, I think we're just thinking about the competitive
• 36:20
  landscape. This is stuff is not, you can't
• 36:22
  just like put a consolation up. You actually have to go develop
• 36:24
  like proprietary hardware and your own chips to make this
• 36:28
  stuff work properly, You know, because in space using FPGA is
• 36:33
  really number one, it's expensive, it's inefficient,
• 36:36
  it's not very fast and it, it consumes a ton of power.
• 36:39
  And so getting, getting to the point where you can, you know,
• 36:43
  deploy an ASIC is really important in terms of getting
• 36:47
  the, the level of the cost of the service down and making it
• 36:50
  also to such a point where you're delivering real, you
• 36:54
  know, broadband speeds to, to your end consumer.
• 36:58
  Let me see here go through some of these notes.
• 37:08
  Yeah. So it in terms of the company's
• 37:10
  manufacturing capacity there, I guess the view there is that
• 37:15
  where they're based, which is Midland, TX, you know, it's oil,
• 37:19
  oil country where you've got a lot of highly skilled people
• 37:24
  with, who work with their hands who have to build custom parts
• 37:27
  when they're, they're doing like, you know, they, they're,
• 37:31
  they're doing these oil explorations.
• 37:33
  And you know, that the idea behind like CNC milling and, and
• 37:38
  working with carbon fiber and also other stuff like it
• 37:40
  actually is something that's kind of built into the fabric of
• 37:44
  the country there. And so from what this person was
• 37:47
  saying is that when they visited the company, they were in a, a
• 37:52
  taxi ride, sorry, an Uber ride. And the person who was driving
• 37:57
  mentioned that for their family members currently working at ASD
• 38:00
  Space Mobile. So it's almost like a family
• 38:02
  affair in Midland, where I guess AC is kind of the company to
• 38:06
  work for and, and everybody's trying to get a job there.
• 38:09
  But more importantly, there's a lot of highly skilled labor
• 38:12
  there and highly skilled labor that doesn't exist anywhere else
• 38:16
  in the country where people can map, you know, fabricate parts.
• 38:19
  And so it was really, to me, it was really great to hear that
• 38:23
  obviously, because, you know, the company is trying to be
• 38:26
  vertically integrated and manufacturing a lot of these
• 38:28
  things on our own, which we know, whether that's working
• 38:32
  with, you know, CNC milling machines or or even working with
• 38:37
  carbon fiber. I mean, I'm not an expert about
• 38:40
  doing, you know, making parts out of carbon fiber, but I've
• 38:43
  seen, you know, companies where you've you have rolls of carbon
• 38:49
  fiber and you have to basically, you know, layer multiple,
• 38:52
  multiple layers of carbon fiber. You know, composites, which the
• 38:55
  companies refer to into certain shapes in order to, you know,
• 39:00
  develop something that's structurally sound, but also
• 39:02
  very lightweight and can, you know, take very white swings in
• 39:07
  in your temperature. I think he was, I remember I was
• 39:11
  watching this documentary, the SR-71, how back in the 60s and
• 39:15
  70s they developed this, this, you know, this plane that can
• 39:17
  travel at over Mach 3 and they use, I think it was aluminum
• 39:22
  and, and it would, it would actually expand and contract
• 39:25
  based off the temperatures. And they were saying if you had
• 39:28
  the ability to utilize a composite materials back then,
• 39:31
  they could have made the plane much better.
• 39:33
  And they, they wouldn't have had all these issues, which I think
• 39:36
  the reason why I bring that up is that in space, obviously, you
• 39:39
  know, these materials are subject to white springs and
• 39:42
  temperature and they get beaten up by radiation and all this
• 39:44
  other stuff. And so but yeah, this person was
• 39:47
  saying that based off of, you know, what they had seen, the
• 39:50
  company has pretty much everything there.
• 39:54
  And all these skilled workers who are doing their best to to
• 39:57
  turn out to eventually what we we all hope is going to be 6
• 40:01
  satellites per month of production.
• 40:04
  But let me see here. I'm just going through my notes
• 40:14
  here. One additional point or there's
• 40:22
  a few points here, I guess from the M and OS perspective, what
• 40:26
  they really care about, You know, these are some of the
• 40:28
  factors that this person outlined.
• 40:30
  You know, one, this satellite committee bring new spectrum to
• 40:33
  the party that adds capacity. And this person's perspective is
• 40:38
  that no one in the press, at least, you know, up until more
• 40:42
  recently, was really focused on this point.
• 40:44
  But, you know, after AST announced the Legato deal in
• 40:47
  January, people kind of, you know, scratch our heads and
• 40:50
  shrugged it off. But then, of course, when
• 40:52
  Sterling bought Echostar Spectrum, you know, it was like,
• 40:55
  Oh my God, they can like provide their own, you know, service,
• 40:58
  which, you know, their own mobile service and they're going
• 41:01
  to get with M and OS, which I think, you know, perhaps that's
• 41:05
  like taking it a bit too far. But but obviously, who knows,
• 41:08
  right? Alon's got various ambitions and
• 41:11
  and we're we all try to speculate where he where he
• 41:13
  wants to go. But but I think it is an
• 41:15
  important aspect where for M and OS who are looking at these
• 41:19
  different services, can you know is, is the satellite provider
• 41:23
  bringing spectrum to bear that's going to help with congestion on
• 41:28
  the network and provide a truly differentiated service and is
• 41:32
  that service of course going to be broadband?
• 41:34
  You know, that's a very important differentiation, which
• 41:37
  this person was saying, obviously, can the satellite
• 41:41
  extended the coverage of the terrestrial network and can the
• 41:43
  MNO use their logo or does it have to be branded as somebody
• 41:47
  else's service but powered by or their service but powered by
• 41:51
  Starlink, for example, which, you know, that's what T-Mobile
• 41:54
  is doing today. I think you've seen T-Mobile
• 41:58
  dial down the amount of Starlink popping in and they put in their
• 42:02
  messaging now they call it T satellite and there's a little
• 42:05
  bit of, you know, powered by Starlink.
