Latest / AST SpaceMobile Podcast / Kook's Weekly - September 22

Transcript

Kook's Weekly - September 22 · AST SpaceMobile Podcast

0:06
This is the AST Space Mobile podcast and.
0:10
We just basically turn your phone and be seamless,
0:14
regardless of where you are. We don't want the user even to
0:16
know that it's connected by satellite.
0:21
Listen, the opportunity that we have is very, very, very large.
0:28
OK, Hello everyone. Thanks for joining and I realize
0:31
the crap I've taken in the past when I start my spaces while
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there's still an NFL game. So I know the Giants and Chiefs
0:37
are still playing but started to look pretty hopeless for the
0:40
Giants so figured I'd stay on the adjusted schedule.
0:44
So we had quite an interesting week because it did seem to be
0:49
finally a turning point in terms of really sentiment and
0:56
certainly the stock price as well, which is good.
0:58
And so when you take a step back, I think King Tut's, I
1:03
don't know if you call it an essay, lecture, love note,
1:08
whatever you would want to call it, it's really important to
1:11
kind of step back from time to time.
1:13
And what I love so much about what Tut said is really the
1:20
House of glass that ASTS lives in, which is is really crazy.
1:25
You know, you have ACEO that doesn't take a salary and then
1:31
you have companies like I don't have to sing a lot of people,
1:35
Rocket Lab ion Q things like that where insiders just dump
1:39
shares on people relentlessly. And I don't know if ion Q you
1:45
know what will happen at that. Seems like they made some really
1:47
good moves and everything like that.
1:49
But at the back of your mind when you have a non founder CEO,
1:53
you had the original founder exit bunch of insider sales,
1:56
things like that. You just gives you a feeling of,
2:00
you know, are you the Patsy at the table?
2:03
And ESTs has done everything since the beginning to instill
2:07
trust in their shareholders and trust in the market.
2:09
Yet no matter what they do, there's, there's always a
2:14
different standard. And time will tell.
2:18
But when you're held to such a high standard, it, it seems it's
2:22
because you're doing something very special.
2:25
And what we're seeing is, is stock start that is showing
2:29
really kind of a classic washout.
2:31
And so you had sadly reformed trader was right.
2:34
You had a head and shoulder broke the neckline.
2:37
People flipped out. Predictably, the shorts came out
2:41
in size. The Sonata Capital and pivotal
2:44
Capital and some others that MP man pointed to, they come out
2:49
banging the drums of war turns out bottom stock rips and rips
2:55
on what? And so we had Scott in Paris at
3:00
a conference, which was, you know, it's always interesting
3:03
because he's really with the dinosaurs of the industry.
3:07
And, you know, always for the past years too, especially when
3:12
they had a weaker perceived hand, would really just tell
3:15
people exactly what they're going to do.
3:17
And, you know, always just kind of, you know, taking, taking the
3:24
blows. Now they're in a different spot,
3:28
they're funded, they appear to have a breakout move set up.
3:32
And Scott is keeping the same tone.
3:35
He just repeats the message of what we're doing, how we're
3:37
doing it, why we're different. And importantly at this
3:41
juncture, you know, with all of us on pins and needles, they
3:45
said that there's quote UN quote, going to be a handful of
3:47
launches in 2025. The market like that.
3:51
So the stock ripped on Friday from what I could tell, and you
3:54
might have belief it ripped because he said there was going
3:57
to be a handful of handful of launchers in 2025.
4:00
Now, why is that matter? Does it really matter 2025
4:04
versus 2026 or Q1? Not really.
4:08
But the fear is that if it slips past 2025 and into 2026 and the
4:12
market goes, oh God, what you know, does Q1 turn into Q2?
4:16
Does Q2 turn into 2045? This is the way the Glass House
4:23
mentality works, as Tut said. And so with the reiteration of a
4:29
handful of launches in 2025, you're going to start to go with
4:32
the definition of a handful. Well, a handful is more than
4:37
one, more than two, more than a few in less than a lot, and
4:46
probably somewhere in the definitional realm of several.
4:51
So I interpret this to be 3, three I think would be very
4:56
exciting, potentially 3 Falcon 9 launches.
4:59
I think ISRO at this point, who knows who cares relationship
5:03
with India seems like it's gone down the toilet very quickly
5:07
recently. I still think we're going to
5:09
have an ISRO launch, but I think we're going to be having some,
5:13
some Falcon Nines first. And so if we can get quote, UN
5:17
quote, a handful of launches in 2025, you have to realize, well,
5:22
people get so upset about the delays.
5:26
We've experienced it. We're now almost done with
5:29
September. So all the anxiety I, you know,
5:33
myself included, you know, waiting for March and then, oh,
5:37
it's they said April and then it's May and then we hear it's
5:41
probably in July. And yeah, that's been
5:45
frustrating. It is what it is.
5:47
Obviously, they're doing everything they could do to
5:50
control their timeline. But now we're at the end of
5:53
September. And so you start to think I, I
5:56
personally, you know, aside, I don't know, I take a positive
6:00
attitude toward things. I think the Internet would call
6:03
me a pumper and call me full of opium.
