Anpanman - Quick Pre-Market Opening Discussion: $ASTS $TE

[00:00:06] Speaker A: This is the AST SpaceMobile Podcast.
[00:00:09] Speaker B: It will just basically come to your phone and be seamless regardless of where you are. We don't want the user even to know that it's connected by satellite. Listen, the opportunity that we have is very, very, very large.
[00:00:27] Speaker C: Hey everyone, thanks for joining for this quick space before the market opens. Just wanted to get everyone together and talk about a few things. Yeah, so obviously over the weekend we had this news that the Iranian leadership was taken out by the US military, and it looks like we are in for a sustained campaign until— not quite sure what's going to Take place of the theocratic regime. It might be perhaps some lower-level people coming in, or maybe we get some flavor of democracy or something. But at this point, I think from the U.S.'s the briefing this morning, it sounds like we're you know that U.S. is not going in boots on the ground to nation build. And so the hope is that the Iranian people. however long it takes, will come up with a form of government if there's enough military and economic pressure to force that type of outcome. But we'll see. So we're in this period of uncertainty, and of course the markets over the weekend initially reacted negatively and then rebounded to a degree and quite candidly is hanging in there pretty well as of today. But I think it's important to note that this was a long time coming. This has been an overhang arguably since the '70s, right? And so you have this regime in Iran who has brought instability to the region and has been trying to develop nuclear capabilities through its proxies, has tried to spread instability throughout the region. And of course, you know, one of the MOs of the country is the complete elimination of Israel and of course death to America, all that stuff. I, you know, I try to stay away from politics, but I think obviously this conflict is having a big impact on markets. And so it's something that should be talked about. But from this point on, I mean, there has been a buildup over the last few weeks and I tweeted about this. Where the US was sending all the military capabilities out to the Middle East. And so I think the market was pricing in some percent probability of military intervention, and now we have it. And now it's a point of, you know, where does this go? Does it get worse? Does it get better? Worse meaning maybe a much larger conflict and it brings in other countries. At this point, though, it does seem like Iran is out at the end of the stick. They're they're by themselves. Like, as people have probably read over the weekend, there it doesn't appear that Russia or China are going to help Iran, whether that's militarily or economically. It seems like they're out on their own. I think by taking out the Leadership structure there, it seems that yeah, some of their allies they don't they're not sure who they're dealing with, I guess. But they also don't want to be drawn into a bigger conflict. And then it seems like and I'm not by the way, I'm not a political expert. I'm just you know commenting on some observations. I'm not I don't pretend to be one, nor should anyone you know take what I have to say as as. An educated view on Middle East politics, which is really complex, right? And goes back many hundreds of years. But it does seem like the rest of the region, for the most part, aside from the proxies that Iran operates in various countries, are taking a step back or are supportive of the strikes. And so, yeah, I mean, I think, as I mentioned before, this has been a long time coming. I think Through various presidencies, it's always been an issue. You know, there's there's always been Iran and North Korea as as the key issues around instability. You know, powers that are that have very specific ideologies, and if they were to acquire nuclear weapons or the ability to deliver dirty bombs, whatever what have you, that could be a bad thing because it's beyond just. any geopolitical framework, but it, when it comes to ideology, it could be more or less, you know, you can make decisions that may not seem rational to other people to end the world, right? And so this was a long time coming. I think the markets are going to, are pricing it in. And obviously there's a bunch of other things that the market has been thinking about, but then this, of course, depending on how this unfolds over the next few weeks. Now we have the event and now it's a matter of which direction does it take. And so if you do have this outcome where Iran stabilizes and perhaps there is regime change and you have more moderate folks coming to power, that would be viewed by global markets as quite positive. And of course, all the oil that Iran was selling for heavily discounted prices to China, you know, that would come to market and bring global prices down. And I think there was a number of articles over the weekend that astutely pointed out that, you know, it