Episodes

Anpanman speculates the satellite signed during the Stankey visit is 'BB-7' (Bluebird 7) and guesses AST will put out a press release announcing the satellite is shipping to Florida (Cape Canaveral), likely later that day or on Friday.

Anpanman calculates that stc did approximately $20 billion of 2024 revenue, so 9% implies a contract value of roughly $1.8 billion — noting this is just for one MNO partner out of AST's roughly 50 total partners, and guessing (given stc's size and prepayment) that stc likely secured favorable revenue-share terms, possibly a 50/50 split.

Responding to a listener question (Philip Wright) about why stc used a percent-of-annual-revenue metric for a 10-year contract, Anpanman says he isn't sure why it was framed that way, and on reflection thinks it's plausible the 9%/$1.8 billion figure could represent annual economic value rather than the total 10-year contract value, leaving the exact scale of the deal unresolved.

Anpanman characterizes the stc deal as further validation of AST's model, coming roughly 2-3 weeks after Verizon's definitive commercial agreement, and predicts other MNOs will feel pressure to sign now that a $175 million benchmark prepayment exists.

Using ChatGPT to total wireless subscribers across the 15 non-Saudi countries covered by the deal (Egypt ~106 million, Morocco ~56 million, Algeria ~51 million, Iraq ~46 million, Yemen ~20 million, Syria ~17 million, Tunisia ~16 million, and others), Anpanman arrives at a combined total of roughly 391 million subscribers, framing this as the addressable market AST/stc could pull from competing carriers once service launches — larger than the entire US population.

Anpanman predicts a Bell Canada definitive commercial agreement is coming within about a week or two, pointing to global IoT company Beware's announcement the prior day of positive test results using Bell Canada's network as a signal; he expects the eventual Bell agreement to include some revenue prepayment, similar to other signed partners, though the specific economic terms are unclear. He also notes Bell was an investor in AST's IPO.

Responding to a listener question about whether Block 2's first-phase constellation (aimed at the most profitable markets, roughly as far north as the US/Canada and as far south as upper South America) will also cover the MENA markets in the stc deal, Anpanman says he isn't sure and needs to check the geography, but speculates the pulled-forward $1 billion convertible note may be intended partly to get satellites up faster to cover additional markets like these sooner.

Anpanman estimates that hedging on the recent $1 billion convertible note added roughly 6 million shares of short interest (assuming ~60% delta hedge on ~80% of the issue placed with convert-arb investors); he notes short interest peaked at about 49.5 million shares in early October, and roughly 20 million shares of shorts have been covered since then net of the convert-related additional shorts.

Anpanman jokingly cites X account 'Pivotal Capital' (@pivotal_capital) as a reliable contrarian bottom signal, noting the account tweeted bearishly on AST around October 24th near a $71 share price, which Anpanman characterizes as a near-term bottom given the stock's subsequent rise to around $83.

Anpanman expects sell-side analysts including UBS, Scotiabank, and Barclays (which previously issued a 'double downgrade') to upgrade their ratings and/or raise price targets on ASTS within the next day or two in response to the stc agreement.

Kook speculates the board may have decided further capped calls aren't worth it: at a ~$100+ stock price the dilution from straight conversion is small, and he questions whether the market can absorb even larger capped-call structures given the company's two existing capped calls are still outstanding.

Kook walked through (with some on-air self-correction/garbling of the numbers) the value of the outstanding capped call from the July 2025 bond: the call spread's lower strike is $72 and upper strike is $120; he estimated it's worth about $25 million intrinsic right now but could be worth almost $400 million at the upper strike, given the stock is already around half of the way to that level. He flagged this as rough, live-calculated math.

Looking back at the January 2025 convertible bond's 'flush' (conversion), the company issued 9.6 million shares gross, which after treasury-method adjustment for the capped call benefit was effectively 7.6 million shares net. Kook estimates straight equity at a 15% discount would have required issuing roughly 11.8 million shares instead — meaning the convert saved the company an estimated $300 million of value at a stock price of about $74, reducing dilution by roughly 1% of shares outstanding.

Incorporating the new convert, the ATM usage, and modest operating cash flow, plus a Q4 capex estimate he admits could be too high, Kook projects the company will end Q4 2025 (the current quarter) with about $2.2 billion of cash, in addition to satellite work-in-progress value on the balance sheet.

New updates from ISRO suggest Indian Prime Minister Modi is set to formally announce the launch, and the launch could occur in early December.

Kook believes the market won't be too concerned about the exact timing since it's clear the company is 'cranking,' and that a formal PM Modi announcement would generate significant international news exposure, potentially exposing billions of people to the AST SpaceMobile name for the first time and creating incremental stock demand.

Kook argues orbital pollution/deorbiting risk will eventually become a regulatory focus that disadvantages thousand-satellite constellations like SpaceX's relative to AST's much smaller design, and frames AST's early orbital-slot acquisition as a 'rule of capture' land-grab analogous to historical railroad land grants.

Kook noted this shows hyperscalers like Meta will care about the technology, which he says the community has long expected.

News surfaced of a Japanese effort involving roughly 8 major carriers cooperating to build a disaster-relief connectivity system resembling a 'Japanese FirstNet,' with testing occurring on relevant spectrum (flagged to Kook by a contact he calls 'Inner Italia'). He frames this as part of a global 'why now' trend, given Japan's tsunami risk and remote island populations, distinct from the US's post-9/11 approach of building redundant terrestrial networks.

AST SpaceMobile is working with Altán Redes (transcribed 'Altman Redes'), a Mexican public-private spectrum initiative, which holds substantial spectrum now being tested; Kook believes this could become a pathway to access Mexican MNOs, and recalled prior discussion of some relationship with Carlos Slim/América Móvil, noting Slim's public animosity toward Elon Musk (who called him a 'drug dealer') as a reason ASTS could plausibly expand into Mexico and Central America.

Kook relayed analysis from a community member he calls 'Katzi,' arguing SpaceX's architecture is flawed because its service requires a dedicated, power-hungry chip that can't work with unmodified phones, and because Starlink lacks a fixed/constant beam design like AST's — instead needing to cycle many moving beams, creating complex handovers between cells.

A widely circulated article reported Apple testing/accommodating SpaceX spectrum needs; Kook expressed doubt about why Apple would help a would-be AST competitor, speculating it more likely reflects Apple accommodating T-Mobile rather than SpaceX directly.

Kook characterized Iridium's most recent earnings call as unusually bad, saying management effectively admitted the business's long-term prospects (potentially not lasting past 2030) and that they hadn't communicated the company's value well; SpaceX was mentioned repeatedly on the call but AST SpaceMobile was never mentioned, which Kook called notable. He used this as a case study for why founder-led, reinvesting companies outperform finance-driven, capital-return-focused ones (calling the latter a 'cigar butt' strategy).

Kook's own theory is that AST SpaceMobile could pursue a spectrum-lease agreement with Iridium (which has underutilized spectrum), comparing it to Charlie Ergen's strategy of creating a spectrum holding company; alternatively, AST could acquire Globalstar outright to obtain global S-band spectrum, cash flow, and an emergency-services relationship angle with Apple — explicitly framed as his own speculation, not a confirmed plan.

As a hypothetical, Kook floated AST SpaceMobile acquiring Iridium (market cap about $2 billion) for roughly $1 billion cash plus about $2 billion of stock — a roughly 50% premium — which would bring worldwide S-band spectrum and about $500 million of EBITDA from Iridium's narrowband service, which Kook believes could be migrated to different, higher-value uses over time.

Kook compared AST SpaceMobile's M&A optionality to how Google's acquisitions of DoubleClick, YouTube, and Motorola Solutions became disproportionately valuable once integrated into its platform, and drew an analogy to Mark Zuckerberg's underappreciated M&A skill, suggesting AST's leadership (citing Scott Wisniewski's banking background and Abel Avellan's prior M&A experience) could similarly accelerate value creation, using the Ligado deal as an early proof point.

On Iridium's spectrum specifically, Kook stated the company holds roughly 10 MHz of S-band assets, though he flagged this number as uncertain ('I think it's 10 megahertz, I forget the exact'), and noted Lynk and OmniSpace are now merging with SES.

Kook speculates this language change is a deliberate signal about upcoming plans, potentially related to M&A, new strategic markets, or Golden Dome-related spending, though he says the company hasn't yet revealed what specifically it refers to.

Kook referenced an article titled 'Golden Dome's rapid timeline collides with industry funding fears,' describing the program's hybrid commercial/defense funding model, where participants must self-fund development with limited opportunity to recoup costs except via prize/milestone payments — a difficult proposition for smaller companies. Kook argues this actually favors AST SpaceMobile since the company now has strong access to capital (helped by the recent convert and the roughly quarter-billion dollars raised via the ATM), which he calls a competitive barrier the company previously lacked.

Kook estimates (as a rough guess, 'más o menos') that pro forma cash by Christmas could be around $3 billion, factoring in typical ATM usage restrictions of about 15 days following a convert, giving the company significant flexibility to push growth initiatives, particularly potential government work, that it previously would have had to more carefully rationalize.

Describes the report's genesis: AST SpaceMobile initially looked easy to dismiss given base rates of failed LEO constellations, its SPAC origin, and an active ATM program, but deeper diligence over about a year and a half revealed what he calls the 'majesty of the business model' driven by MNO partnership leverage and tech-enabled hyperscalability.

Describes AST's opportunity as the 'third great communications revolution,' the transition from a partially connected to a universally connected world, and states his thesis calls AST 'the final bridge to a universally connected world.'

Admits he had a strong initial negative ('visceral') reaction to AST's ATM usage, having previously been burned by another company's poorly-executed ATM, but came to see space as an industry where extended, uncertain timelines are 'par for the course,' unlike industries where consistently missed timelines would normally be a red flag.

Argues it's easier to tolerate dilution/ATM usage from a CEO like Abel Avellan who takes no bullish RSUs or performance-comp packages and is being diluted 'alongside' shareholders, versus a misaligned management team.

States that once revenue and cash flow become visible, an $800 million ATM or a billion-dollar convertible offering no longer worries him because he has 'implicit trust' in Abel Avellan's execution track record.

Argues that company culture doesn't matter for a 1-3 year investment horizon but is 'the only thing that matters' for a decade-long hold, and says AST's culture under Abel Avellan is exceptional for the scale of the tasks the company faces.

Compares AST's roughly 8-year execution timeline to Tesla launching the Model S from scratch in about 5 years, and notes AST is 'about to launch a 90-satellite constellation that will provide 5G broadband anywhere in the world' within a span of a decade.

Recommends the book 'Eccentric Orbits' for understanding why prior LEO satellite ventures failed — largely because they weren't vertically integrated (dependent on external parts suppliers) and had to fully fund and build a constellation before seeing any revenue, a hurdle only Starlink (aided by NASA/ISS relationships) had previously cleared.

Cites the company's ability to attract world-class talent as a signal to track alongside management commentary, mentioning a recent hire, 'Chip Walcott,' with experience in radar and missile-defense programs (name and details as stated in the episode, not independently verified).

Notes J.R. Wilson left AT&T after roughly 20 years — where he was most recently VP of towers, roaming, and in-building commercial strategy and eventually chief of networks and spectrum — to join AST SpaceMobile, which he views as a sign of growing industry confidence and a boost to AST's network-integration and roaming-partnership capabilities.

Uses a 'following Patton out the door' analogy — arguing that seeing not just Avellan's old team but new all-star hires continue joining AST throughout its evolution is a powerful positive signal ('poker tell') about the company.

Explains that companies deliberately announce aggressive timelines to push regulators and suppliers to move faster, and that a quarter or two of slippage is normal and should not be read by investors as a broken promise.

Compares AST's timeline slips to ViaSat's second satellite being delayed by about 5 years, and to Elon Musk's public 2022 target for landing Starship on Mars, which has slipped well past that date (Anpanman guesses Mars landing is now maybe closer to 2030).

Cites Rocket Lab's Neutron rocket, originally expected to fly in 2024 and now expected in 2025, as another example of normal industry timeline slippage.

Argues that whether the constellation turns on in 18 months or 2.5 years is irrelevant to the business's long-term intrinsic value, and that investors who panic over timeline slips likely don't understand the business well enough.

Says most current investor inbound interest in AST comes from smaller, unconventional funds and long-duration capital (family offices, endowments) rather than institutions requiring investment-committee approval, but predicts that once revenue and cash flow prove out, AST will become an easy pitch to investment committees, which he calls the true 'endless rally.'

Recounts helping a friend (a former analyst at a fund with roughly $150 billion in AUM) prepare an investment-committee pitch for AST; the fund's minimum position size was around $4-5 billion, and building such a position at 10-20% of average daily volume would take months, which he says creates a durable, multi-institution 'forever bid' beneath the stock over time.

Argues that a Golden Dome contract award, even if small relative to AST's overall revenue, would be significant because institutions seeking a pure-play way to invest in Golden Dome would identify AST SpaceMobile, which also comes with its consumer broadband business.

States that public equity exposure to direct-to-device (D2D) connectivity essentially doesn't exist outside AST, since Starlink sits inside privately held SpaceX; he estimates roughly 75% of SpaceX's intrinsic value is attributable to Starlink, calling AST the only true public D2D pure play.

Argues similarly that pure-play public exposure to Golden Dome is 'elusive,' with Palantir as roughly the only alternative, since otherwise investors must buy legacy defense primes like Northrop Grumman or Boeing, which come bundled with unrelated business lines.

Predicts that within roughly 6 to 12 months the market will begin to more broadly recognize AST's scarcity value as a pure play on both Golden Dome and direct-to-device connectivity, calling this transition 'quite exciting.'

Predicts that major hedge funds (using Dan Loeb and Bill Ackman as illustrative examples) will eventually feature AST SpaceMobile in their quarterly letters, describing it as a potential largest wireless carrier by subscribers with dual consumer and military applications; notes AST's market cap has grown from about $700 million at the time some investors got involved to roughly $25-26 billion at the time of the episode.

Describes Iridium's recent quarterly earnings call as sounding 'like a funeral,' saying the company had previously been raising debt to buy back stock and grow its dividend while taking a 'CapEx holiday' (a phrase AST investors joke about), but recently halted its buyback, admitting it needs to spend on its future.

Says a recent industry article (in 'The Information,' which he believes was prompted by satellite analyst Tim Farrar) discussing Starlink, Apple, and Globalstar made no mention of AST SpaceMobile at all, which he characterizes as a deliberate omission of 'the elephant in the room.'