6:05
Fair. I think unfair, but whatever.
6:08
But I take an optimistic view. And so everything happens for a
6:11
reason is my general belief. And so why, why did this delay
6:15
happen? Well, let's forget the actual
6:16
reasons why it happened because those are the actual reasons
6:19
like Golden Dome or military things that might have actually
6:22
delayed it. But in the Kook Spiritual Center
6:25
where everything happens because of some simulation that we're
6:27
in. To me, what's happened is to
6:30
compress the launch timeline so that we're not just sitting
6:32
there in the, you know, alternative universe where we
6:35
had a July ISRO launch and then had to wait a couple months for
6:39
the next one. Maybe that would have been the
6:42
same pattern we previously had is people kind of burn
6:44
themselves out and sell after the first launch and then we
6:47
would have had a a decline. Now maybe this time we're
6:51
actually setting up really with the kind of reformed trader kill
6:55
shot of this head, fake head and shoulder.
7:00
And then people realize, Oh my God, they're going to have a
7:03
launch in late October and then two in November or maybe those
7:10
slip to December. It could all of a sudden get to
7:13
be somewhat of a compressed event timeline, which is very
7:17
exciting to the end of the year. And you can see the stock really
7:19
perking up. And so Scott said what he said
7:24
he he isn't known for having perfect guidance, I'll say that.
7:27
But he said it again. And we do know that there were
7:31
the Falcon 9 launches that were booked.
7:33
Two of them, they're on next Space Flight.
7:37
And we've been really thinking hard about the two tweets we've
7:42
had about FM. One about is ready to ship.
7:47
And I forget the most recent one, but we started to really
7:50
look into whether or not these satellites had gone back into
7:53
vibration testing. Not an engineer as everyone
7:56
knows, but when we looked into that, started to have a theory
7:59
that why would they have gone back into vibro testing?
8:03
Well, you do that when you change your launch vehicle.
8:07
Each launch vehicle has a different frequency and you want
8:10
to make sure that your cargo isn't on residence with the
8:15
launch vehicle and blows itself up.
8:17
And so an ISRO rocket is going to have different internal
8:20
frequencies than a Falcon 9. And so good reason for what
8:25
we're potentially seeing is it went back into VIBRO testing
8:30
because they changed the launch vehicle.
8:33
So we're really doing everything we can.
8:35
We say we the space mob in general is doing everything we
8:38
we can to look for any little hints about what's happening.
8:43
But the biggest 1 is what Scott said in Paris.
8:48
So very exciting news. What we're having overnight is
8:52
equally crazy. I was kind of just living in a
8:55
relaxed night, watching some football with my kids and
8:59
wondering why is ASTS at one point over 4% on 50,000 shares
9:05
in the overnight market? That seems odd.
9:07
What did I miss? Are people excited because they
9:10
heard the handful comments? Are people excited because of
9:13
the Legato confirmation hearing tomorrow?
9:15
That's a good reason to be excited.
9:17
And what we found, well, I didn't find it but other people
9:20
did, is there's an article that came out saying Carlos Slim is
9:25
going to make an investment in ASD Space Mobile.
9:28
So this is not out of left field.
9:31
Let's zoom out really fast. You have strategic investment
9:35
from Vodafone, strategic investment from Bell Canada,
9:38
strategic investment from AT&T and Verizon and Google.
9:43
We know a Bell has a relationship with Carlos Slim.
9:48
We have pictures of them together.
9:51
We know that Mexico has a very interesting market dynamic where
9:56
they're trying to put spectrum to use quickly and satellite is
10:02
a very good way to do that. Little thing I'd add is the
10:06
Legato spectrum includes Mexico. So all of a sudden Carlos then
10:14
might be really interested in this.
10:17
We know in the past Carlos really kind of gave the Heisman
10:21
to Elon when Elon, I believe, called him a drug dealer.
10:27
That Elon is so funny. And so as it turns out, a great
10:30
way to alienate a customer in Mexico is to call them a narco
10:35
terrorist. And so we think that a Bell
10:38
already had a pretty good relationship with American
10:40
Mobil. But as we know, Elon is really
10:43
good at bringing people closer together.
10:47
So that would be a really good reason for the stock to be up
10:50
overnight. And what would a strategic
10:52
investment look like? Well, we could just look at the
10:54
past. And so these have generally been
10:57
convertible bonds with a high edge strike price.
11:00
It would show, I think to the market what is probably not even
11:03
a topical concern right now. It's just that they will be
11:06
getting funding from commercial partners.
11:09
And so I think a lot of people have wondered when this sort of
11:13
transition to quote UN quote non dilutive financing would occur.
11:17
And in my view, the answer is it will come when it comes.
11:22
But every day that goes by is a day where the company arguably
11:26
improve their pricing situation because now you can really see
11:31
the whites of their eyes on both sides.
11:33
The M and OS can see this is happening.
11:36
It's no longer hypothetical. They're starting to be be some
11:39
FOMO. And so the time to act is now.
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And are they going to do big prepayment?
11:45
Are you going to do a deal at all?
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I don't know, but it's in the press.