• 42:06
  But I remember initially, of course, with a lot of fan gear,
• 42:09
  it was like Starlink service with T-Mobile.
• 42:13
  And so I think maybe T-Mobile has learned quite a bit that
• 42:16
  perhaps they shouldn't be pushing the Starlink angle so
• 42:18
  much. But as we know phrase T, you
• 42:21
  know, it's going to be white label, it's going to be AT&T or
• 42:24
  it's going to be Verizon in for the probably the general, I mean
• 42:28
  the, the normal person, they're not going to know that, that the
• 42:31
  technology is actually enabled by AST, AST space mobile.
• 42:35
  And you know, for, for me, that's fine.
• 42:38
  It as long as we get more M and OS adopting the service and
• 42:43
  getting more subscribers, that's great.
• 42:45
  We, we can amortize the network over more carriers and we can
• 42:48
  generate more revenue and, and cash flow.
• 42:51
  You know, you can call wherever you want, as long as, as long as
• 42:54
  you know, the, the company is, is earning an economic return
• 42:58
  on, on the consolation. Let's see here.
• 43:03
  Another important thing for M and OS is that they want to be
• 43:07
  able to guarantee service, right?
• 43:09
  And so, and this was actually a really important point.
• 43:13
  You know, what they were saying is if you can imagine this
• 43:16
  future that everyone's trying to paint around AI and drones and
• 43:19
  autonomous vehicles, the first thing that regulators are going
• 43:22
  to do, so let's say like Domino's is they're, they're
• 43:25
  going to try to create an army of drones to deliver pizzas to
• 43:28
  to your house. Well, the first thing they're
• 43:30
  going to say is, OK, well, if you want to deliver a pizza by
• 43:33
  drone, how can you guarantee that that drone is going to be
• 43:37
  connected at all times? Because if it goes through a
• 43:40
  dead spot, what happens to the drone?
• 43:42
  Like maybe it has AI and it can kind of fly through the dead
• 43:44
  spot, but regulators aren't going to go for a service that
• 43:49
  is in and out of connectivity because regulators will want to
• 43:53
  know that there's a human kind of monitoring the stuff and has
• 43:56
  a kill switch. It can override things because
• 43:58
  obviously if you're flying drones, overpopulated areas,
• 44:03
  then you know, who knows? Like in the area, the drone, you
• 44:06
  know, it, it has issues and then heaven forbid it, it falls and
• 44:10
  you know, lands on granny Witherol or or maybe injuries
• 44:13
  some children. You can't have that or, or the
• 44:15
  drone gets close to a house and then it loses connectivity.
• 44:19
  And then, you know, there's there's a child and dog there
• 44:21
  and they get injured. But you know, the same analogy
• 44:24
  applies to autonomous trucking, which everyone thinks is going
• 44:27
  to be this huge revolution. Are regulators going to approve
• 44:32
  a service that where where trucks go in and out of
• 44:35
  coverage? And and so the the company has
• 44:37
  no ability to see what truck is seeing because it goes through
• 44:41
  this valley and there's no terrestrial coverage.
• 44:43
  And so OK, yeah, we'll we'll let the service, you know this, you
• 44:47
  know, multi ton truck just drive on its own with AI, but not be
• 44:50
  connected to a network where a human operator can't see what's
• 44:53
  going on. Like that's that's that's like
• 44:56
  that's dead on a rile DOA right. So I think what this person was
• 45:00
  saying is that for M and OS, they want, they want to know
• 45:04
  that they have 100% coverage and are able like from a consumer
• 45:08
  perspective, but also enterprise perspective, like business
• 45:10
  customers. Can you provide a service that
• 45:15
  provides 100% guaranteed coverage, 100% up time.
• 45:19
  And in today's world with terrestrial networks, we can't
• 45:21
  do that. And where we're going in terms
• 45:24
  of IoT and connected devices, satellite's going to play a huge
• 45:28
  role in that. And I think that's where maybe
• 45:31
  the market maybe up until now didn't really understand this
• 45:35
  opportunity like you had, you know, short sellers and skeptics
• 45:37
  say, well, it's just a niche service and no one's going to
• 45:41
  aside for death spots And like no one's going to care.
• 45:43
  No, actually, people care like those dead spots.
• 45:45
  If you're going to fly assets like drones or have autonomous
• 45:49
  vehicles on these like rural highways, right, or any
• 45:52
  highways. I mean, you can, you can drive
• 45:54
  to. I remember when I lived in
• 45:56
  California. I mean, they're just different
• 45:58
  parts of one O 1 or 280 in the valley, where in Silicon Valley
• 46:01
  where you you don't have coverage.
• 46:03
  We go to Menlo Park, you don't have coverage like that's that's
• 46:07
  like a non starter for autonomous vehicles and and
• 46:10
  drones and all these other things that people want to do.
• 46:12
  So being able to one offer 100% coverage, but then a quality of
• 46:18
  service is going to be important.
• 46:19
  And then, you know, this was the this was the point that the
• 46:22
  person made, which I thought was really important.
• 46:25
  Like, yeah, maybe for your low, you know, if it's a college
• 46:29
  student or a consumer that doesn't use the service very
• 46:33
  much, you know, they're, they're probably going to look for
• 46:34
  budget plans and not really worrying about, you know, if
• 46:36
  they fall in and out of coverage, they're fine.
• 46:37
  But for someone like me who, where I need to have access to
• 46:42
  data because I'm, you know, I'm trading or investing or people
• 46:46
  who are like professions where they need to be connected all
• 46:48
  the time. I think most people would pay
• 46:52
  double their current plan in order to have 100% certainty
• 46:55
  like this. Your phone's going to work on
• 46:57
  the beach, it's going to work. You know, when you're working
• 47:00
  remotely in some cabin in Montana, it's going to work.
