Latest / AST SpaceMobile Podcast / Kook's Weely - Marsch 29 - The Non-Linear Path to a Trillion: AST SpaceMobile and the SpaceMob Strategy

Transcript

Kook's Weely - Marsch 29 - The Non-Linear Path to a Trillion: AST SpaceMobile and the SpaceMob Strategy · AST SpaceMobile Podcast

• 0:06
  This is the AST Space Mobile podcast.
• 0:10
  Where we just basically turn your phone 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.
• 0:27
  Good evening. Perfect timing because I
• 0:28
  literally just hit my clod limit.
• 0:31
  So they're finally cutting me off as I've been messing around
• 0:35
  with my new separate Mac setup, trying to use open claw and all
• 0:41
  this other stuff and pretty underwhelmed.
• 0:45
  I feel like I was sold false bill of goods from Twitter, if
• 0:49
  you could believe it, of all things in terms of what open
• 0:51
  claw can do. So I'm still kind of messing
• 0:53
  around to figure out what I use that for versus dispatch, but Co
• 0:58
  work is pretty amazing as well as Claude code.
• 1:01
  And so trying to figure out ways to deploy all this technology
• 1:04
  for, if you could guess, wait for it analyzing ASTS.
• 1:09
  And so I guess it's a good time to produce my spaces though,
• 1:13
  because Anthropic cut me off. So these jerks are charging me
• 1:16
  for the Max plan. I feel like I am spending as
• 1:19
  much as I can with them and they still cut me off right as I'm
• 1:23
  nearing the end of my program. But all is well, everything
• 1:27
  happens for a reason. So last week was really pretty
• 1:31
  brutal. Wednesday we got the
• 1:33
  announcement. I think it's got like a fake
• 1:35
  announcement that SpaceX was going to file their S1 last
• 1:39
  week, which they did not, unless I missed it.
• 1:42
  And then the stocks just took off.
• 1:45
  And so I was pretty worried about it because when you see
• 1:49
  the whole space sector up 15 to 20%, you know that you're not
• 1:52
  special. It's just a big basket trade.
• 1:55
  And with that comes a ton of hot money.
• 1:57
  And then it's as as if people don't read the news.
• 2:00
  Then people got really bearish on Thursday and Friday because
• 2:03
  of the Iran war, as if we didn't know that was happening.
• 2:08
  And people that kind of fell over, fell over themselves.
• 2:11
  And it's happening kind of at quarter end to you, which is
• 2:14
  already bit of a disaster. So he's the, you know, biblical
• 2:20
  mummy. I just watched the mummy last
• 2:23
  night. You know, the awakening of, of
• 2:24
  that scary guy when, you know, people start breaking out these
• 2:29
  CTA numbers, which of course are supposed to reverse in April.
• 2:32
  And stock then starts to trip all the technical levels which
• 2:36
  freak people out. And then the short term guys go,
• 2:39
  Oh my God, it's about to touch a magical line.
• 2:42
  And then the negative momentum just carries the day.
• 2:46
  So of course, it's usually darkest before dawn.
• 2:52
  I personally added exposure in the way that I've done
• 2:56
  previously. So I have my core position,
• 2:58
  which I really just don't touch. And then I do this strategy that
• 3:01
  I call torques. Anpan Man has plagiarized me and
• 3:04
  he'll often say he's adding torques.
• 3:06
  Sometimes I don't know if he knows what a torque is.
• 3:08
  So I feel like this is another example of intellectual property
• 3:11
  theft at the hands of Anpan man. And so I will have my day in
• 3:15
  court at some point. But when I say that I'm buying a
• 3:18
  torque, what I am doing is I'm selling a put spread.
• 3:22
  So I have cap downside. I'm basically agreeing to buy
• 3:26
  stock from the high strike price down to the low strike price.
• 3:29
  I'm doing that for a net credit, which means I generate some
• 3:32
  proceeds and doing that it's different from just selling a
• 3:35
  put and that I have cap downside to if it's something really bad
• 3:38
  happens, I own all my other common stock.
• 3:42
  So I'm eating it, but it really just allows me to cap
• 3:45
  effectively margin exposure. And so the stock kind of gapped
• 3:50
  down massively. All of a sudden, I'm not going
• 3:52
  to put a huge amount of shares that I can't pay for.
• 3:56
  And so then what I do is I use the proceeds from that put
• 3:59
  spread to buy an out of the money call.
• 4:01
  I call this a torque. It's really torquing up My
• 4:03
  Portfolio. And then that's what I do.
• 4:08
  And so every once in a while, from time to time these really
• 4:11
  hit. And so when this stock wants to
• 4:14
  go up, it really moves. And so the hard part is just
• 4:18
  generally getting on the right cycle with this thing.
• 4:20
  To me, ASTS is like bull riding. And so you're kind of on this
• 4:26
  thing while it's in the gate. I'm sure there's a lot of
• 4:29
  technical terms. I really don't know anything
• 4:30
  about bull riding, but I did watch Yellowstone.
• 4:32
  And so you're kind of on the wild animal as it's in the gate
• 4:35
  and then someone opens the gate. You don't really know when that
• 4:38
  gate is going to open, but when it opens, holy crap, hang on for
• 4:42
  your life. And so that's when you want to
• 4:44
  have a torque because you're just going to have wild Vol.
• 4:48
  You can generally predict when that wild Vol will be to the
• 4:51
  upside. And so when the stock is totally
• 4:53
  bombed out, check Twitter. I mean, I'm here fighting some
• 4:56
  guy named Lucky Stewie on Sunday.
• 4:58
  Everyone's angered at each other.
• 5:00
  TA guys are Hari Kari in themselves.
• 5:05
  The cats he turned into a dog and pan man went gluten free.
• 5:08
  I mean, literally the bottom is has fallen out here.
• 5:13
  This is usually reflected on the charts.
• 5:16
  And so you can kind of see all this sentiment lining up.
• 5:19
  This is where I've really tried to get better at lining up with
• 5:22
  my torques. Not to say it's perfect.
• 5:24
  Sometimes I can just get totally drilled on them.
• 5:26
  But when you get it right, it can add some real meaningful
• 5:30
  exposure. And for me, it satisfies the
• 5:32
  itch of feeling like I need to do something.
• 5:35
  And so as much as I preach being patient, I'm the first to admit
• 5:38
  it's really hard just to be sitting there as a long long
• 5:43
  term holder. I mean, I feel like I'm sitting
• 5:44
  here with like a loaded weapon and you just want to like fire
• 5:49
  off some shots. It's super hard to keep it
• 5:51
  holstered. And that's usually where most
• 5:54
  investors get, you know, go wrong.
• 5:56
  Usually what that manifests itself as people selling when
• 6:00
  they're scared or at the bottom or getting way too long on
• 6:03
  margin or using short term calls.
• 6:05
  So the way I kind of release this urge, because I also have a
• 6:09
  very hard time sitting still, is by using this torque structure.
• 6:13
  And if you haven't traded options before, don't do this.
• 6:17
  And so I started my career on a volatility desk.
• 6:20
  I've been trading equity link derivatives my entire life.
• 6:24
  I feel like I'm pretty well equipped to do it.
• 6:27
  If you don't have a background that makes you feel very
• 6:29
  comfortable and really understand how options work,
• 6:33
  then just consider this first 7 minutes of me talking as a
• 6:37
  generally interesting educational overview, but
• 6:39
  something that you should not do until you've become very
• 6:42
  proficient with these instruments as well.
• 6:46
  This is a long way of saying that I'm actually pretty, pretty
• 6:48
  excited for what's about to happen.
• 6:50
  I personally think the market's going to flip.
• 6:52
  I've been wrong on this, but I think the market's going to flip
• 6:55
  in April like it's a new, it's a new quarter.
• 6:59
  I would wonder if the market actually bottoms with a land
• 7:03
  invasion, which I personally think is happening because I, I
• 7:06
  can see the Marine movements kind of where I live.
• 7:09
  And I don't think you'd deploy all those guys for fun.
• 7:13
  And so I have enough friends in the military.
• 7:15
  I'm kind of picking up pieces here and there just in terms of
• 7:18
  guys that are unavailable to go hang out with me.
• 7:20
  And so I just don't feel like all that stuff is happening for
• 7:23
  fun. And so we're probably going to
• 7:26
  get a land invasion. My suspicion is the market
• 7:28
  probably bottoms on that because that's the thing people are sort
• 7:31
  of hyperventilating over. And when it finally happens,
• 7:34
  they're going to be like, OK, we're done, peace dividend, but
• 7:38
  the fundamentals ultimately are what drive stocks.
