Latest / AST SpaceMobile Podcast / Anpanman - Launch Fever and the Coiled Spring: SpaceMob Takes the Cape

Transcript

Anpanman - Launch Fever and the Coiled Spring: SpaceMob Takes the Cape · AST SpaceMobile Podcast

• 0:06
  This is the AST Space Mobile podcast.
• 0:11
  Just basically from your phone, be simplest regardless of where
• 0:14
  you are. We don't want the user even to
• 0:16
  know that it's connected by satellite.
• 0:21
  Listen, the opportunity that we have is very, very, very large.
• 0:27
  Hey everyone, thanks for joining.
• 0:29
  I figured I'd do one more space before this weekend.
• 0:33
  What a tremendous time to celebrate.
• 0:36
  I know that some people obviously you're not feeling too
• 0:38
  hot with stock price performance, but just take take
• 0:42
  comfort that this is temporary. You know, in my many years of
• 0:48
  working in banking and on the hedge fund side, whenever you
• 0:52
  have a big seller come to market and whether it's a marketed
• 0:57
  offering or an overnight block or they, they sell like they are
• 1:00
  right now, it's going to take some time for it to get digested
• 1:03
  right and cleaned up. And so we'll see probably after
• 1:06
  the close of day a new form for showing how much Rakatan sold.
• 1:10
  But you know, it's a defined period of time where or not
• 1:14
  period of time, but defined number of shares that they're
• 1:17
  going to sell, which is up to half of their holdings, which
• 1:19
  will communally get them to, you know, around 5%.
• 1:23
  As I mentioned before, Mickey, Mickey Tiny stepped off the
• 1:26
  board in January. So he's not in, you know, he's
• 1:30
  not holding any material non public information that putting
• 1:33
  that aside, it is A10B51 plan. So even if he did have
• 1:37
  information, this is just an automatic selling program on
• 1:41
  behalf that Bank of America is executing.
• 1:43
  Although they're doing a pretty shit job.
• 1:44
  But but you know, they're doing a shit job and I'm able to buy
• 1:48
  shares for reasonably reasonable levels.
• 1:52
  And you know, capital markets desk from hedge funds, they
• 1:56
  typically will participate in offerings.
• 1:58
  If they see them like this, they might go short the stock and
• 2:01
  then they'll cover and then they'll go long and trade the
• 2:05
  the technicals, which, you know, once, once these guys get close
• 2:10
  to done to selling, you know, if they've got half of their shares
• 2:13
  to sell, which is call it 1415 million.
• 2:15
  Once they're done, when you start getting towards the end of
• 2:18
  that, which is, you know, maybe the last two or three and people
• 2:22
  can see lighter than tunnel and it's going to get cleaned up.
• 2:24
  Then you're going to see the stock start ramping up.
• 2:27
  And then, yeah, that's what I referred to earlier, which is
• 2:31
  the, the spring is getting coiled.
• 2:33
  But yeah, launch is here. I've I'm going to replay some of
• 2:37
  the favorite videos over the weekend to get people pumped up.
• 2:41
  But yeah, we've got launch scheduled for Sunday morning.
• 2:45
  And so a number of us will be heading, flying down to Cape and
• 2:50
  some of us are staying at Hyatt and others at the Marriott.
• 2:54
  And so I think people are going to be meeting up at the bar.
• 2:57
  Don't don't drink too much, don't stay up too late because
• 2:59
  we're going to have to hop onto a bus early Sunday morning in
• 3:03
  order to make it out to the Cape and see launch, which is
• 3:06
  scheduled for early, early morning.
• 3:08
  Now there is a chance, I think the weather reports say that
• 3:12
  there's a 90% chance of good weather that it's going to, you
• 3:15
  know, it's going to be supportive of a launch.
• 3:18
  But then of course, you know, this is Gorgon.
• 3:20
  Some things may, may not go right or they just don't feel
• 3:24
  comfortable when they might scrub it and then they might try
• 3:26
  it for Monday, which Monday I believe the weather is supposed
• 3:29
  to be like 50% favorable. So the the odds are good for
• 3:34
  Sunday. And but, you know, if they if
• 3:37
  they do push us back, then, you know, it's just kind of normal
• 3:41
  course of business, which would be a bummer because I'm I'm
• 3:45
  going to be there Saturday evening and then going Sunday
• 3:48
  morning and then I'm out of I'm going to I'm flying back to New
• 3:51
  York early afternoon on Sunday. So I'm hoping that this is going
• 3:57
  to happen. But but yeah, I just wanted to,
• 4:00
  you know, fire up a space and just, it's, it's quite comical,
• 4:05
  like just seeing people posting on Twitter.
• 4:08
  And I know it's like just a cross section of folks.
• 4:10
  Most people are, are pretty calm, especially those who've
• 4:13
  held stock for many years or whatever, period.
• 4:16
  But I haven't even looked at Reddit.