seems that the Trump administration is, you know, going, taking out some of these countries that are, I guess, you know, friendly to China, who have been supporting China. Because China's MO has been to get access to cheap energy and support some of these oppressive regimes in exchange for that. And so with the fall of Venezuela and then potentially Iran, that would hurt China's ability to have not only stable energy supply but cheap energy supply. So So yeah, from a geopolitical perspective, this definitely reshuffles the table quite a bit. And we'll see. I did post though over the weekend, this is, I believe, I have friends who are Iranian or they may call themselves Persian, who view, and obviously these are very US, more, I guess, Democratic-centric views, but it's it's it's from folks who who have families still back in in Iran, but live here in the U.S. And so they obviously probably they're here in the U.S. And so they have a specific view. But people are quite excited about the potential for regime change and moving away from theocracy to something more along the lines of democracy. But but we'll see. But yeah, I think we're obviously living in a pretty. for some people it might be a scary time, but it's also, I think, a pretty exciting time because you could see a number of these folks who live under, who have lived under for decades oppressive regimes perhaps get a shot at something better. And so we'll see. But yeah, today the market is down a little. It's not down that much. And so initially I was thinking, oh, maybe you'll get an opportunity where the market would gap down as folks kind of adjust risk and then reacting to what is viewed as instability in global markets. But I think so far at least, it seems like Iran has been contained. And of course there's going to be ongoing retaliation from Iran and whenever they send missiles over, I think was like a refinery hit in Saudi Arabia, that's going to have an impact on global energy prices and then the perception of potentially risk expanding further. But that being said, I think for those of us who have followed Iran for decades, there was always this fear that if you were to go in and attack Iran, the reciprocal Response would be pretty massive, right? And so maybe Israel or Saudi Arabia, any number of countries, you know, you'd have a ton of collateral damage from a response. But so far, it's been somewhat contained. And from what I've read, it seems like a lot of Iran—not all—but a lot of Iran's missile capabilities have been taken out. And every time they they do roll out some of these launchers to go send another sortie of missiles to hit another country, those things get exposed. And when they get exposed, then they get eliminated. So yeah, we'll see how things go. But I think for the markets, things have been, it's somewhat stable, relatively speaking today. And we'll see how things go. I mean, I think because we didn't have this huge gap down and then maybe over the day you could have risk coming off or over the day maybe things firm up. But I think it's important to focus on fundamentals of the companies that you hold, right? And so obviously if you own a company like, let's say an airline and global travel stopped and oil prices continue to move up, that's not a good thing, right? You don't want to— you might want to change your adjustments to owning an airline, which airlines are basically a short on oil and along on global economy. And so to the extent you are invested in airlines, then you might have to adjust. But if you own space companies, I think we saw over the weekend some of the capabilities that these companies bring to bear. And so even, you know, I think we saw some of China's capabilities where they had these images of US bases in various Various countries in in the Middle East, and you know China had tweeted that they had cataloged all the planes. And you know, depending on who you believe, that perhaps was a deception tactic where they parked all these F-35 or F-22s out at various air bases, and then they actually didn't use those planes; they used other ones. And so I think it may have given you know China may have gotten intelligence that these planes were on the ground and they weren't moving, and then they passed that along to their Iran. Iranian colleagues, and then of course the information was wrong. There were other planes that were up in the air at the time of the attacks. But you saw there the importance of space assets. I think, for example, Planet Labs, some people were using images from to highlight some of the strikes in Iran. And then also, you know, there were a number of A few moments later. Hey everyone, sorry about that. Hopefully you can hear me. I think my— I lost internet for a second. So maybe some Iranian operatives took my space out. Anyway, I think I believe I remember where I left off, but yeah, you know, some of the— this past weekend we saw We assume we saw some of the space capabilities of being brought to bear in the attack on Iran. And so I think it's