Argues that competitors avoiding AST's name publicly is a 'catch-22' — acknowledging AST's threat would accelerate their own demise by prompting Wall Street to connect the dots, so their silence is itself a strong signal.

Explains that AT&T and Verizon will likely walk a careful line publicly — supporting AST while also signaling openness to other satellite partners (citing AT&T's John Stankey talking about wanting multiple players and competition) partly because they don't want to become overly dependent on AST or lose negotiating leverage ahead of periodic contract renegotiations roughly every 5 years.

Argues that once networks are technically integrated with seamless handover, it would not make practical sense for a carrier to run two competing direct-to-device satellite providers simultaneously, since it would confuse which system takes network priority.

Agrees that carriers' talk of wanting multiple options reflects the abstract value of optionality/negotiating leverage rather than a realistic desire to actually add an inferior competing provider, drawing a parallel to his firm's 6+ year investment in Nintendo, where understanding a company's communication style prevents investors from misreading normal statements as red flags.

Reveals that the group learned Indian Prime Minister Modi may personally announce the launch date for BlueBird 6 (FM1), which he says would be a major profile-raising event for AST given how active Indian social media users are.

Distinguishes TAM from SAM (the addressable market on day one when the constellation turns on, covering markets with exclusive definitive agreements such as AT&T and Verizon), and frames India as a critical proof-of-concept for regions with similar geographic/coverage challenges, such as Southeast Asia and Africa; notes Canada's population dispersion (following the recent Bell Canada news) is 'almost as bad as India.'

States a core thesis point from the report: the physics and economics of terrestrial cellular networks create a permanent coverage gap that only satellite solutions can bridge, meaning connectivity demand for AST-like service is structurally guaranteed regardless of economic conditions.

Praises Abel Avellan and Scott Wisniewski for strategically positioning the India launch, saying it will be a 'huge profile-raising event' amplified by highly active Indian social media users.

Argues the India launch is geopolitically important, noting India banned Huawei and ZTE (Anpanman states since 2020) and is a swing state between Russia and the West; having India align with AST and Starlink rather than adopt competing Chinese satellite constellations is seen as strategically valuable for the US.

Speculates AST likely paid full freight to ship BlueBird 6 to India via an Antonov aircraft but may have received a discount on the LVM-3 rocket launch given the prestige of carrying the first Block 2-design satellite and AST's status as a marquee US commercial customer for that rocket.

Says he received a large amount of inbound feedback and, as of the recording, no one had identified a valid flaw in the report's reasoning; he says nearly every prior skeptic he's personally discussed the piece with is no longer skeptical, and those who don't yet own the stock are now considering it.

States his view that anything under a $100 billion valuation for AST SpaceMobile is 'asininely stupid' given what he considers the best intrinsic business he's studied at scale, adding the key uncertainty is whether the company can reach scale, not the quality of the business itself.

Compares AST's long-term subscriber potential (which he suggests could reach roughly a billion subscribers) to Netflix's approximately 300 million subscribers and roughly 40x trailing EV/EBIT multiple, arguing AST at scale would make comparable subscription businesses like Netflix and Spotify 'look adorable' a decade from now.

Speculates that absent COVID-era circumstances, AST would likely have gone public around 2026 via a traditional IPO at roughly a $50-60 billion valuation, but instead the group was able to invest earlier via a Series C round.

Cites Peter Thiel's stated biggest mistake with Facebook — underestimating how network effects mean a business like Facebook (or AST) gets better as it gets bigger, scaling from $100 million to $1 billion to $10 billion to $100 billion in valuation.

Admits he personally finds it easier to hold a stock through a bear market (where he's looking for bargains) than to hold a stock up roughly 300% in a year without trimming, and cites Charlie Munger's view that the hardest thing in intelligent investing is developing the conviction to hold.

Describes his personal trick for holding long-term winners as being deliberately 'lazy' about short-term details, predicting there will be a point after the constellation turns on and cash flow starts when he'll stop actively thinking about AST because subscribers won't cancel their cellular service.

Recalls that around April-May 2025 there was a sense in the investing community that satellite launch delays were coming, prompting some hedge funds to sell or go heavily short in May; the stock subsequently rose for roughly 18-20 consecutive trading days in June, a streak the group says was matched at the time by only Amazon and Facebook among large companies.

Closes the topic by warning that even investors who find 'the next Warren Buffett' typically abandon the position after the first tripling out of misplaced doubt, and that trying to trade in and out of a name with AST's characteristics has historically led to 'tragic' consequences for investors.

Notes that many investors who sold AST early for 20-30% gains never got back in, while others who admitted being wrong bought back in at higher prices and did well; stresses the importance of managing position sizing if AST becomes a very large share of one's net worth.

States that even using deliberately conservative ('sandbagging') assumptions, he finds it hard to model AST doing less than roughly $5-6 billion in EBIT, and says he wouldn't be shocked if the company generates around $20 billion in free cash flow within 10 years.

Notes AST has gone from zero to roughly 8 military/government contracts, arguing it's implausible that the technology is a 'sham' when numerous government agencies (SDA, DIU, and others) have engaged with the company.

Compares the credibility of AST's regulatory and legislative backers (FCC Chairman Brendan Carr and Senator Ted Cruz's support for space legislation) to having 'the chairman of the Federal Reserve backing your fintech startup,' arguing this undercuts bearish claims that the FCC is hostile to AST.

Jointly mock satellite industry critic Tim Farrar (referred to in the recording by a name that transcribes as 'Tim Ferriss') for having been consistently wrong about AST for roughly five years, while conceding he inadvertently benefits AST bulls by keeping a 'wall of worry' alive that encourages continued short selling.

Contrasts Avellan's approach with Palantir, where insiders have sold shares as the stock rose (which Anpanman says is fair, since 'they earned it'), noting Avellan is instead fully 'all in' on AST.

Observes that history's biggest wealth-creating founders were typically mission-driven rather than money-driven, and frames Abel Avellan's drive to connect the unconnected as fitting that same pattern.

Jokes that biographer Ashley Vance will one day have to write a book about the AST Space Mob community, referencing hosts by their pseudonyms.

There was strong demand for the deal from both long-only fundamental credit investors and convertible arbitrageurs, with arb investors hedging a portion of their allotment via short sales in the days following pricing, meaning some short-term stock 'digestion' from hedging flows over roughly the next 3 days.

Why no capped call this time (unlike the prior convert, where the capped call raised the effective conversion price to about $120): Anpanman's guess is the company wanted the full proceeds and/or derivatives dealers may not have had capacity for another large capped-call transaction with one already outstanding.

The company changed its use-of-proceeds language to mention adding 'incremental strategic markets,' which Anpanman reads as a signal AST may now target the full ~90-satellite constellation for full global coverage rather than the 45-to-60-satellite build sufficient for its primary/most commercially attractive markets.

He also speculates part of the raise is earmarked for upcoming military/government contract awards he expects the company to win, though the government shutdown means news on those awards is likely delayed until the government reopens (8 awards received so far; a Golden Dome-related award would be the 9th).

With over $3 billion of total liquidity (roughly $2.6 billion cash plus about $530 million remaining on the ATM), Anpanman argues the company no longer needs strategic investment or prepayments from MNOs to fund itself, which shifts negotiating leverage in AST's favor — MNOs wanting priority service after AT&T, Verizon, Vodafone and Rakuten will need to offer better commercial splits (he floats a hypothetical 60% AST / 40% MNO split) and larger prepayments.

He speculates Saudi Telecom, Zain, or Mobily (Saudi MNOs) could be candidates for a new definitive commercial agreement given the pivot toward incremental markets, though this is explicitly framed as speculation.

Now that the company is a $26-27 billion market cap business, Anpanman argues it no longer makes sense to run with a bare-minimum cash balance of $200-300 million as in the 2024 'lean years'; building a multi-billion-dollar war chest lets the company act offensively — procuring materials faster, adding production shifts, procuring additional factory space — and gives MNOs/regulators/governments confidence the company can reach the finish line.

FM2 is in final testing and, per prior company guidance, was expected to ship to Florida before the end of October; assuming about 30 days of integration/prep after arrival, Anpanman estimates a launch window of late November to early December for FM2, meaning FM2 and BB6 could launch around the same time or FM2 could even go first.

He cites Bloomberg's projection of the next quarterly earnings call landing around November 14, and expects it to be 'jam-packed' with updates on how convert/ATM proceeds are being deployed, military awards, and additional MNO partners.

He expects the FCC — which he describes as moving at 'warp speed' under its current focus on space competitiveness versus China — to approve the US commercial SCS application within this quarter, though he's unsure of the exact timeline from comment-period close to decision.

This quarter (Q3 2025) is expected to be the first of two quarters this year (Q3 and Q4) where the company generates material revenue against its previously guided $50-75 million for the second half of 2025; Anpanman speculates the company deliberately withheld a pre-announced revenue figure this time (unlike some past capital raises) to save it as a highlight for the earnings call.

He argues direct-to-device is becoming unavoidable mindshare for institutional/TMT investors, with increasingly detailed questions on recent MNO earnings calls about competitiveness with terrestrial networks, customer satisfaction, adoption, and ARPU impact.

His framing: it will be a duopoly market between AST SpaceMobile and Starlink serving roughly 6 billion global subscribers; AST has the superior architecture/technology, giving it a strong position even without capturing the entire market.

Iridium holds globally harmonized L-band spectrum, only 8 MHz wide, adjacent to Ligado's spectrum; Anpanman notes a theoretical synergy where AST (already using Ligado spectrum on its Block 2 mid-band Bluebirds) could potentially combine with Iridium's spectrum across the guard band between the two allocations, though this is speculative.

He believes AST has no near-term need to pursue Iridium given AST's own large opportunity set, capital, MNO relationships, and spectrum access, but could imagine a future 'sweetheart deal' where a buyer (AST or Starlink) manages Iridium for cash flow and eventually folds in its spectrum once their own constellations are ready; he also floated the idea that Iridium retains strategic value to the US government for communications redundancy/resiliency in contested/electronic-warfare environments.

Headlines from the same article suggested Globalstar could be sold for over $10 billion, but Anpanman read the underlying article as actually bearish for Globalstar, noting it describes Apple as dissatisfied with the relationship; he cautions Globalstar shareholders that Apple effectively controls the company (owning about 85% of Globalstar's satellite capacity) and would likely have right of first refusal on any sale.

He views Apple integrating multiple satellite partners' frequencies (Starlink, Ligado, EchoStar, Viasat via FCC filings on NTN standards) as standard industry practice to shape 5G non-terrestrial network standards, not evidence of any exclusive Apple-Starlink arrangement.

He personally guesses (without confirmation) that Globalstar spectrum is also incorporated into AST's ASICs, reasoning it's low-cost optionality in case a future partnership with Apple/Globalstar emerges; he frames this explicitly as his own guess, not a confirmed fact.

The two companies' spectrum/technology aren't currently compatible; Lynk would need to re-architect its satellites to use Omnispace's spectrum, requiring further capital investment, and Lynk claims roughly 50 MNO partners today, though Anpanman characterizes most as small operators of little consequence.

He speculates Omnispace had been unsuccessfully shopping itself for sale because spectrum rights without a funded buildout plan carry little value with regulators, and guesses the merger is partly meant to help both companies meet spectrum buildout requirements and buy time ahead of license renewals.

He cautions that MNO CEOs' public comments about direct-to-device (e.g., calling it useful for 'filling gaps' in dead zones) should be read with context, since admitting broader need would mean conceding their terrestrial network has coverage gaps; he cites Verizon's stated 96% coverage as referring to population coverage, not landmass, estimating actual US landmass coverage closer to 70%.

He argues Block 1 Bluebirds serve mainly as coverage gap-fillers, while Block 2 Bluebirds using Ligado's roughly 40 MHz of uplink/downlink capacity will provide 100% broadband coverage that can also add network capacity (not just coverage) during congestion — e.g., offloading a crowded cell at a beach or stadium onto satellite.

He frames 100% guaranteed coverage via satellite/MSS spectrum as essential for future applications like IoT, autonomous vehicles, and drones, which will require connectivity for remote human-operator kill switches since they won't be fully autonomous.

Asked why no capped call was used this time, he guessed the company wanted the full proceeds and/or dealers lacked capacity for another large capped-call derivative transaction given the prior one is still outstanding (from the earlier convert that raised the effective conversion price to about $120).

Asked about battery consumption on handheld devices using the service, he expects AST's large fixed-cell phased array to keep a phone locked onto one satellite for a fixed period (roughly 7-10 minutes) before handoff, which should be more battery-efficient than Starlink's smaller, constantly-moving beams that require more frequent satellite handovers and searching, which drains battery more.

Asked whether Amazon's Kuiper is being boxed out of direct-to-device globally and needs an AST partnership, he said Kuiper's near-term priority is standing up its fixed-wireless constellation and generating cash flow before tackling direct-to-device, and speculated (based on the personal/commercial relationship between Abel Avellan and Jeff Bezos) that some form of AST-Kuiper partnership is plausible in the future.

Asked about data centers in space, he was skeptical, arguing they'd need to be positioned far beyond LEO (to avoid orbital debris/collision risk and to stay fixed toward the sun for power/cooling), and that reaching such high orbits is extremely costly (e.g., Falcon 9/Falcon Heavy boosters going to high-GEO-type orbits are typically expended, not recovered).

Responding to charts circulating that group AST with pre-revenue/speculative names like Oclo and IonQ, he rebutted by comparing 2030 consensus estimates: AST is projected to generate over $6 billion of revenue and over $5.5 billion of EBITDA in 2030, versus a few hundred million in revenue and roughly $100 million EBITDA for some of the quantum-computing names it gets lumped with.

Rumors had suggested the ISRO/LVM3 launch of FM1 could occur in November rather than the community's earlier assumption of January; Kook personally believes Falcon 9 launches from Florida will happen first, but says he could be wrong.

FM2 is expected to ship this weekend/soon by truck to Cape Canaveral, Florida; Kook says he'd prefer confirmation only after it has actually arrived, for operational-security reasons.

Per a graphic from the analyst 'Katsi': FM1 was boxed/tagged and shipped to India in October; FM2 is scheduled to ship this month; FM3 through FM5 are flowing through the production/shipping system; a possible scenario has FM2 launching alongside a combined 3-4 satellite shot for FM3 and FM5 on a dedicated Falcon 9 launch in December, followed by FM1's ISRO launch in January.