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Are they going to do a traditional injection, which
11:50
won't be non dilutive. It will just be capital
11:52
efficient because it will be, you know, strategic, which is
11:55
valuable probably in convertible bond that has a high strike
11:59
price. That's pretty good.
12:00
And so those types of things I think will be rewarded by the
12:06
market, but decreasingly so because previously this would
12:09
have been an issue of, Oh my gosh, you're going to avoid
12:12
bankruptcy or Oh my gosh, you're going to avoid diluting
12:15
shareholders at $4.00 a share or $3 a share.
12:18
Now with a billion 5 on the balance sheet, an extra X
12:22
dollars is a nice to have, but not a need to have, but does
12:26
show that ASTS is walking away with the market.
12:29
And so in my view, the technical barriers entry are high, but the
12:35
commercial barriers to entry are higher.
12:38
And as they get more MN OS that starts to really close the
12:43
opportunity for any other competitor to come in because
12:46
their starts to become somewhat of an impenetrable commercial
12:49
mode to doing this. So that gets me really excited
12:52
if that if that comes to pass. We also this week had ASTS
12:57
update their website and so all of a sudden now there's the next
13:03
generation Bluebird page. They lack a control sat, which
13:07
is interesting. And so kind of to me proves that
13:10
we're we're right when I say we're really mean.
13:12
Katzie's right about the design of the next generation Bluebird.
13:16
So it does have a control sat, but they're hiding the design
13:20
because it's so proprietary in terms of how it's working.
13:23
And previously they would have shown the schematic of what's
13:26
going on. This time they seem to be
13:27
obscuring it and that I think it's just proof positive that
13:31
the design, we know it's changed and we think it's really cool
13:35
and it's going to be really exciting.
13:39
And so another kind of look back this week that I thought was
13:42
interesting is just what Ampam Man wrote about.
13:47
Here's the timeline. And I find this actually really
13:50
interesting and and pretty similar to the narrative on some
13:53
topics I've spoken about previously, like SAS AI.
13:59
I think I've related it to shale drilling.
14:02
You can relate it to the cell phone itself.
14:04
But back in 2020, ASDS was just dismissed.
14:09
It was a small niche market, by the way.
14:11
It wasn't going to work. Other people aren't doing it,
14:14
therefore it must not be worth doing.
14:16
Elon didn't do it, therefore it's definitely not worth doing.
14:19
And now, if that's for five years, every single MNO is
14:24
interested in it, every single handset manufacturer is
14:26
interested in, governments are interested in it, defense is
14:28
interested in it, everyone wants to get in on it.
14:32
And Space Extras put down $19 billion, the same type of
14:38
numbers Facebook put down to buy WhatsApp.
14:42
Space Extras did for one necessary but not sufficient
14:48
component to even begin to have a 10 PO solution for this
14:52
market. It just shows how far ahead ASTS
14:57
was thinking. And it goes back to this comment
14:59
that, you know, obviously a light legacy satellite guy said
15:04
on this Paris interview where you said to Scott quote, you
15:09
guys bet your whole ball of wax on this technology quote, which
15:14
is really a way to date yourself really quickly.
15:16
I'm going to start telling my kids like, well, you really bet
15:20
your old ball of wax on this idea that you didn't have to
15:23
brush your teeth and they're going to look at me and you go,
15:26
why? They just won't look at me.
15:28
They will walk away in absolute embarrassment and disguise and
15:31
disown me if I ever use the term ball of wax, which I didn't
15:35
really know what the what's really supposed to mean, I'm
15:38
going to look that one up. But Scott said, yeah, we did
15:40
better. Our ball of wax.
15:42
We did not do a half measure. We bet on an entirely bespoke
15:48
system to solve a problem with first principles correctly,
15:54
without half measures, while defying the convention of the
15:58
market because we had first principles of what we wanted to
16:01
do and we were right. And so you look at what Legacy
16:08
would have done. You would have used S band
16:10
spectrum, you would have had a narrow band solution, you would
16:15
have had modified devices because you would have not tried
16:19
to solve the link budget problem by having issued satellite in
16:23
orbit. There's a lot of things you
16:27
would not have done if you were clinging to the past.
16:31
And so a similarity to me is when Elon had to think about how
16:35
to design an electric car and everyone said, why don't you put
16:38
a small engine in it as well? Why don't you hedge?
16:43
You know what if you run out of battery, what blah, blah, blah,
16:45
all these what ifs. And I remember reading some,
16:47
some books about the origins of Thessalon.
16:49
He just looked at it and went, it is so much more complicated
16:51
if you have an internal combustion engine in there as
16:54
well. We, we just have to start from a
16:58
blank page. We have to have first principles
17:00
about what we're doing. We're going to have AEV car,
17:03
we're going to try to make it super simple and we're going to
17:04
try to make it cheap and we're going to try to make it good.
17:08
And that's really what ASTS did. They said our design parameters
17:12
are obviously unmodified device, which means a very weak signal
17:16
on the terminal. And so we have to have an
17:18
enormous satellite in space generate an enormous amount of
17:23
power to close that link budget, so on and so forth.