important to note that the space sector, you know, AST SpaceMobile, Planet, BlackSky, Rocket Lab, all these companies all play a pretty important part of what we currently bring to bear in contested environments, but also for the future, especially as we think about Golden Dome. Also, there was some speculation, for example, of, I think in Europe, company— sorry, not Europe, in Israel, potentially using laser technologies to take down missiles. And there was, I think Penny Check has talked about this company LASR, which I'm not involved in, but it's kind of cool to see some of these emerging technologies being used. But Anyway, moving on to the markets, I think now we have a degree of uncertainty. It depends on where things are going to go in terms of direction. But yeah, I think overall the markets are handling pretty well. And so over this coming week and as the days unfold here, we'll see. But in particular for specific names, I think for space names, I'm quite bullish. I think obviously this is a big year for space and Now that we are seeing armed conflict and, you know, some of the assets from space being utilized. I mean, for example, China, there was a post from, I forgot which Chinese social media account, talking about how GPS jamming is going on in the Strait of Hormuz. That's a big deal, right? And so companies like AST SpaceMobile are working on backup GPS systems, PNT or next generation systems. And so all these things are going to play a very particular role in the future of these contested environments. And so I think it's important to know what you own. And I think obviously there's market uncertainty, but there's going to be some big winners from this conflict in Iran and the utilization of these next-generation technologies. And so yeah, moving on to SpaceMobile, I mean, Today is great. We've got 3 large announcements, although there are a few other smaller ones too, but Orange, Vodafone, 3 Hutchison, Telefonica all announced that they're working with Satellite Connect in Europe, which is the JV with Vodafone. And so that represents 3 of the top— well, including Hutchison, that's 4 of the top 5 MNOs in Europe. We also had an announcement by Sunrise, which is a smaller Swiss player, announcing that they're working with Satellite Connect in Europe. So yeah, really bullish news. I think it's important to look at the European landscape where AST so far has pretty much locked up majority of the carriers. Not to be outdone though, Starlink did announce that finally Deutsche Telekom, which is the parent of T-Mobile, They announced their intention to work with Starlink starting in 2028. And the reason why that is, is that Starlink Mobile announced some details around their next generation satellite. For example, for people who haven't seen, they plan on having a larger phased array, surprise, surprise. And they purport to have, they're gonna be able to put down more precise cell beams, surprise, surprise. I mean, these are all things that AST already does and architected their solution from first principles ground up. But Starlink is pushing for that. They want to be able to deliver a similar type of service. And so the reason why Deutsche Telekom announced this partnership today and that it won't be until 2028 till they'll be able to use it, the current Starlink satellites are a minimally viable product. They put down very large beams that are not fixed cell. And so they don't respect the borders of countries. And so it's really hard to deliver service with the current architecture of Starlink's direct-to-cell satellites. And so they need to wait for the next generation, which won't be operational until 2028. But the reason why Deutsche Telekom announced that deal today is that they're trying to help Starlink through the EchoStar spectrum acquisition. They're trying to position the company to get their 2 GHz spectrum allocation renewed for 2027. And so for EchoStar, for those that don't know, EchoStar has an allocation of 2 GHz spectrum in Europe. It's coming up for renewal in 2027. And you know that it seems like ASD Space Mobile through its European JV is well positioned to get an allocation without any sponsorship from Europe. It looked like EchoStar was not going to get an allocation. That said, today Deutsche Telekom said that they were going to use their service, and so it seems like they're trying to position EchoStar/Starlink to get an allocation. And so that was very strategic today. We'll see. I think the big wildcard for EchoStar and getting that reallocation or renewal is the fact that Elon Musk obviously is quite active in anti-European politics. And so we'll see if that actually impacts their ability to get— oops, my cat just jumped on me— if that will impact their ability to get spectrum. But anyway, yeah, so that was some of the big news today. I expect we'll hear quite a bit more when AST announces earnings after the close today. They also, for what it's worth, in some of these announcements, they talked about having beta testing this summer. And