Anpanman has built a recurring chart mapping Starlink/SpaceX operational milestones to SpaceX's implied valuation over time, which Kook and Anpanman use as an analogy for how AST SpaceMobile's own milestone execution could drive its share price.

Using rough, admittedly made-up figures, Kook estimates SpaceX's launch business alone (roughly 120 launches/year at about $70 million per launch sticker price, ~$8.4 billion) isn't enough by itself to justify a half-trillion-dollar valuation; he attributes the bulk of SpaceX's value to Starlink, which he guesses has about 5 million subscribers and roughly $1,000/year ARPU (~$5 billion revenue) plus additional government revenue (e.g. Starshield), putting total Starlink-related revenue at over $10 billion.

Kook argues AST SpaceMobile is now at a stage analogous to SpaceX's own inflection point — when large-scale satellites were in orbit and regulatory approvals were secured — right before SpaceX's valuation went from roughly $40-50 billion to a quarter-trillion and eventually half a trillion dollars.

The stock's recent move from about $40 to roughly $87 in aftermarket trading reflects, in Kook's view, the market recognizing there's 'no showstopper' on the new satellite form factor; he says the next thing the market wants to see to push valuation further is actual revenue turning on.

Kook runs through a sequence of major uncertainties he says have now been resolved for AST SpaceMobile: can the company finance itself (yes), did the satellite prototype work (yes), will regulators permit the service (yes), and will major mobile carriers (MNOs) actually sign on — citing that the market had debated whether Verizon would 'bail' on AST SpaceMobile before Verizon's deal came through and the stock jumped.

Kook expects a 'flurry' of additional definitive commercial agreements (DAs) with carriers ahead, but believes the market may eventually stop rewarding each new DA announcement and instead wait to see roughly 20 satellites in orbit and revenue actually flowing before re-rating the stock sharply higher; he is unsure whether that re-rating pressure builds around $85/share or $150/share, but believes the resolution window is within about one year.

Kook cites commentator Kevin Chen's 'dam breaking' analogy: AST SpaceMobile's MNO deals have been 'wiring' cash flow and go-to-market infrastructure for roughly seven years even though revenue hasn't yet flowed through the P&L.

Kook argues that for MNO partners like AT&T and Verizon, revenue-sharing with AST SpaceMobile is largely incremental revenue with little added cost, pushing back on bears who frame carrier competition/pushback as a risk.

Kook concludes that Bell Canada wouldn't be discussing specific pricing publicly unless a definitive commercial agreement (DA) with AST SpaceMobile were imminent, expecting one 'any day now.'

Kook models AST SpaceMobile's core capacity constraint as analogous to a solar company — capacity is bounded by satellite solar power/processing bandwidth on the chips, not by user count — meaning the network's economics depend on modeling concurrent usage (demand), not just subscriber counts.

Because a $10-15/month consumer plan is 'divorced' from actual data usage (most users rarely need satellite coverage), Kook believes AST SpaceMobile can oversell its data capacity by roughly 100-200% or more (versus only 2-5% typical oversell on an airline flight), implying an effective realized wholesale price that could reach $50-100 per gigabyte of actual data delivered, versus the $2/gigabyte assumption he currently uses in his own models.

An X account, 'ASTS Investors,' published analysis (linked by Kook) estimating a path to roughly $5 billion of revenue from the US market alone; Kook says he has independently arrived at similar figures.

Kook says he recently did unpublished due diligence valuing the Ligado spectrum purely as a bandwidth/capacity asset and arrived at 'huge numbers,' which he views as a reasonable floor revenue estimate; he is holding off publishing new DD while the stock is rallying so as not to 'add fuel to the fire.'

Kook frames AST SpaceMobile's current roughly $35-40 billion valuation against potential future revenue scenarios of $5-20 billion, and separately cautions against ever shorting a growth stock purely on valuation grounds, citing Palantir as an example where the market is pricing in a growth trajectory that's easy to underestimate.

Kook recaps analyst Katsi's theory (from the prior week) that MNOs tend to sign their definitive commercial agreement (DA) with AST SpaceMobile only once their own spectrum position is locked down, which Kook uses to explain the timing of Verizon's DA (it reportedly came after Verizon's spectrum situation was resolved).

Anpanman reminded listeners that SatCo, the Vodafone-AST SpaceMobile European joint venture, now has roughly 21 MNOs signed up and working with it, though Kook says he isn't certain of the exact current count.

An X account, 'Mega Constellations,' noted that competitors Skylo and EchoStar are set to lose (have expiring) S-band spectrum licenses in Europe; Kook argues this creates an opportunity for AST SpaceMobile, since a broadband-capable system like AST's should be able to outbid narrowband operators for renewed spectrum access.

Kook reiterates his thesis that AST SpaceMobile is effectively a 'spectrum treasury company' — able to aggregate underused/hard-to-use spectrum cheaply (as it did with the Ligado deal) because it is the only operator that can practically utilize it, then monetize that spectrum through its existing MNO partnerships; he contrasts this with Dish Network's Charlie Ergen, who accumulated spectrum but had no efficient way to deploy it and became financially cornered.

If his 'spectrum treasury' thesis is correct, Kook argues it supports a valuation path toward half a trillion to a trillion dollars for AST SpaceMobile, driven by the ability to aggregate spectrum globally and monetize it through MNO subscriber access.

Kook says there is a 'strong suspicion' the company will soon land a Saudi Arabian contract, and recalls that a former Rakuten board member named Tarek, previously a proponent of AST SpaceMobile, left Rakuten to reportedly become chief technology officer of Saudi Aramco, where he would need connectivity solutions for remote oil-field assets.

Kook floats the idea, without confirmation, that the Trump administration could push for a direct US government strategic investment or equity stake in AST SpaceMobile in exchange for the company's participation in the 'Golden Dome' missile-defense program, drawing a parallel to the Pentagon's reported effort to diversify away from sole reliance on SpaceX after past friction with Elon Musk; Kook says he doesn't know if this will happen but views it as a scenario that would meaningfully reduce tail risk for short sellers if it did.

Kook argues Europe is increasingly recognizing gaps in its own defense command-and-control capabilities, citing the war in Ukraine (Starlink's important role, and the risk of being denied access to it) as a wake-up call; he characterizes Europe's own IRIS² satellite system as potentially flawed.

Kook positions Vodafone's SatCo joint venture as well-suited to European 'data sovereignty' requirements (data must stay within the continent when serving European customers), calling this a key differentiator versus IRIS².

Kook argues AST SpaceMobile's architecture avoids this vulnerability because it encrypts data directly from the phone to the satellite using the same encryption standards as terrestrial cell networks, and uses tight phased-array beamforming that isolates signals to specific devices, making eavesdropping much harder than on traditional satellite relay systems.

Anpanman flagged that two BlueBird satellites have been observed flying in close formation, which the community believes is testing position-navigation-timing (PNT) and radar applications, potentially enabling high-resolution radar backup capability.

Boeing is launching a new family of tiltrotor combat drones; citing a conversation with a military contact, Kook argues helicopters are becoming unusable in contested areas (per lessons from Ukraine) and that these drones will need reliable non-terrestrial connectivity, which he suggests AST SpaceMobile is well positioned to provide.

Palmer Luckey's company is developing an 'Eagle Eye' warfighter augmentation helmet platform integrating mission command and AI; Kook speculates it will require small, reliable broadband satellite connectivity (rather than a large, reflective Starlink-style terminal or a slow narrowband link), and notes Palmer Luckey is an AST SpaceMobile investor, speculating that Abel Avellan and Luckey may be in talks about integration.

Kook says he could personally see a scenario where AST SpaceMobile shares are eventually worth $500 to $2,500 per share, explicitly framing this as a long-run possibility ('not going to happen overnight') rather than a near-term prediction, and loosely compares it to how few people predicted ServiceNow would become a $1,000 stock.

Kook cites Kevin Chen's observation that investors who are very close to a story (i.e., who have done extensive research) can mistakenly convince themselves that well-known future catalysts are already 'priced in.' Kook agrees, citing his own expectation that stock reactions to a FirstNet contract or additional MNO definitive agreements (DAs) will still be meaningful when they land, even though the space-mob community treats them as inevitable.

Kook reflects that the most-informed, highest-conviction holders (like himself and the 'space mob' community) often run out of capital to buy more right when their conviction is highest, meaning the marginal buyer/seller setting the stock's price at any moment tends to be less informed; he says this dynamic has caused sharp selloffs in the past (e.g., the stock falling from around $40 to around $20 when the community was already fully invested) but can also work in investors' favor on the upside, as happened over the past year and a half as many predicted catalysts materialized.

Kook notes new videos show SpaceX's Starship looking visibly damaged/worn after landing, raising questions in his mind about how economical Starship will really be once refurbishment costs and payload utilization (dollar-per-kilogram efficiency) are factored in versus Falcon 9; he says this remains an open, undetermined question rather than a conclusion.

Anpanman said this is a fair argument to a degree and that he's told people in Spaces all along that, depending on personal financial situation and exposure, it's always good to reevaluate a position given how much the stock has run.

He recommends a simple framework: take out your original cost basis (and taxes owed) and let the remainder ride; position sizes he's seen range from a few percentage points of net worth up to 80% for some long-time holders, which he says did not come from irresponsible behavior but from very early investment that compounded.

He extended the tax discussion to retirement accounts (traditional IRA/401k), suggesting that at retirement, someone in a high-tax state like New York or California might consider relocating to a state like Tennessee, Florida, or Texas before taking withdrawals to avoid state/city tax on the gains.

He suggested that once someone is financially independent with an outsized AST SpaceMobile position relative to a mortgage (e.g., a position grown to $1.5 million against a $300,000 remaining mortgage on a $600,000 house), it's not a bad idea to monetize a portion to pay off the mortgage.

He said his general advice has been to take out your original pre-investment net worth once a position grows large (e.g., from $1 million net worth to a $5 million position) and let the rest ride.

He argued that deep due diligence creates strong attachment to a stock, which outsiders label as a 'cult'; people who don't own the stock tend to root for it to fail out of jealousy/envy, and dismiss reasons the company doesn't have revenue yet or will 'get crushed by Starlink.'

He noted that after a drawdown (e.g., from $100 to $36), investors who felt on top of the world start blaming management ('Abel needs to tweet,' 'why is the satellite delayed') rather than recognizing normal volatility.

Anpanman said that when the r/ACDSpaceMobile (AST SpaceMobile) subreddit is in full despair ('bloody murder'), that has historically marked a bottom; conversely, when known bears like Stone Fox Capital, 'Pivot Capital' (who he says has mysteriously disappeared), or Onada Capital come out doing victory-lap 'I told you so' tweets, that also tends to mark a bottom.

He argued there is no longer a realistic 'zero' scenario for AST SpaceMobile: the company is well capitalized, has satellites in production, and has launch already paid for, contrasting this with 2022 when the company was 'running on the seat of our pants' during the BlueWalker 3 launch with little cash cushion.

He said the company currently has two satellites, FM1 and FM2, expected to launch almost simultaneously, so if something happens to one, the other should still proceed; he estimated a launch or satellite failure might cause a 20-40% stock drawdown rather than a wipeout.

He said at ~$100 the company has an estimated $1.5-2 billion in cash, potential Golden Dome-related defense opportunity, 8 defense contracts, definitive commercial agreements with Rakuten, Verizon, AT&T, Vodafone, Google, and American Tower, a Bell Canada relationship, a possible upcoming Saudi Telecom deal, positive testing results, and is on the cusp of FCC US market access approval — framing it as comparing a company 'on the cusp of bankruptcy' at $5 to one 'about to cure cancer' at $100.

He argued retail investors can tolerate 10-20% portfolio drawdowns without consequence (aside from a spouse's reaction), whereas at a hedge fund/'pod shop,' a 5-7% drawdown gets capital cut and a 10% drawdown can end a team's mandate, so hedge fund commentators' risk framing doesn't directly apply to retail.

He described a pattern where people who sell (e.g., half a position at $70, the rest at $80) later start publicly emphasizing risk/reward concerns and 'the stock went up too fast' arguments as post-hoc justification, which he considers disingenuous compared to genuinely disclosing a sale.

He recounted a member of a private Twitter chat who was an outspoken bull and, within about a week, turned to spreading FUD about delays and the AST5000 ASIC; it later emerged he had secretly sold his entire position around $30 before the stock ripped higher, and out of FOMO tried to talk the stock back down so he could rebuy, before eventually leaving the chat and deleting his Twitter account out of self-awareness/shame.

He generalized this as a recurring pattern: people who sell and then feel regret often become more 'balanced' or negative to rationalize their decision, which he said is natural human psychology and not something he faults people for, but readers should recognize the motivation behind the shift.

He said the most vocal, sensational Twitter voices during turbulence are often people long short-dated calls or puts, who become extremely vocal ('management needs to do something,' or 'Verizon's going to walk away') depending on which way they need the stock to move.

He described people who sold covered calls near $50-70 (e.g., $60/$70 strikes for $2-4 premium) turning bearish and citing Starlink competition or launch-capacity doubts once the stock ripped through their strikes; he referenced seeing similar complaints on WallStreetBets.

He said Stone Fox Capital, a Seeking Alpha contributor and AST SpaceMobile bear for roughly the past year to year and a half, has low engagement and touts 50,000 Seeking Alpha followers, but Anpanman questions his actual influence.

He explained that subscription-service sellers often lead with credibility-building lines like 'I bought this stock at $2' to build trust, and place recurring 'marker' tweets (e.g., repeated market-crash warnings) so they can later claim credit if proven right; he said Stone Fox Capital pointed back to an earlier warning when the stock fell to $36, though Anpanman attributed that drop to the SpaceX/EchoStar spectrum news rather than the warning itself.

He attributed the drop to $36 to the market's 'visceral reaction' to SpaceX acquiring EchoStar's AWS -H block spectrum, after which hedge funds long EchoStar shorted AST SpaceMobile as a pair trade down to $36, a trade he said has since badly backfired as the stock recovered.

He said hedge funds always talk their book regardless of long or short positioning, citing Bill Ackman going on CNBC to promote long positions or argue against government programs that fund companies he's short as a classic example.

He said hedge funds operate under different constraints (limited partners, risk parameters) than retail and often dismiss a 10-20% retail portfolio allocation to AST SpaceMobile as reckless, even though no hedge fund would run that concentrated a position themselves (he joked investor Ryan O'Connor might be an exception).

He argued the most vocal short-side Twitter accounts (e.g., 'Pivot Capital,' who he says vanished as AST ripped against him, or Onada Capital) tend to be the ones actually in trouble on their trade, using public negativity to try to sway sentiment in their favor.