17:27
They had to think differently. And so as a result, I think the
17:30
look back is going to be, you know, almost humorous when
17:35
calling in. Three to five years from now,
17:38
people will look back at the really false malignment of ASD
17:44
Space Mobile in a similar way to how the cell phone was maligned
17:48
30 years ago and how EVs were maligned, how the cloud was
17:55
maligned. I don't know.
17:56
The AI was ever really dismissed, but in video was AMD
18:03
was, I don't know, the AMD really had a first principles
18:06
approaching. They just sort of executed
18:08
really well. But it's lonely when you're
18:11
doing something that no one has done before and creating a
18:15
market that people have a difficult time drying it really
18:19
comparison to because the that market in itself doesn't exist.
18:23
And you have to look at some different outside adjacencies to
18:27
to figure out what might be. And that's my bet is that the
18:31
market size and exercise I did is betting not on ASTS, the
18:36
share of the market that we'll see today, but a compound bet on
18:42
Asts and a related bet obviously on the development of the market
18:47
itself. And So what is perceived now is
18:50
sort of dead spots and things like that.
18:52
You would've been over this a million times.
18:55
I think it's going to expand in ways we don't even know today,
19:00
but we're seeing it already in terms of how things like IoT,
19:05
autonomous vehicles, defense systems, position navigation and
19:09
tracking, which is GPS systems, missile defense, emergency
19:13
response, all of these things are going to utilize this
19:17
technology. And I think the use cases are
19:19
going to explode until we'll get to the market in a second.
19:23
But that compound that I think is where you can make the most
19:25
money because people will ignore something at first because there
19:29
isn't kind of a known big market.
19:32
But when the market explodes itself and you're the leader in
19:35
it, it's very difficult for anyone else to catch you at that
19:38
point. So that's good.
19:41
And then you're going to have a massive re rating of the
19:44
opportunity. So let's talk a little bit about
19:48
that head start. And so as some more weeks pass
19:52
between the SpaceX announcement was Echostar because it was
19:56
actually last week. We're, we're getting just more
20:00
press around what a lot of us figured out last week, which is
20:04
that. It's going to require a lot of
20:06
work for SpaceX to operationalize the newly
20:11
acquired spectrum. So never mind that that deal
20:14
won't close until 2027. But they're going to, they
20:17
haven't done tests yet, so they're going to start doing
20:19
some tests in late 2026. Tests can't even remember the
20:24
year we did BW3. That might have been 2022.
20:27
I mean, long time testing, long time.
20:30
And then they have to integrate it with chip manufacturers, they
20:36
have to integrate it with the handset devices.
20:39
There's a lot of things that have to happen.
20:41
And importantly, then they have to do things like an ASIC.
20:46
They think law sometimes are just the hard critical path
20:49
items that ASTS has been working on for the past five years that
20:55
are integral to a successful technical solution, never mind a
21:00
commercial solution, just a technical solution.
21:03
And so I went back to just study a little bit more of ASIC.
21:10
And so this is just ChatGPT output, which is good enough.
21:14
We're just asking what would it take for ASIC development for
21:18
SpaceX and ChatGPT things, just because SpaceX is special that
21:25
they'll be able to get something in early 2028.
21:28
Seems optimistic that you can have an ASIC really done in two
21:33
and change years. It requires a lot of testing to
21:36
tape it out. People have asked for comments
21:39
on X. There's a lot of engineers and
21:41
people with semiconductor experience seem to think that
21:44
this is a much longer process. And what's interesting, and I
21:51
didn't know this is really just understanding the not the
21:56
spectrum in terms of RF frequency, but spectrum in terms
21:59
of the gradient of difficulty of an RF ASIC versus any other type
22:06
of basic. And so remember I was sitting
22:08
down with an NVIDIA engineer and yeah, he's in NVIDIA and he was
22:14
just made the point that there's not going to be AI Asic's
22:18
because the industry is changing so quickly.
22:21
By the time you actually tape something out for an ASIC,
22:24
everything's changed and you just can't keep up.
22:27
And so the lag time to get an ASIC taped out is just too great
22:32
relative to the rate of change of the overall AI industry that
22:35
his view is the F GB AS were were going to be the way to go
22:39
for AI. It's interesting.
22:41
And he didn't know about RF. That was just outside of his
22:45
bailiwick, outside his ball of wax.
22:48
But once again, AI comes to the rescue.
22:51
And what I learned is that, well, it seems obvious, but ASTS
22:56
5000, which is our ASIC chip is a mixed signal RF ASIC.
23:00
It combines analog RF front ends like amplifiers and filters and
23:05
DAX, which are digital analog converters with digital signal
23:09
processing. So compared to a pure digital
23:12
ASIC like an AI accelerator, think of like a Google TPU, the
23:16
chips have higher design complexity per function despite
23:20
far fewer transistors. Digital ASICS benefit from
23:23
automated tools, while ASICS that are involved in RF require
23:28
manual optimization for noise, frequency response and other
23:34
elements which make it more challenging to make.
23:37
The ASICS must also handle extreme conditions like
23:39
radiation, temperature swings and power constraints that Dr.