• 47:02
  Or when you're on a plane, it's going to work.
• 47:05
  Or when you're in your car and everything's tethered to your
• 47:09
  phone in the car like it's going to work.
• 47:12
  Or if you are a Pizza Hut or sorry, not pizza, but if you're
• 47:16
  Domino's and you're, you have these drones flying all over the
• 47:18
  city in order to get people comfortable, you know, or it's
• 47:22
  Amazon with, with drones, or they're the little, you know,
• 47:26
  these little autonomous vehicles that are delivering packages,
• 47:29
  you're going to have to guarantee 100% coverage and
• 47:32
  connectivity to those things. Otherwise, regulators are,
• 47:35
  whether it's local government regulators or the FAA or, you
• 47:39
  know, you name it like NHI, forget NHSTA or whatever.
• 47:44
  They're going to want assurance that those that these these
• 47:48
  vehicles that don't have people in them are, are always
• 47:50
  connected, right? And so that's going to be a big
• 47:53
  killer app, which I think people underestimate.
• 47:56
  But, you know, the ability to have broadband data to any 3 GPP
• 48:01
  device, which is not just your mobile phone, but it's any, you
• 48:05
  know, laptop a, a robot or whatever it is, but it has a
• 48:09
  cellular modem that has these frequency bands built in.
• 48:13
  That's going to be a killer app. And you know, if you think about
• 48:18
  3 billion subscribers today of the 59 OS that we're working
• 48:21
  with, multiply that, right? Like how many IoT devices and,
• 48:26
  you know, air tags or whatever, any type of assets, any tracking
• 48:30
  devices that you put in assets that, you know, a company with a
• 48:33
  trucking fleet or, you know, if they're like even delivery
• 48:39
  bicycles, right? Like everything's going to be
• 48:41
  connected. And so you're going to want to
• 48:43
  have, you know, I, I talk about how, and this person agreed with
• 48:47
  me. I, I was like this the, the
• 48:49
  whole idea where, where short sellers would say, well, no
• 48:52
  one's going to pay $10 a month for 100% guaranteed
• 48:55
  connectivity. And it's like, are you out of
• 48:56
  your mind? Of course they are.
• 48:58
  You know, like if you have kids, you know, my kids have Apple
• 49:02
  Watches. And if my wife found out that I
• 49:05
  wasn't paying an additional $20.00 for satellite service to
• 49:09
  those watches to make sure that I know exactly where they are at
• 49:12
  any point in time they ever get lost, Like I can pinpoint, I
• 49:16
  know exactly where they are. But yeah, oh, dad, Dad didn't
• 49:18
  want to pay $20. And so, you know, your kids
• 49:20
  lost. You know, whether it's it's
• 49:23
  maybe an amusement park with it, quite candidly, there's the this
• 49:26
  coverage, the service there sucks.
• 49:29
  And so having additional MSS spectrum covering that amusement
• 49:31
  park, you'll get better coverage.
• 49:33
  And then, you know, you'll be able to find your kid.
• 49:35
  Or if you go on a camping trip and they get lost, anybody who
• 49:40
  has kids or loved ones knows like you would pay any price for
• 49:44
  Peace of Mind. I mean, it's like the the SUV
• 49:47
  analogy that I like using, which is, you know, people pay a
• 49:50
  massive premium to own a sport utility vehicle because it looks
• 49:53
  cool. And maybe you'll take it off
• 49:55
  road or go into like a pretty heavy snowstorm one or two days
• 49:59
  out of the year maybe. But people pay for that Peace of
• 50:02
  Mind like they want they want a vehicle that can do anything
• 50:05
  right. And so similar to your cell
• 50:06
  phone, you're going to want a cell phone or, or device that's
• 50:11
  connected all the time, especially when it's to your,
• 50:14
  your, your, your mother who probably shouldn't be driving
• 50:16
  anymore, but she, she, you know, gosh damn it, she's going to
• 50:19
  continue to drive. And so you want to make sure
• 50:21
  that she's going to have full connectivity and you can reach
• 50:25
  her no matter where she is, right?
• 50:27
  Or your kids, like I said, if they're, if they're away on
• 50:31
  camp, at summer camp, like you want to make sure that you know
• 50:35
  if they, if they're, if they get lost or something that you'll,
• 50:38
  you'll be able to track them. But I think having that Peace of
• 50:42
  Mind, I think for most people, they would pay that.
• 50:45
  And it look, it doesn't. And by the way, like this
• 50:47
  doesn't have to be a solution that's adopted by everybody.
• 50:50
  Like if there's A and 20% adoption in a subscriber base of
• 50:56
  3 billion, not include, this is just like human subscribers.
• 50:59
  We're not talking about like connected devices, you know,
• 51:03
  drones, any of that stuff. And we're not even talking about
• 51:05
  military stuff too. Like that's like a whole another
• 51:07
  conversation, which probably takes like another hour.
• 51:10
  But yeah, like people are going to pay for that.
• 51:13
  And you know, for business users, enterprise users, they're
• 51:15
  going to pay double or more for their phone to work.
• 51:20
  And if you're a salesperson and you actually have to go around
• 51:22
  and see, see people like, or if you're, you know, retail trader,
• 51:26
  like some of the people on this, on this Twitter space and you
• 51:31
  decide to go go somewhere. And obviously, let's say like
• 51:33
  you have calls expiring and, or put your options expiring, but
• 51:39
  your family's on vacation. I mean, we've all been there,
• 51:41
  right? Like you're, you're on a ski
• 51:42
  vacation and your wife is like, why are you so distracted?
• 51:45
  Why you keep looking at your phone and you're like constantly
• 51:48
  trying to connect to a non existent network?