He described an account called 'Grandma Party,' known since the 2020-2021 SPAC boom, who became relentlessly negative toward management ('complete scam,' calling for leadership's heads) once the stock fell into the single digits (roughly $5-7), despite Anpanman privately encouraging him to just sell if it was mentally tormenting him; the person refused, saying he'd never forgive himself if it later succeeded (which, in hindsight, was the financially correct call), but Anpanman said the public negativity likely pressured other holders to sell.

He argued against running a broadly diversified retail portfolio (15-20 names), saying retail investors have no edge managing that many names alongside a full-time job; he recommends either an S&P 500 index fund if time is limited, or a concentrated portfolio (e.g., 50% S&P plus 10% allocations to a handful of well-researched names), while explicitly warning against getting stock ideas from CNBC's Mad Money/Jim Cramer.

He advised that if someone wants to sell covered calls, they should only do so on part of a position, not the whole position, to avoid maximum regret if the stock rallies.

He recounted podcaster Tim Ferriss repeatedly calling SpaceX/Starlink overvalued as its valuation rose from roughly $10-20 billion through $100 billion, before eventually admitting (a few years ago) he was wrong as SpaceX reached an estimated $450-500 billion valuation and predicting Starlink would dominate communications; Anpanman used this as an analogy for how naysayers dismiss AST SpaceMobile using the 'Starlink will crush them' argument without acknowledging SpaceX/Starlink itself was once dismissed the same way against incumbents like ULA, Arianespace, and Roscosmos.

He said he still believes AST SpaceMobile will breach $100 this week, and noted that the Antonov aircraft carrying BlueBird 6 has now arrived in India ahead of its launch.

AST SpaceMobile traded as low as $75-76 the prior Friday amid a broader market selloff tied to a potential Trump tariff war with China; he speculated some of the selling was margin-related and noted short sellers who shorted the dip 'not looking so smart today.'

BlueBird 6, the satellite loaded on an Antonov cargo aircraft, was picked up over the weekend and is now on its way to India; BlueBird 7 appeared close to being finished and was expected to ship via flatbed truck to Cape Canaveral, with a company PR likely to follow.

Anpanman frames space, and direct-to-device communications specifically, as an increasingly contested strategic sector versus China and Russia; Russia's anti-satellite weapons capability is flagged as a major risk (Kessler syndrome fears if a space conflict generates debris), while China is developing its own direct-to-cell constellation reportedly modeled on AST's Block 1 satellites, though he cautioned it's unclear how much is real versus 'vaporware.'

He expects the Western/allied direct-to-device market to be dominated by AST SpaceMobile and Starlink, with AST currently working with AT&T and Verizon and Starlink working with T-Mobile; he stated AST has 50 MNO partners versus Starlink's roughly 9 (counting Boost Mobile), while China will likely build a separate constellation serving countries like Iran, Russia, and North Korea plus some developing nations.

Unlike large defense primes (Lockheed Martin, Boeing) that are already de facto government-backed via large contract revenue, or SpaceX (already past 'max Q' commercially and heavily government-contracted), Anpanman argues newer space companies like AST SpaceMobile, Rocket Lab, and BlackSky (which he said gets over 90% of revenue from the US government) are earlier-stage and could be candidates for a government stake or loans to lower their cost of capital.

Anpanman said Scott Wisniewski has publicly disclosed AST sees 10 non-communication use cases for defense, and noted SDA, DIU, and multiple armed forces branches are testing/working with AST SpaceMobile; he believes AST will be an important, potentially critical piece of the Golden Dome missile-defense initiative, though this is his own inference, not a confirmed award.

Anpanman initially said AST has 6 military contracts, then later in the Q&A corrected himself after a listener comment, saying it might actually be 8, flagging he 'might be behind' on the exact count.

Anpanman estimated the probability of a US government stake in AST SpaceMobile at around 20-25%, up from something he would have dismissed 4-5 months earlier; he said the probability would rise further depending on how Golden Dome and other defense contracts unfold, and could effectively be announced alongside a Golden Dome award.

A listener (Dylan) asked Grok to estimate the odds of a US government passive stake in ASTS; Grok cited AST's DoD/SDA/DIU relationships and the Intel/MP Materials precedents and put the odds at 10-20% with high uncertainty, which Anpanman said broadly agreed with his own view, though he'd lean toward the higher end (~20%).

Anpanman explained the 'lower cost of capital' mechanism with a hypothetical: if the government bought AST shares at a 10% discount (e.g., $80) and the stock later doubled to $180 on the validation signal, future equity raises at $180 would be far less dilutive than raising at the pre-stake price, effectively halving the company's cost of equity capital.

In response to a listener question asking why the government would take equity on top of contracts, Anpanman said the Trump administration has shown a preference for taking equity stakes (not just issuing contracts) because it lets them claim a political/financial win if the stock appreciates, similar to how a forced 10% Tesla stake on its original government loans would have been extremely lucrative in hindsight.

Anpanman said he expects a government stake to be passive with no board seat, similar to prior stakes in MP Materials and Intel, and that it would not come with 'strings attached' beyond signaling.

On the risk that a government stake could jeopardize AST's international MNO relationships, Anpanman argued the SatCo European joint venture with Vodafone (majority-owned by Vodafone, AST a minority owner) is structured to be governance-ring-fenced from AST, preserving European sovereignty concerns even if the US government held a stake in AST itself.

Anpanman cited AST's short interest at roughly 42 million shares as of the day of recording, while noting uncertainty about how much of that reflects convertible-note-related short positions versus a smaller outright short (guessing it could be as low as 10 million or as high as 30 million); he argued a government-stake announcement, or even a rumor of one (e.g., a Wall Street Journal report), could force a severe short squeeze, calling it potentially 'career-ending' for short sellers.

Anpanman ran an audience poll asking where ASTS would trade if a major outlet reported the government was considering a 5-10% passive stake; the highest-voted responses were around $150-$200, roughly double the price at the time.

Anpanman said AST's market cap was about $33 billion at the time of recording, and speculated the market may be partially rewriting/discounting the stock's valuation following the recent Ligado bankruptcy-court approval, valuing the Ligado spectrum access alone at roughly $15-20 billion, implying roughly $10-15 billion of remaining equity value attributable to the rest of the business.

Anpanman argued the market is shifting from valuing AST off trailing financials (near-zero historical revenue) toward valuing it off future 2026-2028 cash flows, drawing an analogy to the Alaska Pipeline being valued on future oil flows before it carried any oil, and to SpaceX being valued on its eventual potential rather than then-current financials as it grew from roughly $10 billion to nearly $500 billion in valuation.

Anpanman said that once regular satellite launches begin, the cadence should be roughly one payload every 1 to 1.5 months on average, giving investors something tangible to track as satellite economics get underwritten one by one.

Anpanman said he could see the stock potentially double by mid-2026, or possibly more, driven by the market increasingly pricing in AST's three business verticals — commercial MNO service, government/first-responder, and defense (including any Golden Dome contribution) — though he stressed this is hard to pin down precisely.

Anpanman responded that AST SpaceMobile has the potential to become the largest wireless carrier in the world with over a billion subscribers, which he speculated could be worth roughly 10x today's market cap (about $320 billion) or more, though he wasn't sure if that takes 10 or 15+ years; he compared the opportunity to Netflix's subscriber growth and cited Netflix's current market cap of about $518 billion as a scale reference.

Anpanman said it would depend on whether the acquirer is US-friendly and whether the US government is comfortable with it — he thought the government would likely view an Apple acquisition positively, but a foreign buyer would likely be off the table if the US held a stake; he added that AST's dual-class share structure (Abel Avellan's supervoting control) exists specifically to prevent an outside party from forcing a sale, and that he personally believes AST's highest value is in remaining independent and neutral (not owned by Apple, Google, Meta, or Amazon) so it can keep serving many MNOs and tech companies as a neutral connectivity provider.

Anpanman closed by reiterating that a US government stake or loan is something investors should be prepared for, especially around the timing of Golden Dome contract awards, but cautioned that the ongoing government shutdown has delayed award announcements; he expects to learn more about pending awards, including Golden Dome-related ones, in the coming weeks and months.

Anpanman said he expects additional commercial agreements 'any day now,' naming Bell Canada and Saudi Telecom (stc) as likely near-term candidates for further news.

Kook recounts telling a friend that a year ago there was a real chance ASTS could go to zero, but says the stock's return distribution has fundamentally changed since then.

Kook frames AST SpaceMobile through Peter Thiel's 'Zero to One' lens — an idea dismissed as crazy by industry experts (including AT&T initially) except that Abel Avellan's leadership quality won them over — arguing the company took a 'no half measures,' first-principles approach unlike hybrid solutions.

FM2 is expected to leave Cape Canaveral-bound by truck 'any day,' which Kook frames as a test of the 'everything is priced in' (Kevin Mack) theory; a truck photo passing the Cape Canaveral sign would signal an imminent Falcon 9 launch, which Kook says could happen before the ISRO launch (which he'd personally prefer given greater launch-date certainty).

Kook noticed unrelated Antonov cargo being unloaded in Midland and speculates (without full confirmation) that these were critical-path satellite-packing components not yet vertically integrated in-house; if true, he believes this could unlock faster satellite production (FM3, FM4, etc. leaving the factory gate) within about a month.

Kook describes the current phase as the constellation moving past 'constellation constipation' — his term (coined roughly a month earlier) for the shakedown period needed to secure external critical-path parts before production lines can run at full speed.

AST announced a new ATM equity program this week, which initially drove the stock down in the morning; Kook says the company has roughly $1.5 billion of cash but would burn through it quickly funding full constellation buildout, so raising more is prudent rather than risking being under-capitalized against a well-resourced competitor like SpaceX.

Kook argues AST is now 'dollar for dollar, probably the most resourced aerospace startup in the world' and has less risky capex than SpaceX, which carries large capital commitments beyond its direct-to-cell constellation (e.g., Starship).

Kook says he doesn't know whether AST will ultimately pay the Ligado prepayment in cash versus drawing on the previously planned non-recourse debt facility, but notes the balance sheet flexibility now gives the company real optionality on how to finance it.

Kook frames the Verizon deal as locking in roughly 60% of the US wireless market for AST, which he calls a 'monopoly threshold,' arguing this validates a thesis that AST could achieve a similar monopoly position globally and seals a durable commercial moat beyond just technical/regulatory validation.

Kook notes the Verizon deal press release included no new prepayment, unlike what he had personally expected (a large upsized prepayment); he theorizes prepayment size and revenue share move inversely — the less prepayment AST asks for, the higher revenue share it can negotiate — and speculates AST may now be foregoing prepayments (funding itself via the ATM instead) in exchange for a materially higher revenue share from MNOs.

A Vodafone update/testing slide (spotted by X account Rocket Tank123) showed S-band being used in testing, even though AST doesn't have S-band spectrum yet — Kook interprets this as a signal S-band will be used in Europe, likely via the Vodafone/AST SatCo joint venture.

A Vodafone update also referenced a technology hub in Malaga, Spain, in partnership with Meta, tied to getting WhatsApp to work over AST's satellite service; Kook cites this alongside Google's existing investment as evidence that major tech companies ('Mag 7') are increasingly engaging directly with AST's technology, and speculates Apple and Amazon partnerships are likely to follow.

Kook flags a DoD program called 'Silent Swarm' as a new defense communications initiative he believes AST is well-suited to address, and notes an X account 'Tough4R,' which he believes has a military background, has been highlighting relevant contract specifications.

Per an update from X user Kevin Chen, reply/response filings on AST's FCC application for its full SCS constellation (up to 248 satellites) are due October 23, 2025; Kook speculates the application could be approved before the end of 2025, which he expects would be a major de-risking event refuting bears who claimed the technology would never be approved.

Kook connects the Vodafone S-band testing-slide sighting to the earlier Ligado/Inmarsat adversary proceeding, in which Inmarsat had tried to preclude AST from expanding internationally in S-band (a condition AST denied it would accept), plus AST's purchased ITU S-band priority rights, arguing these pieces support a broader 'AST as the first spectrum treasury company' thesis he first raised as a joke.

Kook speculates that spectrum acquisition itself could end up being a core, possibly the largest, value driver for a company he believes could become worth multiple hundreds of billions of dollars.

Citing X account 'Catsy,' Kook describes a 'spectrum enablement thesis': Verizon signed its DA with AST before finalizing a spectrum deal with Dish/EchoStar, and AT&T had already signed its AST DA before closing its own spectrum deal — suggesting MNOs act on AST partnerships before their own spectrum moves, a pattern Kook says is worth monitoring closely.

Citing telecom industry veteran Joe Madden, Kook notes AST's ability to receive uplink signals through roofs and vehicles dramatically expands its addressable market, since 80% of traffic is indoors and at least half of outdoor traffic occurs inside a car, train, or other vehicle — markets Kook says line-of-sight-dependent systems like Starlink, Apple, and Skylo cannot serve as well.

Barclays forecasts the direct-to-device market will be worth $30 billion a year by 2034, with AST likely the dominant player in what Barclays expects to be a duopoly; Kook believes, by analogy to SaaS and cloud computing TAM history, that this $30 billion estimate will prove too conservative and the market will both grow faster and larger than consensus expects.

Kook cites the Palisades wildfire aftermath, in which the LA Fire Department is adding network redundancy tools including Starlink after communications failures during the fire, as an example of expanding TAM for satellite connectivity broadly (including AST) beyond dead-zone coverage into emergency-response and first-responder use cases.

Kook highlights a bullish investor letter from '10 West' (brought to his attention by Redrum), which frames AST as 'selling photons' — the most efficient way to leverage electromagnetic spectrum anywhere on Earth — analogizing it to how Amazon evolved beyond being a bookstore and Nvidia beyond being a gaming-chip company.

Kook notes the rapidly expanding launch industry (a Blue Origin New Glenn 2 rollout video, and a SpaceX Starship launch attempt the next day) as a positive supply-side development for AST, since he views launch services as a structurally weak business that will have ample capacity for AST to rely on as it launches well beyond 96 and likely beyond 248 satellites.

He speculates that with this definitive agreement, some portion -- possibly all -- of Verizon's prior commercial prepayments may now be released, though he frames this as uncertain ('I think').

With Verizon and AT&T both signed, Anpanman says AST has now locked up roughly 66-70% ('two-thirds, 66%, 70%') of what he calls the most profitable wireless market in the world, since both carriers contributed their 850 MHz low-band spectrum.