• 4:17
  I heard Reddit's like pretty bad.
• 4:19
  And so I think we've achieved the Kook bottom, although Kook
• 4:23
  has been quiet. I think he's trying to tidy up
• 4:26
  everything before he hops on a flight out to Florida.
• 4:30
  But we did get a spotting today, cut capital finally pressed the
• 4:37
  button. Last time he did this was
• 4:38
  February 6th. But he finally tweeted today.
• 4:41
  Nothing changes sentiment like price, which is absolutely true.
• 4:45
  You know, it's, it's funny because like if the stock was at
• 4:48
  1:10 or 1:20, which I'd argue if the Amazon news news hadn't
• 4:52
  hadn't come out, if Mickey decided not to to sell at this
• 4:55
  point in time or not, not decided to sell that that's
• 4:57
  actually in Bank of America's hands.
• 4:59
  They're selling on his behalf for Rakerton.
• 5:03
  Then I think the stock would probably be like at one 10120
• 5:07
  heading into launch. But here we are.
• 5:09
  And am I upset about that? No, this is just part of owning
• 5:15
  shares in this company. Like it's, I know it was some
• 5:19
  people are frustrated that the market has rallied and we've
• 5:21
  been left behind. Well, it's the spring has been
• 5:23
  coiled, right? And so when Rakatan's done
• 5:26
  selling, there's a number of positive callus that are coming
• 5:30
  right around the corner in addition to launch this coming
• 5:32
  Sunday. But you know, today, for
• 5:34
  example, we saw that AST submitted a letter to the FCC,
• 5:40
  which seems like I was keeping at this point that they're
• 5:43
  planning to coordinate with National Science Foundation.
• 5:46
  And I think it's the Radio Telescope Association or
• 5:52
  something, but around interference.
• 5:54
  But these are these are kind of the last, last, you know
• 5:59
  crossing TS and dotting IS before full commercial approval,
• 6:02
  which I think is very soon. And as as Chairman Carr
• 6:06
  mentioned this past week when he discussed the deep directed
• 6:09
  device market being a three player market, it's clear in his
• 6:12
  mind that approval's coming. So yeah, we've got a lot of
• 6:16
  catalysts that are coming up. And so for me, you know, today
• 6:20
  and our last few days, just knowing the Amazon, you know,
• 6:25
  deals is noise and then of course, you know, racket didn't
• 6:29
  selling, which that will be that's transitory.
• 6:32
  That will ultimately get done. I've been buying and you know,
• 6:37
  there are some people making jokes.
• 6:39
  I get someone was like, well, what if you sold 10,000 shares
• 6:43
  and then you're just buying all back?
• 6:45
  I guess I just might be like, this is a fraction like a, the
• 6:50
  daily buys that I'm making right now is, is a tiny, tiny
• 6:53
  percentage of my position. Someone had asked like, are you
• 6:56
  going to disclose your position? I typically don't do that.
• 7:00
  But as I've mentioned, there is a, an article that's being
• 7:04
  worked on by Bloomberg. It's been in the in the process
• 7:08
  for several months actually going back to the fourth
• 7:10
  quarter. And so this particular
• 7:13
  journalist has talked to a number of space mob folks.
• 7:17
  You know, they found the the whole story very interesting.
• 7:20
  And so I have no idea like how the article's going to come out
• 7:24
  or House can Rich Reyes, maybe maybe we'll be indeed the
• 7:27
  clueless cult that Tim Farrar claims for us to be.
• 7:31
  But but I'm looking forward to it because I know there's going
• 7:34
  to be elements of humor in there and lore, which is going to be
• 7:37
  pretty fun. And I think, you know, for
• 7:40
  Bloomberg to run an article like that, good, bad, whatever, any
• 7:45
  attention is good, right? And so I, I was telling some
• 7:48
  people today that I actually met up with a reporter or sorry, a
• 7:52
  photographer and took what I hope are anonymous looking
• 7:55
  pictures, but they're going to be in, they're going to be in
• 7:58
  this article. And then I'm coordinating with
• 8:01
  Bloomberg around, you know, potential meetups for space Mob.
• 8:06
  And so I, you know, I, I told them that if they do end up
• 8:11
  taking pictures of folks, just to make sure whoever's in them
• 8:14
  that they're OK with it, which I think there might be a
• 8:17
  photographer that could show up at the Hyatt Sunday night.
• 8:20
  So if you're interested in getting your photo taken or an
• 8:23
  article on Bloomberg. And I think this, this article
• 8:27
  may end up in the Bloomberg magazine as well, which means
• 8:30
  like it's going to be pretty in depth then, yeah, show up to the
• 8:34
  Hyatt Saturday night. And then to the extent people
• 8:37
  are, are OK with it, I might if, if folks are going to like wall
• 8:40
  file, so I'll direct them towards those areas.