23:42
complexity. So I'm of the belief that this
23:45
ASIC is a very big deal. And so again, what is important
23:49
about an ASIC, you again need to take a step back and realize
23:53
what is the constraint that these systems are operating
23:57
under. In my belief is that ASTS is
23:59
really an orbital power company. The constraint is power.
24:04
You need to generate via huge solar panels, a lot of power in
24:11
order to do the bandwidth processing and the beamforming.
24:17
This is why the FGPAS create limitation.
24:20
They're much more power hungry. In a power constrained
24:23
environment, you need the ASIC so that you can get the type of
24:27
bandwidth processing you want given the real estate
24:29
constraints you have with the size of the solar arrays.
24:36
No ASIC, no power, no power, no bandwidth processing.
24:41
No bandwidth processing, no big signals, no multitude of waves
24:51
creating very precise beamforming.
24:53
If you don't have that, you have a weak system.
24:56
Which then brings us back to then a quick review of all the
24:59
other technical barriers. So never mind the commercial
25:01
barriers, which I think reigned supreme.
25:04
It's useful to take a step back and go what?
25:07
What is ACS accomplish with a technical MO that will be
25:12
difficult to replicate. So the beam forming, first of
25:17
all, it's very difficult to focus signals on a small phone
25:21
antenna with Doppler compensation and a low power
25:25
environment. A SpaceX type system is used to
25:29
having a terminal on the ground, different types of link budgets
25:33
that are required then. So ASTS has patented protocols
25:36
that enable high throughput links without phone
25:38
modifications. And while SpaceX obviously has
25:41
beamforming experience, it's optimized for satellites with
25:44
Ternals. And so this just requires new
25:47
algorithms and testing and there's the risk of patent
25:50
infringements against ASTS when they try to do this.
25:54
The next thing is you got to make them Bay.
25:57
And ASTS has solved that with the mechanical unfurling
26:00
mechanism, which they think is quite clever.
26:03
And so they have figured out a way to deploy massive antennas
26:09
and they're reliable in vacuum and temperature extremes.
26:13
SpaceX has only deployed smaller structures and again has to
26:17
overcome quite a lot of patent hurdles set by the front runner.
26:21
ASTS. There's the ASIC, we've already
26:23
talked about that. Then there's the software.
26:26
ASTS has already developed a cellular specific stack, which
26:29
is 3 GPP non terrestrial network compliant.
26:33
It has all the patents and 1st mover advantage.
26:37
SpaceX hasn't handled that yet. And then you have the core
26:40
integration. Now I think this is probably a
26:42
big one, one that I'll have to be humble to other people's
26:45
opinions on. But ASTS, what I know they have
26:48
done is achieve MNL core network integration with key partners.
26:52
We learned from some Tiga's calls that SpaceX has done a
26:56
rack's Nest integration with T-Mobile that was hundreds of
26:59
thousands of hours to integrate. You know what, it almost sounded
27:02
like 2 utility cobalt systems together bridge the bubble gum
27:07
and tape. And they're not seamlessly
27:11
integrated. They just sort of work together
27:14
side by side. ASTS uses bent pipe allowing for
27:18
it to be G agnostic 5G6G, whereas Starlink uses
27:22
regenerative architecture with the E node BI guess E node B for
27:28
what's that what it's called in orbit versus using the
27:32
terrestrial base stations for the network integration.
27:36
And so there's lots of different foundational technologies that
27:39
went into one system versus another.
27:42
And one might imagine that it's difficult for SpaceX to pivot
27:47
and make up all this lost ground.
27:51
So then we also thinking about the Tam, which I think is very
27:53
interesting. We had this big report come out
27:58
from Bank of America and they started to throw some pretty big
28:03
numbers out there in terms of what they think the satellite
28:09
market could be. And we've constantly seen these
28:12
sort of 30 plus billion dollar per year revenue numbers coming
28:16
out from various industry consultants.
28:18
There's a lot of ways you can get there, but they're pretty
28:23
big numbers. And when you start to think
28:25
about why there's natural monopolies in this market, which
28:28
I think there are, Barron's recently wrote an article to the
28:32
same effect. Granted, they got the title of
28:35
the article wrong because they said is SpaceX a natural
28:38
monopoly? And I think they made a typo and
28:40
it should have been, is ASD Space Mobile a natural monopoly?
28:43
And the answer to that I think is yes.
28:46
And so then all of a sudden these market size numbers get to
28:48
be really interesting because you can start to go, wow, this
28:51
company is going to get like 70% plus of that market.
28:55
That's really special. Those are pretty big numbers
28:58
with really high margins. And so you can start to go, are
29:02
they going to do $20 billion of revenue per year with I don't
29:06
know, 75% EBITDA margins. And again, the the interesting
29:13
calculations will be just sort of the net versus look through
29:16
gross revenues. I don't want to get into that
29:17
complexity right now, but these get to be some really big
29:20
numbers and you can start to, you know, bridge some upside
29:25
scenarios of this company being worth 1 to $300 billion of
29:30
market cap. Some people will say I'm being
29:34
conservative, but I think those are still pretty good
29:36
aspirational targets right now. So let's just stick with that
29:39
until the stock is 250. But they get to be really
29:43
exciting numbers. And there's a lot of analogs
29:46
we've seen of, of companies that have sort of built their own
29:48
markets, built their own Tam and are easily clearing in $100
29:53
billion valuations. In my head, I'm thinking of like
29:55
Robin Hood came on really nowhere, Roblox came out of
29:59
nowhere. Some of these things, you know,
30:03
app lovin it's, it's just amazing to me.
