Kook's Weekly - April 5 - The Noise Floor Revolution: SpaceMob, FirstNet, and the End of Constellation Constipation

[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: Okay, thanks for the loyal, loyal people showing up. I'm in Asia right now, so it's a little bit of a difficult time zone for me. And we got back to the hotel, my wife thinking it's early to bed, and I go, well, I gotta do my podcast. And she looks at me like, you gotta do what? I have to remind her what pays the bills around here. It's ASTS fundamental research. So Let's get started. A lot happened today. It was pretty crazy watching the rescue of the pilot. And so I know I just saw Katzy do another couple tweets because what we'd studied as part of the forbidden videos are some of these capabilities that AST has, one of which is MOUS, which I— I'm just on my laptop right now, so I can't pull up my own due diligence, but A lot of these technologies relate to being able to transmit below the noise floor. Because as you might imagine, if you're shot down in Iran, which is just simply unbelievable to imagine getting shot down in some high-altitude desert and then have to go run up a mountain as people hunt for you, it's astonishing, uh, what people are capable of doing. But then, you know, the first thing that I was thinking about is, well, how the hell do you transmit your location? Because A beacon can only be visible to the good guys, otherwise it's a beacon for the bad guys, presumably. And so we had learned from Michael Pollack at ASTS is the— and I'm going to butcher this, but being able to broadcast or operate below the noise floor means your satellite has so much— and I'm going to get this wrong— so much power to listen. that you can transmit at a very low level and still pick it up so that to anyone that's trying to hear you, it just looks like background noise. And so this is one of many capabilities that the company has demonstrated, as well as encrypted up-down transmissions so that you can go directly, for example, from warship to warship. And with a mobile land radio, I believe you could do the same thing. And so it'd be able to transmit an encrypted waveform directly to, you know, presumably a battleship that's going to come save you. But needless to say, the military has something that worked sufficiently well enough today to result in a good outcome for the good guys. But the question, which I'm sure will be unanswered to normal peons like myself is just how difficult was it for them to do what they did today? And so did the pilot have to put out just a very short little chirp, uh, and then the CIA worked its magic? But is that something in the future with using new, new technology, hopefully brought by ASTS, is that something where the pilot would be able to commu— be in more regular communication, uh, shorten the loop to safety, things like that? And I have no idea. But it's interesting to think about because obviously the system that we have today was good enough, but who knows how much that can be improved and, and whether that will help increase the safety of, of all the people involved in such an astonishing mission. And, and one that really does seem like there's gonna be a movie about this and I'll watch it. But to the diligence, uh, someone made another meme this week where right when I send out the weekly, Cassie just starts banging out stuff like all these threads and someone gave me that angry Indian man at the cricket match meme, which is kind of true. I blast the weekly out and then I see Cassie put out a ton of content. I'm like, God, dude, come on. It's like you can't create news right after the newspaper goes to the, goes to print. You know, let's, let's respect the journalist here. So anyway, it looks like I have some stuff to catch up on for next week's weekly. But what we learned this week is very important fundamental news, which is Bluebird 6 is performing well. So it's all for naught if the satellites don't work at a systemic level. You know, we'll of course at some point probably have a failed satellite. Maybe not given how careful these guys are, but you know, one failed bird is no problem. A systemic issue is a problem. And so since we're early into the satellite count, and certainly FM1 is the first new-gen satellite, having it work is very important. And so as Scott said, the satellite is performing very well. It's done everything it's supposed to do. The hardest part is unfolding well. And there he goes again, saying unfolding. God, Scott. You know, it unfurled well is what he meant to say. And that went successfully, which is great. And next, we're getting ready to release it for customer use. So that's pretty interesting to me, releasing it to customer use. So as we all know, this is a for-profit business, so one would think it's going to have a customer. But the naysayers would say this is all still kind of R&D yet. So releasing it to customer use is pretty interesting because then one might question whether that customer is the US government. I think it is. And then releasing it for use would presumably be a milestone that's achieved, which could release things like money, um, and could also release things like more contracts. But speculation on my part, but would make sense. But very important that it is being released to the customer. And so as always, our European correspondent Peter Lindmark, uh, painstakingly translated the whole interview with Scott, which is great. So I have that link for everyone. It's what I read because I was trying to Do this. Well, I did do this when I was on my flight to Asia, and it's hard to listen on an airplane. So thanks for