• 51:51
  Because you have to make trades because just the stock is down.
• 51:54
  Some stock is down 20% or it's up 20%.
• 51:56
  You need to do something you would pay any price at that
• 52:00
  moment in time to be connected. And so I think that's what
• 52:04
  people lose sight of. They, they try to think of very
• 52:07
  simple or they're dismissive of what this service brings.
• 52:11
  Where as I think this person was saying, like this is kind of the
• 52:14
  next big leg up for the telecom industry, right?
• 52:18
  Because now we're at 1 trillion of revenues and the, the
• 52:23
  consumer has been pretty much maxed out in terms of what you
• 52:26
  can charge them versus like the services that are being
• 52:30
  delivered to that consumer. Whereas this is the Holy Grail.
• 52:33
  Now it's going to be, oh, we can give you 100% guaranteed
• 52:36
  coverage no matter where you are, right?
• 52:38
  And, and at the high end, people are going to pay for that for
• 52:41
  business users, they're going to pay for that.
• 52:43
  Not everybody below is going to pay and, and quite candidly,
• 52:46
  like for those people, those are going to be some of the highest
• 52:48
  yielding users where someone's not going to want to subscribe
• 52:53
  to monthly service. But for those single days where
• 52:56
  they actually need it, they're going to pay $2030 to get
• 52:59
  access. I mean, it's just like in the in
• 53:02
  the alternative of no service when you're on air airplane
• 53:07
  flight, you know, I pay $30.00 for what is basically, you know,
• 53:12
  very intermittent shitty service that maybe is low band at best.
• 53:16
  But but I pay for it because I need some type of connectivity
• 53:20
  even it's just to see the quotes changing on my Bloomberg on my
• 53:25
  phone when I'm on a flight, you know, I I need to know what's
• 53:29
  going on. So anyway, but yeah, so I think
• 53:34
  ACR, I think the the point of having, you know, quality of
• 53:41
  service, that's that's always on.
• 53:44
  And also, you know, to this person's point, having a
• 53:48
  seamless experience where the the network is converged, where
• 53:52
  satellite and terrestrial networks actually can do hand
• 53:54
  offs pretty seamlessly, which I think AC Space Mobile is working
• 53:58
  very hard to do, which is not an easy task.
• 54:01
  But I think when you're integrate into the network
• 54:04
  operators core and the you know, the E node B or the brains are
• 54:07
  actually down on on earth and it's connecting, interacting
• 54:10
  with with the network, that should be easier to do.
• 54:14
  But you know, obviously that's going to take some time in order
• 54:18
  to make that a reality. That's that's seamless.
• 54:21
  And then finally, I think, as I mentioned before, you know,
• 54:24
  sovereignty is going to be important.
• 54:25
  You know, you the data where the processing happen, it needs to
• 54:29
  happen within the country and that's a big high or that's a
• 54:33
  big requirement for M and OS. And ultimately do they have
• 54:36
  control over that? Are they operating the network
• 54:39
  or in partnership or parts of it or is someone is it a completely
• 54:43
  separate service basically and are they going to trust that?
• 54:46
  So let's see here. I think those are most of the
• 54:51
  points which I think over the coming coming days, I'll try to
• 54:55
  write a bit more about some of this stuff.
• 54:57
  But but yeah, I just wanted to share some of these these
• 55:02
  thoughts, which I think we're enlightening.
• 55:04
  And as I said before, I think, you know, I think the market is,
• 55:09
  is starting to get their arms around this and is reformed
• 55:13
  trader said before. You know, there's, there's if
• 55:17
  you want to invest in modular nuclear reactors, there's like a
• 55:20
  whole group of companies. Or if you want to invest in AI,
• 55:23
  there's, there's a whole group of companies and, or quantum.
• 55:25
  And of course, like there's, there's a whatever level of
• 55:30
  speculation and, or something's real, something's not.
• 55:33
  But when it comes to direct to device broadband connectivity
• 55:36
  from space, there's only two companies right now.
• 55:38
  There's, there's SpaceX, which is, you know, Starlink and you
• 55:42
  know, for the people that are interested in doing that, you
• 55:45
  know, what is it? I mean, combined enterprise
• 55:47
  value of SpaceX and Starlink at 450 billion, you've got to go
• 55:51
  through an SPB and pay 2 and 20 or more in terms of fees.
• 55:57
  You know that that's one way to invest.
• 56:00
  Or there's HD Space Mobile and it's this public company that
• 56:03
  happens to have the best technology today.
• 56:06
  You know, it also is working with 50 mobile network
• 56:09
  operators. I think Starlink is now at, they
• 56:12
  moved up from 8:00 to 9:00 or I'm sorry, from 9 to 10 mobile
• 56:15
  operators because now they can include Boost Mobile as Minos.
• 56:20
  And I think they've got just under 300 million subscribers as
• 56:25
  potential customers, whereas AST is now at 3 billion.
• 56:29
  But yeah, you've got this company that you can invest in
• 56:32
  today. You know, the question is in
• 56:35
  terms of discounting how much of how much of the, how much is the
• 56:40
  company is getting credit today in the current stock price,
• 56:42
  which I would say, you know, for people to get the stock price
• 56:47
  when it was at $2.00, but not understanding what state the
• 56:50
  company was in back then versus where it is today.
• 56:52
  I think it's probably a hard mental it's it's probably a big,
• 56:59
  big hump to get over. But I think, you know, on
• 57:03
  today's call, we just talked about the consumer, the consumer
• 57:06
  side and how it relates to M and OS.
• 57:08
  But then we haven't even discussed the government side of
• 57:11
  the business or the defense applications as well, which is a
• 57:14
  whole nother call. But yeah, I just wanted to share
• 57:18
  some of those thoughts and, and of course give people a, a, a
• 57:23
  sanity check too, of kind of where we are.