so I think that's a bit of a hint in terms of how the company thinks its launch cadence is going to come along. And so for folks, obviously we're all waiting to hear about batch updates. We might hear something after the close today is my guess. But yeah, the fact that the company is targeting initial service, beta service this summer seems like the timeline is intact. So the other cool announcement today was Taiwan Mobile announced a partnership with AST SpaceMobile. Taiwan Mobile is one of the top 3 carriers in Taiwan. Obviously, for people who follow geopolitics, Taiwan is a very interesting situation with China obviously trying to reclaim Taiwan as its own. I think obviously satellite direct-to-cell, direct-to-device connectivity is really important when you think about the potential for some armed conflict there. And so Taiwan is a very mountainous region. They have very dense urban areas and great cell coverage. However, in some of these mountainous areas or on the coast, coverage can be somewhat spotty. But I think it's important to note that for a company like— or a country like Taiwan, in a conflict where an adversary could take the cell network down, or, you know, you have— whether it's taking the entire network down or parts of it get taken down. Of course, you also have natural disasters, whether that's, you know, hurricanes or typhoons, I guess we call them typhoons in Asia, but then also earthquakes. Having a backup network besides, aside from just covering dead zones, but having a network that can light up spectrum during these periods of whether it's uncertainty and war or if it's natural disasters, really important. So signing Taiwan Mobile, I think, is a big deal. I'm not sure if the market— I know looking at Bloomberg, I don't think they've caught the news, but that's a pretty big one. And so that's the first in Taiwan. And so I assume that perhaps AST, with the announcement of this, might sign some of these other carriers as well. But yeah, that's pretty big news there. And so I think There's been a number of speaking engagements at Mobile World Congress. So we're gonna get some really interesting nuggets. Obviously, Abel, Jennifer Manner, Scott was a new speaker there, and so we might see them speaking as well as you've seen a number of executives, whether today Vodafone CEO Margarita de Waal gave a talk about Satellite Connect Europe, and then also John Stankey, the CEO of AT&T, AT&T spoke about Direct-to-Device as well. And so, you know, you've got Mobile World Congress happening this entire week. And so I expect additional news coming out. Not that, I mean, today it was a pretty big deluge. I woke up at, I think it was like 4:00 AM to just check things and I saw all these announcements. And so I was like, crap, I need to get up soon and start tweeting this stuff out. But yeah, it's an exciting day. A lot of great news out of Mobile World Congress. And of course, We've got earnings after the close, which I think we'll get some really great updates. Probably my guess is some color around production cadence, like a confirmation of 6 satellites per month, and perhaps an update on the batch launch, or sorry, batch delivery, and a whole host of other things. Yeah, so an exciting, I think, update after the close today. The other thing I had mentioned before is, you know, which I think I got cut off when I was speaking about it. But yeah, just go through the names that you own because obviously this conflict is going to be a positive for some companies. So I think, for example, space companies are going to be positively impacted by this, especially those that have a defense angle, which many of them do, whether that's Earth observation, communications, launch, radar sensing, PNT, all these things. really important. But also, you know, for some of the names that I'm covering, for example, T1 Energy, if we have a prolonged spike in energy prices, right? Or, and of course the US, you know, given the instability, of course is focused on energy security and sovereignty. That's good for solar names, right? And so I think obviously for T1 Energy in an environment where you have instability in the Middle East or not. Obviously, I'm hoping Iran gets resolved peacefully. It's not as if the inexorable rise in AI data centers and building those out is going to change. And over the weekend, I posted a tweet. I think it was from Zero Hedge where I think this is the first time in history where data center Build growth is, or data centers. Yeah, the build growth is higher than office buildings, right? And so that's flipped. And I guess for the foreseeable future, we're going to be building more data centers than offices, which makes sense. But yeah, you're going to have to feed all those data centers with energy. And so whether that's nat gas, coal, maybe, I guess, but solar is obviously a very important part of the equation. Wind, hydro, pretty much all sources of energy are going to need to be brought to bear. But let's see here. But yeah, that's kind of all I had for