Peter doing that. And all those links are there for your review. So it's nice to see that this is happening. We also got some confirmation of FirstNet, as if anyone at this point listened to this series of Spaces should have any doubt about FirstNet. Again, the FCC docket is absolutely replete with evidence that we have a contract with FirstNet coming. But if that's not enough, FirstNet does the, uh, red A— I don't even know what that's called— blood type A sign. Quick space update for the Space Mob crew. So that would be a message directed to us. So here we have the United States of America's first responders network built by AT&T Using the blood type A symbol and hashtag Space Mob to give us an update. Now, is that freaking awesome or is that freaking awesome? Could anyone have imagined 5 years ago? Could you just imagine if I'd gone and seen a psychic or, or hallucinated or did drugs and posted on Twitter CCing Tim Farrar that FirstNet would tweet at us an update on the deployment to the network? Could you, could you imagine Tim's response? Clueless kook continues to lie through his teeth. This unethical monster of a human lying and spewing false dreams to, you know, blah blah blah. Like he would have said something like that. And sometimes I just pinch myself like we're in a simulation. You know, here it is, April 1st, 2026 at 11:26 AM. Not quite sure what time zone it's referencing. And that No matter. But they go, our space legacy continues. Later this year, FirstNet will offer beta services using an everyday smartphone to select first responders with AST SpaceMobile satellites. Plans are underway for a larger release in the future. Now that is just absolutely super exciting. First of all, that there is going to be this technology put in the hands of our first responders. So while probably a lot less traumatic than what the combat search and rescue guys just did in Iran, no less important, the duties and the kind of sacred commitments, frankly, of all of our first responders that are going to have this technology. And this goes to why I think this is such an incredible investment for me personally, because I think it's going to go up a lot from here for one. So I think financially it's going to be very lucrative, but I just know that the space mob, because we really saved this company where we changed its cost of capital. We allowed it to raise money. That's going to save so many lives. Um, it's going to save, it's going to be, you know, a very good battlefield application for the allies, but then everyday people are going to have incrementally a little bit more safety when first responders themselves can communicate, uh, more reliably. And get data to where it needs to be. And that's great. And first, that's keeping us, keeping us posted that this is happening. Sure, a little bit late, as, as Tim Ferriss would point out, but hard stuff is hard to do. And so late is better than never. But importantly, I always just go back to the passage of time. You know, it's almost like a Yogi Berra comment. It's like, well, the, the passage of time is interesting in that time passes. And yeah, damn straight. You know what? So if you were sitting there in 2020, And if, if someone had said, well, actually the service won't really be deployed for beta testing to anyone until late 2026, people would've been, first of all, the stock would've gone to zero because it wouldn't have been able to raise money without some dreams that people could believe in that are nearer term. It's just, you know, this, this ain't your grandfather's quantum stock where people can invest based on like 2040. No way. And But as, as time passed, sure, a lot of us, you know, me being the greatest sinner, uh, injects hopium into their veins every day. But that's kind of what separates the kooks from the clowns, are people that have the positive willpower to be optimistic. That's the growth mindset that VCs have. Uh, I used to laugh at these people, but I came to really appreciate the incredible power of positivity as someone who actually kind of self-identified as negative most of my life. The positive power of positivity is to suspend one's disbelief with incremental negatives as long as the real research supports an ultimate positive. And so then as you endure this torturous torture chamber of a waiting game, as it turns out, late 2026 is actually 6 months away. It's right around the corner. And so while the do-nothings of the world will point out that this is, you know, multiple years delayed, guess what, bro? That is in the rearview mirror, and one must always look out the frontview mirror when investing. As I'm in Japan right now, and you know, it's a little touchy subject sometimes, this whole like US burned the entire country to the ground, which is just shocking to me that 80 years ago, I was in the equivalent of Tehran today, and now it's truly one of the world's most functional cities from what I can tell. But my tour guide, when we were going through the Meiji— I think it's the Meiji Temple— and pointed out that it burned down, the US had firebombed it, which is like, come on guys, did we have to like firebomb a temple? It seems a little bit insensitive. But then he goes, oh, you know, in Japan we say, you know, bygones are bygones. Like, all right, dude, like, come on. Like, we, you know, Pearl Harbor is pretty goddamn awful. Like, I went there last year, that memorial, that brings tears to your eyes, really a horror of horrors. But then I kind of get it that dropping nuclear weapons on the people are also pretty horrible. But you gotta let bygones be bygones. And not to relate delays in ASTS to World War