30:06
And they're not even that controversial until I don't
30:09
think the world's going to be that offended.
30:11
If ASD Space Mobile is worth $150 billion next year, I don't
30:18
think that's really going to upset the natural balance in the
30:22
world. And it it does look like it's
30:24
all kind of right there. And what's kind of neat is to
30:28
think about how flip flop the market has this.
30:33
And so people worry about SpaceX sort of intruding on ASTS in
30:37
their market. I think it could easily flip the
30:39
other way around and Asta Space Mobile could start intruding on
30:43
Starlug's market. The M and OS have an interest in
30:48
protecting fiber and keeping satellite broadband out.
30:54
Asts can do that. I think there has to be some
30:57
modest changes, but you could again see in the Legato
31:01
documents that this is not hypothetical.
31:03
It's actually specifically envisioned they'll be doing
31:05
fixed broadcast. Why wouldn't the M and Ms. offer
31:11
this with Asts? This makes sense.
31:15
So that's where the script gets flipped.
31:19
And it's not ASTS fighting for some scraps and it's certainly
31:23
is not going to be SpaceX fighting for some scraps.
31:25
They're in a pretty good position.
31:27
But all of a sudden the market opportunity for Asts can start
31:30
to expand beyond what I think people presently think.
31:33
So then we had this next week, SpaceX challenges.
31:41
And so there were some additional things I looked at.
31:47
OK, so we have again these articles that talk about how
31:50
they have to have the chip integrations.
31:52
So it got me thinking, why? Why would Qualcomm help them?
31:59
Why would Apple help them? Why would Google and Samsung
32:04
help them? Are they obliged to?
32:08
How does this work? And so just, you know, quick, I
32:12
hate to even say this is research because it's obviously
32:14
just me, put it in to ChatGPT. But I guess that's where because
32:18
these days do it looks like there is no legal or regulatory
32:22
obligation for mobile phone chip makers or device manufacturers
32:25
to work with SpaceX. And so it's usually voluntary.
32:29
You know, usually there's demand for it and everyone kind of
32:33
benefits here. I don't see how everyone
32:36
benefits. And I just really struggle to
32:37
understand why Samsung really why Qualcomm and these guys
32:47
would do that. Qualcomm and Fairness did do
32:51
this project Stardust, I think it was what it's called from
32:54
memory with Iridium for a hot moment before they cancel it
32:57
because then there was just zero interest by anyone in using it.
33:00
But I think that was kind of their way to get some more lock
33:02
in on their chips here. I'm I'm just wondering, there's
33:09
just a massive explosion inside my house.
33:11
I don't know if you guys could hear that.
33:17
That was a really Big Bang. Anyway, back to our regularly,
33:25
regularly scheduled program. What was this saying?
33:29
Oh, yeah. Why would anyone help these
33:31
guys? I don't know.
33:32
And so I think we got to watch this very carefully and
33:34
understand why Apple, in particular, Apple would go out
33:38
of the way to to support the spectrum.
33:41
When you think about it, if this is a precursor ultimately to an
33:44
X phone, this is where things get things get very murky in
33:48
terms of people's willingness to help.
33:52
Say what you will about Elon, if an X phone comes out you have to
33:55
believe it would shave one or two at least one or 2% market
34:01
share out of the market. Maybe a lot more than that.
34:05
This isn't exactly a growth market.
34:08
Seems like a zero net gain for anyone. 0 sum market and so I
34:17
don't know why they'd be raising their hand to chop off billions
34:20
of dollars of their own revenue. Makes no sense to me.
34:23
Which brings us back to how stupid T-Mobile is.
34:26
And I always say, you know, you have to be a special kind of
34:28
stupid to partner with your competitor.
34:30
But here, here's T-Mobile opening up their customer base
34:37
to Starlink. And as more and more interviews
34:42
come out about their intentions, you just have to ask yourself,
34:47
why did T-Mobile do this? But then more importantly, will
34:50
any other MN OS be so stupid to partner with Starlink?
34:53
And that's where I just really struggle why anyone would do
34:57
that. It's just so obvious that they
34:59
are not carrier neutral. Whereas AST Space Mobile the
35:02
entire time has gone out with a very specific business plan
35:06
about being carrier neutral. And that I think is going to
35:10
make the difference in terms of being a ubiquitous player versus
35:15
someone who's going to more or less, I think, get left at the
35:17
altar. They still have this spectrum.
35:20
And so it's going to be an interesting thing what happens.
35:22
Like Starlink has all this spectrum.
35:24
I don't know how they're going to monetize it just with
35:27
T-Mobile, is that almost going to force their hand to compete
35:32
directly with the M and OS? All of a sudden they have so
35:35
much capital tied up, they can't not do something that's adverse
35:40
to the M and Ms. be an interesting thing to see.