• 57:25
  And just to make sure that you have a plan, You know, as, as we
• 57:29
  as the markets continue to, to trade up into, you know, what I
• 57:33
  think is pretty high expectations for all these
• 57:35
  different growth areas, which, you know, we've seen these kind
• 57:38
  of cycles in the past where you, you have a ton of excitement.
• 57:43
  And obviously there's real dollars bearing it like, you
• 57:45
  know, companies spending a tremendous amount of money on AI
• 57:48
  CapEx and of course that driving up the need for energy, which
• 57:53
  then is driving demand for these next generation nuclear
• 57:57
  technologies. Who knows who's going to be a
• 57:59
  winner? But then you know, looking at,
• 58:01
  hey, some of these solar companies are going to benefit
• 58:03
  or even traditional coal and gas, like that's going to
• 58:07
  benefit too. But, you know, I think looking
• 58:12
  at the market and what it's doing and also recognizing that
• 58:17
  there's probably some level of like exuberance in AST space
• 58:21
  mobile's stock price. But then also balancing that
• 58:24
  against the fact that, you know, I, I tweeted that meme of the,
• 58:29
  the football player dropping the football or basically
• 58:31
  celebrating and dropping the football right before the end
• 58:33
  zone. We're, we're kind of at that
• 58:34
  point where we're, we're going to be launching satellites in
• 58:39
  the space and it becomes much more, you know, that the
• 58:42
  constellations going to be built out and service is going to
• 58:45
  start to be rolled out here. And we're going to be generating
• 58:48
  revenues And we're going to be getting, you know, we, we've
• 58:51
  talked about like the Verizon definitive agreement, Bell
• 58:54
  Canada Defend agreement, you know, Golden Dome award or other
• 58:58
  defense awards. All the stuff starts becoming
• 59:01
  much more tangible. And so as Cook mentioned before,
• 59:05
  for institutions, it becomes something that is unavoidable
• 59:08
  that they're going to have to get smart around and whether to
• 59:11
  decide to invest, you know, who knows, right?
• 59:12
  But I think when I was talking to this consultant, the point
• 59:18
  that I made that which is my favorite is that, you know,
• 59:21
  there's this unique opportunity to own what is going to be the
• 59:25
  largest wireless carrier in the world.
• 59:27
  And not, you know, we're, we're not obviously competing with
• 59:31
  AT&T and Verizon and Vodafone, but we will have, you know, you
• 59:35
  pick the number, I don't know, 4500 million subscribers, like
• 59:38
  maybe we'll be the first company to be at 1 billion, you know,
• 59:41
  wireless subscribers just through our relationships.
• 59:44
  And you know, obviously those, those subscribers are not going
• 59:46
  to be on the service all the time, but, but we are going to
• 59:50
  have those customers and they will be paying, which is great.
• 59:53
  And you know, I think, I think it was tight.
• 59:56
  Who mentioned Netflix where you know, where, if you can imagine
• 1:00:00
  Netflix's model where they charge, I don't know, 10-15
• 1:00:03
  dollars per subscriber and you know, they're they leveraged.
• 1:00:07
  The Internet, they leveraged the fact that people have devices.
• 1:00:11
  It's kind of a similar story, right?
• 1:00:12
  So is the adoption curve and the economic model going to be
• 1:00:16
  similar? I would argue it's going to, you
• 1:00:19
  know, our service is going to be more rapidly, you know, adopted
• 1:00:24
  and, and the financial, you know, obviously the, the, our
• 1:00:28
  EBITDA margins relative to, you know, our high fixed cost
• 1:00:31
  initially from putting out the satellite, but then the ability
• 1:00:33
  to generate free cash flow after that is going to be tremendous.
• 1:00:37
  And it's going to be, you know, a Harvard Business case study
• 1:00:39
  for people to study for many years to come.
• 1:00:43
  But anyway, I know I'm just rambling and repeating stuff
• 1:00:47
  that I've said before, but I'm going to take a quick look at
• 1:00:50
  some of the comments and see if there's any questions here.
• 1:00:55
  Every time I listen to you lately, you keep telling me to
• 1:00:59
  sell. Haven't sold a bean since 6:00.
• 1:01:01
  Hoping to hold till 400 + 35 is already an overwhelming amount
• 1:01:05
  of money though. Wow, that's a fair point.
• 1:01:08
  I, you know, when I, when I say, and I'm sorry you feel that way,
• 1:01:12
  that you feel like I'm telling you to sell.
• 1:01:14
  I think it depends on when your situation, right?
• 1:01:16
  Like if you have a 5% position that's grown into 10% position
• 1:01:20
  in space, AC, space mobile, then you're more than welcome to like
• 1:01:24
  keep holding it, right? Like I hold it until the cows
• 1:01:26
  come in and we get to $1000 a share.
• 1:01:28
  And that I think that's like a great strategy.
• 1:01:31
  But if you, if you have that similar position and you've got
• 1:01:35
  like your credit card's maxed out, if you have a mortgage and
• 1:01:39
  by selling 2% of your position, you can like completely pay down
• 1:01:43
  your mortgage and be free of debt, then then your
• 1:01:46
  circumstances is different, right?
• 1:01:47
  And I think it, it, you owe it to yourself to think through
• 1:01:51
  that analysis to, to make a decision for your financial
• 1:01:57
  independence, right? And I think also, you know,
• 1:02:01
  it's, it's, it's fun to like be in these times of when stock
• 1:02:05
  price is doing well, but also go back to when the stock price
• 1:02:09
  drew down to 36. And how are you feeling them?
• 1:02:11
  And did you have any regret? And were there things that you
• 1:02:14
  wish you had done when the stock was at what was it 60 when it
• 1:02:17
  peaked at 60? And so now that we're at some
• 1:02:19
  E4, you know, does it make sense to do those things you were
• 1:02:24
  contemplating? I'm not telling people to sell,
• 1:02:26
  but I think it's important to have a plan and to stick with
• 1:02:31
  that plan, right? And so if you have 80% of your
• 1:02:35
  net worth in this stock, then you know, God bless.