• 8:43
  But but yeah, man, it's, it's a exciting time and I'm looking
• 8:49
  forward to it. There's nothing quite like a
• 8:51
  launch. And, you know, originally I, I
• 8:55
  had like, if it was going to happen earlier this week, I
• 8:59
  wouldn't be able to go. And then during the week is just
• 9:01
  tough because there's a lot going on with the family in
• 9:04
  terms of school and, and chilling kids around and all
• 9:06
  that stuff. But so I kind of like rushed it
• 9:09
  off as like, you know what, I'm not going to be able to go.
• 9:12
  It's I'll, I'll wait for the next batch launch, which by the
• 9:15
  way, I think that next batch in terms of being ready for
• 9:18
  shipment, just a reminder that, you know, we're in the middle of
• 9:22
  April and it's going to be happening soon.
• 9:24
  But yeah, I, I, I was kind of, you know, downplaying it and
• 9:29
  coming up with reasons why it was, it would be OK to miss
• 9:32
  this, right? And then, of course, when I saw
• 9:36
  that hot fire, I started getting like, you know, I started
• 9:40
  feeling, feeling it in, in my plums, like just feeling it
• 9:44
  that, that, you know, that sensation of being part of
• 9:48
  something very special, right? And then, of course, when I saw
• 9:50
  the invite go out, I immediately, you know, I might,
• 9:55
  I was out somewhere. I immediately texted my wife and
• 9:57
  it's like, Hey, you know what, actually, I, I want to go to
• 10:00
  this thing. And she immediately was like, I
• 10:02
  understand. And I, I looked at her schedule
• 10:05
  and, and because it's Sunday morning, it happens to be at a
• 10:09
  reasonable time in day where, you know, we, I have some
• 10:14
  obligations, but I can, you know, I got a friend take our
• 10:17
  son to this one event and, and then my wife is going to take
• 10:20
  our daughter to this other thing.
• 10:22
  And so I'm covered. And so of course, when I, when I
• 10:25
  saw the invite, I was like, how can I miss this?
• 10:27
  I can't miss this. You know, I've, I've gone to
• 10:29
  every single launch except for of course, the Israel launch.
• 10:33
  And by the way, like this Bloomberg photographer who, who
• 10:37
  came today to my house and then also, you know, we were at out
• 10:41
  in the park. She, she is, you know, she's
• 10:45
  Indian and she was born and raised there.
• 10:48
  And, you know, obviously just to get to know each other, we were
• 10:50
  just talking and, and I, I'm, you know, I talked to her about
• 10:54
  the company and she like, you know, she, she was interested
• 10:57
  and took photos. And then when she saw my model
• 11:01
  of the LVM 3, she's like, oh, that's an Israel rocket.
• 11:05
  And then and then she saw the PSLV that I have too.
• 11:08
  And then and then it clicked for her.
• 11:09
  She's like, Oh my gosh, this is AST space mobile, like everybody
• 11:13
  in India. It was like such a high profile
• 11:16
  event. Everybody knows about this
• 11:17
  company and and the launch and that just that that made me that
• 11:23
  made me feel. Yeah, I was like tickled by
• 11:26
  that, right? Because it's one thing to say
• 11:29
  like see news and, and folks talking about how it's, it was a
• 11:35
  Seminole like watershed event for India, like a source of
• 11:38
  national pride that they were putting up a, an important US
• 11:42
  commercial satellite. And, and putting that aside it,
• 11:45
  it's actually AUS commercial satellite that's being used by
• 11:48
  SDA and Department of Defense. Like it's, it's beyond just like
• 11:53
  for commercial use, right? That that's FM one or Bluebird
• 11:56
  6, which by the way, like I, I think some people may have
• 11:59
  forgotten that we did launch Bluebird 6 in December 'cause I,
• 12:03
  I saw as some of these people are crashing out on Twitter,
• 12:06
  they're like, oh, the company hasn't launched anything.
• 12:08
  It's like, wait, you know, like we did launch a satellite at the
• 12:10
  end of last year and it was deployed successfully.
• 12:14
  But but yeah, that was a pretty cool moment where this, this
• 12:19
  lady told me she's like, Oh yeah, we, I, I know LVM 3 and I
• 12:23
  and you know, my family, everybody was paying attention
• 12:26
  to that launch, which I thought was pretty cool.
• 12:28
  But but yeah, that that's, that launch was, was great to watch.
• 12:37
  But, but now we get to see, you know, this new vehicle, which is
• 12:41
  Blue Origin New Glen. You know, I've seen 2 Falcon 9
• 12:43
  launches in person for Blue Walker 3 and the five block 1
• 12:48
  satellites. And, and I think this is going
• 12:51
  to be next level, right? Blue Origin, it's going to be
• 12:54
  amazing to see this launch and I'm not sure like how far out
• 12:59
  the booster landing is going to be.
• 13:00
  And if we're going to we're going to be able to catch it.