II, kind of went on a tangent just based on where I'm sitting right now. But, you know, the whole, like, you gotta let the bygones be bygones is a, is a first of all, an example of positive thinking. You know, you got to look forward of where you are today, and that's where you got to contextualize. When you read experts talking about all these massive delays and things like that, that's an interesting story. I like history. So as a consumer of nonfiction, that's interesting. It will be good in the book that we can write. But if you're in the game of making money, which a lot of people forget that that is what this is about, and I actually talked to my CFO about this a lot, We, you know, I'm the last person in the world that needs to be reminded that this is about making money because that, that's what runs through my veins. But a lot of people don't have a for-profit mentality. They're really not killers. They're people that shouldn't be in the business. They will get slaughtered in the jungle of life and they forget this is about making money. And so while the documentary guys like the Tim Ferrars will point out the delays, you gotta say, well, where are we in terms of inflecting toward the ultimate prize here, and we're close. And so what's interesting is to then also kind of hear FirstNet talk about what they're going to be doing with satellites. And so Dr. Mike, who's a very attentive guy, as one might think a PhD doctor would be, went through this podcast that was recorded at this earlier FirstNet event. In June called Five by Five, and it talks about filling the white space. So that's really the areas where you don't have service, mountainous areas, and just talked about how this happened quite a lot for FirstNet, talking about their own experiences, but then also sort of maritime environments and areas that are really off the beaten track. So this is where FirstNet's going to be using it, and it's always a good reminder to understand where the first responders are seeing a need. And like most things, the need states originate with military or first responders, but then have broad applicability to consumers. And that's, that's how this will go as well. Getting all this technology into our hands is a regulatory framework that must also occur. And so Katsi, who is more diligent on this than really, well, I don't want to take any credit away from Justin Barrett and Kevin Tanner, but we, let's just say we have a deep bench of talented people tracking all of this. And so Katsi put out a nice tweet about the STAs that were put out. And, you know, nothing really here for me that That stands out other than forward progress. And maybe there's more to it, but I just read forward progress and that's, that's what we want. And then the other thing that kind of relates to FirstNet, but really, you know, anyone that has children will, if you don't sympathize with this, then you probably don't actually have children, is listening to Rep. Fluger. Who is talking about the Mystic River tragedy that happened last year, and it already seems honestly like a lifetime ago. But this was that incredible flash flood that happened in Texas that literally just washed away this girls' camp, which almost just makes you not believe that anything matters when things like this could happen. Just really, and I have a, I have a daughter that was actually at camp at the same time and just, you just can't even, can't even imagine this. It just should not happen. That's kind of, if one were to dedicate one's life to one thing, it would be the prevention of this from ever happening again to anyone. And so the act that they're pushing would close some of the gaps in communication by incorporating space-based mobile broadband into the Wireless Emergency Alert System. And so this is all about natural disaster alerts that can be delivered. Let's see what it says more closely. To allow natural disaster alerts to be delivered by satellite. And so getting that information, and especially when the seriousness of the situation is evolving, getting that, for example, to camp directors. And so back a long, long time ago, to make an extra, like, I think it was like, $8 a day. I would sleep in an attic to work a switchboard, which was probably from World War II because that was kind of the level of technology at the camp I worked at. But there was a switchboard. And so if there was an emergency or someone had to make a phone call, that would go to me up in this attic where I had access to a typewriter, which is what I then used to do my college applications at the time. And then I would just literally connect a switch to put a call through. Well, if your life depends on me being awake at a switchboard in an attic, that's kind of a scary proposition. And so now you'd want to make sure that these weather alerts are going to be accessible to all the people that really matter. And any, any camp, for example, or any institution is going to have the right sort of processes and protocols so that this would occur. And this is again why things like ASTS matters because it is whether redundant or a primary system can allow this information to be where it's needed. And maybe that per se is a small TAM, but it's an important TAM and the type of miracles that technology like this are going to be able to solve. And so what we're really seeing now is an astoundingly exciting time for space. I don't know how much of this was really what was driving the stock market on I don't even know what day it was at this point. Thursday last week?
[00:18:41] Speaker B: Wednesday?