• 1:02:39
  And, and, and if that's because it went, and it also depends on
• 1:02:42
  like what your cost basis is, right?
• 1:02:44
  Like if you if you bought a ton at 2:00 and then also in the
• 1:02:47
  stock is going to 74 and it's become 80% of your net wealth,
• 1:02:51
  you are probably OK with riding the volatility to a degree
• 1:02:54
  because your cost basis was so low and you're basically riding
• 1:02:58
  on house money. But I think, you know, what I've
• 1:03:01
  told people in the past is if you've made multiples of your
• 1:03:06
  net worth in this stock, why not just like sell enough to cover
• 1:03:10
  to crystallize what your previous net worth was?
• 1:03:13
  And of course, taxes. And then the rest you can just
• 1:03:14
  write. But yeah, it's, it's all
• 1:03:17
  situation specific. And I'm just like a voice of
• 1:03:21
  just a not a voice of reason, but I guess a friend just saying
• 1:03:26
  like, do what works for you and have a plan and just make sure
• 1:03:31
  you're prepared, right? Because I think, you know,
• 1:03:35
  reformed trader was talking about potential for, I mean, all
• 1:03:38
  the ingredients of the market and you know, the rate backdrop
• 1:03:41
  and, and all things that are going on.
• 1:03:43
  Like he could see a path to 500, which, you know, God bless I
• 1:03:46
  that would be amazing if we get to 500.
• 1:03:49
  But if we do, I, I will tell you one thing, like it will not be a
• 1:03:54
  straight line to 500. Like there it's going to be a
• 1:03:56
  rocky road. Like you might get to a point
• 1:03:59
  where I mean, I'm just making this up.
• 1:04:00
  But like, let's say the stock goes to 200 and then you have a
• 1:04:03
  drawdown all the way to 90 and then also it goes to 300.
• 1:04:08
  Are you able to ride that volatility, right?
• 1:04:10
  And, and it's not just volatility of being down money,
• 1:04:14
  but it's also like having for non profits, right?
• 1:04:17
  Because sometimes that that's pretty brutal to go through that
• 1:04:19
  mentally. So anyway, yeah, I'm not telling
• 1:04:23
  people to sell it, but but just be mindful, right?
• 1:04:27
  Let's see, there's a lot of comments about of course be
• 1:04:31
  having technical issues. I'm sorry about that.
• 1:04:34
  Let's see. Question for you regarding let
• 1:04:40
  it ride. What if you've already smashed
• 1:04:42
  expectations? How do you ship from letting it
• 1:04:43
  ride and into capital preservation?
• 1:04:47
  Well, I mean, there's option strategies you can do to
• 1:04:50
  preserve capital. You could like buy some
• 1:04:52
  protection or, you know, heaven forbid sell calls, which I think
• 1:04:55
  is always, I mean, from my perspective is a bad idea.
• 1:05:00
  But the best solution is to just sell, sell some of your
• 1:05:04
  position. And then that's, that's like the
• 1:05:07
  easiest way to capital preservation.
• 1:05:08
  And then you can write the rest, right.
• 1:05:12
  Anyway. But yeah, sorry, being a broken
• 1:05:14
  recorder, but people are asking about this stuff.
• 1:05:18
  Yeah, it looks like a lot of people.
• 1:05:23
  What percent of shares short do you think are technical meaning
• 1:05:27
  delta type of hedges versus straight bearish trades as in
• 1:05:34
  people think the stock will crash?
• 1:05:35
  Well, I think a lot of short sellers, OK.
• 1:05:36
  So there's there's kind of there are convertible bond holders who
• 1:05:42
  are at this point fully hedged. So I forget what the exact
• 1:05:46
  number is like it's probably don't quote me on this, I will
• 1:05:49
  probably be wrong, but there's probably, I don't know, 10
• 1:05:52
  million shares related to the converts that were bondholders
• 1:05:56
  were short and quite candidly like the hedge funds who are
• 1:06:01
  convertible Rs, they probably closed some of those positions.
• 1:06:04
  And so they might have covered those short and sold the bonds.
• 1:06:06
  And the people who own the converts might actually be
• 1:06:08
  fundamental guys who want who who like the company and and and
• 1:06:14
  want to have exposure with on the fundamental story.
• 1:06:17
  But then I want to express it through to convert, which is
• 1:06:20
  basically equity, you know, and then you also get, you know,
• 1:06:23
  coupon, a very small coupon, but a coupon nonetheless, and some
• 1:06:26
  downside protection if the stock were to, you know, completely
• 1:06:29
  crater. But yeah, the rest of it is
• 1:06:32
  short sellers. So I think we've talked about
• 1:06:35
  how I'm not really sure what the short thesis is at this point.
• 1:06:39
  Quake candidly, it's probably really irresponsible to be short
• 1:06:45
  the stock just given where we are in terms of development of
• 1:06:50
  the service and we're about to launch commercial service.
• 1:06:53
  You know, I, I previously the bears were like, you know, the
• 1:06:57
  tech doesn't work. There's no funding.
• 1:07:00
  What were the other things? Oh, they can't scale production,
• 1:07:03
  but all those things are the you know, the funding's there.
• 1:07:07
  The technology works, you know, M and OS.