He argues the deal was not fully priced into the stock because uncertainty had been rising with each passing month since the May 2024 MOU (a year and 4 months of waiting), including real risk that Verizon could have gone with Starlink instead.

He credits Scott Wisniewski, President and Chief Strategy Officer, with giving the market advance warning about two weeks earlier that a handful of agreements were coming soon, which led to Space Mob speculation ('Verizon soon') ahead of the announcement.

He argues Verizon's due diligence over 16 months included testing on Verizon's own network, spectrum, and phones, plus review of AST's funding plans and satellite launch/ramp roadmap -- meaning Verizon's decision today reflects far more information than it had at the May 2024 MOU stage.

He believes Verizon was also in discussions with Starlink during this period and chose AST anyway, calling the signing 'voting with their feet' and a validation that ripples out to regulators (FCC) and other MNOs.

He compares this to the May 2024 AT&T/Verizon MOU announcement, which he says re-rated the stock from roughly the $8-9 range (he initially misspoke '$13') up to a peak near $39, settling around $26.

He separately recalls that during the first (Block 1) launch campaign, the stock went from about $13 up to as high as $39 and settled around $26 -- he presents both the May 2024 news and the September 2024 launch as having driven similar-looking re-ratings, without fully reconciling the two accounts of the starting price.

Kevin Mack reportedly said the prior day that he doesn't think recent stock strength is short covering but rather genuine re-rating as investors see improving fundamentals, a view Anpanman agrees with.

Bell Canada, a strategic investor in AST, announced successful direct-to-cell testing results from over the summer; Anpanman expects a Bell Canada definitive commercial agreement to be announced within the next few weeks.

He notes that around the time of the Verizon news, the Canadian Prime Minister met with Trump, who made comments about Golden Dome covering Canada; Anpanman argues AST is well positioned for this because it holds Ligado L-band spectrum covering Canada, whereas Starlink's EchoStar-acquired spectrum only covers the US and it would need to separately pursue Canadian spectrum rights.

He says the company (and Scott Wisniewski in particular) has expressed high conviction that AST will win Golden Dome-related defense work, though the timing is unclear ('up for debate').

He calls a recent Starlink-publicized 'first video call' demonstration 'absolute bullshit,' arguing it involved two engineers standing next to each other near a building (possibly in Washington) within Wi-Fi/normal coverage, and both could have been routed through the same satellite -- not a genuine test of dead-zone, long-distance connectivity the way he believes AST's testing works.

He argues Starlink's ramp-up of PR (dumbed-down apps offering roughly hundreds of kilobytes to half a megabit per second of throughput) is a good but non-broadband service, and that heavy Starlink PR activity is itself a signal that AST has something coming, since the industry is small and competitors likely have visibility into each other's timing (e.g., via shared SpaceX launch scheduling).

He calls out short sellers who drove the stock down about 6% intraday after the ATM announcement the prior day, naming 'Pivotal Capital' (and mentioning 'Adada Capital') as consistently wrong short-seller/FUD accounts he views as a reliable contrarian buy signal.

He notes AST put in place a new ATM program the day before the Verizon announcement, arguing this was deliberate ('the A-team') PR sequencing by Scott Wisniewski, and that the first satellite constellation is already fully funded.

He argues the ATM proceeds are intended for other opportunities beyond the core constellation -- citing the January 2025 Ligado spectrum deal as a past example of accretive spending, and pointing to the company's Homestead, Florida manufacturing space as being for defense (not commercial) production, which he says will require pre-funded capex if AST wins Golden Dome or other defense awards.

He pushes back on retail investors who view dilution as inherently bad, arguing growth companies need capital to pursue opportunities until they become self-funding, and that the market tends to reward AST's ATM raises because investors increasingly trust the capital will be used for highly accretive purposes (drawing a parallel to how Rocket Lab holders view that company's ATM usage).

He references a conversation with Kook the previous night and comments from 'Reformed Trader' about how high the stock could go, saying a $500 price target is hard to comprehend but not impossible under the right conditions.

He frames the current market as accommodative (heading toward zero-interest-rate-policy-like conditions amid expected rate cuts tied partly to Japan) and notes the US President closely watches and appears to actively manage market sentiment, which he says favors speculative, long-duration growth stories getting pulled forward in valuation, similar to AI, modular nuclear, quantum computing, and solar names.

He reiterates his prior public price target of roughly $100 once the launch campaign gets underway (up from an original post targeting $70 at the low end and $79 as his 'PIMM' estimate off a $49 base), noting the stock has already moved past that base without even factoring in today's Verizon news, Bell Canada, FirstNet, or the pending US commercial access decision.

He argues that in direct-to-device broadband connectivity there are only two ways to invest: AST SpaceMobile directly, or Starlink via a special-purpose vehicle costing about $220 to access (with SpaceX valued around $450 billion); he contrasts this with sectors like AI/nuclear/quantum that have many ways to express the same thesis.

He cites AST's positioning as working with over 50 MNOs globally covering roughly 3 billion subscribers, having US regulatory backing, pending European backing, and completed Japan regulatory clearance, plus Ligado L-band spectrum he speculates could be worth $15-20 billion once fully deployed, against a company market cap he estimated recently at around $26 billion.

He argues '100% connectivity' will become a hard regulatory requirement rather than an aspiration, citing a conversation with an unnamed telecom industry consultant who used a Domino's Pizza delivery-drone example: the FAA would require guaranteed connectivity through every dead spot (not just GPS-based autonomous fallback) before approving such drone operations, given liability risks like a drone landing on a child if connectivity is lost.

He extends this to autonomous trucks/vehicles, arguing regulators will require a human operator with a 'kill switch' at all times unless 100% connectivity (no dead zones) can be guaranteed, which terrestrial towers alone cannot provide due to coverage gaps and uneconomic build-out in rural areas.

He argues AST's model -- using MNO cellular spectrum to fill terrestrial dead zones plus its own Ligado L-band MSS spectrum covering the entirety of the US and Canada -- gives AT&T and Verizon a way to offer MNOs, car makers, drone makers, and robot makers guaranteed 100% coverage to satisfy regulators like the FAA and (he speculates) NHTSA.

He speculates that with roughly 3 billion MNO subscribers globally, the number of connected devices needing this kind of coverage (phones, watches, AirTags, cars, drones, robots) could reach 15-20 billion, calling this a made-up illustrative figure ('you make up the number').

He notes AST's large phased-array satellites and spectral efficiency allow signal penetration through walls, houses, and car roofs, citing (from memory, unsourced) that about 80% of device usage happens inside homes and roughly half of the remaining 20% (about 10% of total usage) happens in cars.

Referencing an investor letter from 'Paranya' (posted the previous night) and mentions from 'Kasey,' he says AST's satellites can be used in pairs for radar imaging and tracking with notably high accuracy, tying into defense/Golden Dome applications and resilient, jam-resistant multi-network connectivity for battlefield use cases (name-checking Anduril as an example of connected defense systems).

He speculates China is developing competing Starlink and direct-to-device satellite services (citing a satellite reportedly resembling AST's Block 1 design), predicting a bifurcated global market between US/allied users of Starlink and AST versus a China-aligned bloc (potentially including Russia, Iran, North Korea, and some African nations).

He closes by listing near-term catalysts: FM1 and FM2 satellite launches expected in the next 2-3 months, FM3 through FM5 launches, and hopes for 2-3 total launches before year-end as part of the broader multi-launch campaign.

Additional catalysts he lists: a Bell Canada definitive commercial agreement, Golden Dome or other defense contract awards, additional MNO partnerships, and a FirstNet investment or contract that he says AST is close to securing.

Anpanman says some Reddit users panicked, mistaking the incentive plan for a capital raise; he clarifies it is normal-course authorization of shares for employee RSUs/stock options to align staff incentives with shareholders, not a dilutive fundraising event.

Anpanman notes the company has historically preferred ATM offerings over one-off marketed equity offerings (a 'brutal' marketed deal in 2022-2023 pushed them toward ATMs), since marketed offerings to institutions can be priced at meaningful discounts (3-5% for well-followed names, 10-30%+ for more speculative ones), whereas ATMs let the company sell opportunistically.

As an illustrative example, Anpanman notes that if ASTS were to double to $140/share and the company sold stock at that price, the implied dilution from an $800M raise would only be about 1.5%, since dilution scales inversely with share price.

While management has said the initial 45-60 satellite constellation is fully funded based on the company's current capital position, Anpanman argues other opportunities -- FirstNet funding, Import-Export Bank funding, other commercial prepayments, and defense awards -- may require upfront capex the company doesn't yet have committed.

He cites the Ligado spectrum deal (agreed in January 2025) as an example of an unforeseen, capital-intensive opportunity that required drawing on an SPV credit facility and issuing warrants, arguing similar unforeseen opportunities could arise again.

AST paid for its recent global S-band ITU spectrum rights acquisition partly in shares because the deal size was small enough to do so, but larger targets -- especially VC- or PE-backed ones -- may demand cash instead of stock, as with Rocket Lab's more acquisitive strategy.

If the Department of Defense/Department of War asks AST to build a dedicated satellite constellation using its technology, AST would receive government funding paid out over time but would need to pre-fund the upfront capex itself, which he views as a highly accretive use of capital.

Current Block 1 Bluebirds address low-band spectrum (600-900 MHz); because AST is pursuing Ligado L-band and S-band spectrum, a future satellite generation ('Block 3') will be needed to use mid-band spectrum -- likely a similar or possibly smaller array form factor than Block 1/2, since mid-band requires less array size, though the company may keep the same form factor for improved efficacy.

AST has already worked on 4th and 5th generation satellite designs, but Anpanman speculates that within the next quarter or two the company may start discussing expanding production facilities specifically to manufacture mid-band ('Block 3') satellites, potentially pulling forward that timeline given the 10-12/month production capacity Scott mentioned.

Anpanman argues the market's reaction to AST ATM announcements has shifted: previously (during a period of more retail ownership and business uncertainty, likened to Lucid) an ATM announcement might have caused a large sell-off, whereas now the market increasingly views additional capital as enabling execution on a large menu of accretive opportunities.

He compares AST's use of an ATM to fund opportunistic, value-accretive acquisitions (citing Ligado, potentially worth $12-15 billion once fully deployed, as the prime example) to Rocket Lab's acquisitive strategy, and contrasts it with Firefly, which issued stock to fund a defense-software acquisition shortly after missing earnings and seeing its stock drop into the $20s, resulting in more dilution than if it had priced the raise at $45-50.

Anpanman says the covering Scotiabank analyst was previously quite bullish on AST but turned markedly bearish over recent quarters; he speculates (without confirming) that short sellers who are Scotiabank clients may have influenced the shift, and states he believes the analyst's sell rating is wrong.

Despite the day's stock decline (down as much as 5% intraday, settling around 2-3% at points), Anpanman notes ASTS had only recently reached levels not seen since the prior Friday/Monday, framing the pullback as minor given the run-up.

Anpanman says his short-interest data feed has been unreliable recently, but as of the prior Friday, short interest had stayed roughly flat; he attributes the recent stock rally to genuine buying (long-only, momentum, or retail) rather than short covering.

Anpanman says he expects big news to drop any day, specifically commercial definitive agreements with two more MNOs -- one whose name starts with 'V' and one starting with 'B' -- from AST's roster of 50+ partners.

Anpanman notes Elon Musk was reportedly critical of this executive's prior stewardship at PayPal, suggesting strained relations between the two, but says because the new CEO has long sat on Verizon's board he is already well aware of the AST SpaceMobile relationship, so Anpanman has no concerns the partnership changes as a result — 'who knows, maybe it'll get tighter.'

Anpanman recalls that about a year to a year and a half earlier (around May, stock under $2), telling your past self the stock would be well north of $70 within that timeframe would have sounded impossible; he attributes the run to milestones including signing Verizon (locking up 2 of the top 3 US carriers) with a strategic investment, major FCC progress toward US commercial access, a more supportive FCC under the new administration, administration focus on defense use cases for space assets, satellites already in orbit, a large amount of capital raised toward the initial constellation, and being on the cusp of a multi-launch campaign expected in 'the next month or two.'

Anpanman raises the question of how much of the ASTS price is pricing in fundamentals versus overall market frothiness and speculation, and says that's a fair question for every investor to ask themselves.

Reformed Trader tweeted that, based on his chart/technical analysis, market conditions have the ingredients for ASTS to reach $500 a share — the first time Anpanman has seen a '$500 handle' floated; Anpanman says he is not a technical analyst himself and would take the call with a grain of salt, but could see it happening if the market gets frothy and the company keeps announcing near-term catalysts.

Anpanman references his own pinned-tweet analysis: during the prior launch campaign the stock ran from about $13 to a high of $39 (up ~200%) before settling around $26; applying a simple 61% eventual-settle move to a $49 starting price (the price at the time of that tweet) implies a target of roughly $79 after a successful upcoming launch, though he expects volatility and possible overshoot along the way.

Anpanman cites the Goldman Sachs 'most popular hedge fund longs vs. most shorted names' index as evidence the broader market looks frothy — that index has underperformed but is now catching back up to prior-year levels — and notes small caps (IWM) are only now catching up to large caps, which have been driven mainly by the 'Mag 7' stocks; he cautions investors to keep this broader frothiness in mind.

Anpanman and Kook have discussed that institutions are increasingly asking what AST SpaceMobile is and what it does, initially framing it as 'how do they compete with SpaceX,' but progressively understanding the story better as they dig in — Anpanman frames this as the start of a genuine institutional re-rating.

Using the consultant's rent-a-movie example (~5GB to deliver a $4 movie, or about 80 cents/GB), the consultant calculated SpaceX/Starlink's cost to deliver a gigabyte (factoring in satellite CapEx, launch, operations and eventual deorbiting) at around $4/GB, dropping to roughly $2-3/GB now that Starlink has acquired EchoStar spectrum.

By the same consultant's math, AST SpaceMobile's cost per gigabyte — helped by its large phased arrays and spectral efficiency, but including the fact that AST pays full retail price for launch — comes out to roughly $1.50-$2/GB, a meaningful cost advantage over Starlink despite Starlink's launch cost advantages, larger satellite count, and closer orbit.

Anpanman argues this cost structure supports attractive day-pass/premium pricing (e.g., $15-20 for a day pass, or $20/GB before throttling) since the service is used intermittently for dead zones rather than continuously.