• 13:02
  But if you haven't been to one of these events, you go to this,
• 13:06
  this this area that's very close to the water.
• 13:08
  It's as close as you can get to all the launch pads out there
• 13:12
  and they have these bleachers and you just sit out there and
• 13:15
  there's a guy who who MCS these things.
• 13:19
  You know, he, he is out there and he's, you know, he's a, he's
• 13:23
  a, he's a experienced tanned and he talks about the, the mission
• 13:27
  and the launch, the satellite and then he walks you through
• 13:31
  the entire thing. And so there, there are monitors
• 13:33
  there too. And so the last time, the last
• 13:37
  two Falcon 9 launches were pretty cool because after the
• 13:40
  launches happened, then the booster returns.
• 13:44
  And we were able to see, fortunately, both of those
• 13:46
  launches had the boosters return right nearby.
• 13:51
  And so we got to like hear the Sonic boom and then, of course,
• 13:53
  the booster landing and that. But this time, of course, you
• 13:57
  know, it's going to be the boosters or New Glen 3 is going
• 14:01
  to be landing somewhere out in the ocean on Jacqueline.
• 14:06
  And so we'll probably get a video feed of that happening,
• 14:09
  which is going to be amazing, right?
• 14:12
  But yeah, this is going to be an exciting time.
• 14:13
  I'm sure there's going to be a lot of Blue Origin folks there
• 14:18
  as well. So that'll be fun.
• 14:20
  I believe I, I heard there there's, you know, this invite
• 14:23
  went out in a very short period of time.
• 14:25
  I think in the previous launch there were a few I'm guessing
• 14:29
  just looking at trying to remember like there was probably
• 14:32
  well over 1000 attendees, whereas I think this time
• 14:35
  there's several 100. There could be more depending on
• 14:40
  you know, how, how, how much of the invites get filled up.
• 14:42
  But but yeah, I'm looking forward to it.
• 14:45
  I know, as I said before, people were meeting at the Hyatt to
• 14:48
  hang out and I'm coming in late, but I'm going to hang out as
• 14:51
  much as I can and try to get some sleep.
• 14:54
  I don't know if you've, if you've ever experienced like not
• 14:58
  taking a big test, but like if you had some, I don't know,
• 15:01
  crazy performance the next morning or, or something
• 15:04
  exciting happened and you don't really get good sleep.
• 15:06
  Like that's that's usually what happens ahead of these things.
• 15:10
  I remember, I think I took like, I think I took a sleeping pill
• 15:13
  or cough syrup or something last time to make sure I got some,
• 15:16
  some amount of sleep. But but yeah, it's, it's, it's
• 15:19
  going to be pretty special night.
• 15:21
  I think, you know, the company has done a great job in in the
• 15:23
  past and I'm not sure how much they are prepping for this one.
• 15:28
  I don't know if it's going to be as big an event as the Block One
• 15:31
  launch, but my assumption is that it's going to be pretty
• 15:34
  good. They've raised $4 billion.
• 15:36
  I'm not saying that they should spend money on events, but
• 15:41
  hopefully it'll be like fun and they'll be some memorabilia
• 15:44
  there that they're handing out. But but yeah, I'm, I'm totally
• 15:47
  looking forward to it. And I guess the other thing I
• 15:51
  wanted to talk about is, is some of the, and this is not the dark
• 15:55
  side, but it's just kind of, I guess, funny.
• 15:56
  It's like there's all these, these, these panickens who are
• 16:02
  crashing out on Twitter and, and Reddit.
• 16:04
  And so yeah, it's it, it is interesting the, the human
• 16:09
  psychology of, you know, the stock is obviously it's down.
• 16:13
  Let's see what is it 6% today, which for the old hands and ASC
• 16:18
  space mobile, you know, for the people who went through like
• 16:21
  10/15/20 percent downswing days, of course, you know, sometimes
• 16:24
  up 5060% too. This is like peanuts, right?
• 16:29
  And so and, and it's not as if like there's some boogie man
• 16:32
  that we don't know, like, Oh my gosh, someone knows something
• 16:35
  and they're selling. It's like, oh, it's Rakuten.
• 16:38
  So over there, you know, Mickey Mikutani stepped off the board.
• 16:41
  He's got to turn around the company.
• 16:43
  They're going to be plowing way more CapEx into the mobile
• 16:46
  business. Bloomberg highlighted this back
• 16:48
  in March and of course company has talked about this in 2025,
• 16:52
  but they need to, they're going to need to monetize, you know,
• 16:56
  up to half of their HD space mobile state stake.
• 16:58
  They're going to, I think reorganize their fintech
• 17:01
  business. I haven't dug much into that,
• 17:04
  but I think they probably have to spin that thing off.