today. I think markets are responding pretty positively. As I mentioned before, I mean, the market had been pricing in some type of military action for weeks, right? And so you've seen, I think, Allied Capital, who's a friend of mine, had posted over the weekend the The positioning, especially in put options as hedging, had been so extreme and negative heading into this that now, you know, if we had a different outcome over the weekend where we had Israel and the US had struck Iran and had failed in taking out the, you know, the Ayatollah and failed taking out leadership and maybe things got botched, then yeah, you could have had a pretty bad market reaction. But it seems like so far things are going according to plan and seem somewhat contained, where, as I mentioned before, you don't have Russia and China stepping in. For all intents and purposes, they're hands-off. You've got what seems to be most of the Middle East either proactively supporting this or not helping Iran. And of course, some of Iran's proxies are stepping in. But those proxies, by the way, if Iran does— if the theocratic regime does fall, then those proxies are not going to get funded and they're going to get weakened pretty significantly. So you could— I mean, I'm an optimistic person by nature, but you could see a situation hopefully where we get a more moderate form of government that eventually comes in and And perhaps, you know, some some rationality restored, and and perhaps yeah, I mean it could be. I've I'm not. I mean I mean I I try not to talk politics, but you know I've been skeptical of this administration from the beginning. But as I mentioned this weekend, if if this administration is able to pull something off where Iran does get to a point of of democracy or something at least as far away from theocracy, but that's moderate and re-engages with the global community, then it will be a pretty significant accomplishment of this administration, one that many administrations prior could not accomplish. And so, you know, I'm with bated breath, like, I'm hoping things work out well for the Iranian people. And, you know, as I've mentioned before, maybe if it wasn't cut off, you know, the folks that I know who still have family in Iran are very hopeful and looking forward to the potential for something better than what was before, you know, the theocracy get replaced. And so we'll see. But yeah, that's pretty much my quick update. Looking forward to see how this week unfolds. I think if things do Or, you know, if Iran, the military apparatus gets weakened as, you know, as they launch more missiles and then those, those, the launchers get exposed and they get taken out. And, you know, you start to see, I believe this morning in the brief, the US said that they've achieved air superiority. And so we'll see how things unfold here. But I'm optimistic on markets and especially for space companies. And so yeah, looking forward to the AST call this afternoon and I'll perhaps do a space after that. But yeah, hope everyone had a good weekend. And as I mentioned before, in times of volatility, do not overextend yourself. You know, don't get— don't go crazy on margin or leverage because, you know, even though I'm optimistic on things, you know, things can be volatile. Some unforeseen things can happen. And of course the market will adjust to those. So stay vigilant and yeah, be strategic and not overextend yourself. Because I think in periods like this where there's uncertainty, volatility can be your friend and you can get bargains at the right time. And obviously things overreact and you can trade volatility. And for retail investors who have capital on hand and are managing their risk properly, volatility is your absolute friend. 'Cause for institutions that try to manage absolute returns and try to be fully hedged, it's tough to navigate. But for retail investors, this is— these are the type of environments that we look for, right? This is where opportunity truly comes. So with that, I'll end the space and we'll catch up again perhaps later this evening or tomorrow. Take care.
[00:28:40] Speaker A: Thanks for listening to the AST SpaceMobile Podcast. If you enjoyed this episode and you'd like to help support the podcast, please share it with others, post about it on social media, or leave a rating and review. To catch all the latest news about AST SpaceMobile, make sure to subscribe. Thanks again, and I'll see you next time.
[00:29:05] Speaker B: We are doing something very, very big, and I think with this technology we can really affect billion lives. Safety Space Mobile is the only company that has proven technology to deliver cellular broadband connectivity directly from space to the everyday smartphone. People will just basically turn on their phone and be seamless regardless of where you are. We don't want the user even to know that it's connected by satellite. Our role is to bring this into reality, always in partnership with the end user.
[00:29:42] Speaker A: Listen.
[00:29:42] Speaker B: Mmm, waffles.