[00:18:41] Speaker C: I was in the air when Artemis took off. But the world has seen this— I don't know what the world has seen, but what I'm seeing is this incredible exceptionalism in technology happening. I don't even wanna say kind of American exceptionalism, but one can't help but notice that these 3 massive rockets Starship, Artemis, and New Glenn are all stamped with USA. And people are seeing this happen as that kid that was interviewed by CNN. They said, well, why are you excited? He's like, we're going to the fucking moon. It's like, hell yeah, that's exciting, I guess. You know, why not? Let's go. And people are excited. They're seeing this happening. And I think all of a sudden, again, what my thesis was is The new space economy was delivered to us in disguise because it was disguised as these billionaires, or even, you know, deca-billionaires, centi-billionaires, uh, having this fun hobby. And so people dismissed it as Elon just lighting stuff up, but that's because he's a rich guy and had nothing to do. And then they see Bezos and they're like, oh, he's just trying to get into a measuring contest with Elon. And this kind of happened, you know, for years, and I think people really dismissed it, and now they're waking up. And, you know, whether intentionally or not, all of a sudden these 2 individuals who sit on top of 2 of the world's most powerful general ecosystems have unique capabilities that no one else has. And so I still, maybe I'm wrong on this, but I'm still thinking that if I'm Google, Microsoft, or Meta, I wake up and go, oh my God, how did I miss this? I, I don't have this. Usually there'd been sort of parity in the arms race with respect to cloud, SaaS, things like this. These companies were all sort of able to match, and even AI, uh, you know, one could argue, but all of them at this point have their models and things like this. Space is the thing that there appears to have been this sort of covert operation disguised as a hobby where then Bezos and Musk broke away from the pack, and I really actually do think it was because of their general interest. And this is where you have the power of owner operators. They just did whatever the hell they wanted to do. Satya, not an owner operator. The Google guy, I'm already forgetting his name, but Pichai, not an owner operator. And Mark bet wrong. Mark bet on the metaverse, and so he is an owner operator, but he just bet on the wrong thing. And then, and that's where I think there's really a, you know, side conversation you can have about the power of an owner-operator because at the end of the day, they do whatever the hell they want to do. Their boards report to them. And once you start to have professional CEOs, not to say that they're not good, but they, they don't have that freedom. They can't be legitimately crazy because they get replaced or stopped. Bezos and, and Musk can be legitimately as out of their mind as they want to be and no one can stop 'em. And that is both dangerous at times. I've seen that in terms of portfolio companies where, you know, we have owner operators, some of them that go crazy, legit go crazy, and that's bad. But these individuals, Bezos and Musk, they've, well, whether Musk can figure out the Starship thing is TBD, but they bet big with their own money and The world is now seeing it, and that's happening at this point where now you're having this fantastic financial event, which will be the SpaceX IPO, and that's all dovetailing with the initial deployment of the ASTS constellation. So the whole world's going to be waking up and going, this is the next thing. And it also appeals to the, the heart of, I believe, of what it is to be human, certainly what it is to be American, which is like go to space. I guess one could argue the same for Russians, but, you know, this is running through our veins. So I think it also— one of my original thoughts when I made this investment is this fundamentally appeals to the dream-a-dream aspect of people. And then when there's intersection of that to money, things can get really crazy really fast. And that could also be code for it could turn into a bubble, which is good, I guess, if you, you know, get out at the right time. I'm not a good bubble seller, so I hope it doesn't go into a full bubble mode. I hope it just ends up being really good and compounds for a long time. But the setup is there. The setup is, is there for a, a crazy outcome. And, you know, behind that you have ASTS continuing to execute. So they hired a head of launch, which is great. Uh, they had a former head of launch who's retiring. So they were able to fill for that. And it's a— I believe it was a Blue Origin person. Let me just check that real quick. Yep, Blue Origin person who's Deputy Director of Program Management. And before that, you had a, you know, senior leader at Lockheed Martin. So again, people that didn't just fall off an apple cart are joining our company, which is great. And then as Always Think Inches keeps tracking our hiring, Pace continues to just skyrocket. And so this is a company that is scaling like wild. And I still think, you know, I'll die on, on this hill of poop, but the constellation constipation, people will look back and realize that our— this metaphor might strike people as one that might make you uncomfortable, but our intestines are full of satellites. And we are taking our fiber, but the world has not yet seen that fiber kick in. But we are locked and loaded, and it's going to be exciting. And so stay tuned. But I think people often confuse— I know the frustration of like, why haven't we shipped yet? Blah, blah, blah. The arrays are being made. They're making the buses. They had to deal with some Composite