• 7:40
  And so I spent this weekend doing the weekly obviously, but
• 7:44
  also just trying to also invent this energy by learning some new
• 7:46
  things. So I've I've been studying
• 7:48
  Merlin. I have a lot of questions about
• 7:50
  that, but I do feel like there's a big founder there, certainly
• 7:55
  with authentic background. I need to really review sort of
• 7:58
  what that milestone progression is going to because it's as best
• 8:02
  as I can tell, this thing could easily just go straight to $5 as
• 8:05
  it could to 50 if you're thinking about what the path
• 8:09
  dependency is. But it's always useful when the
• 8:12
  market totally sucks to start to just learn new things and, and
• 8:16
  study and studying Asts I think is generally a really profitable
• 8:20
  thing to do. And so the things I took note of
• 8:22
  this week were Vodafone Ireland. And so we have the Prime
• 8:27
  Minister of Ireland, Michael Martin.
• 8:30
  I didn't actually Fact Check this.
• 8:31
  I'm assuming this is who this was.
• 8:33
  Brian, let me just check this. So I don't ever do Prime
• 8:37
  Minister of Ireland. Yeah.
• 8:38
  So it's Miguel Michelle, who knows as as an Irish person I
• 8:45
  should probably know this, but he's sitting there with a really
• 8:48
  cool Bluebird and I'm kind of wondering where he got this bad
• 8:51
  ass model because I'd buy it too.
• 8:53
  So got some issues with Scott as usual, but we have some really
• 8:56
  cool content coming out of Vodafone around their testing
• 9:01
  with Ireland around Saint Patty's Day, which is really
• 9:05
  exciting. And so they complete a first
• 9:07
  ever mobile video call. They take a video of the video
• 9:11
  call, picture of a photograph, if you will, and that's great.
• 9:16
  And so the bears will usually say, oh, there's no proof that
• 9:19
  this works. And then you're like, well,
• 9:20
  actually there's videos I'm doing of a video call.
• 9:23
  It's a video of the CEO of Vodafone Ireland.
• 9:28
  And then they have a picture of the Prime Minister of Ireland.
• 9:30
  Seems like they're not fabricating this.
• 9:33
  And then the bears will be like, well, yeah, but the satellite
• 9:36
  overheated. Well, I mean, they what are they
• 9:38
  going to do, have a six to 10 minute long video of the guy
• 9:42
  just being like, hey, can you hear me?
• 9:45
  Hey, still still here? Oh, are you there?
• 9:48
  Cool. OK.
• 9:49
  That would be a lame video. It would actually be pretty
• 9:51
  funny if they did that just to put to rest some of the FUD.
• 9:56
  And so if they're listening, you know, maybe the next thing you
• 9:58
  do is just literally have a 10 minute video and have fun with
• 10:03
  it. But there's more proof.
• 10:06
  And what's also really cool here and just shows the space mob is
• 10:08
  totally undefeated, is there was a brief camera angle where they
• 10:13
  showed the signals to noise ratio.
• 10:15
  As best I could tell, it was showing the gain from the beam
• 10:20
  in the relevant frequencies and then the gain or, or the really
• 10:23
  the lack of in the adjacent channels.
• 10:26
  This is technical stuff. And so sometimes you kind of
• 10:29
  wonder, are they throwing this little snippet in because they
• 10:32
  know the space mob will catch it.
• 10:33
  And my God, the space mob was impressive.
• 10:36
  And so I kind of watched the video thinking like, oh, cool
• 10:38
  video. And then of course, someone, you
• 10:40
  know, runs an analysis to clean out the noise and do full, full
• 10:46
  scientific reconciliation of this.
• 10:47
  And then Katzie quickly picks it up as well.
• 10:49
  I mean, this is just like weapons grade research that
• 10:51
  we've got in the space mob and it shows what is in the DD dock.
• 10:54
  It shows this this really sort of tabletop plateau where in the
• 11:00
  frequencies where you want to be transmitting with a lot of gain,
• 11:03
  boom gain right when you get to the side, you don't have this
• 11:07
  sort of Mount Kilimanaro like big sweeping shoulders, which
• 11:11
  then cause a lot of interference in the adjacent channels.
• 11:15
  It just drops off. And that's really important.
• 11:18
  And so the next thing I have here is exactly this issue of
• 11:23
  beam forming. And so at Tom Ster 000 did a
• 11:27
  couple passes with AI to clean things up and it's showing the
• 11:32
  signal to noise ratio. And then Katzie, of course, you
• 11:36
  know, someone called him on the bat phone and and also just sort
• 11:40
  of confirmed and elevated this post.
• 11:44
  It actually might have been from at Bonsai O3 is the person that
• 11:49
  found this, who knows, but a couple of people picked up on
• 11:52
  this and all their contributions are are really valuable and
• 11:54
  thank you for that. But it's it's just showing the
• 12:00
  this is showing the decibel watts per square meter.
• 12:08
  I'm just looking at this now closely but so hard, but it's
• 12:12
  showing the power flux density, I believe and it looks exactly
• 12:16
  what it should look like. So the beam forming is
• 12:20
  ultimately the service we're delivering.
• 12:23
  So all of this tech goes into this advanced beam forming
• 12:26
  technology we have. That's the product and we're
• 12:29
  seeing that product demonstrated in the field and that's good
• 12:33
  news. What we also had this week
• 12:38
  should be quickly confirmed just a couple minutes ago, is just
• 12:41
  the pace Blue Origin is prepping to operate at.
• 12:45
  I know there's an incredible amount of frustration at the
• 12:49
  slippage in the launch schedule. This is a little bit of a
• 12:53
  maturity test in my view, because obviously it's really
• 12:56
  easy to get short and temperamental with people.
• 12:59
  But when you look at the scale of these things that mean the
• 13:02
  whole idea that New Glenn, even if it were just like a fixed
• 13:06
  skyscraper, that would be pretty impressive.
• 13:09
  The fact that the skyscraper blast into orbit and then lands
• 13:12
  itself is simply difficult for my small little brain to
• 13:16
  comprehend. And So what we have picked up on
• 13:19
  are some reasons why the New Glenn three launch is happening.
• 13:22
  When it's happening, I won't go into details, but this is the
• 13:27
  third launch. So they've launched 2.
• 13:29
  They're still learning that goes in to this rocket.
• 13:33
  And with learning it's absorbed and the next ones are faster.
• 13:37
  And so then we also found out today Blue Origin said that they
• 13:40
  announced that no earlier than date of April 10th, I believe.
• 13:46
  And so now they really have line of sight on when they're going
• 13:49
  to launch this bad boy, the typical price reaction.
• 13:55
  So the future is not the past is not indicative of future
• 13:58
  performance as everyone knows. But it's super fun to try to
• 14:01
  apply these analogs because maybe it will happen.
• 14:03
  So that's also kind of how I'm thinking is now we have a date
• 14:09
  market as a date. We're going to see this thing
• 14:12
  static fired or hot fired, I forget which stage they're in,
• 14:15
  but they're going to do some additional tests.
• 14:17
  There's going to be a lot of media around this.
• 14:19
  It is super exciting. We're going to have Artemis and
• 14:22
  two or three days. So another sort of incredible
• 14:25
  feat of engineering and Italy. Not the low cost solution going
• 14:29
  up. All eyes will be on space.
• 14:31
  We have a Falcon Heavy going up and then reasonably certain we
• 14:36
  should get the Space XS1. There's a lot of space
• 14:39
  excitement about that's about to happen.
• 14:42
  And historically ASTS really finds its footing into launch
• 14:47
  and maybe it'll be different this time.
• 14:50
  So you'd want to own the stock for other reasons, not just like
• 14:54
  a run up into launch because you could be disappointed by that.
• 14:57
  So if you're interested in the stock, you should really try to
• 14:59
  understand why people like me have owned it for five years and
• 15:02
  have a desire to own it for, you know, the future.
• 15:08
  And I was hesitating because I'm like, I kind of hope it's it
• 15:11
  goes up a lot before five years, because five years is a long
• 15:14
  time. That would be, you know, a
• 15:15
  decade and a stock. I mean, what's my life
• 15:17
  expectancy? But history says that these
• 15:21
  stocks trade really well into launch and these stocks meaning
• 15:24
  basically all the space stocks. What I'm really hopeful for is
• 15:29
  quote UN quote, this time it's different, which I realize are
• 15:31
  just absolutely tragic words to ever say, much less say publicly
• 15:35
  on a recorded spaces. But what I think is going to be
• 15:38
  different this time is it will have New Glen Three.