• 17:07
  But but yeah, like they're, they need, they need money, simple as
• 17:12
  that. And so the great thing is like,
• 17:16
  you know, how much they're going to sell potentially and, and
• 17:20
  generally speaking, given how much volume we trade every day,
• 17:22
  like they should be, they should get cleaned up pretty pretty
• 17:25
  soon. And so for me, it's like, wow,
• 17:29
  that's a great set up. So there's I know where the
• 17:31
  pressure of the stock is coming from.
• 17:33
  It's been primarily Rakuten, of course, like this Amazon news,
• 17:36
  which, you know, I've gone through in detail, you know,
• 17:39
  that's not going to impact the stock for four or five years
• 17:43
  maybe. I don't know, unless Amazon goes
• 17:45
  out and like does more deals, which it could.
• 17:47
  But in all these situations, by the way, for people who are
• 17:51
  like, Oh my gosh, like I think Iridium and bias out, like these
• 17:54
  deals are going to happen. One thing you don't want to do
• 17:57
  as in the choir entering into a market, you don't want to
• 18:02
  announce multiple deals and go through the regulatory view at
• 18:04
  the same time. You actually want to do a deal,
• 18:07
  get it done, make sure it's done and it's not messy or dirty, and
• 18:11
  then you move on to the next deal.
• 18:13
  And so for this global star deal, you know, you're probably
• 18:17
  looking at a closing of that deal sometime in, you know, Q2
• 18:22
  of next year. And then maybe Amazon will have
• 18:24
  the the ability to go out and, and announce another deal.
• 18:28
  But what you don't do is when you're in antitrust review and
• 18:33
  FCC regulatory review, you don't you don't complicate things by
• 18:37
  announcing another deal and and just making things either you
• 18:42
  know, it's going to take longer, but also, you know, you also
• 18:46
  risk potential of having one of those deals fail because of
• 18:51
  maybe there's some anti competitive issues.
• 18:54
  But but yeah, so, so we got that.
• 18:57
  And then of course Rakatin is selling and and there's but
• 19:02
  there's some pressure. So it is interesting, I guess
• 19:05
  you know, from a psychological standpoint where you've got
• 19:08
  people who, you know, when stock is in the 90s and, and they're
• 19:12
  really bullish and you know, the company is the best thing since
• 19:14
  sliced bread. And then the stock because of
• 19:17
  this, this insider who, well, they're not an insider anymore
• 19:21
  'cause they, they left the board, but they, they have to
• 19:23
  sell stock and clean up their balance sheet.
• 19:26
  And it's caused pressure on the stock.
• 19:28
  All of a sudden your good feelings about the company like
• 19:33
  a week or two weeks ago gets evaporated, right?
• 19:36
  And and now you're like calling for the the heads of management
• 19:39
  and they could have done all these things better.
• 19:41
  And it's like, dude, just like take a step back and take stock
• 19:46
  of what what you're doing and what you're writing on Twitter,
• 19:49
  whatever it is, right, Like nothing has changed.
• 19:52
  Like the launch is happening Amazon news like it is what it
• 19:56
  is it you know, for any all host of reasons like.
• 20:00
  It's validated the market and you know it's it's introduced
• 20:03
  like potential another player, but you know it's also expanding
• 20:06
  the Tam like all that stuff, right and then, you know,
• 20:10
  Rakatin selling stock, but has it has anything fundamentally
• 20:13
  changed by the company? No, as a stock been under
• 20:16
  pressure and is it frustrating that the market has gone up and
• 20:20
  the stock has languished? Sure, but when I was in event
• 20:25
  driven portfolio manager, this is the type of event you would
• 20:28
  be like, OK, you know what, perhaps like somebody shorted on
• 20:31
  the front end of it, but then this is also a great trade.
• 20:35
  Once the selling, what's the selling gets done right, 'cause
• 20:38
  once it's cleaned up, then stock should rally.
• 20:41
  And so, yeah, it's, I think, I think people and, and by the
• 20:47
  way, like there's on Twitter, there's also people who are like
• 20:51
  reaching out to like Kevin Mack and others.
• 20:53
  And it's like, oh, what do you think of this?
• 20:55
  And I can tell you like Kevin Mack's going to say, oh, rackets
• 20:58
  isn't selling. It's there's technical pressure
• 21:00
  on the stock. But once they're done, the stock
• 21:03
  should recover, right? Like nothing's changed error.
• 21:07
  I'd be, I guess I'd be curious to hear what he thinks about
• 21:10
  Amazon, but I don't know if, if he's, if he's in the weeds as
• 21:14
  much as the rest of us on the competitive side, but but I'm
• 21:18
  sure he'll have something to say as he always does.
• 21:20
  But but yeah, I think it, it is funny.
• 21:23
  Like there's all these people who've come out of the woodwork
• 21:25
  and like the some of the, there's a very small subset of
• 21:29
  Rocket Lab investors and, and by the way, there's a small subset
• 21:33
  of AST holders too, who are toxic.