stuff and some stacking engineering. But the machine is spinning up and it's going to start spitting out satellites, I believe, in the near future. And that's going to be one of the massive unlocks. It's not going to be the last unlock we got. There's still more stuff we have to see proven, but operational execution is a big one. And then we'll shift the goalposts as usual. The bears will come out and go to the ARPU question, you know, really like how much can you charge? How deep is the market? We might have some competition questions coming up. There's always going to be this, but you got to ask yourself again, forward mirror versus the rearview mirror. Let bygones be bygones. At what stock price are we asking those questions? Is this a fierce debate when the stock is $150, $250, $350, $450? I don't know. If I knew that, if I knew it was a debate when the stock was going to be at $50 or something, well then, you know, like, I don't know if I'd sell, but, you know, you, a reasonable person would say, well, yeah, get out, you know, have that debate at a lower price. But where, where this stock has been so difficult for shorts is the fierce debates have been happening at, at stock prices that they didn't really conceive of because they thought the stock was going to get knocked out on other events, which they were wrong about. And then when they didn't, when the stock didn't get blown to pieces, then all of a sudden they had to invent new things to worry about, but at stock prices that they, they could not have conceived. And so as Katzi sort of pointed out, it's now a time-honored tradition for us to beat the living brains out of shorts at increasingly higher prices on decreasingly important questions. And so all of a sudden, if we're arguing whether the ARPU is $10 versus $15, bro, we won because the original debate was it was going to blow up in these, in the sky, the FCC wouldn't approve it, things like that. The, I don't know if this is the right use of the term overturn window, but you'll kind of track what I'm saying. It's shifted and it is not shifted in favor of the shorts. And now these knuckleheads have to fight the wave. And so SpaceX has now filed for the IPO. And so we can have a lot of academic debate about what this means. On one hand, you could say, well, oh, that's going to be sucking $30 billion of capital outta the market. Yeah, but from what? Not from ASTS. You know, that $30 billion is going to be coming from big accounts. Highly unlikely it's coming from accounts that, you know, are the top, top page in terms of, you know, the Fidelity small cap fund. You know, are they really selling their ASTS to buy SpaceX? I don't know. And so, you know, some people on this call, if they get an allocation in SpaceX, I get it. Some retail people on the margin, know, might have to sell some ASTS to take down their SpaceX allocation. I will not be one of those people for one. But, you know, that's, I think, a losing argument because I think the dominant argument is this is just going to draw incredible attention going back to this hobby. You know, my view, this sneak attack of owner-operator billionaires doing whatever the hell they wanted to do, which is build space companies, and then the world waking up down the line and realizing these might be the most defensive strategic assets presently on Earth. And then people are going to see SpaceX and we'll, you know, obviously be excited to see these numbers and see what's what. That could very easily then make people realize, holy crap. And I go, I, again, the other mountain I'll die on is I think people are going to wake up and go, SpaceX is Facebook Desktop, but can they transition to mobile? And the answer for Facebook back then was yes. The answer now is people, I believe, are going to look around and go, God, ASTS is that. Facebook Mobile is ASTS. SpaceX is desktop, fixed broadband market. And then we'll go to the next tweet is really, is SpaceX running up against the limit of their TAM? And so who put this out? This was @AlexFromBabylon. He's probably not actually from Babylon, but you know, you can choose whatever handle you want. But he quotes this PCMag article and PCMag could be a bunch of dopes on this issue. But you know, we've seen the curve for SpaceX is starting to flatten a little bit. It's less convex. And they point out the broadband-focused Starlink might be nearing its ceiling according to Wait for it. Gwen Shotwell. Well, damn, that's not good. That's the CEO of SpaceX. She's saying they're hitting their ceiling. That's not like Tim Ferriss saying ASTS sucks. This is the CEO of the company. So that's not good. And so there are going to be a lot of eyes on this. And I personally think SpaceX is going to pivot to this AI data center pitch. Because it sounds a lot more exciting than DTC because you can start talking about a million satellites. You can start talking about Kardashev, whatever, level 2 civilizations with replicants and spice on faraway planets. You know, this is more exciting stuff for Elon to talk about, but I think other financial analysts are going to realize ASTS also sneakily dominated what is probably the more exciting part of Leo Telecommunications. That's my bet. My money is where my mouth is on this, so I hope I'm right. And last week we had a lot of volatility, and so I'm assuming— actually, the futures aren't open yet. Sorry, I'm on the wrong time zone, but who knows how the market's going to view it. I don't know what people expect with Iran, but my personal expectation is ground war. And so I don't know if the US or the market is fully adapted to that. Trump might jawbone it up a