• 15:41
  I hope it's successful, but then we really should be on the cusp
• 15:45
  of a Batch 1 shipment in the end of April.
• 15:50
  And I would hope that the company is going to start to
• 15:52
  give us some media that shows some progress toward that.
• 15:55
  But then that's really opening the floodgates of the exciting
• 16:00
  Constellation deployment that I know all of us are looking
• 16:02
  forward to. And it's also going to dovetail
• 16:05
  again with the lead up into the SpaceX IPO.
• 16:08
  And so that's why I think Q2 could really be gangbusters and
• 16:12
  why I've added torques to my exposure.
• 16:16
  And I'm going to really lay off any temptation of doing covered
• 16:20
  calls because, again, I think we're on this bowl that's still
• 16:23
  behind the gate, and they're about to let the bowl out.
• 16:27
  And covered calls can wreck your brain when the stock starts
• 16:32
  going and starts having successive green candles.
• 16:35
  Like holy crap, I mean, I've been there.
• 16:38
  I've had my face absolutely ripped off selling covered
• 16:40
  calls. In my experience, this is
• 16:44
  probably not one of the best times to deploy that strategy.
• 16:46
  Sit on your hands if you can and let the bull out of the cage.
• 16:53
  We also had the company issue a bunch of executive awards
• 16:57
  dilution. So this is my point about
• 17:01
  compensation. This company pays its executives
• 17:06
  in stock, not in cash. If you work at AFC Space Mobile,
• 17:10
  it is a compensation vehicle for you and one that's been very
• 17:14
  lucrative to be an executive at. And so Scott for example, got
• 17:19
  100,000 shares. That's cool.
• 17:23
  That's real adult money. And so I would have to see I
• 17:28
  actually don't remember if if these are annual awards.
• 17:30
  I would suspect not. They also are subject to
• 17:35
  vesting. But I'd have to problem is it's
• 17:39
  testing my eyesight. These are so tiny, these
• 17:41
  filings. But but he says they've reached
• 17:44
  milestones. And so Scott, his milestones can
• 17:47
  in fact, sometimes not be totally the things we want.
• 17:51
  You know, hey, congratulations on the ATM and blasting our
• 17:54
  balls off with a convertible bond.
• 17:55
  Here's your share and set of awards.
• 17:58
  That is a true statement for Scott some of the time.
• 18:02
  The exact same thing can also be true for Andrew Johnson.
• 18:05
  Like thanks for castrating me financially because you issued a
• 18:09
  billion dollar convert right when the stock was about to go
• 18:11
  to 150. That is a milestone that Andrew
• 18:14
  would be compensated for. So again, let's not read too
• 18:17
  much into his milestones, but Shanti, dear Shanti, his
• 18:22
  performance milestones start to get very interesting.
• 18:25
  So this is the COO. He's compensated on stuff
• 18:29
  getting built, so that's good. His milestones could easily have
• 18:36
  been FM one, FM two could have been the critical design review
• 18:40
  of the Bluebirds, could be anything.
• 18:42
  It could be advancement of the batch one and the same thing.
• 18:48
  Same thing for a Bell. So a Bell got a big boy award
• 18:50
  184,000 shares. His milestones are certainly not
• 18:54
  going to be limited to doing an ATM, for example.
• 18:59
  That's going to be much more toward technical progress,
• 19:03
  commercial progress and regulatory progress.
• 19:06
  So they hit their milestones outlined by the board.
• 19:08
  That is good. And it does seem like things
• 19:15
  could really be shaping up. And again, I know that there's
• 19:17
  just rock bottom sentiment. It's really easy to get mad at
• 19:20
  people is what I've kind of realized in life.
• 19:23
  I don't know all the people on the Internet as people might
• 19:27
  imagine. I do know some of the people on
• 19:28
  the Internet. And so that's why some people,
• 19:30
  for example, when anyone attacks Katzie, I turn into John Wick
• 19:34
  and I'm willing to basically burn down the entire world in
• 19:36
  the defense of my dear friend because I do know about this
• 19:40
  individual and he is really talented person.
• 19:44
  And so anyone that sort of flings invective at Katzie is
• 19:47
  going to get, you know, a knock on their door from El Kuk.
• 19:52
  But some other people, I don't know who they are.
• 19:54
  And so for all I know, they're 23 years old or they're 18 as
• 19:58
  easily as they could be 65 in retirement.
• 20:00
  And so it's hard for me to always reconcile the
• 20:03
  exasperation people have. But as someone who I can draw my
• 20:07
  own experiences, I don't have any private companies that have
• 20:11
  done what they said they were going to do.
• 20:13
  It's just kind of almost remarkable when you're on the
• 20:15
  inside and on a bunch of boards and see how the world really
• 20:20
  works with companies just. Dealing with being companies,
• 20:24
  it's very humbling to see what executives have to do and how
• 20:28
  hard it is to make progress. I'm involved with some companies
• 20:32
  that are doing things of a loosely similar vein as ASC
• 20:37
  Space Mobile in terms of the regulatory and technical
• 20:39
  challenges kind of actually making big things.
• 20:42
  It is viciously difficult and to get something done within a
• 20:46
  couple years of your estimate is somewhat of an incredible
• 20:51
  accomplishment. So when you have that viewpoint,
• 20:55
  it's not like you're covering for management, but you
• 20:58
  understand the fact, and I made this point the other day in a
• 21:01
  tweet, the very fact that Asda stock is above 0 is an
• 21:05
  incredible accomplishment. It means that the company
• 21:07
  exists, it was financed, and it is made it this far.
• 21:11
  And so anything above 0 when you're doing something other
• 21:15
  people thought to be impossible is pretty incredible.
• 21:18
  Now, I would say that that also could be setting the bar a
• 21:22
  little bit low, but the stock is 80 bucks.
• 21:25
  They're doing great. But I do appreciate the
• 21:30
  exasperation people have because I think there's this expectation
• 21:33
  if you put something out publicly, you're supposed to do
• 21:35
  it. And I also kind of agree.
• 21:38
  I don't really understand why the company persistently gets
• 21:41
  its own guidance wrong. I don't know why you wouldn't
• 21:43
  just build in some more flexibility.
• 21:46
  I think there's always some delicate issues of you have to
• 21:48
  guide in line with your regulatory filings and your
• 21:51
  regulatory filings are trying to put realistic pressure to get
• 21:54
  stuff done. You're also trying to signal to
• 21:57
  your team, which is the Elon way, which I do appreciate The
• 22:00
  second you start to introduce complacency into your company
• 22:04
  anywhere it can become pervasive.
• 22:06
  And so certainly studied Ken Griffin and his, you know, his
• 22:11
  rule of Citadel and he lives in terror of any complacency
• 22:15
  entering that organization. And and he's right, you can't
• 22:20
  get complacent, doesn't mean you hit all of your promises.
• 22:24
  And so that's the tension this company has to navigate and
• 22:28
  certainly hasn't built a track record of hitting guidance,
• 22:31
  quite the opposite. But at some point that will
• 22:35
  change and it will. They did actually hit the
• 22:37
  revenue guidance actually in fairness to them.
• 22:39
  And so the One Financial KPI that they've really given, they
• 22:43
  did hit and so that that's a big deal.
• 22:46
  But the technical stuff I would just emphasize to people, you of
• 22:50
  course, they'd rather get stuff done faster.
• 22:52
  Of course you don't think a bell would want these all to be up.
• 22:56
  So like he sits around, he's like, I know I'm going to give
• 22:59
  guidance and then I'm going to miss it by 2 1/2 months so I can
• 23:02
  vaporize everyone's monthly calls.
• 23:05
  That will be super funny. That is not what he's doing.
• 23:08
  They're missing it because they're doing this for the first
• 23:11
  time on these next generation satellites with composite and
• 23:14
  they got to get it right. And you just don't know until
• 23:16
  you throw stuff into the T vac of what's going to happen.
• 23:20
  If something needs to be fixed, you fix it.
• 23:22
  And you know, their guidance is evidently not baking in the
• 23:25
  contingencies sufficiently are the things they have to get
• 23:28
  fixed. But I know as an owner of the
• 23:30
  company, I want that stuff to be fixed.