The consultant emphasized that MNOs now evaluate direct-to-device satellite partners on whether they bring their own spectrum/capacity to the table, not just fill dead zones — satellite capacity can also offload congested dense-area networks (e.g., football stadiums).

Starlink bought 40 MHz of spectrum from EchoStar (reported at $19 billion) to offer to T-Mobile in the US and is pursuing S-band spectrum rights globally; AST SpaceMobile can offer up to 45 MHz of spectrum in the US and Canada to partners like Bell Canada, AT&T, and Verizon via its own deals (e.g., Ligado). The consultant framed bringing this kind of finite spectrum asset as a rising 'table stakes' cost of entry for any new direct-to-device competitor.

Per the consultant, AST's demonstrated spectral efficiency to date is about 3 megabits per hertz, versus roughly 2 megabits per hertz for Starlink — not even accounting for AST's low-band vs. Starlink's mid-band spectrum difference.

AST's founder Abel Avellan reportedly designed the system from the outset to work indoors on cellular low-band spectrum (600-900 MHz), building large, powerful arrays with enough link budget to overcome the roughly 60-70% signal loss through a roof or wall; Anpanman says even after that loss, AST's ~3 Mbps/Hz efficiency should still deliver usable data indoors or in a car, whereas Starlink's ~2 Mbps/Hz would likely drop below 1 Mbps/Hz indoors.

Anpanman notes Starlink's direct-to-cell service today is architected to work only on the 1.9 GHz PCS G block, with plans to expand onto the roughly 2 GHz mid-band spectrum acquired from EchoStar, while AST's first constellation targets low-band (600-900 MHz) for coverage/propagation and a future constellation will add L- and S-band (roughly 1.5-2.6 GHz) for capacity.

By contrast, Starlink's model is likened to roaming onto a separate network via an international eSIM — users lose native services like their existing phone number/texts until they reconnect to their home network; T-Mobile has reportedly dialed back branding it as 'Starlink service' in favor of 'T-Satellite' with a smaller 'powered by Starlink' mention.

The consultant agreed that data sovereignty is a major consideration for MNOs: on Starlink's network, subscriber data can be routed via Starlink's inter-satellite links and may not stay within the home country, whereas AST's MNO-core-integrated architecture keeps subscriber data with the MNO and within its own country — an issue Anpanman frames as especially important given precedents like satellite connectivity decisions affecting the war in Ukraine.

Under the AST model, the MNO retains ownership and control of the customer (billing, support, marketing, pricing), with AST acting as the underlying 'plumbing' leveraging the MNO's own spectrum plus AST's own spectrum; under the Starlink model, MNOs are described as more at Starlink's discretion for how roamed customers are handled and monetized.

The consultant's view is that Starlink is likely about a year into developing its own custom ASIC for its next-generation satellites (expected to support the newly acquired EchoStar spectrum), and that a full ASIC development cycle typically takes about 2-3 years — implying Starlink could be roughly 1-2 years away from having its own ASIC, similar to how long AST's own AST5000 ASIC took to develop.

Anpanman frames custom ASIC development as a major competitive moat, since FPGAs are expensive, inefficient, slower, and power-hungry in space, and building proprietary chips (not just launching a constellation) is a prerequisite for delivering real broadband speeds at a competitive cost.

The consultant, who visited AST's Midland, Texas facility, noted that Midland's oil-industry heritage has produced a large pool of highly skilled labor experienced in custom fabrication (CNC milling, carbon fiber work) — skills directly applicable to AST's vertically integrated satellite manufacturing.

The consultant recounted an Uber driver in Midland mentioning that four of their family members currently work at AST SpaceMobile, illustrating how central the company has become to the local labor market.

Per the consultant, MNOs weigh: (1) whether the satellite partner brings new spectrum/capacity, not just dead-zone coverage — a point Anpanman says the press largely missed until Starlink's EchoStar purchase made it obvious; (2) whether the service is true broadband; (3) whether the MNO can use its own branding versus a co-branded 'powered by' arrangement (contrasting AST's fully white-label approach, where end users won't know AST powers the service, with T-Mobile's now-downplayed 'powered by Starlink' branding).

The consultant said MNOs also need to be able to guarantee near-100% coverage/uptime for emerging use cases like autonomous delivery drones and self-driving trucks, because regulators (local government, FAA, and vehicle-safety regulators) won't approve unmanned vehicles that can lose connectivity in dead zones — framed as a large, underappreciated future demand driver for satellite backup coverage.

Anpanman argues that both casual/budget users (fine with occasional dead zones) and high-value users (traders, remote workers, businesses, and future autonomous-vehicle/IoT/drone applications) exist on a spectrum, and that many higher-value users would pay double their current plan — or a la carte fees like $10-30/day — for guaranteed connectivity, citing his own willingness to pay for Apple Watch family-location satellite service and in-flight Wi-Fi as examples.

Anpanman frames direct-to-device broadband from space as a two-company market: SpaceX/Starlink (combined enterprise value cited at about $450 billion, accessible to outside investors only via an SPV paying '2-and-20' type fees) versus AST SpaceMobile, a publicly traded pure-play he calls the current technology leader, working with about 50 MNOs.

Anpanman states Starlink has expanded from roughly 8-9 to about 9-10 mobile operator partners (now including Boost Mobile) with a combined subscriber base of just under 300 million, versus AST SpaceMobile's roughly 3 billion addressable subscribers across its MNO partner base.

Anpanman speculates AST could become the largest wireless carrier in the world by reach — perhaps 400-500 million subscribers, or even the first company to reach 1 billion wireless subscribers through its MNO relationships — while acknowledging not all of those subscribers would use the satellite service regularly; an audience member ('Tut') compared the potential economics to Netflix's subscription model.

Asked how to shift from 'letting it ride' to capital preservation after smashing expectations, Anpanman says options strategies exist (buying protection, or selling calls, which he calls generally a bad idea) but that simply selling a portion of the position is the easiest form of capital preservation, then riding the rest.

On the composition of short interest, Anpanman estimates (with explicit uncertainty — 'don't quote me on this') that roughly 10 million shares of short interest are tied to convertible-bond arbitrage hedges, some of which may have already been unwound as convert holders became more fundamentally bullish; he believes the remainder of the short interest is outright bearish positioning.

Anpanman recounts that some investors placed a pair trade — long EchoStar (as a 'SpaceX proxy') and short AST SpaceMobile around $36-40 — reasoning EchoStar would benefit from a Starlink partnership; with ASTS now around $74-75 and EchoStar roughly flat, he says that trade has been badly unprofitable for those investors.

On satellite/launch risk, Anpanman notes that with 13 planned launches expected to place roughly 50-60 satellites in orbit, a single satellite failure is now recoverable and expected, unlike earlier in the program when a failure of BlueWalker 3 or one of the first five Block 1 BlueBirds could have been an existential risk; he contrasts AST's 'get it right the first time' philosophy under Abel Avellan with Starlink's higher-volume, higher-defect-tolerant approach.

Since Indian rockets don't launch from Cape Canaveral, and Blue Origin's late-October Cape Canaveral launch is 'almost undoubtedly' not carrying FM-2, Kook infers FM-2 will fly on a Falcon 9, probably in November.

Kook reads this as confirmation that satellite-production 'debottlenecking' has largely concluded — the hardest part was engineering the first next-gen control satellites, and once that's done, subsequent units should roll off the line without a hitch — setting up a real launch cadence of Falcon 9 launches carrying 3-4 satellites and Blue Origin launches carrying 6-8 satellites.

The stock re-rated sharply on the FM-1/FM-2 news; Kook argues the market hadn't previously priced in the high confidence he and others already held (voiced on the prior week's Spaces) that FM-1 had cleared its issues, illustrating why simple 'the market is efficient' arguments (referencing commentator Kevin Mack) don't hold up well for a dynamic, uncertain story like AST SpaceMobile.

Kook highlights a Reddit thread by 'Tanner' (a petroleum engineer, self-doxed under username TKO/Tanner Kirk Otway) on operational scaling, arguing the warrant-exercise cash infusion roughly a year earlier was the catalyst that let the company 'step on the gas,' since capacity investment had previously been constrained by the balance sheet.

Kook reiterates his view that capital raises/dilution should be judged by whether they are NPV-accretive — i.e., whether raising money helps pull forward future growth value by more than the ownership percentage given up — rather than being reflexively criticized as dilutive.

Vodafone visited AST's Midland, Texas facility, which Kook says tipped him off in advance (before it was public) that FM-1 was about to ship — a call he says he took criticism for online before it was confirmed.

Vodafone is publicly discussing bringing AST's full solution to the European market via the SatCo joint venture; Kook frames this as building a 'European sovereign system' as a hedge against the EU's IRIS² satellite program, which he argues (citing a LinkedIn review by the 'Mega Constellations' account) will be commercially and technically weak, non-sovereign for non-EU customers (including the US), and effectively unusable outside Europe given it's not an economy-of-scale, multi-region asset.

Kook notes Inmarsat had separate historical government deals tied to related spectrum use — a $700 million Navy deal in 2020, a $600 million military deal in 2022, another billion-dollar Navy deal, and a $400 million Army deal — as evidence of the spectrum's real-world value, while flagging he has not yet verified these figures against Inmarsat's actual reported numbers.

Kook compares the Ligado price to SpaceX's recent purchase of EchoStar spectrum, which he says cost '$17 billion, really $19 billion,' arguing this validates his own earlier ($10 billion-plus) valuation estimate for Ligado spectrum since SpaceX paid roughly $20 billion for a comparable amount of 'lesser quality' spectrum.

Kook breaks down what AST actually paid for Ligado in present-value terms: roughly $130 million of stock (based on the ~$50 stock price when the deal was struck), $520 million of cash funded via non-recourse debt from alternative-credit firm SoundPoint (held in an off-balance-sheet, bankruptcy-remote SPV), and the $80 million/year lease payment, which he values at roughly $1.5 billion in present value at a 5% discount rate — totaling about $2.3 billion in present value for cash, lease and shares combined.

Kook adds a rough estimate for the royalty AST owes Ligado — if AST eventually generates $5 billion of North American revenue (his stated assumption), the royalty would be about a quarter of a billion dollars a year; discounting that in perpetuity, he estimates total present-value consideration for the Ligado spectrum at roughly $7 billion, versus his estimated $20 billion gross value — i.e., a 'good deal.'

Kook offers a rough framework for valuing the Ligado spectrum: using spectral-efficiency and utilization assumptions, he estimates AST could sell capacity for roughly $2 to $20 per gigabyte, bridging to a gross revenue range of about $1.5 billion to $30 billion — he states this range as 'gross per month,' which appears inconsistent with the surrounding annual framing and may be a verbal slip; flagged here as uncertain/garbled.

Kook converts this into revenue-per-megahertz terms and compares to AT&T (stated as roughly $250 billion, then apparently partially corrected toward $250 million) and Verizon (roughly $300 million) per megahertz of spectrum annually — the exact figures are garbled/self-corrected in the conversation and should be treated as uncertain.

Kook concludes this rough math implies roughly $15 billion a year of gross revenue potential for AST from the North American Ligado spectrum alone, explicitly framing this as illustrative 'realm of the possible' math rather than a forecast.

'Only 6 Stitches' shared excerpts from an interview with a former AST SpaceMobile employee; Kook, who listened to the full interview, highlights the point that being first to solve previously 'impossible' technical problems lets AST leave behind a wide patent/IP moat, comparing it to how wearable-ring company Oura has aggressively enforced its IP against competitors. He also recalls Abel Avellan telling him in their first meeting that enforcing and protecting patents was a top priority for the company.

Kook argues major big-cap tech companies ultimately all depend on connectivity delivered through MNOs, positioning AST as one of the world's most strategically important assets — Google is already an investor, Meta is now testing use cases, and Amazon (via its Kuiper constellation) could potentially also partner with AST.

Kook concludes this could render in-flight-connectivity incumbents like Gogo 'potentially useless,' and reiterates that AST's low-band spectrum propagates well through walls (no line-of-sight required), extending use cases to planes, boats, cars, trains and buildings.

Kook notes AST continues posting job openings requiring top-secret security clearances, which he and others in the community read as evidence of ongoing/expanding defense work, while cautioning this isn't necessarily Golden Dome-specific.

Kook says the official Golden Dome program announcement appears delayed again, possibly to the following week, partly due to the US government shutdown affecting the Space Development Agency (SDA); separately, defense contractor L3Harris has been publicly discussing its own role in Golden Dome, which Kook reads as a signal the program is moving forward.

Kook pegs the current market cap at roughly $25 billion, arguing the addressable direct-to-device market is 'winner-take-most' rather than strictly 'winner-take-all,' with Starlink expected to remain a distant second competitor capturing a small secondary role.

Kook says prior rough annual revenue estimates for the space-based direct-to-device market (around $30 billion/year) are probably too low given new use cases will likely be invented; assuming AST captures roughly two-thirds of a $30 billion market implies about $20 billion of annual revenue.

Kook discusses claims of roughly 90% EBITDA margins, arguing this is theoretically plausible once revenue-share obligations are already netted into the accounting (though actual R&D and headcount costs will still factor in); if the market eventually assigns something like a 10x-revenue multiple, he estimates that could equate to roughly $500 per share.

Kook references a Deutsche Bank estimate suggesting the company could eventually generate multiple billions of dollars of free cash flow, with the timing pushed out due to prior delays, but says AST is now 'right there at the ramp' toward roughly $1-2 billion of cash flow within an investable time horizon.

Kook says he doesn't have high expectations for near-term Golden Dome news given the likely delay, and mentions he will be camping again the following week.

The stock hit as low as $36 in early September after Starlink (SpaceX) announced a transaction with EchoStar to buy its spectrum (Anpanman refers to it inconsistently as AWS-4 and later as AWS-3/S-band spectrum), triggering a knee-jerk sell-off as investors misread the news as a threat to AST.

He argues the market misunderstood the transaction: it actually validates AST's spectrum strategy (questioned back in January) because Starlink now needs its own spectrum to pursue broadband, just as AST needed the Ligado L-band deal — 'we invented the direct-to-cell market' back in 2017-2018, with SpaceX pursuing Starlink direct-to-cell starting in 2022.

Starlink paid roughly $19 billion for 40 MHz of AWS-3 spectrum plus some H-block spectrum, covering only the US, versus AST acquiring 45 MHz of L-band spectrum out of Ligado's bankruptcy for a much lower upfront cost, in exchange for sharing ongoing economics/upside with Ligado's stakeholders (he names Cerberus and Fortress).