little bit. Who knows? But the stock this week, I, I really thought I was going to wake up on Thursday and see the stock drilled overnight. It was already down to like $79. I was moaning and groaning on some private chats and everyone was probably seeing that and buying the stock because they're like, Cook crashed out again. And so when I woke up, I'm in Asia, to see the stock close at 92, I just couldn't believe it. But just because to show you that this stock can kind of do whatever it wants. And so to trade ASTS based on whether the timeline in Iran is 1 week, 1 month, 6 months is pretty silly. Because again, I think it's like the same thing as giving a paper bag to someone hyperventilating. Ultimately, they're just going to pass out because people can only freak out about stuff like Iran for so long and then they're going to move on. And you gotta look at the fundamentals. And so ASTS keeps on just putting building blocks in front on the fundamental development. And so Katzi, once again, tracking everything all the time, finds the Legato filings. And I'm trying to remember what the big takeaway is here, but more Legato stuff and All again, kind of beyond my pay grade. I'd have to remember what my key takeaways from this are, but my takeaway was really just that the company keeps on putting the important building blocks in place for nonlinear upside from here because adding spectrum starts to totally change our capabilities and our monetization potential and sets the company up increasingly an increasingly strong position for what I'm going to term the global spectrum wars. And so what's also pretty interesting from our other sort of elite FCC analyst, Justin Barrett, he was pointing out that in ASTS's response to SpaceX and Viasat over the 2 GHz spectrum, ASTS points out some interesting legal positions that SpaceX, with its EchoStar deal, does not guarantee SpaceX access to that spectrum globally. Quote, in fact, under ITU rules, SpaceX is required to coordinate with ITU-registered satellite networks with lower priority to enable spectrum sharing. So shots fired. It's exciting, and we can start to see how this is going to unfold. So as someone who is absolutely not an expert in this, so I'm learning with each filing, I'm having to go learn it for the first time too, just in case anyone is wondering, I am not an authority on this topic. I'm a learner on this topic. What I see is some interesting education in these filings and how battle lines are being drawn out. ASTS is very clearly positioning for a global onslaught to secure more S-band spectrum. That was already clear to me by following the Legato adversary proceeding within Marsat. And these guys are like real punks. I don't know what to say other than that. Viasat, bunch of punks. And this battle was already previewed with the adversary proceeding with Legato. And now we're just getting more insight into just how serious ASTS is.
[00:34:29] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:34:30] Speaker C: at securing global spectrum rights. And that gets super interesting. And so when you want to talk about how to accrete value, the duality of ASTS is its ability to be increasingly supported by NAV while also about to be supported by inflecting operating results. This duality, I almost sound like the duality of man is to be full of NAV, yet the speed of a cheetah, something like this. And so what's cool about this duality of ASTS is that the conservative distress guys are going to be looking at these spectrum-based NAV numbers. So as we secure spectrum, they're going to be putting this megahertz per pop comp number on it. And that's the, you know, to be sure, that's what I did initially too when looking at Legato. And I went, you know, hey, Ant-Pan Man, I think the downside on this thing is now $50. We should YOLO into it. And, you know, hey, I was right. Uh, but that's kind of, that was initially how guys like Ant-Pan Man and I looked at it because we're those guys, you know, we, we were trained in the ways of being dopes wearing Patagonia vests. And, you know, we've ripped off that vest. We have now secured our freedom. to be a wild man, and that is a good freedom to have, but we still appreciate that. That's how a lot of Wall Street's going to have to think. And so as we secure more and more of the spectrum, the NAV bros are going to see this downside support. That's going to be a bulletproof downside case because this was just totally reinforced on Wall Street by the EchoStar drama. And so I have a lot of friends that are EchoStar guys and they fought this one to the teeth based on the NAV of spectrum and they were right. And so Wall Street just learned a very valuable lesson on like, these NAVs are real and they are worthwhile. And as ASTS gets more of it, that's going to give us just more downside protection. And what's so nice about that and important to remember are, you know, people just use myself, for example, you know, when the stock started ripping, you know, most notably when it kind of broke from $10 up to $20, I was just on a, on a hair trigger, you know. Every time it goes up, I'm like calling all my friends on Wall Street like, what do you think? What do you think? Oh my God, what are you seeing for flows? Calling every broker like, well, what are you seeing? No, no, no, no. I'm just so worried about it, about it going back down. Now what I've sort of come to realize over the years is when stocks make big moves, there's, there's so much more memory and stickiness to them than you might think. And so I It's very hard to do, but when you have a stock make a big revaluation move, as long as it's not