• 23:32
  I don't want to launch a deficient satellite and have
• 23:34
  something break up in orbit if it could have otherwise been
• 23:37
  prevented. Now, we might have satellites
• 23:39
  break up in orbit at some point, but I feel very good that the
• 23:43
  company's doing everything possible to mitigate that and be
• 23:46
  responsible with their technical risk taking, which I certainly
• 23:50
  appreciate. So I know a lot of us think let
• 23:52
  you know, Yeah, sure, we're exasperated, but you just have
• 23:54
  to put yourself in the shoes of management.
• 23:57
  And it's not like the guy on 78,000,000 shares is not like
• 24:01
  he's missing guidance for the fun of it.
• 24:04
  It's because this is hard stuff and if it were easy, someone
• 24:07
  else would have done it and SpaceX would have done it.
• 24:10
  So now let's talk about SpaceX. So SpaceX is like a pet tiger.
• 24:15
  So if anyone has watched Tiger King, you would know that while
• 24:20
  tigers look like really amazing animals, albeit when you get
• 24:24
  close to 1, you start to realize they probably smell because they
• 24:27
  are a big animal, but they are a beautiful animal.
• 24:30
  But having a pet tiger is dangerous because at the end of
• 24:34
  the day, it is a cat. And unlike catsy cats can
• 24:38
  generally not be trusted because they are smarter than you and
• 24:42
  they don't really respect you because they know that they are
• 24:46
  sophisticated in every possible way.
• 24:48
  And so that means from time to time they will just kill you.
• 24:51
  And that's why you don't have a tiger as a pet.
• 24:54
  You should also not have SpaceX as a partner.
• 24:57
  Why SpaceX is a Tiger? They think they are smarter than
• 25:01
  you. They think they are dominant in
• 25:03
  every possible respect than you. And if they're your partner,
• 25:07
  it's only because for this exact moment in time they need you.
• 25:12
  But the second they don't, they will slash your jugular with
• 25:15
  their claw and eat you. And so is it perhaps a little
• 25:21
  bit awkward for T-Mobile to see that its partner is bidding
• 25:24
  against them in the AWS 3 spectrum.
• 25:27
  And so NPM man was retweeting this that Maidano found.
• 25:32
  And this just goes to the point that you don't partner with a
• 25:37
  company that is unpartnerable. Spacex's first principle is not
• 25:42
  to be a carrier neutral global infrastructure provider.
• 25:45
  Their first principle is to be vertically integrated, own the
• 25:49
  customer, and have 0 dependencies whatsoever.
• 25:53
  Great. The difference with SpaceX is
• 25:56
  they can generally actually do that.
• 25:59
  He, he being Elon, has proven over and over the ability to
• 26:02
  completely disintermediate all prior existing value chains and
• 26:07
  own the full stack. Impressive, but something you
• 26:12
  should take note of if you're an MNO and he does generate big
• 26:17
  ideas. So if you own SpaceX stock, good
• 26:20
  for you. Will he do a SpaceX phone?
• 26:23
  I don't know, but I bet he will. Will the SpaceX phone be
• 26:28
  competitive with as an M&O service Competitive the AT&T and
• 26:33
  Verizon? I don't know.
• 26:34
  But I do know that it's going to make the AT and TS of the world
• 26:38
  poop in their pants. And my guess is that it's not a
• 26:43
  good idea for Elon to do because M and OS are incredibly capital
• 26:47
  intensive businesses with very little net market growth.
• 26:51
  It just seems like a killing field.
• 26:54
  And so my personal bet is Elon's going to see that maybe he
• 26:57
  doesn't want to enter this capital intensive low return
• 27:00
  killing field and instead do something that is more
• 27:03
  Greenfield like orbital AI and things like that, that have just
• 27:09
  crazy open white space in new markets where he has a real big
• 27:13
  competitive advantage. That makes more sense to me.
• 27:17
  The corollary to that is that maybe he takes an off ramp in
• 27:21
  terms of D to C. But you know, here he is bidding
• 27:23
  for more spectrum. So who knows what he's going to
• 27:25
  do. But if you're in M&L, you really
• 27:27
  don't want to partner with this guy and give him any advantages.
• 27:30
  You want to start making his life as hard as you can.
• 27:34
  Meanwhile, ASTS is also going after more spectrum, which is
• 27:37
  very exciting. And so at one more Smith here,
• 27:42
  another great account points out that the, and this was actually
• 27:47
  new to me, there's Grain Management LLC has this
• 27:53
  nationwide block of 800 megahertz spectrum.
• 27:55
  So I need to do more research on the background of grain
• 27:58
  management. But some other people have been
• 28:00
  hoping, I guess that this 6 by 6 band of spectrum would find its
• 28:05
  way into ASTS. And so they're petitioning the
• 28:12
  FCC to really going to free this up and they mentioned DDD
• 28:17
  services. So I don't really think this
• 28:22
  should drive the stock price one way or another.
• 28:26
  But it is just another snippet that there's more spectrum
• 28:29
  shaking loose. And it's very possible that this
• 28:33
  spectrum is going to find its way to Asts, which in my belief,
• 28:36
  which I started as a joke, just kind of spitballing on a spaces,
• 28:40
  but I really actually kind of mean it is that ASTS is going to
• 28:44
  be a global spectrum holding company and then it will
• 28:49
  potentially end up being one of the world's most valuable
• 28:51
  companies. And so Rocket Tank 123, another
• 28:55
  very technical, very good account.
• 28:57
  Also notice that ASTS submitted a filing requesting S band
• 29:01
  allocations in Brazil. Just another drop of facts that
• 29:07
  show this strategy taking hold. The company vertically
• 29:10
  integrating into the upstream asset which is going to position
• 29:14
  it to have a totally different value proposition to its M&O
• 29:17
  partners. A lot more defensibility than
• 29:19
  being just the the tech leader with bent pipe.
• 29:23
  When you actually bring the radio frequency rights with it
• 29:30
  start to become a a really big deal.
• 29:33
  The legato transaction is also trudging ahead.
• 29:37
  So again, that's another big piece of spectrum that you want
• 29:42
  and it's always good to remember the difference in spectrum.
• 29:44
  And so ASTS is able to operate with low band spectrum.
• 29:48
  Reason being would always amaze you how simple the physics are.
• 29:52
  Low band spectrum are big waves. Those antennae, those elements
• 29:57
  need to be spaced further apart because those other waves
• 30:01
  otherwise collide with each other.
• 30:03
  And so almost think of like a silly string or something where
• 30:06
  you know, you have some sine wave shooting out.
• 30:08
  If that's a big sine wave, you need silly string dispensers
• 30:11
  being further apart so that the silly string doesn't hit it hit
• 30:14
  itself and sort of cross the beam And and the world
• 30:16
  Ghostbusters style. And SpaceX, because they can't
• 30:20
  make this big array because they haven't figured out the
• 30:21
  unfurling can only operate in the high band stuff because
• 30:25
  those are like little bitty lasers and you know, they don't
• 30:29
  wiggle a lot more like straight lines.
• 30:31
  And so those elements can be closer together.
• 30:33
  The reason why you need low band is because it allows you to get
• 30:37
  premium coverage and work inside.
• 30:41
  And so here we have this cool post from Kevin Chen about a
• 30:46
  Firstnet user. And he was just talking about
• 30:52
  how Firstnet saved his life because of the low band.
• 30:57
  Was it low band coverage that his cell phone had allowed him
• 31:00
  to make a call when they were under fire, so getting shot at
• 31:05
  and they moved into an elevator for cover, but in the elevator
• 31:08
  they didn't. Their radios wouldn't work.
• 31:10
  And so they use their personal phones, which are operating on
• 31:14
  low band, and we're able to make a call to get help.
• 31:17
  And so in the most challenging environments is when you need to
• 31:20
  have really the most flexible spectrum, the communications
• 31:27
  must happen. And that's where ASTS is is
• 31:30
  going to thrive. And we'll have something a
• 31:32
  little bit more later about that in terms of 911 services.
• 31:36
  But then this week we also got ADA with a Singaporean entity
• 31:42
  the, I forget what DST stands for, but it's the Defense
• 31:47
  Science and Technology Agency of Singapore.
• 31:50
  And so this is their first net. So this shows that we've have a
• 31:55
  commercial blueprint for these types of deals and we're
• 31:59
  starting to sign them. And so this MOUI believe had
• 32:01
  been announced last year, but now it finally printed and they
• 32:07
  really should have these around the world and I believe we will.
• 32:11
  It just goes to show you that sometimes the initial D as take
• 32:14
  a while because you have to figure out the commercial
• 32:18
  blueprint that can work for everyone.