• 1:07:09
  If the technology didn't work, you'd have M and OS kind of
• 1:07:12
  backing away from the company, but you have war investment from
• 1:07:16
  M and OS and M and OS are, you know, you have the CEO of
• 1:07:19
  Vodafone at the factory floor And obviously that was that was,
• 1:07:25
  you know, partially to celebrate the completion of FM one and
• 1:07:30
  then, you know, announcing, you know, Bell Canada just announced
• 1:07:33
  like their first video call. So obviously things are going
• 1:07:36
  pretty well. I mean, if, if the five
• 1:07:39
  Bluebirds that were, that are up in space, if they weren't
• 1:07:42
  scaling or you know, the technology wasn't being proved
• 1:07:46
  out as we, you know, over the last several months, M and OS
• 1:07:50
  would be seeing that data because obviously they're, we're
• 1:07:52
  working closely with them. We, we can't pass these things
• 1:07:54
  without their infrastructure. Then you wouldn't see M and OS
• 1:07:59
  like AT&T sending out care packages to space mob that we're
• 1:08:04
  talking about the service and how it's going to be rolled out
• 1:08:06
  soon. So, yeah, I mean, the proof is
• 1:08:09
  in the pudding there. I, I just don't know why shorts
• 1:08:13
  are involved. I mean, I think maybe I've
• 1:08:16
  talked about this in my prior call where, you know, they might
• 1:08:19
  be looking for fluctuations like, oh, hey there.
• 1:08:22
  And you know, to be candid, like somebody did make some money on
• 1:08:25
  the, on the delay in launch, where the stock went from.
• 1:08:29
  And of course, maybe if you knew, if you were like talking
• 1:08:33
  to echo star management and they're like, oh man, they it
• 1:08:35
  sounds like they're pretty close to a spectrum deal and maybe
• 1:08:37
  it's Starling. So I'm going to speculate.
• 1:08:38
  And you saw some of those people like short AST and then it went
• 1:08:41
  down. They made some money, but you
• 1:08:45
  know, I don't think many of them covered and then and went up and
• 1:08:47
  ripped them in the face and like some of these brain dead guys
• 1:08:52
  here, long echo star and they're like, Hey, this is a perfect
• 1:08:55
  pair. Trade a long echo star because
• 1:08:58
  it's a SpaceX proxy and they're going to benefit from working in
• 1:09:02
  SpaceX. And so who is space?
• 1:09:04
  You know, Starlink's one of the key competitors, at least for a
• 1:09:06
  direct device. Oh, it's AST space mobile.
• 1:09:08
  So I'm going to put that pair trade on.
• 1:09:09
  I'm going to short AST at 36 or or 40 and now stocks at like 74.
• 1:09:14
  And you know, Echostar is basically flat.
• 1:09:16
  So they just got their asses handed to them.
• 1:09:19
  They, they had like a completely, I don't know,
• 1:09:22
  irrational trade on, but I don't know people do stupid things
• 1:09:25
  right. So anyway, but but yeah, I'm not
• 1:09:29
  I'm not sure why shorts around. I know Ryan O'Connor, Pranya
• 1:09:33
  Capital and some of the other guys here, they could probably
• 1:09:36
  tell you because they, they, they, they kind of go toe to toe
• 1:09:39
  with some of these guys. And, and I think it seems like
• 1:09:42
  it's like smaller hedge funds where people we think like they
• 1:09:46
  have some variant perception and different edge.
• 1:09:48
  And, and so somehow, yeah, there's going to be some
• 1:09:52
  precipitous decline in the company's stock.
• 1:09:54
  But it's, it's bizarre because given everything the company has
• 1:09:58
  accomplished to date, I don't think you're playing for zero on
• 1:10:01
  the hedge fund side. Like maybe you're playing for a
• 1:10:03
  5 to 10%, maybe 30% draw down and some.
• 1:10:07
  Yeah. Hey, what what happens if like
• 1:10:09
  some satellites brick up there and and they don't deploy
• 1:10:13
  properly and then people get scared?
• 1:10:15
  I mean, you saw Firefly, Was it down 2025% because they're the
• 1:10:21
  rocket engine exploded. But of course, like that, that
• 1:10:24
  was on top of the fact that the company in their first public
• 1:10:27
  quarter didn't hit guidance and and or sorry, didn't hit
• 1:10:31
  expectations and and or guidance, which is like a
• 1:10:34
  Cardinal said, you never do that as a public company in the first
• 1:10:38
  quarter. You can't especially IT and IA
• 1:10:40
  regular way IPO, not a SPAC, but a regular way IPO where you
• 1:10:44
  basically are giving research analyst the numbers and you're
• 1:10:48
  telling them to hate. These are appropriately
• 1:10:51
  sandbagged numbers. And so, but you know, it's like
• 1:10:54
  a unsaid rule or not an unsaid rule.
• 1:10:56
  It's like everybody knows this as an investment banking, you
• 1:10:59
  need to set expectations such that you can beat and raise at
• 1:11:03
  least for four quarters after being public.
• 1:11:04
  And so Firefly shoot the bed the first quarter.
• 1:11:08
  So the stock was down, broke IPO price.
• 1:11:10
  And then of course, like a rocket engine exploded and
• 1:11:12
  people have been, you know, concerned about Firefly because
• 1:11:15
  there as Rocket Lab investors know, which they make people
• 1:11:19
  acutely aware, Fireflies had a checkered history in terms of
• 1:11:23
  their rocket program. And so that stock went down a
• 1:11:26
  lot. And so, yeah, I mean, ASD, you
• 1:11:28
  could have a situation having been that, you know, maybe a
• 1:11:32
  satellite doesn't deploy or, or, you know, things happen.
• 1:11:35
  But the great thing is that we've got a ton of satellites.
• 1:11:40
  A ton of satellites are being built and they're going to be
• 1:11:42
  launched. And so before Blue Walker 3
• 1:11:46
  didn't work, that could have been like a existential
• 1:11:51
  extinction event. Or if the Block 1 Bluebirds, if
• 1:11:55
  like 1 didn't work, that could have been a problem.
• 1:11:58
  But now, you know, we're going to be launching.
• 1:12:00
  We have 13 launches that are going to put up, I don't know,
• 1:12:03
  depending 5060 satellites, if you have one go bad, that's OK.