• 21:35
  And for whatever reason, they try to compare the two
• 21:38
  companies. And so that that small subset of
• 21:40
  toxic people have come out and be like a look Rocket Lab stock
• 21:43
  price is higher or it's getting close and they're trying to make
• 21:46
  that comparison, which it's pretty stupid.
• 21:50
  But there is one thing that is interesting relates to that,
• 21:54
  which is the companies do trade on top of one another.
• 21:57
  And so as you know, these anointed leaders of, of new
• 22:02
  space, they do trade similarly. And so when one is down, the
• 22:06
  other one kind of trades down. When 1 is up, the other trades
• 22:08
  up and there is a pair. There's some correlation between
• 22:11
  the two. Like when Rocket Lab gets pretty
• 22:12
  close to AST, then usually if you were to actually trade this
• 22:16
  pair, you would sell Rocket Lab and you go along AST because
• 22:18
  then that gap would widen again. And then when it gets too wide,
• 22:21
  you would sell AST and you would go long Rocket Lab and then the
• 22:24
  gap would narrow. How long that relationship will
• 22:29
  hold, who knows. It's not a, it's not a, you
• 22:31
  know, a pair that I trade, but you know, some people have
• 22:36
  pointed that out and I've pointed it out as well.
• 22:38
  But it is kind of funny, like, you know, some of these, these,
• 22:43
  these folks who have come out and said, Oh, I, I knew it.
• 22:47
  AST like their management, they're not transparent.
• 22:52
  They're doing this, they're doing that.
• 22:53
  I trust Rocket Lab more. And then I think someone had
• 22:57
  pointed out to this, this one person who was posting that, you
• 23:00
  know, this person said, AST misses deadlines.
• 23:02
  And then the person asked, well, what happened to Neutron?
• 23:05
  And then, and then they like came up with all these reasons
• 23:07
  why their delays are better, which the whole argument is just
• 23:11
  kind of stupid. I actually had put together like
• 23:14
  a, a funny meme for some of these people who for a period of
• 23:18
  time, they got distracted by Firefly.
• 23:22
  Like there's a whole group and, and there's some people I
• 23:24
  respect, like Michael Skend, He, he's long Firefly.
• 23:27
  There's a few others. And, and by the way, like that's
• 23:29
  been a great trade. They called the bottom on that.
• 23:32
  And Firefly has has quickly rebounded.
• 23:34
  And it's, you know, it, it's part of this like SpaceX IPO
• 23:38
  trade where all these names have rallied, right, Even the
• 23:42
  questionable ones. And I'm not saying Firefly's
• 23:44
  questionable. They've got what appears to be
• 23:46
  like a great lunar program in terms of their their rocket
• 23:50
  history. You know, they still got work to
• 23:52
  do, but, you know, maybe they'll eventually get there.
• 23:56
  But yeah, there when, when Firefly started rallying, then
• 24:00
  you had like some of the, the small group of Rocket Lab
• 24:03
  holders come out and just start shitting all over it, right.
• 24:06
  And I, I did put together this little meme of, of the two girls
• 24:10
  in the middle of that were fighting.
• 24:12
  And it's like the toxic Rocket Lab guys and then the Firefly
• 24:16
  guys, which, you know, I, I guess some of those Firefly guys
• 24:20
  like baited them to a degree. And then like the guy, of
• 24:23
  course, in the corner is the boy who's like smoking for a bong.
• 24:26
  And that's like space mob where they're enjoying the fact that
• 24:30
  the toxic Rocket Lab guys have like focused their efforts
• 24:33
  elsewhere on on a company that actually is is comparable in
• 24:37
  terms of what they're doing versus, you know, coming after
• 24:40
  as T, which has nothing to do with what the business that
• 24:44
  Rocket Labs in. But anyway, but yeah, it's just
• 24:47
  kind of funny to see market market psychology play out where
• 24:52
  people, you know, I think some, some folks shouldn't be on
• 24:58
  Twitter, perhaps because like, I think, you know, overall, by the
• 25:01
  way, like, and Cook and I have talked about this too.
• 25:04
  I, I think Twitter, if you're, if you're looking at it daily,
• 25:08
  it is, it is the, the height of brain rot and you have to
• 25:12
  recognize it for what it is. And it's very addictive, right?
• 25:15
  Like there's, outside of the stuff that you're, you want,
• 25:18
  which is like financial news, investing, maybe it's related to
• 25:22
  AST or a few other companies that you're following outside of
• 25:25
  it. There's a whole bunch of just
• 25:26
  absolute garbage and it's accessible, right.
• 25:29
  And, and I, I told someone this the other day, like I, I'm, I'm
• 25:34
  pretty much like AII guess I would say it was more of a
• 25:37
  liberal before and then I'm kind of bad, but I'm very much like
• 25:40
  in the center. You know, being in New York,
• 25:43
  it's hard not to be somewhat more liberal.