• 32:20
  But once you have it for a specific market, then other
• 32:24
  markets are going to be similar and there's precedent so that
• 32:28
  MNO or agency on the other side doesn't have to worry about sort
• 32:31
  of reinventing the wheel. There's a real template that
• 32:34
  someone else had signed off on, just allows things to go faster.
• 32:37
  And that's why the DA momentum should really pick up in the
• 32:41
  back half of this year, especially as we're launching
• 32:43
  satellites. I think DA's will start to
• 32:45
  become a mundane event that really people take for granted,
• 32:50
  and hopefully it's just happening when we otherwise have
• 32:53
  a lot of momentum in the stock and just these constant DAS will
• 32:56
  just be like boosters for it. So then NPMN was out also with
• 33:02
  the New Zealand Network Operators Group with a
• 33:05
  presentation that points to the deficiencies of SpaceX.
• 33:09
  Here's a quote to remember. If you dial dial 111, which is
• 33:13
  their 911 and you're on Starlink, we believe the call
• 33:16
  will fail. Your mobile device will then try
• 33:18
  other carriers and eventually hit the AST space mobile network
• 33:21
  and produce the emergency call. Well, I don't know why you'd use
• 33:28
  Starlink then. And so this up time is really
• 33:36
  what's going to matter. And I was also learning.
• 33:37
  So as I was learning this weekend more about Merlin again,
• 33:39
  I, I'm really early in this and I just want to be clear.
• 33:42
  As far as I'm concerned, it could easily go to $5 in the
• 33:46
  next couple weeks as it could to pump the 20 or something.
• 33:48
  So just TBD. I think it's super interesting
• 33:50
  thesis, but one I need to learn about.
• 33:52
  But I was just learning more about aviation redundancy, which
• 33:57
  clearly there's a lot of it. And a big issue they have is as
• 34:01
  their AI brain is trying to natural language process all the
• 34:07
  air traffic control transmissions.
• 34:09
  And so as an air traffic controller is talking to them on
• 34:11
  VHF frequencies and you know, all sorts of accents and speech
• 34:17
  patterns and things like that. The problem Merlin has is it
• 34:20
  can't rely on an Internet connection.
• 34:22
  And so they have to solve a problem where it still has to be
• 34:25
  able to do all of its compute without access to the Internet
• 34:29
  and have it all on board. And it just goes to the problem
• 34:31
  of as we have more AI in the world, the connectivity is going
• 34:36
  to need to happen where connectivity is the least
• 34:38
  assured and where the reliability must be as close to
• 34:42
  100% as possible or you're going to have to undertake incredibly
• 34:45
  complex engineering tasks to solve for that.
• 34:50
  And I was learning about Swarmer as well, just stuff I listen to.
• 34:55
  I'm at the gym, same issue of, you know, how do you have all
• 34:58
  these drones work in GPS tonight environments and without access
• 35:02
  to connectivity. And this is just where these use
• 35:06
  cases, whether 911 calls AI everywhere things, whether the
• 35:13
  military or not operating in challenging environments, that's
• 35:16
  where these market figures in my view could, could really
• 35:19
  explode. I don't think I'm just being
• 35:21
  hopelessly optimistic. I think it's really just showing
• 35:23
  each day we're getting closer to that vision.
• 35:25
  And I'm really excited to see what the commercial impact of
• 35:30
  that is going to be. And that to me means that
• 35:33
  partners don't really have a choice.
• 35:36
  And so we get to the emerging decisions that are happening
• 35:40
  with Iris Squared, which is the sovereign European
• 35:45
  constellation. And we have util sat explain at
• 35:50
  Mobile World Congress that it did not have the financial means
• 35:53
  to create a constellation with the capacity to do D to D until
• 35:58
  as expected. The Europeans are realizing that
• 36:01
  this is really difficult. Their local industry players are
• 36:04
  these kind of tired TV satellite companies and are being asked to
• 36:10
  do something that the some of the most, you know, best
• 36:17
  capitalized US tech companies in the world have a 10 year head
• 36:22
  head start on. And so their fall back clan is
• 36:28
  going to have to be to partner I think with ASTS or Starlink.
• 36:32
  And we've already been beaten to death the fact that Starlink is
• 36:36
  not a ideal partner. And so we're seeing more things
• 36:40
  kind of drop out in these European filings.
• 36:46
  And we know if you've done the diligence, you know that as TS
• 36:48
  has been very forward with data sovereignty and things that
• 36:52
  Europeans should and do care about.
• 36:55
  So there is increasingly high hopes that we're going to get
• 36:59
  some big announcements around things like IRIS 2.
• 37:03
  And by all accounts, the Vodafone JV, now known as
• 37:07
  Satellite Connect Europe is firing on all cylinders.
• 37:11
  And I know we have Peter Lindmark really tracking that
• 37:14
  really as carefully as anyone. He's European, has a good pulse
• 37:19
  of like where to look first of all, and then is very generous
• 37:22
  and sharing it. And everything I've been reading
• 37:24
  from him and then putting together with all the other
• 37:26
  great contributors is really helping me form a really great
• 37:30
  mosaic of what ought to happen. And sadly, what ought to happen
• 37:36
  isn't always what will happen, but what does happen usually is
• 37:42
  what ought to happen. So that is my pedantic speech
• 37:47
  using fancy specific words for the night.
• 37:52
  Now let's get back to basics. SCS.
• 37:57
  And so the FCC docket for Supplemental Coverage from
• 38:01
  Space, which is the Market Access Award which is forever in
• 38:06
  the making, are now having some of these finer points with some
• 38:12
  late stage meetings. We just had the ITU filings for
• 38:16
  the 543 satellites. I might have forgotten the exact
• 38:20
  number, but they're starting to be some activity on the back
• 38:24
  end, which is starting to smell like we're about to get the FCC
• 38:30
  drops. And that should be, well, as a
• 38:34
  guy, he's kind of predicted this for a year.
• 38:36
  I want to be careful, but that really should be in the next
• 38:38
  couple weeks in my in my best guess.
• 38:40
  But again, I am an anonymous account on the Internet that is
• 38:45
  accused of being a paid boiler room pumper from Bangladesh.
• 38:48
  So my estimate of this happening in the next couple weeks, once
• 38:51
  you caveat that perhaps I am wrong, but perhaps I'm right.
• 38:59
  We just don't know and that's why the stock has 100 percent
• 39:03
  implied volatility. But it is good.
• 39:06
  Now that we look at these ITU filings, which is conveniently
• 39:10
  the next tweet I had is this 543 satellite filing for the ITU
• 39:17
  looks like a big land grab to slot in a couple more shells.
• 39:21
  There's all sorts of inclinations being included,
• 39:25
  including our Equatorial satellites.
• 39:28
  And this is some pretty exciting stuff.
• 39:31
  And so Tanner Kirk Ottaway, who evidently doesn't have a Netflix
• 39:36
  subscription, I mean, this guy just seems to spend literally
• 39:39
  all of his time looking for ASTS stuff.
• 39:42
  So this is really one of these incredible case studies of price
• 39:46
  elasticity. And so Netflix increase the
• 39:48
  prices, Tanner can't afford it. Tanner does more work on ASTS so
• 39:52
  that he can make some money in the stock.
• 39:54
  And you know, thank you for ripping our faces off Netflix
• 40:00
  with a price increase because that's what causes Tanner to
• 40:03
  search itu.in T filings. Oh God, I wonder if like 12 year
• 40:11
  old Tanner is like had a vision vision of himself.
• 40:13
  It's like I know when I'm older, I'm going to be sitting around
• 40:16
  and reading ITU filings and understanding which orbital
• 40:19
  shell satellite will be in. And you know what, we love you
• 40:23
  for it. And so this is exciting stuff
• 40:25
  and Cat sees of the belief. That this is the type of stuff
• 40:30
  that is coordinated with the FCC before a formal filing to the
• 40:34
  FCC, and I have no reason to believe that's wrong.
• 40:39
  It just shows you the scale this company is preparing to operate
• 40:42
  at. It's much bigger than what they
• 40:46
  originally said. And this all just revolves
• 40:51
  around ultimate data capacity and coverage and use cases.
• 40:55
  And if you take the foundational belief, so if you kind of, you
• 40:59
  know, wonder how Kook's brain works, it goes down to unit
• 41:02
  economics. Before I get excited about
• 41:04
  anything, a single thing must just be good.