35:44
So let me get back to the Bammel report.
35:46
So I posted out. Everyone can read it, but you
35:49
can just see that the narrative is changing.
35:51
Leo, low Earth orbit. I still think we're very early
35:56
in this trend, something that's maybe been around
35:59
conversationally for a decade, but it's really now on the
36:04
precipice of general understanding of what it means
36:08
for the space economy. And I think that this is the
36:11
space economy. And so while there'll be some
36:13
missions to Mars and things like that, this is the really, I
36:19
think, the only scaled commercial opportunity that is
36:22
there in the space economy. And to be a leader in it,
36:27
especially at this early time, I think there's going to be an
36:29
incredible amount of scarcity value for the winners.
36:32
And I think that there's really only going to be 1 obvious
36:36
public winner, which is AST Space Mobile.
36:39
And there's going to be a lot of FOMO for Starlink and then we'll
36:42
see Kiper not would not want to bet against it, but remains to
36:46
be seen what's going to happen. And then I don't think you
36:48
really have anyone else. And so as people start to really
36:53
get conditioned for the race for space, that capital is going to
36:57
only have one door to get into. Well, now there's like a little
37:00
side door with Echostar because you can buy Echostar and
37:03
effectively Createspace that stock, which is interesting for
37:07
for those who partake. Echostar, you know, gives you a
37:12
shot glass at the bar. But ASTS is the real pureplay
37:18
substantiating this big market we're talking about is, you
37:22
know, little things that keep happening like Golden Dome until
37:26
Golden Dome wasn't on any of our Rd. maps nine months ago.
37:32
I think we kind of joke and people dismissed this, but we
37:34
were talking about how it could be used for this, but it didn't
37:39
really burst to the forefront and tell Trump.
37:41
And now golden Dome is quote, complete blueprint.
37:45
And so I don't think anyone really knows yet who has won
37:50
what. And I I really hope we find out
37:53
soon, but it's obviously making progress.
37:56
And so the Pentagon completes the golden Dome blueprint, but
37:58
silent on cost. That's the headline that came
38:00
out on September 17th until we don't know what's happened yet.
38:04
We hope and believe that ASES is going to be part of one of these
38:11
tracking layers. We hope that what they're going
38:14
to do is basically be selling their satellites under service
38:18
contracts to the Pentagon for pretty healthy margin on the
38:22
hardware, hardware sale and a really juicy recurring service
38:26
component, which I think will do wonders for the stock.
38:29
When on my loose calculations, I I value this at 5 to $7 billion
38:36
per share, which is just got them as a, a baseline.
38:41
And so that would be, you know, 10 to $25.
38:44
I think the reality is if you get a deal like that, people are
38:47
going to look so far into the future about the implications of
38:50
of being, you know, effectively a key component of our national
38:54
security and could very easily blow past that in terms of them
38:58
the implied value of future expected growth.
39:00
Beyond that, let's get the first deal first because I don't know
39:04
if they've won and we didn't know that they're going to have
39:06
a lot of military business. It would be great to get the
39:09
marquee Golden Dome contract. But until they do, we have to
39:13
assume they don't. But then you just see it.
39:16
We're really in the right place at the right time.
39:19
And so you had another article came out this week where quote,
39:24
Europe is preparing its missile defenses and will likely use.
39:29
I think this is his guess is that they'll likely use ASTS,
39:33
but Europe is having Russia problems.
39:37
And so Russia just flew a bunch of drones into Poland and they
39:41
had a hard time dealing with it. And so this technology is now
39:47
going global. We have Saptic.
39:51
So Vodafone as a fully European entity is going to be able to
39:56
offer this technology to European countries.
39:59
And so when we think about the scale of the opportunity for
40:02
defense businesses. We, we really don't know what
40:06
the upper limit could be and I still think it could be many,
40:09
many billions of dollars and then put a 20X multiple on that.
40:13
You start to very quickly start to justify the entire market cap
40:17
of the company today on some of these opportunities.
40:21
And so I hope that they materialize, but it's useful to
40:23
keep seeing the change and how the effectively the prospect
40:28
pipeline keeps stacking higher and higher.
40:31
Something else that's been on our prospect pipeline for a very
40:34
long time has been personal. And so really at this point,
40:37
it's just like, come on, just do something.
40:40
And so their budget closes September 30th.
40:45
They have this big appropriation of their budget.
40:47
They literally have in all of their board backs satellite
40:51
investment on their road map. They specifically name ASTS on
40:56
it. So it's it's it's really kind of
41:00
the edging session of all time. It's like guys, come on like
41:04
we're not even to the point of insinuation.
41:05
You say we've allocated extra money for a satellite and Leo
41:09
technologies and our partners is ASD space Mobile and it's all
41:12
filed on the FCC docket. Let's let's get something to the
41:16
tape guys. So I don't know if that will
41:18
actually be done before their fiscal year, which is evidently
41:22
September 30th or or whenever. But we do know that this is is
41:26
going to happen. The the spectrum lease is on the
41:32
docket. We also have more launch sort of
41:37
coming on the daily. And so Europe is been testing
41:42
its own reusable rocket looks exciting the Themis.