some bullshit stock, you know, forget these like fake things. But, and I get that bears would potentially make the argument that ASTS was a fake thing. I just thought they were wrong. But you don't actually have to sell so fast. The downside after a revaluation event is usually much A, less likely and less severe than you might fear. And the time where you just chill out gives you so much more time to reflect and absorb new information that you might realize what previously looked like a crazy stock price, quote unquote, very quickly with the benefit of new information and reflection can, can start to look stupid cheap. And so just even think about lately, you know, last year, I don't know, far from me to keep track at this point. The first time we sort of hit 60 last June, I remember, you know, certainly I was thinking, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God. And, you know, then we, you know, hit 100 in October and that felt, you know, like this release. And then of course it crashed and then, you know, 100 felt so far away, but at the same time, 50 felt really cheap. A lot of us loaded up and then we got to 130, you know, all of a sudden, look at how well we held the 70s. And, you know, a lot of us, as we reflected on the information, we went, well, 70 is cheap. Well, 70 used to look crazy. And so think about that when you just think about your own psychology, how, you know, you have, you know, some of the craziest of us, like losing our minds at 75 nowadays, where previously 75, you know, I was posting, you know, daily pictures of Porsches, which I should probably go back to doing, you know. So what had been euphoric success so quickly turns into the deepest despairs. at the exact same dollar price. Crazy to think about. So long way of getting off topic when I say that the accretion of NAV can make prices that previously looked euphoric very quickly look cheap. And that's why if you catch a winner, what I've sort of come to realize is being patient and doing nothing can be quite the virtue. So going back to Legato, because again, that is a big source of NAV for us, we have had some wild things happening in court. And so, uh, a lot of us are, are in the bankruptcy proceedings so that we can keep a solid eye on this. And so people know some of the people in Space Mob are actually lawyers. So I am not one of those people, but I know my way around. But @Steve24661 is such qualified professional, and so I like to chat with @Steve. It's actually @SteveD24661, and so good sounding board. And and with Tanner and of course the usual usual gang of suspects, been really focused on this legato proceeding. So Viasat just got smacked in court. The the judge. was not entertained and verbally admonished counsel and ViaSat for really unbelievable actions in court. And certainly taking very pedantic positions in front of the judge that the judge just smacked down. I think one quote was like, you have Quote, a lot of chutzpah for standing up here and lecturing me on contract law. So let me just break it down. When you're in federal court and a judge says that you have quite a lot of chutzpah for saying something, yeah, in that moment you're fucked. That's not good. That is not good. You can generally tell which way a judge is going to rule when they say stuff like that. That is not good. And when you're a lawyer at Quinn Emanuel, And you're trying to build a practice. Quinn Emanuel is a very good firm. It is astonishing to me that Quinn was put in opinion, in a position where a federal judge was saying that to them. Just astonishing for, for me to hear this. Again, not my first time at the rodeo. And I think frankly astonishing for all participants. And so needless to say, this is not good for ViaSat. It is neutral. For AST SpaceMobile, because again, AST just wants the deal that they have. They're not negotiating for anything extra. They're just negotiating for the deal that they have. So when we have court hearings like this, it's not good for ASTS, uh, because you want a straightforward court proceeding. You want to have counterparties that are holding their bargain. But this is absolutely devastating for Viasat. All of a sudden, it is very clear— the judge said as much— That now there's the opening of potential damage claims. And so ASTS is going to pay the money. They did, but it's now held in escrow, effectively in escrow against potential damages. And so one could argue whether the damages are owed to Legato or ASTS. Tim Ferrar, of course, said immediately that I'm an idiot for suggesting it's ASTS. Well, you know, screw you, Tim. When you think about it, who the damaged parties are, It is Legato because their bankruptcy is, you know, being affected by this. But the judge has also been clear that the reason why ASTS has standing in this case, and they do, and he has said as such, is because of the unique nature of this course where the entire plan effectively is ASTS is an alter ego of Legato. And ViaSat has said as much in filings as well as part of their other little battles. And so when that's the case, reason stands that ASTS could receive damages as well, especially since there are damages. And so whether these amount to a lot of money or not is really not the point, because even if all of a sudden ASTS got a couple hundred million dollars of damages, you know, literally that's just like a good day for Scott on the ATM when he's just banging out, you know, dilution just to mess with people. You know, what's $100 million to Scott at this point? But It could happen. And it certainly starts to put ViaSat a little bit more on the straight and narrow, I'll tell you