• 41:08
  And so the unit, the widget that this company produces is a
• 41:11
  satellite on my math, which you could drive a truck truck
• 41:14
  through. The variance of whether it's
• 41:16
  right or wrong leads me to believe each satellite is
• 41:20
  enormously profitable thing. And so I measure this on a
• 41:23
  bottoms up way of how much data it produces or put a price on
• 41:26
  that data relative to its CapEx, yadda, yadda, yadda.
• 41:30
  And I have the satellites being enormously profitable.
• 41:33
  If you could be a partner in one satellite, you would put all of
• 41:36
  your money in that because you'd be getting like a one year
• 41:39
  payback or something like that. And so again, I I could be
• 41:42
  massively wrong because we don't really know these numbers, but
• 41:45
  the foundational building block of the way my brain works is
• 41:48
  that the unit economics are good.
• 41:51
  So if that's true, you want open-ended runway to have as
• 41:55
  many units as you can. And so for someone like me,
• 41:58
  seeing a path from 93 units or whatever the original thing was
• 42:03
  to then the full Constellation ask of 248 gets exciting.
• 42:10
  But then to see 543 is really exciting because that's really
• 42:14
  just saying we had many, many, many, many years of
• 42:17
  Constellation build out. So basically incremental awesome
• 42:22
  unit economics building. This is good.
• 42:24
  This is how stocks compound. And it also ties to all the
• 42:28
  qualitative things Scott has said over the years, ties to
• 42:31
  what we've learned about Golden Dome and the military programs.
• 42:34
  It ties to the mid band as a mosaic.
• 42:37
  It all fits together and that's what's really exciting.
• 42:40
  Do I know specifically what's going to happen?
• 42:42
  No, I don't, but I've I've been able for my own thinking to
• 42:46
  create a mosaic of this general BLOB of good things that I have
• 42:53
  developed my own conviction in. So that's how I approach it.
• 42:58
  There's many different ways in which people think and invest
• 43:00
  and I don't purport to be right or the only person, but that's
• 43:04
  how I think about it. What's good to support this idea
• 43:08
  of unit economics is to understand why our units are
• 43:11
  going to be desirable to MN OS. So what was also neat is there
• 43:14
  is this video by two degrees. So again, the New Zealanders and
• 43:20
  it's this nice video and MPM is generous enough to create a
• 43:23
  summary of this video and just talks about the first principle.
• 43:28
  So it ASTS works with three GPP standards and you can use
• 43:32
  ordinary phones. That's good, the architecture
• 43:35
  And so the M&O owns the network, which is very important.
• 43:39
  It has control over the ground stations and the E node BS and
• 43:44
  flexibility over control and it works.
• 43:48
  So listen to that video. It's important to keep your own
• 43:51
  understanding. But then you also are having
• 43:54
  some of the M and OS in the regulators slap back and bad
• 43:57
  architecture, and so this is sort of doubling one's
• 44:02
  conviction. So you have some M and OS
• 44:04
  talking affirmatively as to why ASTS is good, but then you have
• 44:07
  other regulators showing us exactly why SpaceX is not good.
• 44:13
  And so Namibia is out there to just make some noise.
• 44:19
  And so the chairperson of the Board of the Communications
• 44:22
  Regulatory Authority announced the reasons why they rejected
• 44:26
  Starlink's application for Spectrum and operating licenses.
• 44:29
  And he said the applicant met only three of the six criteria,
• 44:33
  noting that failure to meet even 1 requirement is sufficient
• 44:36
  grounds for rejection. And they said that the lack of
• 44:39
  Namibian ownership in the American company contributed to
• 44:42
  this decision. OK, whatever.
• 44:44
  But he said Serling failed to meet national security criteria.
• 44:48
  And I believe that that relates to the architecture, the
• 44:54
  regenerative architecture, where Namibia would have no idea where
• 44:58
  the data is going and have no control over it.
• 45:00
  You have no wiretapping authority, things like that.
• 45:03
  These are the the reasons why sovereigns are not going to like
• 45:08
  SpaceX. And we've been talking about
• 45:10
  this for now years. Our own understanding of it has
• 45:14
  just been cemented early on where it began as guesses and
• 45:18
  now it's been solidified with proof points.
• 45:21
  And that's really then the closing of uncertainty, which is
• 45:26
  why the stock goes up because things are less uncertain.
• 45:30
  And now let's talk about some of the other opportunities.
• 45:35
  And so military, I was kind of surprised this other guy who I
• 45:37
  didn't really followed with this Space Connect guy who's all like
• 45:40
  taking up in arms because as TS is a military company, I guess
• 45:44
  this guy doesn't understand the price of freedom, but I do.
• 45:51
  And so I'm really proud that AST Space Mobile has military
• 45:55
  applications. I want the good guys to have
• 45:57
  better weapons. I think that we're the good
• 46:00
  guys. I know there can be different
• 46:01
  views on that, but I don't subscribe to the alternative
• 46:04
  view. But what we're learning from the
• 46:06
  Iranian conflict is that Iran, they're not dumb.
• 46:12
  And so it's been global headlines that they took out
• 46:15
  this early warning Ewak, which, you know, there's no more of
• 46:18
  these things in the US, very valuable military infrastructure
• 46:21
  and they just totally drill it on a Saudi Arabian air base,
• 46:25
  which is which is bad. And they've also been taking out
• 46:28
  ground based radar systems. And so the US embassy got
• 46:32
  whacked. And so they're blinding us
• 46:35
  wherever they can. They realize that if you take
• 46:37
  out the radar, you take out a bunch of capabilities.
• 46:41
  So tragic that Iran is successful in these attacks, but
• 46:46
  also eye opening in what could possibly be the counter move
• 46:51
  from such an obvious vulnerability.
• 46:53
  I believe the US is pretty far ahead and has identified that
• 46:58
  these Leo constellations provide a very different approach toward
• 47:02
  EWAX in ground based radar. I believe that ASC Space Mobile
• 47:06
  is just simply an AEGIS system in the sky.
• 47:10
  And so we have continued movement of Golden Dome, which
• 47:13
  is going to be relying on all these technologies for the
• 47:17
  tracking and custody of threats. And so we have continued
• 47:25
  movement in Golden Dome. The price went up because they
• 47:28
  added capacity and they've added air moving target indicator
• 47:33
  sensors so they can track projectiles in in different ways
• 47:37
  and a space based communications architecture that will connect
• 47:40
  it all. So to a man of the hammer, the
• 47:42
  world looks like a nail. I obviously believe that ASTS is
• 47:46
  suitable for all of these things.
• 47:48
  I don't I doubt they will get all of these things, but I think
• 47:51
  they'll get some of these things and it these awards we went from
• 47:56
  Golden Dome being sort of the talk of the town and people kind
• 47:58
  of forgot about this. But it's a big project 175 a
• 48:02
  $185 million that I think is going to drive a lot of
• 48:05
  excitement as we get into the the coming months.
• 48:08
  And it's not just about Golden Dome, it's about really all of
• 48:17
  the capabilities. And so we have a quote from
• 48:19
  Michael Pollock, who's the EVP of government operations, where
• 48:23
  his closing remarks at the sad show were, quote, the war in
• 48:27
  Ukraine and the war in Iran have made us more important than
• 48:30
  ever. That seems like an obvious
• 48:32
  statement if one's been following like I have both of
• 48:37
  these complex and if you know, if you so so-called monitor the
• 48:42
  situation, you see that electric electronic warfare is really how
• 48:47
  all of this happens now. And that's a that's a big
• 48:51
  opportunity for ASC space mobile to support all of the allies.
• 48:55
  And that's where I think Europe comes into play too, because
• 48:58
  Europe is going through a big rearmament cycle as well.
• 49:01
  And I just think things like iris are going to be very
• 49:03
  difficult to do by themselves. And so going back to other
• 49:07
  applications, RNA really talented industry executive.
• 49:14
  So again, you're part of the space mob that it's able to pull
• 49:17
  in a lot of pretty crazy first hand experience was out there.
• 49:22
  What was he doing? So transforming, I think this is
• 49:28
  just simply the number of IoT devices.
• 49:30
  Oh yeah, he was responding to this really funny thing about
• 49:33
  cows. And so, you know, the DD to C
• 49:37
  market is really the direct to cow market.
• 49:39
  There is this thing showing about how people were spending
• 49:42
  5-8 dollars a month, I think that was in Kiwi dollars, so
• 49:46
  exchange rate it. But talking about how they would
• 49:49
  put solar powered smart collars on cows to track them.
• 49:52
  So smart to do you want to make sure you're monitoring your herd
• 49:56
  and you just go again, this thing I'm seeing is this massive
• 49:59
  collar. Not quite sure how it's working,
• 50:03
  but this is again one of the many, many use cases for IoT.