• 25:46
  And I've always lived in like cities that are more liberal
• 25:49
  than, than conservative. But after being on Twitter for
• 25:54
  how many over years? It's like, Oh my gosh, I'm
• 25:56
  becoming a racist and more conservative and xenophobic and
• 26:00
  all this stuff. And, and I have to catch myself,
• 26:04
  right? And, and it's funny, 'cause like
• 26:05
  I, I'll have conversations in New York with people and I'll
• 26:08
  just be there and be like, wow, this person's really liberal or
• 26:11
  really progressive versus perhaps like a few years ago, I
• 26:15
  might have agreed with someone what they're saying.
• 26:19
  But, but Twitter is pretty powerful.
• 26:20
  It, it's like mind control, right?
• 26:22
  And so I think it's important. And this goes for the reason why
• 26:27
  I'm bringing this up is that it, it's, it's extreme, right?
• 26:31
  Like when you had all these doom maxers 2-3 weeks ago, 4 weeks
• 26:35
  ago, Oh, we're going to war. And it's, it's like World War
• 26:38
  three. And you know, there's no way
• 26:40
  that that Iran and the US will come to some peace, you know,
• 26:44
  peace, peaceful resolution. And there's going to be a market
• 26:48
  crash. Like I heard there was a market
• 26:49
  crash that was going to be this Monday.
• 26:51
  There's a market crash the next last Monday and the Monday
• 26:54
  before and the Monday before. And if you're not like, if you
• 26:58
  don't have mental strength or can recognize the, the baiting
• 27:01
  and the, the rage posting for what it is, then I guess you can
• 27:06
  kind of fall into the trap of this stuff, right?
• 27:08
  And, and that's where like some of the I, I joke about these
• 27:11
  pannikins, but these people who are either truly panicking or
• 27:16
  they're, they're, they're writing stuff for engagement.
• 27:19
  Like there's this guy Sasso, you know, saying like, Oh my gosh,
• 27:24
  Rocket does panic selling. No, dumbass, they've been
• 27:29
  outlining their, their need to, to monetize and monetize, you
• 27:36
  know, their ASD space mobile stake and, and fix your balance
• 27:40
  sheet. You know, they've been talking
• 27:41
  about riding the ship in 2025 and and of course, Mickey left
• 27:46
  the board in January. And then of course, now they're
• 27:48
  selling. It's not padding selling like
• 27:51
  it's, it's the it's been planned, right.
• 27:55
  And so I think, yeah, you just got to be careful, like
• 27:58
  following some of these people and not letting it get to you.
• 28:02
  And that's, you know, it's, it's, it's, it goes beyond just
• 28:06
  like the investing stuff. It's like the political stuff,
• 28:10
  violence. I mean, there's all kinds of
• 28:11
  just garbage. And on the one hand, like X is
• 28:14
  pretty useful. Like it can you can get news
• 28:18
  pretty fast and you can get some, you know, some opinions
• 28:22
  that perhaps aren't in mainstream media or analysis,
• 28:25
  which is good. But then I think we all learned
• 28:28
  during this Iran conflict, like a lot of it is propaganda, just
• 28:32
  people making up shit or AI slop.
• 28:35
  And so you got to be careful, right?
• 28:37
  But anyway, I'm, I'm, I'll, I'll stop, I'll step off the soapbox.
• 28:43
  And yeah, I'm looking forward to this weekend.
• 28:46
  I know a number of you are like packing and, and are going to be
• 28:49
  heading out either today or tomorrow, but yeah, it's going
• 28:53
  to be special. And I think one of the fun
• 28:58
  things about being an investor in this company is that you get
• 29:02
  to, you have these events where you get to meet people and, and
• 29:06
  the company, what it's, you know, when I was talking to this
• 29:09
  Bloomberg photographer, the company's doing something truly
• 29:13
  game changing and, and amazing, right?
• 29:16
  And you get to be part of that journey, which for me, it's been
• 29:19
  since 2020, the fourth quarter of 2020.
• 29:25
  So, so it's been a long time. And I've, yeah, I've got a lot
• 29:29
  of memories and built a lot of great relationships, friendships
• 29:33
  over the years. And and so, you know, when my
• 29:36
  wife, when I told her, she was like fully supportive.
• 29:39
  She's like, I understand you got to go down there.
• 29:41
  It's important. And when I do these spaces and
• 29:44
  and she's got to deal with other stuff, she understands.
• 29:48
  So anyway, yeah, that's, that's kind of I think what I had
• 29:53
  actually. I'm going to look at the
• 29:54
  comments here. Let's see if there's good
• 29:57
  comments. Oh, by the way, like when you're
• 30:00
  down there, be sure to I'm going to bring a Doctor Pepper to the
• 30:03
  lunch for in memory of our friend Steve Lewison.
• 30:06
  For those who don't know, he was like one of their OG space mob
• 30:09
  members and he's actually buried down there overlooking,
• 30:14
  overlooking Cape Canaveral. So he'll be watching with us.