41:46
And so I don't know the timeline on that looks like a prototype.
41:48
So maybe that's a couple of years out, but it's, it is good
41:51
to have more reusable launch capacity coming.
41:55
And then you have Blue Origin really gearing up.
41:59
And so they're working to support multiple new glam
42:02
launches a month next year, multiple launches a month.
42:06
And so is that going to happen right on schedule?
42:09
I mean, most people would say the nature of space is to delay,
42:13
but they're getting there. And this is an enormous amount
42:16
of capacity that comes on. And that's what gets really
42:19
exciting is all of a sudden the the launch market goes from the
42:23
current sort of tight, you have to pre plan and pre book, which
42:27
it's nice that ASTS did do that, spent a fortune securing their
42:32
launch capacity for 2026 and 2027.
42:35
But it's nice to know that this market is likely going to be
42:38
pretty loose in the coming years just because like all commodity
42:43
markets, there's this a price signal and it happened to have a
42:47
very long lead time for suppliers.
42:50
But then it is coming and then it will not go away.
42:56
You're, you're, it's going to take a lot to start taking
42:58
capacity out of the market. And that's, you know, why I
43:01
votes not launch is kind of like shipping markets.
43:05
You can build a boat, but it takes a long time for that boat
43:07
to go back to Bangladesh and meet, meet the breaker.
43:11
And so all of a sudden we're going to have this scaled F9
43:14
program. Maybe Starship Blue Origin is
43:19
definitely real. You have ula with renewed vigor.
43:23
And then maybe Neutron will happen.
43:26
I say that just to throw a little caution to the wind
43:29
because you know, that still hasn't flown.
43:31
They have a very good track record.
43:33
So hopefully it flies and Neutron come to the market.
43:35
If if the Rocket Lab guys are right in terms of the velocity
43:39
of their cadence, that's going to add, you know, yet more
43:43
capacity. And then you have all the the
43:46
other guys like ISRO, you have Ariana and you know, at this
43:52
rate, who used to say Trump won't just make a deal with
43:57
Putin and all of a sudden we have the Russians back.
44:00
Although that I think is a very remote possibility right now.
44:03
But the launch market is going to be very different in two
44:06
years. And that is good for people that
44:08
are short launch. So with that, seems like we
44:10
still kept it kind of a regular time.
44:15
Thanks everyone for joining. I'm really excited about next
44:18
week because again we have what do we have on Monday, we have
44:26
the confirmation hearing or legato and to my knowledge that
44:31
is still scheduled for 2:00 Eastern Time.
44:35
And what that means is that will mean that the plan is done
44:40
remaining for operational purposes is FCC approval.
44:44
I think what we've seen with Brendan Carr is he put it on his
44:47
desk, he will approve it. And so this will be potentially
44:51
a meaningful event. It's hard to know what the
44:53
market cares about with AST Space mobile because again, we
44:56
live in a glass house evidently. But in light of a couple things,
45:01
in my view, everyone assumes ASTS will be delayed always, all
45:05
the time. So even though we have a
45:06
confirmation hearing scheduled in court tomorrow and anyone can
45:11
go see that you just type it in Google.
45:15
Despite that, I think that when that gavel strikes the bench and
45:22
the deal was confirmed, I think that could end up being a big
45:24
deal. Should certainly be a big
45:26
headline. And it will be an interesting
45:28
headline now that people recently have been conditioning
45:31
themselves to SpaceX and what they've been really hyping about
45:35
their 50 megahertz of echostar spectrum, which again is not
45:39
supported by any phones or chips presently.
45:41
Then to all of a sudden news that has been around for nine
45:45
months. You know, we've all known about
45:46
Legato. I wonder if that news takes a
45:49
new character when it's a confirmed in B.
45:53
Now put in the context of Elon just talking up the value of
45:56
spectrum in the past week and a half, two weeks.
46:02
We will find out tomorrow. So have a great week everyone.
46:06
Thanks for joining. I'll, I'll try to do these
46:08
spaces during the fall season right after the football games
46:14
end. And so I'll, I'll, maybe I'll
46:16
just start to set the start date time a little bit later.
46:19
And then I'll generally just start it kind of near the end of
46:22
the game. And if it's a blowout, I'll just
46:23
start it earlier. Thanks again everyone for
46:26
joining and talk to everyone soon.
46:27
Bye. Thanks for listening to the AST
46:31
Space Mover podcast. If you enjoyed this episode and
46:35
you'd like to help support the podcast, please share it with
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others, post about it on social media, or leave a rating and
46:41
review. To catch all.
46:42
The latest news about AST Space Mobile, make sure to subscribe.
46:47
Thanks again and I'll see you next time.
46:53
We're doing something very, very big and I think with this
46:55
technology we can really affect billion lives.
46:58
AST Space Mobile is the only company that has proven
47:02
technology to deliver several mobile connectivity directly
47:06
from faith to the everyday smartphone.
47:09
People will just basically turn their phone be seamless.
47:12
But regardless of where you are, we don't want the user even to
47:15
know that it's connected by satellite.
47:18
Our role is to bring this into reality, always in partnership
47:21
with the MMO Listen. Waffles.