He frames the market as heading toward a duopoly (perhaps a third entrant later) between AST and Starlink in direct-to-device, noting the barrier to entry now requires technology, MNO partnerships, and spectrum — 'a pretty tall order' for any new competitor.

AST's MNO traction: Starlink has 8 or 9 MNO partners versus AST's over 50, which Anpanman cites as a key competitive advantage alongside AST's combination of cellular low-band spectrum (propagation/coverage) and mid-band spectrum (capacity).

Using his own experience with T-Mobile's mid-band-only service around 2005-2006 (poor indoor/subway coverage until T-Mobile later acquired low-band spectrum via auctions and the Sprint merger), Anpanman argues Starlink's current V2 and upcoming V3 satellites are mid-band only and will still have coverage/propagation issues even once EchoStar spectrum is deployed in about two years, unlike AST's Block 2 (low-band) and Block 3 (mid-band) satellites.

He argues that even if Starlink built a larger phased array and partnered with MNOs for low-band spectrum access, they would need architecture capable of precise fixed cell beams that don't interfere with a carrier's terrestrial network — architecture he says Starlink does not currently use.

AST had hoped to launch Block 2 FM1/FM2 around June-July 2025 but delayed; Anpanman speculates (his own guess, not confirmed) this was due to testing that uncovered issues requiring optimization, possibly including changes related to speculated government use cases.

He contrasts AST's culture with SpaceX's iterative 'launch and fix' approach, arguing that because AST's satellites must work correctly the first time (unlike a fixable ground-based system like Hubble), the company deliberately took the time to be comfortable before launching, which he views positively despite investor frustration over the lack of a firm launch date.

His recurring advice: never invest on margin in a high-volatility stock, since macro volatility can force you out of a position even if your long-term thesis is correct; taking some profit off the table to cover cost basis and taxes lets the remaining position 'ride to wherever you want.'

Bluebird 6 is expected to ship via Antonov aircraft to India — Anpanman guesses around October 12 (uncertain, his own recollection) — with satellite-to-fairing integration typically taking roughly 30-45 days before launch.

He expects a second launch of three Bluebird satellites shortly after, guessing around December 2025, followed by roughly ten more Bluebirds launching throughout 2026.

He anticipates Blue Origin will carry six Bluebirds per launch initially, rising to up to eight once the satellites are weight-optimized and Blue Origin is comfortable with the load — a contrast to Block 1, where all five satellites launched together on one Falcon 9.

He expects the company to invite investors again for an upcoming launch (possibly more corporate guests this time) and says he'll watch from the Cape if he doesn't get an invite via lottery.

Applying that prior campaign's roughly 61% appreciation (from $13 launch-ready price to $26 post-launch) to the current cycle's Friday close of $49 implies a target near $78 — which he notes lines up with some technical analysts' cited $77 target, though he calls this 'kind of dumb logic' and notes the company's situation (more cash, more regulatory progress) is different now.

He states AST now has roughly $1.5 billion of cash (his own recollection, stated imprecisely at one point as '$1.5 million') versus only a few hundred million dollars during the prior 2024 launch campaign.

He believes the FCC comment period for AST's commercial market-access application is coming toward the end of October (stated with some uncertainty).

He views Verizon's definitive commercial agreement as imminent, noting the added complexity of Verizon needing to coordinate spectrum combination with rival AT&T; he expects Bell Canada's definitive agreement to be close behind, reasoning that a company wouldn't publicize successful summer testing (voice, video, data, native voice via HTC SpaceMobile) unless a commercial deal were near, since announcing success before a deal is finalized would be commercially embarrassing if the deal fell through.

He expects Bell Canada's upcoming agreement to include commercial prepayments (as with AT&T, Verizon, and Vodafone) but not a fresh equity investment, since Bell already invested via the original SPAC IPO.

He notes that Scott Wisniewski, both at a recent investor conference and again on Bloomberg that day, explicitly mentioned Golden Dome by name (after previously being coy about it), and says based on their own due diligence, the Space Mob group believes there's a high chance AST will win related work, though it's not a given and could slip to a later round; a government shutdown could delay news.

Anpanman argues social media has become a real source of alpha post-COVID, with even professional money managers now tracking retail sentiment (citing Bloomberg's social-sentiment/volume tools) despite noise from bots that increasingly use AI to reply and redirect people to Telegram/Discord groups.

He describes the structural pressure on hedge fund 'pod shop' managers (citing Millennium/Citadel-style shops): tight risk limits, being 'factor neutral,' needing true alpha rather than beta, and facing termination for drawdowns of roughly 5-10% in a year — a fundamentally different risk tolerance than retail investors.

He argues professional money managers resent retail investors who make large gains without the same credentials/resources, drawing an analogy to a doctor being upset that an unlicensed person performed successful surgery; he compares this dynamic to hedge funds who were short Tesla and 'got their asses handed to them' because they couldn't think beyond quarterly financials for a pre-revenue-style growth story.

He states that in his view AST and its 6 billion-phone addressable install base, combined with 50+ MNO partners with potentially 3 billion subscribers, represents a 'big number' even at modest penetration and price points (e.g., 3-5% of subscribers paying $10-15/month), which is why he doesn't focus on precise near-term DCF-style valuation.

He describes an EchoStar-long/AST-short pair trade some hedge funds ran as a hedge against their EchoStar position (using AST as a Starlink proxy short), which he says blew up badly: funds reportedly shorted AST in the $35-40 range and were forced to cover as AST rallied to $66 while EchoStar was roughly flat to down, calling it a case of poor 'basis risk' management; he suggests shorting Iridium (down from $30-35 to $18) would have been a better hedge.

He argues retail's key structural advantage is a longer time horizon and the ability to hold through 80-90% drawdowns (citing extreme examples within the Space Mob community) without career consequences, unlike a hedge fund manager who would be fired for a much smaller drawdown; some Space Mob members reportedly held through such drawdowns to eventual returns as high as 2,000%.

He reflects that AST SpaceMobile 'should have never gone public' at its 2021 Series-B/C-like stage of development, but COVID-era market liquidity allowed it to go public then; he estimates that in a traditional IPO process, AST would only be going public around Q1 2026, likely near its current valuation or slightly higher — or, if fully commercial with revenue, potentially at a $100 billion valuation rather than the roughly $20 billion he references for the earlier stage.

He notes AST had about 13 MNO partners at its 2021 IPO versus over 50 today, and calls Verizon's 2024 decision to partner with AST (after evaluating both Starlink and AST) a huge validation point that re-rated the stock from the teens into the $30s.

He recalls the painful ~$100 million equity raise the company did alongside the AT&T/Google/Vodafone convertible investment, saying Scott and Abel knew they needed the capital cushion to reach the point of securing the Verizon MOU/investment, which then triggered a wave of government (Department of Defense) interest once AT&T and Verizon were on board.

He pushes back on the idea (which he says some on Reddit have floated) that executives should never sell stock or should take out margin loans against their holdings to stay fully exposed, arguing it's healthier for executives to have some financial comfort while remaining properly incentivized, rather than being placed in a position where a market downturn could force desperate decisions.

Asked what catalyst comes next — Verizon, FirstNet, or Golden Dome — Anpanman says any could come next in no particular order; he thinks Verizon is very close, jokes that FirstNet is 'always imminent,' and notes FirstNet board meetings have discussed satellites specifically, which he doesn't think is priced in given most institutions have only cursory knowledge of the FirstNet relationship.

Asked whether hedge funds hire people to spread FUD, Anpanman says yes — industry consultants and bots (on Twitter, StockTwits, Reddit) are sometimes paid to spread negative sentiment, distinguishing them from legitimate short sellers who are simply talking their book.

Asked when the full satellite constellation will be proven to work at scale, Anpanman says the current five Block 1 satellites are already being tested with MNOs (Verizon, AT&T, Vodafone) including handoffs, and speculates the company has likely validated the underlying approach; he expects the company has previously cited a 45-60 satellite range for full coverage and guesses it lands toward the higher end (60), comparing the initial rollout to Starlink's own gradual, imperfect-then-improving early service.

Anpanman's closing framing: the company has moved from a pre-revenue story to the start of commercialization and 'cash printing,' aided by a supportive FCC (he references Chairman Brendan Carr) moving the regulatory process quickly, and he expects 2026 to be a much bigger year than 2024 or 2025.

He notes that what has historically moved the stock most are unexpected 'unknown unknown' developments — citing Golden Dome (not on anyone's radar before roughly December 2024/January 2025) and the AST-Ligado spectrum deal (announced January 2025) as prior examples of surprise catalysts nobody had modeled — and speculates that new applications enabled by a globally connected 3GPP device network could be similarly hard to value in advance.

An 'adversary proceeding' side docket within the Ligado bankruptcy surfaced new information via court testimony from both sides; Kook characterizes Inmarsat's own court testimony as revealing it as a legacy player being overtaken by AST's disruptive growth.

Kook says the L-band approval isn't urgently needed because AST is building its low-band satellites first, with mid-band-capable satellites to be built later.

Kook revises his earlier theory about the PLM payload appended to FM1, FM2, and subsequent satellites — he previously wondered if it related to L-band capability, but now leans toward it being extra solar power rather than L-band hardware.

Kook estimates the Ligado spectrum is worth at least $20 billion (his own figure) and argues that because AST is the only company with the technology to monetize it, there was effectively only one buyer, creating path-dependent value that the market hasn't fully reflected; he believes remaining unlocks will ultimately be worth 'far in excess of $50 per share' above today's price, though he acknowledges legitimate risk/discount factors remain.

Kook argues Inmarsat's existing spectrum is underused for narrowband applications like ship communications, and that ship crews (Kook says he knows several ship owners) are unhappy with Inmarsat and would prefer AST SpaceMobile phone connectivity; he believes AST can coordinate around Inmarsat's rights to access and monetize spectrum without fully displacing it.

Kook speculates that, years out, this spectrum-holding-company strategy could become extremely valuable — floating (as a distant, low-confidence idea) that founder Abel Avellan could become a '$100 billion' figure — but says this is too far out to factor into near-term investment decisions.

A tweet by 'Socrates' speculated that ASTS and Amazon Kuiper could team up (AST bringing L-band plus carrier integrations, Kuiper bringing Ka-band broadband and AWS Edge, Blue Origin providing launch); Kook is explicit this has not happened, but calls it a plausible future combination given AST's need for a fixed-broadband go-to-market and Amazon/Blue Origin's need for cargo and distribution.

Kook flags a possible complication: an AST/Kuiper tie-up could create tension with existing MNO partners like AT&T if it were seen as competing with fiber broadband.

Kook relays other unsourced social-media speculation floated this week: that OpenAI should acquire AST to build distributed AI infrastructure, and that Amazon's long-standing interest in drone delivery could be served by an AST-style broadband network since existing cellular networks don't give Amazon positive control over drones in flight.

Kook recalls that when AST SpaceMobile was founded, no regulatory rules existed for its service and many skeptics assumed it would be 'dead on arrival,' but regulators subsequently wrote rules to accommodate it — which Kook cites as a reason for confidence the current SES application will be approved.

Kook believes Golden Dome participation for AST 'is happening,' citing Scott Wisniewski openly discussing AST's fit for Golden Dome at a B. Riley presentation, plus AST job listings that appear specifically tailored to Golden Dome-related roles (Kook ran the listings through ChatGPT to check); he notes some cited security clearances aren't issued without an already-stated government need.

Kook floats, without high confidence ('I don't know, but hope isn't a strategy'), that the FirstNet budget closes September 30 and AST might benefit from a related Q3 budget commitment.

Kook argues that when AST eventually lands a PNT-related deal, investors should recognize it as a sign of a much larger, harder-to-appreciate total addressable market across many government use cases, potentially justifying a 'Palantir-type' valuation multiple given open-ended growth.

Kook speculates the reason Verizon's definitive agreement (DA) hasn't been finalized could be conditions tied to Block 2 satellites or SCS approval, but says it's also possible the parties are simply moving slowly; he expects the commercial segment to be AST's 'second act' after the government story.

Kook argues talent density — smart people choosing to join a company — is an underrated signal that the market doesn't price well; this week the earlier hiring of J.R. Wilson (a senior AT&T tower-business executive who left to join AST SpaceMobile) resurfaced in discussion.

Kook highlights Jennifer Manor (AST's spectrum lead, previously at EchoStar), who appeared on a panel this week and has published a book; Kook considers AST's spectrum strategy an underappreciated hidden asset that will eventually explain why MNOs offer AST such favorable profit-sharing terms.

Kook references a 'Ligado Overview' tweet by Jonathan Cooper (a ChatGPT-generated summary with valuation estimates) and says he spent his own plane ride tightening up his Ligado analysis, which he plans to publish this week, including a cleanup comparing the price AST paid for L-band spectrum against what SpaceX paid for similar spectrum.

Kook's view is that AST's spectrum is qualitatively better than what SpaceX obtained, even though SpaceX secured a somewhat larger quantity; he also notes the Ligado price includes a royalty component, making it 'codependent' — if AST succeeds, the ultimate price paid will be higher, but the upside wouldn't otherwise have been available.

Kook describes his methodology for estimating Ligado spectrum capacity value (spectral efficiency, spectrum reuse, satellite deployment count, data throughput per year, and a price per unit of data) to arrive at hypothetical revenue estimates, which he plans to publish and may vet with 'Katzi' first.

Kook mentions new video of Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket looking close to ready, with upper stages complete, and expects a launch in October, though he does not believe AST SpaceMobile satellites are on that particular launch.

Kook says he would be excited to see the company report a $75 million to $150 million GAAP revenue run rate that includes actual Block 1 satellite service revenue, not just ground-station/base-station equipment sales.

Kook opens by referencing a piece by 'King Tut' about the 'house of glass' ASTS lives in — a company whose founder-CEO takes no salary and has avoided the kind of relentless insider share dumping seen at companies like Rocket Lab or IonQ, yet is still held to a skeptical standard by the market.

The stock had a classic technical washout this week — a head-and-shoulders pattern (as 'Reformed Trader' had flagged) broke its neckline, shorts including firms Kook names as Onada Capital and Pivotal Capital (also flagged by Anpanman) piled in, and then the stock bottomed and ripped.

Kook interprets 'a handful' as meaning more than one or two but less than 'a lot' — probably in the range of 'several' — and personally guesses this means 3 launches, potentially 3 Falcon 9 missions, while still expecting an ISRO launch to occur eventually despite what he describes as a recently strained India relationship.