• 30:17
  And his favorite drink was a Doctor Pepper.
• 30:20
  I actually loved Doctor Pepper growing up.
• 30:23
  And so that that immediately when I learned about that about
• 30:26
  Steve, immediately put him in good light with me.
• 30:31
  Let's see, someone's asking, does wind effect launches?
• 30:35
  Monday looks windy. Sunday looks perfect.
• 30:38
  Yeah, Sunday does look perfect. That's why I think in regards to
• 30:42
  to the weather, they're saying that Monday or sorry, Sunday is
• 30:46
  the best time to launch. Monday is is like 5050.
• 30:50
  Sunday's like 90%. So yeah, wind does matter.
• 30:56
  As long as it's not a hurricane or something crazy.
• 31:00
  It it it would be good if there's no wind.
• 31:02
  Let's see. I know you want staying on, but
• 31:04
  would be cool for AST to live stream from the event.
• 31:07
  I think he's talking you're let's see, Ashley, I think
• 31:09
  you're talking about me. I guess I could do that.
• 31:13
  But then AST is going to be having a live stream with a lot
• 31:17
  more cool information and you know, just like the Israel
• 31:21
  launch or block one or blue Walker three launch.
• 31:25
  I think they're going to be sharing some cool videos
• 31:28
  probably. My guess is, and this is just me
• 31:31
  speculating, they're probably going to show some videos of
• 31:34
  perhaps like the composite satellites being produced or
• 31:39
  some of that stuff. So I don't know if if a
• 31:42
  streaming would be good, but I mean, I maybe I'll do a space
• 31:45
  here or there. But yeah, let's see someone
• 31:50
  saying hi. And then based on SpaceX darling
• 31:54
  timeline, it looks like we are still six months away from full
• 31:57
  SES approval. No, I disagree with that.
• 32:00
  I think we already finished the comment period in October.
• 32:04
  And so we are we, you know, the approvals imminent in looking at
• 32:10
  the back and forth between the docket between the company,
• 32:14
  AT&T, Verizon, Firstnet and the FCCI think we're in the final
• 32:18
  strokes. Let's see, could it question,
• 32:26
  could it be that Rakaton told AST management about the
• 32:29
  upcoming sale to postpone any positive callous news?
• 32:32
  Thank you for what you do for Space Mob.
• 32:36
  I don't think so. Rakaton doesn't sit on the board
• 32:38
  anymore. They might have given AST a
• 32:40
  heads up and said, hey, we're we need to do this.
• 32:43
  And so we're just going to let you know, I don't think the
• 32:46
  company is going to hold back good news based off of what
• 32:51
  Rakuten is doing trading wise, but they're going to be
• 32:55
  cognizant of it, right. And so if they know that the
• 32:58
  selling's happening right now, maybe post launch there'll be
• 33:02
  some news, we'll see. But we do know of course that
• 33:06
  they first batch shipment is going to happen in the next week
• 33:09
  or two. And then there's a number of
• 33:12
  other things that are in the works.
• 33:15
  So I don't think this this depression of the stock price is
• 33:19
  going to last long, which is why I'm buying.
• 33:21
  If if I didn't think that I wouldn't be buying.
• 33:25
  Let's see. All right, so that those are, I
• 33:30
  guess some of the comments that I, that I see now.
• 33:32
  So I'm going to have this space here and yeah, looking forward
• 33:36
  to seeing everyone. And yeah, if you have a friend
• 33:41
  that's panicking because the stock price is down on the
• 33:43
  market is up, just for, just ask them to tell you why they're
• 33:48
  invested. And when they tell you the
• 33:49
  reasons why they're invested, they'll feel better about
• 33:52
  themselves. But anyway, I'll in there and
• 33:56
  yeah, I'll see everyone in the Cape and yeah, looking forward
• 34:00
  to having a beer. Take everybody.
• 34:04
  Thanks for listening to the AST Space Mover podcast.
• 34:07
  If you enjoyed this episode and you'd like to help support the
• 34:10
  podcast, please share it with others, post about it on social
• 34:14
  media, or leave a rating and review.
• 34:16
  To catch all the. Latest news about AST Space
• 34:19
  Mobile, make sure to subscribe. Thanks again and I'll see you
• 34:22
  next time. We're doing something very, very
• 34:28
  big and I think with this technology we can really affect
• 34:31
  billion lives. AST Space Mobile is the only
• 34:34
  company that has proven technology to deliver several
• 34:38
  mobile connectivity directly from space to do every day as
• 34:42
  much. People will just basically turn
• 34:45
  their phone be seamless, regardless of where you are.
• 34:48
  We don't want the user even to know that it's connected by
• 34:50
  satellite. Our role is to bring this into
• 34:54
  reality, always in partnership with the MMO Listen.
• 35:10
  Waffles.