• 50:09
  Another thing that Arnie and I were talking about live this
• 50:12
  week was something we saw for I believe it was the equivalent of
• 50:17
  OnStar. I don't know why I didn't link
• 50:19
  this out. I wonder what I how I missed
• 50:22
  this, but I do remember it. It was an article about arming
• 50:27
  cars with this type of capability for if there's a
• 50:31
  crash basically to have OnStar on it.
• 50:33
  And they were saying that the average budgeted usage for the
• 50:36
  life of the vehicle was something like 5 megabytes.
• 50:39
  So basically nothing. And this goes to the capacity
• 50:42
  payment that I've been talking about with AST Space Mobile.
• 50:46
  So, you know, liking it to insurance, you're paying premium
• 50:50
  and hopefully if you're lucky for your entire life and never
• 50:53
  having a claim, most people do not want to claim.
• 50:56
  When you do have a claim, it's very high severity to you, but
• 50:59
  it's very low frequency. I've always believed ASTS is
• 51:03
  selling insurance, but in this instance, they're not short.
• 51:07
  This crazy exposure of if your house burns down, you get tagged
• 51:10
  for trillion dollars. If you have an accident in your
• 51:14
  car or something, there's a call on the data.
• 51:18
  But you with an actuarial table, you'll really smooth that out.
• 51:21
  But meanwhile, you're able to charge someone, whatever it is,
• 51:23
  $5.10 bucks a month. You know, I think I'm paying,
• 51:27
  who am I paying 10-15 bucks a month?
• 51:31
  My Toyota BMW is trying to charge me something that I told
• 51:34
  them to. I don't want their service.
• 51:35
  But car companies are getting increasingly smart about trying
• 51:40
  to add these subscription services and could easily just
• 51:43
  be the car company paying for this upfront to have this
• 51:46
  enabled service. And from their perspective, it's
• 51:48
  really not that much money anyway on a feature they're
• 51:51
  selling upfront and then embedded is this data data
• 51:54
  package. But it's really not consuming
• 51:56
  any of the AS TS network. It just has a right of call
• 52:00
  against the network in the unlikely event it is needed.
• 52:03
  This is what allows ASTS to oversell its capacity many fold.
• 52:08
  And so going back to my unit economic math on my unit
• 52:11
  economic math, I'm not doing that at all.
• 52:14
  I'm assuming they only sell 30% of their data.
• 52:16
  The rest is just unutilized. The reality is the company is
• 52:21
  going to be able to oversell its data and that's what I believe
• 52:24
  makes my numbers quite likely dramatically low.
• 52:29
  And I hope that's right. And so I'm not putting out
• 52:31
  estimates like a sell side analysts.
• 52:32
  I don't put on prices targets. I'm putting out my own math that
• 52:35
  I use for myself. I just know what I have to
• 52:38
  believe at a minimum, knowing that I'm likely wrong and likely
• 52:43
  wrong massively, but I'm wrong with respect to the upside.
• 52:49
  And so I'm just trying to line myself up for asymmetry to the
• 52:53
  upside. And that's where, again, making
• 52:56
  sure you own your shares in the correct way so that you, you
• 52:59
  know, either don't have a rigid target price and sell right when
• 53:02
  a winner is winning or just something else silly.
• 53:05
  But that's kind of how how I think about it.
• 53:07
  And so learning more about these IoT opportunities is really
• 53:10
  important because I think this is just simply a lot of cash
• 53:13
  flow that comes with minimal demands on the network, which
• 53:18
  allows you then oversell the network.
• 53:20
  Because what you're really doing if you're ASTS is you're looking
• 53:24
  at people like me that will, you know, be using the network
• 53:26
  pretty consistently as I go in and out of coverage areas.
• 53:29
  So you're charging me a price and I use a certain amount of
• 53:33
  sort of known demand. Then you're going to have all
• 53:35
  sorts of other use cases, but then you're going to have these
• 53:37
  IoT use cases which are really using network capacity where
• 53:41
  people are not located or extremely infrequent uses that
• 53:47
  you can then really stack without worrying about
• 53:51
  exhausting your capacity. So that's how I would think
• 53:54
  about it. And that's where the network
• 53:55
  optimization comes into play. And you can see that the company
• 53:59
  has added incredible board experience in this respect and
• 54:03
  technical experience in terms of how to manage the network.
• 54:06
  I believe that a lot of that goes into these things that I'm
• 54:09
  saying. And so let's go back to the
• 54:12
  midweek. As we talked about, the SpaceX
• 54:15
  IPO really got these stocks ripping.
• 54:17
  Lunar is up 20%, fly was up 18, blah, blah, blah.
• 54:21
  This was sort of the hot money thing that caused unfortunately
• 54:24
  like a terrible hangover Thursday and Friday.
• 54:28
  And I think that's caused us to really overshoot to the
• 54:31
  downside. And then what?
• 54:33
  We'll see what Monday brings. I haven't checked the market
• 54:35
  since I've been on the spaces, but it really wouldn't surprise
• 54:38
  me at all if a ground invasion, if confirmed, which I personally
• 54:45
  would believe, that's what's going to happen.
• 54:47
  Whether I like it or not, this is what I think is going to
• 54:49
  happen. I think that might be the
• 54:51
  capitulation move where all of a sudden the boogeyman comes out
• 54:55
  and then it's like, well, OK, US ground troops on the ground is
• 54:59
  usually going to be a quick end to something.
• 55:02
  Because again, you got to be a, you have to be very religious
• 55:05
  person to stand your ground when a Marine Expeditionary unit
• 55:10
  lands in front of you. I mean, your belief in God has
• 55:12
  to be absolute because otherwise the same response is to like
• 55:16
  just run. And and that's what I hope the
• 55:19
  Iranians do is just simply run for their life because you don't
• 55:23
  want to be on the receiving end of that sphere.
• 55:25
  And that's what I think would cause the market to also bottom.
• 55:29
  So then the last thing, but I could be wrong, who knows.
• 55:32
  I'm just literally a kooks in my office.
• 55:33
  My wife texted me asking me when I'm done with my cult meeting.
• 55:36
  So you know, you're not like getting advice from JP Morgan
• 55:39
  right here to put it lately, but you do.
• 55:42
  Let's end on something equally credibility destroying, which is
• 55:46
  me talking about a tweet from Ben Jawanda who who might have a
• 55:51
  lot of curability, I don't know, but he walks through the case as
• 55:56
  to why this company could be a trillion dollar company.
• 55:58
  I know this is what the bears always like the glom onto saying
• 56:00
  that these paid pumpers are leading everyone to their own
• 56:03
  demise. And again, you know maybe I am,
• 56:07
  but I do so naively because I am on the same path to demise if
• 56:10
  that is true. But this person walks through
• 56:13
  the high level math and it is good.
• 56:15
  I usually look back at the biggest stocks that I've missed
• 56:19
  and I've always just kind of realized, you know, it's so easy
• 56:23
  to get so enraptured in the details and it's so difficult to
• 56:28
  get to a point where your subject matter expertise on one
• 56:32
  hand is extremely high. But then on the other hand, your
• 56:36
  ability to do math on a napkin is also high.
• 56:40
  Because usually it's very difficult to to marry these two
• 56:43
  things. Either you're incredibly in the
• 56:45
  weeds and you do a 300 page PowerPoint that industry
• 56:48
  consultants say is total garbage and trash.
• 56:51
  And then you really don't have the ability to zoom out and see
• 56:53
  the bigger picture. Or you're super high level
• 56:56
  thinker and you we just won't look at something like ASTS
• 57:01
  because it's very complex And so distilling the complexity is
• 57:04
  very hard thing to do. But sometimes if you just look
• 57:07
  at the simple math like a Ron Baron would do, it allows you
• 57:12
  just to understand what am I playing for?
• 57:15
  And just to know that on the if you're right, and also using a
• 57:21
  framework of the if and unless framework, which I have in the
• 57:23
  first couple pages of my document of unless these bad
• 57:27
  things happen. So in other words, if inertia
• 57:29
  and you know, rational behavior keeps going, what does something
• 57:33
  look like? You know, if I slap a certain
• 57:35
  market share number that's achievable and I I slap certain
• 57:37
  unit economics, blah, blah, blah.
• 57:40
  And you just kind of calculate sort of a high level EPS.