• 1:12:07
  Like that's totally recoverable. And is it's, it's expected like
• 1:12:10
  you're going to have some, some number of these things that may
• 1:12:14
  not work. I mean, in Starlight's case, a
• 1:12:16
  lot of the satellites don't work.
• 1:12:17
  They don't, they, they malfunction.
• 1:12:20
  They don't get to the proper, you know, level.
• 1:12:23
  They don't get, you know, when they do their rays, they don't
• 1:12:26
  get to the right orbit. But he, but that's a different
• 1:12:29
  piece. Like they're building quantity
• 1:12:31
  over quality and they're OK with having a decent amount of
• 1:12:35
  defects, right? Because that's their business
• 1:12:36
  model. Whereas for us, and a Bell's
• 1:12:39
  philosophy is like, you get it right the first time and every
• 1:12:42
  time. So but yeah, it's, it's, I
• 1:12:46
  think, I think for anybody holding the stock, and I preach
• 1:12:50
  this constantly, like don't don't hold it in margin.
• 1:12:53
  Don't go to, don't get over your skis.
• 1:12:55
  It's highly volatile. I mean, on days like this, it's
• 1:12:57
  great, but on down days, you know, if you're on margin, not
• 1:13:02
  good. So anyway, but yeah, that's,
• 1:13:06
  that's about all I had today. My son's soccer practice is
• 1:13:09
  going to end soon, so I should fall at the end of space.
• 1:13:12
  But yeah, I, I, I think I covered most of the important
• 1:13:16
  points that, that, that I had in this conversation.
• 1:13:19
  There were a few other things that maybe I'll kind of share
• 1:13:21
  over time, but I, I would say that my conversation, I, I came
• 1:13:25
  away quite bullish. And it's interesting.
• 1:13:28
  I think even the people who are, who know the, the industry well
• 1:13:34
  and understand the importance and have a good grip of what
• 1:13:37
  this technology brings in terms of transformation and
• 1:13:41
  disruption. I, I think they're just
• 1:13:44
  literally at the point of like scratching the surface.
• 1:13:46
  I don't think they fully comprehend what this means and
• 1:13:50
  what a sea change it's going to be that quite, you know, I think
• 1:13:53
  most people on the retail side understand.
• 1:13:56
  And so that's, that's the opportunity, right?
• 1:13:58
  Like I think those consultants that, that the people who are in
• 1:14:01
  the industry, they and the ones who are working with them knows
• 1:14:04
  they at least have a pretty decent understanding.
• 1:14:07
  But then compare that to retail investors.
• 1:14:10
  They're they're pretty far behind, but then they're at
• 1:14:12
  least ahead of most institutional investors who
• 1:14:15
  quite candidly, most have no clue.
• 1:14:17
  They don't really understand what this is.
• 1:14:19
  They might think it's like, oh, it's like global Star SOS text
• 1:14:23
  messaging or something like that.
• 1:14:26
  But I don't think they understand how it fits into what
• 1:14:29
  I described before, which is, you know, in a connected
• 1:14:32
  environment where you have Internet of Things devices,
• 1:14:36
  drones, autonomous vehicles, things like that, robots, you're
• 1:14:41
  going to have to have 100% connectivity.
• 1:14:43
  And even when the terrestrial network goes down, you need the
• 1:14:46
  satellite network back up because like, if you can imagine
• 1:14:49
  where we become and then, you know, from my perspective, it's
• 1:14:53
  quite sad, but we become more dependent on these devices,
• 1:14:57
  whether it's, you know, robots, drones or other things.
• 1:15:00
  Like for a terrestrial network to have an outage to go down,
• 1:15:03
  like that's just that's, that can't happen.
• 1:15:06
  It just can't, right? And so having whether as a
• 1:15:11
  primary network or backup or an overlap network, having a
• 1:15:14
  satellite network, it's going to be absolutely critical.
• 1:15:17
  And I think, I think we're all early in understanding that.
• 1:15:20
  And I think the market is far behind.
• 1:15:21
  But once they do, yeah, it's going to be pretty wild.
• 1:15:25
  If you think our our time now is wild in terms of the market
• 1:15:29
  recognizing the value of this company and the opportunity, I
• 1:15:35
  think, you know, we're just scratching the surface.
• 1:15:37
  But anyway, I'll end it there. I've got to go get my kid.
• 1:15:41
  And you know, I'm going to, I'll be, we'll be back at it
• 1:15:43
  tomorrow. Maybe I'll do, I'll do some
• 1:15:47
  additional spaces because yeah, this is fun.
• 1:15:50
  But anyway, I hope you guys enjoy this.
• 1:15:52
  I'm going to let it run for a while.
• 1:15:54
  And then yeah, we'll catch up again.
• 1:15:57
  Thanks everyone for joining. Thanks for listening to the AST
• 1:16:02
  Space Mover podcast. If you enjoyed this episode and
• 1:16:05
  you'd like to help support the podcast, please share it with
• 1:16:08
  others, post about it on social media, or leave a rating and
• 1:16:12
  review to catch all the latest news about.
• 1:16:14
  AST Space Mobile. Make sure to subscribe.
• 1:16:17
  Thanks again and I'll see you next time.
• 1:16:23
  We're doing something very, very big an activity technology.
• 1:16:26
  We can really affect billion lives.
• 1:16:28
  AST Space Mobile is the only company that had proven
• 1:16:32
  technology to deliver several mobile connectivity directly
• 1:16:36
  from the state to do everyday smartphone.
• 1:16:39
  People will just basically turn their phone and be seamless,
• 1:16:43
  regardless of where you are. We don't want the user even to
• 1:16:46
  know that it's connected by satellite.
• 1:16:48
  Our role is to bring this into reality, always in partnership
• 1:16:52
  with the MMO Listen. Waffles.