Kook speculates, based on reports that the satellites (referred to as FM1) went back into vibration testing, that this could indicate a change of launch vehicle rather than a problem with the satellites, since different rockets have different resonance frequencies that hardware must be re-tested against.

Kook contextualizes the Carlos Slim rumor against AST's track record of strategic investors (Vodafone, Bell Canada, AT&T, Verizon, Google), a known personal relationship between Abel Avellan and Carlos Slim, and Mexico's interest in quickly deploying spectrum via satellite; he adds that AST's Ligado spectrum deal includes rights covering Mexico.

Kook recalls that Carlos Slim previously distanced himself from Elon Musk after Musk called him a 'drug dealer,' and jokes that this makes América Móvil more receptive to partnering with AST instead of Starlink.

Kook speculates that if a Carlos Slim deal materializes, it would likely resemble past AST strategic financings — a convertible bond with a high conversion strike price — rather than being purely non-dilutive; he argues the market rewards these deals less than before now that AST has roughly $1.5 billion on its balance sheet, calling further capital a 'nice to have, not a need to have.'

Kook argues that as more MNOs see AST's technology becoming real (not hypothetical), FOMO increases and AST's negotiating leverage on pricing improves over time, whether through prepayments or strategic capital injections.

Kook takes the omission as support for a theory from an X user he refers to as 'Katsy' that the next-gen BlueBird design does include a control satellite, but AST is deliberately hiding the schematic because the design is proprietary.

Kook highlights a write-up by Anpanman noting that in 2020 ASTS was widely dismissed as a niche idea unlikely to work (partly because 'Elon didn't do it'), but five years later every MNO, handset maker, government, and defense entity is now interested.

Kook compares SpaceX's roughly $19 billion EchoStar spectrum purchase to Facebook's WhatsApp acquisition price, arguing it validates how far ahead AST's technology bet was, since spectrum acquisition alone doesn't solve the technical direct-to-device problem.

Kook draws an analogy to Tesla's decision to build a pure EV from a blank page rather than hedging with a hybrid engine, arguing AST similarly committed to an unmodified-device design requiring a huge satellite and enormous power to close the link budget, rather than a narrowband, modified-device legacy approach.

Kook predicts that in 3-5 years people will look back at the early dismissal of AST SpaceMobile the way the cell phone, EVs, and cloud computing were once maligned; he frames his investment thesis as a compound bet on both AST's market share and the growth of the direct-to-device market itself (citing IoT, autonomous vehicles, defense, PNT/GPS, missile defense, and emergency response as expanding use cases).

Kook notes SpaceX's EchoStar spectrum deal is not set to close until 2027, SpaceX isn't expected to begin relevant testing until late 2026, and further integration with chip manufacturers and handset makers would still be required after that.

Using ChatGPT as a research aid, Kook estimates an ASIC comparable to AST's could take SpaceX until roughly early 2028 given typical chip tape-out timelines, calling that estimate 'optimistic'; he notes engineers on X believe the real timeline is even longer.

Drawing on a conversation with an Nvidia engineer plus AI research, Kook explains AST's AST5000 chip is a 'mixed-signal RF ASIC' combining analog RF front-ends (amplifiers, filters, DACs) with digital signal processing, which he argues is far more complex to design than a purely digital ASIC (like an AI accelerator/TPU) despite having fewer transistors, due to needing manual RF optimization and radiation/temperature/power hardening.

Kook frames AST as fundamentally an 'orbital power company' — without the ASIC there's insufficient power efficiency for bandwidth processing and beamforming within the satellites' solar-array real-estate constraints.

Kook lists five technical moat areas versus SpaceX: (1) beamforming/Doppler compensation for small phone antennas with patented protocols, (2) a mechanical unfurling mechanism enabling large, reliable antennas in vacuum/temperature extremes (versus SpaceX's smaller deployed structures), (3) the AST5000 ASIC, (4) a purpose-built 3GPP/NTN-compliant software stack, and (5) deep MNO core-network integration.

Kook contrasts AST's carrier-agnostic 'bent pipe' architecture with what he describes (citing prior comments from T-Mobile/'TIGAS' calls) as SpaceX's more complex, regenerative architecture using an eNodeB in orbit, which required what he calls a 'rat's nest' integration with T-Mobile taking hundreds of thousands of engineering hours.

Kook cites a Bank of America report and various industry consultant estimates putting the satellite-to-phone market at $30+ billion per year in revenue, and references a Barron's article on natural monopolies in the space (which he says had a headline typo asking if SpaceX, rather than AST SpaceMobile, is the natural monopoly).

Kook speculates AST could capture over 70% of this market and sketches a scenario of roughly $20 billion in annual revenue with around 75% EBITDA margins, which he says could bridge to a $100-300 billion market cap; he frames this explicitly as his own aspirational estimate, not company guidance, comparing it to how companies like Robinhood, Roblox, and AppLovin built markets that didn't previously exist.

Kook floats that ASTS could be worth $150 billion 'next year' as a plausible, non-shocking outcome given these comps, again framing it as speculation.

Kook argues the competitive dynamic could flip, with AST intruding on Starlink's fixed-broadband market rather than the reverse, since MNOs have incentive to protect fiber revenue and keep satellite broadband providers out — he cites the Ligado documents as evidence AST's fixed-broadcast use case is already specifically contemplated.

Kook questions why chipmakers and device manufacturers (Qualcomm, Apple, Google, Samsung) would voluntarily help SpaceX integrate direct-to-cell chips, noting there's no legal or regulatory obligation for them to do so, unlike AST's MNO-driven demand model.

Kook recalls Qualcomm previously partnered with Iridium on a 'Project Stardust' satellite initiative but canceled it after finding no market interest.

Kook speculates Apple in particular has reason to be cautious about helping enable SpaceX's satellite spectrum if it's a precursor to a rumored Musk 'X phone,' which could cannibalize Apple's own market share in what he calls a 'zero-sum' phone market.

Kook criticizes T-Mobile for partnering with Starlink, calling it 'a special kind of stupid' to open its customer base to a company that isn't carrier-neutral, and questions whether other MNOs will follow T-Mobile's lead or avoid Starlink given AST's explicitly carrier-neutral business model.

Kook wonders whether SpaceX's difficulty monetizing its EchoStar spectrum beyond the T-Mobile deal could eventually force Starlink to compete directly against MNOs.

Kook reiterates that low Earth orbit is, in his view, the only truly scaled commercial opportunity in the broader space economy right now, expecting AST SpaceMobile to be the sole clear public pure-play winner, with Starlink chasing FOMO and Kuiper as a wildcard; he notes EchoStar offers investors a partial proxy for SpaceX exposure.

Kook hopes AST SpaceMobile will be part of a Golden Dome tracking layer, envisioning a model where AST sells satellites under service contracts to the Pentagon for a margin on hardware plus a recurring service-contract revenue stream; he explicitly cautions 'we have to assume they don't' have a deal until one is confirmed.

Kook gives a rough, self-described 'loose' valuation guess around a Golden Dome contract, citing figures he describes as roughly '$5 to $7 billion' translating to a per-share range of about '$10 to $25' — he flags this himself as a rough baseline calculation, and the exact figures are somewhat garbled/uncertain in his delivery.

Kook cites a news article speculating that Europe will likely use AST SpaceMobile's technology for missile defense, linking this to recent Russian drone incursions into Poland, with the Vodafone-AST European SatCo venture as the likely delivery vehicle.

Kook notes FirstNet's budget closes September 30, and that FirstNet's board materials have reportedly named AST SpaceMobile specifically as a satellite/LEO partner in roadmap and appropriations documents filed on the FCC docket, though no deal has been announced yet.

Kook reviews growing launch capacity: Europe is testing its own reusable rocket ('Themis'), which he views as still a prototype possibly years from operational use; Blue Origin is working toward multiple New Glenn launches per month next year; and Rocket Lab's Neutron rocket has not yet flown but could add capacity if timelines hold.

Kook argues the launch market, currently tight and requiring long lead-time pre-booking (which AST already did for 2026-2027), will likely loosen considerably over the next couple of years as new capacity from SpaceX, Blue Origin, ULA, and potentially Rocket Lab comes online.

Kook says his impression of FCC Chairman Brendan Carr is that matters move quickly for approval once they're formally on his desk.

Kook speculates that confirmation of the long-known Ligado spectrum deal could carry a different market impact now that it comes in the context of Elon Musk publicly hyping the value of spectrum in recent weeks, given his EchoStar deal.

Wisniewski pushed back on the narrative that the satellite-direct-to-cell market is small or that terrestrial coverage 'already exists everywhere' and is 'perfect,' arguing there will be a tremendous role for satellites in evolving and imperfect cellular networks over the next 3, 5, 10, and 20 years.

Kook speculates this could reflect deeper native integration beyond AST's baseline 'no special hardware needed' compatibility, pointing to the AT&T/Vodafone/Google side letter and language in the Ligado bankruptcy documents that reportedly contemplates Apple-device integration on the L-band spectrum, with 'real economics tied to that.'

Kook is unsure whether the demoed connection ran over AST's own proprietary test network/core (for testing purposes) or through an actual MNO core; he notes AST previously confirmed (with AT&T corroboration) making calls directly through an MNO core, but his 'strong suspicion' is that this particular clip used AST's own test core rather than a live MNO core, though he says he doesn't know for sure.

Kook thinks it's 'very reasonable' that a formal Apple/AST partnership story (e.g., in a major outlet) eventually surfaces, similar to how Apple's cooperation with Starlink/T-Mobile became public, and expects Apple to likewise 'accommodate' AT&T and Verizon; he flags a hypothetical tweet from an analyst he calls Katsy/Cathie describing an 'iOS 26 development beta with native FaceTime app doing livestream over Bluebird satellite' as a first take that hasn't been confirmed.

Kook separately notes there is 'strong hope' AST's next launch (FM-1) will fly on a SpaceX Falcon 9, with a lower (and seemingly declining) chance it ends up on Blue Origin's New Glenn 2, but no confirmed date exists yet; he says he has asked industry contacts but has no firm answer.

Kook and @TutuFly attribute the drop mainly to the market conflating normal seasonal weakness with the delayed satellite launch and the SpaceX spectrum-purchase headline, rather than any real change in AST's fundamentals; Kook notes 'the stock price writes the news.'

Kook believes actual deployment will take considerably longer than SpaceX's stated ~2-year timeline, noting the deal itself won't even close until 2027, and full commercial deployment would still require Apple/Google/Qualcomm-ecosystem chipset support plus FCC approval — putting real availability at 2028 or later in his 'worst case' framing.

Kook's own (self-described 'unpopular') read, published as his own tweet, is that the spectrum purchase was a defensive move by SpaceX rather than evidence of market dominance — arguing Starlink began as a byproduct business to fill spare Falcon 9 launch capacity, uses Ka/Ku-band frequencies that don't require AST's large phased arrays, and was never structured for the MNO partnerships that direct-to-device requires.

Kook argues Elon Musk historically avoids partnerships (citing that Tesla never partnered with GM) and doubts Musk would want to work through AT&T's and Verizon's technical/MNO processes; Musk has said he intends to compete as his own MNO, while also acknowledging existing MNOs 'aren't going anywhere' because of their spectrum holdings.

Kook estimates AST SpaceMobile could have a generally available commercial service with continuous coverage in key markets as early as 2026, versus SpaceX's spectrum deal not closing until 2027 and (his worst-case assumption) not deploying until 2028+ — implying at least a 3-year AST head start even before considering chip development.

Kook, citing an informal conversation with a friend who is a principal engineer at Nvidia, argues that a custom low-power ASIC (like AST's AST5000) is essential to make satellite-to-unmodified-phone beamforming power-efficient, and believes no competitor — including SpaceX — is likely to have a comparable ASIC on the market in under 3 to 5 years.

Kook also flags unresolved technical questions for SpaceX around beamforming, Doppler-effect compensation, and MNO-core network integration, noting AST's own carrier integration reportedly took 'hundreds of thousands of hours' of engineering effort to get working.

Kook relays that 'Professor' Kevin Mack characterized the SpaceX/EchoStar spectrum deal as 'largely a non-event' and expects the direct-to-device market to ultimately support three global players, a framing Kook says he agrees with.

Kook cites an essay from a contributor called Jagaloon arguing that AST's structural advantages built over the past year (its own spectrum, partner relationships) outweigh the week's negative headlines.

On the All-In podcast, when a co-host remarked that 'Verizon kind of sucks,' Elon Musk reportedly nodded along; Kook doubts this plays well in Verizon's boardroom and thinks it reduces the odds of a SpaceX-Verizon commercial relationship.

Kook speculates Musk's real long-term ambition behind the spectrum purchase could be building his own 'X Phone' to bypass Apple's app-store/gatekeeper model, reading Musk's past dismissive comments about an 'X phone' as effectively signaling one is coming.

Kook argues this dynamic could push Apple and Google toward supporting AST SpaceMobile as the 'carrier neutral' — and, in his new framing, 'handset-manufacturer neutral' — option, since AST has no plan to build its own phone, unlike a hypothetical SpaceX-built device that would threaten Apple/Google's ecosystems directly.

Kook estimates (his own rough, unverified math) that AST paid roughly $2 billion all-in for 45 MHz of L-band spectrum — about $550 million upfront plus roughly $200+ million of stock plus $80 million/year of lease payments capitalized — versus SpaceX's $19 billion for 50 MHz of S-band spectrum that isn't yet supported by any handset.

Kook relays an analysis (attributed to 'Katsy'/Cathie) explaining the price gap: EchoStar's S-band has viable alternative terrestrial/other-constellation uses, while Ligado's L-band was largely 'orphaned' (blocked from terrestrial use due to interference, previously tied mainly to Inmarsat's narrowband maritime use); L-band's lower frequency also requires roughly 30% wider antenna element spacing than S-band (about 10cm vs. 7cm half-wavelength), meaning about 69% more physical antenna area for equivalent gain.

Kook doesn't yet know whether the FirstNet commercial structure will be a lump-sum contract or usage-based against FirstNet's roughly 6 million subscribers, and speculates pricing could land in a $10-$20/month range.

Kook doesn't know what contractual form AST's Golden Dome-related work might take (e.g., selling satellites outright per unit vs. an ongoing service/software contract), but argues AST's vertically integrated, non-radiation-hardened manufacturing approach (avoiding costs he estimates run up to 20x higher for satellites built to survive 15 years) could let it sell satellites at roughly half the price of traditional 'job shop' competitors, plus attach recurring service revenue.