• 57:42
  If that's a massively big number and you have a really good
• 57:45
  founder and a really good team, that's the way you see the non
• 57:48
  linearity in the world. And that's where you can make
• 57:51
  the the monster numbers. And I have seen enough of this
• 57:58
  in my career, but I've never had the 100 bagger and I want 1 and
• 58:03
  I go back. I was again sort of in a pissing
• 58:05
  match today with this lucky Stewart guy, and he was out
• 58:10
  there making these claims. I think my response to him, Oh
• 58:13
  yeah, this is maybe not my finest moment or my tweet was
• 58:16
  Stewie, fuck off. OK, I guess I could be a little
• 58:19
  bit more civil, but but he then maybe he's a nice guy, I don't
• 58:24
  know. But he just says that he's doing
• 58:28
  God's work because ASTS is astronomically overvalued.
• 58:32
  Well, that's, I think a very discreet statement and where I
• 58:36
  get so I don't even know get whipped up.
• 58:39
  But what what I think about when I see things like that are the
• 58:42
  same statements by quote UN quote experts.
• 58:44
  When Google IPO DI remember I was doing the case study of
• 58:47
  Google versus ask Jeeves. I was very young back then and
• 58:51
  and not wise, but I was very smart and that's that's a
• 58:54
  dangerous thing. And so as someone who had, you
• 58:59
  know, a lot of positive feedback as the ones sort of academic
• 59:02
  intelligence, but not matching that with high level
• 59:07
  distillation skills because those are usually not present in
• 59:10
  a 23 year old, I did not see the bigger picture of something like
• 59:15
  Google. And then that was reinforced by
• 59:17
  all these value investing guys that I was friends with and
• 59:19
  read. They would do these sort of like
• 59:21
  very condescing write up. So well, you can buy Freeport
• 59:25
  Mcmoran, Newport, you know, Pan American Silver, Conoco, you can
• 59:32
  buy all these things and that's the same market cap as buying
• 59:36
  Google. Ergo, Google is astronomically
• 59:40
  overpriced. And what a bubble.
• 59:42
  Like they were wrong because they didn't see the bigger
• 59:47
  picture. And so the muppet that was just
• 59:49
  buying Google because they went this seems seems like it's going
• 59:52
  to be a monopoly and an aggregator of all content of all
• 59:56
  of humanity and be rent seeking and then have a platform to do
• 1:00:01
  the exact same thing in every other format.
• 1:00:03
  The person that understood that high level thing would have not
• 1:00:06
  get. Would not have received a job at
• 1:00:08
  many firms other than like Tiger which is frankly the only place
• 1:00:11
  they probably wanted to get a job.
• 1:00:14
  But they wouldn't have really gone far with the Park Ave. suit
• 1:00:19
  wearing value investor. They would have been laughed out
• 1:00:22
  of the room. And I have the same thing.
• 1:00:24
  Ironically, my in laws are are with me and I remember I was
• 1:00:28
  going over for dinner and talking to my brother in law's
• 1:00:32
  son who was like, I don't know, 28 at a time.
• 1:00:36
  Remember, you know, go to dinner and you know, I'm a fancy hedge
• 1:00:39
  fund guy and you know, he came up like, what did he like?
• 1:00:43
  And he's like, I'm all in on Tesla.
• 1:00:45
  You know, they're going to change the world.
• 1:00:46
  He's he's, you know, young environmental guy and didn't
• 1:00:50
  understand the math anything. He just saw like this is the
• 1:00:53
  trend. My generation wants EVs.
• 1:00:56
  These are cool. You got to believe he was all
• 1:00:59
  in. And I remember kind of just
• 1:01:01
  smirking me like, I mean, like, what about what about their
• 1:01:04
  balance sheet? Like do you have a view of the
• 1:01:06
  front data converts that I'm on a heavy delta on?
• 1:01:08
  You know, what do you think about those things?
• 1:01:10
  And they just saw the high level.
• 1:01:12
  And so I really tried to reorient my brain.
• 1:01:15
  I don't want to claim to be the next Antonio Linares.
• 1:01:18
  I am certainly not. But I've tried to retrain my
• 1:01:21
  brain to really allow this separate GPU, if you will,
• 1:01:27
  process just the high level big picture so that I'm not blinded
• 1:01:31
  by the facts and the difficulties of of reality.
• 1:01:35
  That's where the team comes in. And so the facts and the
• 1:01:38
  difficulties of reality are all too easy to find when you're
• 1:01:40
  looking at AST space mobile. Just go ask him Farrar.
• 1:01:43
  He'll tell you that. But if you have a dynamic
• 1:01:48
  management team that can breakthrough walls, then the
• 1:01:52
  question is, and I hate this phrase viscerally, but I'm
• 1:01:57
  doomed to repeat it. You ask yourself, is there a
• 1:02:00
  there there, which is like the most West Coast thing a person
• 1:02:03
  can say. Is there a there there?
• 1:02:05
  But you know, it's a good it's a good point.
• 1:02:06
  You know, I got to concede. Sometimes things you hate are
• 1:02:08
  right. And so you ask, is there a there
• 1:02:10
  there? Well, with ASTSI have concluded
• 1:02:15
  that there is a there there and that there can be somewhat
• 1:02:19
  loosely mapped by simple math like we have from our friend Ben
• 1:02:25
  Jawanda. And so that's what the type of
• 1:02:27
  analysis I really like to see on on really anything I'm looking
• 1:02:31
  at. And so, for example, as a sort
• 1:02:33
  of study things like Merlin, you know, the basic thing is like,
• 1:02:37
  what's the business model again? I don't I don't I don't know the
• 1:02:39
  answer on this thing yet. I don't even think I'm pumping a
• 1:02:43
  new stock, but you know, I'm trying to learn new things.
• 1:02:46
  And so I try to understand, you know, what is the unit
• 1:02:48
  economics? What is the go to market?
• 1:02:50
  How does it scale? If if it goes to plan, what does
• 1:02:54
  it look like? That's the type of thing if you
• 1:02:57
  had really sat and thought about for businesses like NVIDIA,
• 1:03:00
  Google, Facebook, you know, all of the big great businesses.
• 1:03:05
  It's that bigger picture that made you get rich not
• 1:03:08
  understanding next year's PE ratio.
• 1:03:10
  It's the nonlinearity. So anyway, kind of babbling on
• 1:03:14
  about stuff that's sufficiently ambiguous for anyone to actually
• 1:03:17
  challenge me on. So I'll stop.
• 1:03:19
  But I'm excited for next week. I hope that we have a not a run
• 1:03:23
  up per SE, that's not short term.
• 1:03:24
  But I do believe we're going to get a relief rally into the new
• 1:03:27
  Glen Three rocket. And then people are going to
• 1:03:29
  have to ask themselves if they feel lucky on batch 1.
• 1:03:32
  And I think a lot of things are going to be coming.
• 1:03:35
  Sentiment, I think is absolutely in the toilet in the market and
• 1:03:39
  for the stock in particular, I think we have this wash out
• 1:03:43
  because of the SpaceX S1 anticipation.
• 1:03:46
  I think that will come. And you know, as I look here,
• 1:03:48
  S&P features are back to almost flat.
• 1:03:51
  So that's what I have tonight. Everyone's been doing awesome
• 1:03:55
  DD, I hope the launch is actually delayed a little bit so
• 1:03:59
  that I can get back for my kids spring break in time and then go
• 1:04:02
  to lunch. So you know, careful you wish
• 1:04:06
  for I guess that's what I got. So thanks for joining me.
• 1:04:09
  I appreciate it and I hope everyone has a wonderful night.
• 1:04:13
  Thanks for listening to the AST Space Mobile podcast.
• 1:04:17
  If you enjoyed this episode and you'd like to help support the
• 1:04:20
  podcast, please share it with others, post about it on social
• 1:04:23
  media, or leave a rating and review.
• 1:04:26
  To catch all the latest news about AST Space Mobile, make
• 1:04:29
  sure to subscribe. Thanks again and I'll see you
• 1:04:32
  next time. We're doing something very, very
• 1:04:38
  big and I think with this technology we can really affect
• 1:04:41
  billion lives. AFP Space Global is the only
• 1:04:44
  company that has good technology to deliver cellular broadband
• 1:04:48
  connectivity directly through state to everyday smartphone.
• 1:04:52
  People will just basically turn their phone and be seamless,
• 1:04:56
  regardless of where you are. We don't want the user even to
• 1:04:59
  know that it's connected by satellite.
• 1:05:01
  Our role is to bring this into reality, always in partnership
• 1:05:05
  with the enemy.