that. And so if these guys aren't changing their behavior after that smackdown, then, you know, I can't, I don't really know what to say. And I still think ViaSat ultimately is not long for this world. They are strategically interesting. If I woke up tomorrow and I saw ASTS had acquired ViaSat, I would say, Well played, Scotty. Not saying that will happen, but if that did happen, I could see how that could be a smart thing. Yeah. Getting all the global S-band makes sense. Again, the same reason why I thought Iridium was interesting because you onboard a bunch of business as well. So just, you know, deorbit the satellites, you know, whenever you want, but just transition over all the government contracts and use the spectrum, which I when I talked to guys like Tanner and Kevin, kind of talked me off the spectrum. Is that interesting? But I could see how some of these legacy satellite companies are actually pretty interesting M&A targets for the big secular winners. And the big secular winners are going to be SpaceX, ASTS, and Kuiper in my view. And so we're still trucking down Legato Lane and should close and should get FCC approval in my view. And we're also starting to have more spectrum get repurposed. So it's interesting when we learn about SiriusXM repurposing their spectrum, but now we have this other company, Grain Spectrum, which I had never heard about. But Grain bought spectrum from T-Mobile. It's a private equity-backed vehicle, and now they're looking, they're asking the FCC for flexibility to also lease or sell it to satellite D2D operators. which presumably would include AST SpaceMobile. And so this is just more spectrum that is sort of being legatoized, which is great for the industry. It's just, it's more capacity that then can be used with our ultimate downstream assets, which are the satellites. And then we had a pumpathon for Globalstar. And so Globalstar has never forsaken the opportunity to pump itself as M&A. So they last year, if people remember, they started spreading a lot of rumors that SpaceX was going to buy it. Didn't happen. We have at whatever his name is, Rohan Goswami says, I can confirm this great FT scoop. So who is this guy? So he's a business— okay, so this is actually a real journalist. So he's confirming that Amazon is in talks to buy Globalstar. Great. But then he adds, all the telcos took a look at Globalstar and passed. So hard to tell if this is just yet another rumor to try to pump Globalstar, because I struggle a little bit to understand why Amazon would want it. On one hand, you get the spectrum, but it's already committed to Apple. So then why would Amazon be buying The Apple relationship, what would they get from that? There's some other spectrum associated with Globalstar. I think it's this band N53 from the last time I looked at Globalstar, but it doesn't just strike me as totally obvious what Amazon would be— what would they be doing with this? They would buy a customer in Apple, but again, seems a little bit of an unholy Marriage, so I don't really get it. I'm also not the world's smartest guy, so who knows? But doesn't seem like the rest of the world gets it either. And so Mega Constellations, which is a pretty smart account, does point out that there is complexity with Apple's ownership, and basically Apple gets to call the shots. So this could once again be the rumor mill. trying to will a deal into existence that otherwise doesn't want to happen. And we talk about other deals that are being willed to happen. There was an interesting article in Bloomberg or Wall Street Journal about AT&T pledging up to $2 billion to upgrade cellular networks with the FCC. And they did make a weird comment, is that part of the negotiation with the FCC was in return for some faster approvals. One has to ask on some of the things we expect to happen with ASTS SpaceMobile as it relates to FirstNet, one has to sort of wonder if we're also part of some bigger, more complicated issues. Not that I think it matters because, again, our satellites aren't up in the air, but just interesting to see if ASTS is part of a bargaining chip with some of these things. It was also notable to see that Brendan Carr was in West Texas. And so Brandon Carr took a picture of tumbleweeds, and then he goes, the FCC's Build America agenda is helping providers unleash new internet infrastructure across the country. So was he visiting AST SpaceMobile? We didn't see any confirmation of that, but the timing would be interesting, right? When we think we could be getting SES approvals, we've had some recent FCC activity and some correspondence and things like that. It's very possible that Brendan was doing a last, you know, kick the composite type of trip. We shall see. Um, you know, the weeks keep melting by. So again, when thinking about the rearview mirror versus the windshield, SCS approval, each day that goes past, one day closer to an ultimate approval, one would think. And so that could really be coming now any given week. And then we also, the last thing we have is the space ETF was announced. I think this is pretty small potatoes in terms of how much AUM is in it, but the, you know, NASA ETF, you know, I don't know if that's like the best ticker, but it's funny, I guess. And ASTS is in it, you know, along with things like Rocket Lab, Planet Labs, things like that. So it's just, again, just more capital vehicles that are, you know, going to serve this exciting space industry. And the most important thing, as far as I'm concerned, is there has to be real businesses. And so the problem with space had been that there's just— there really weren't scalable, interesting businesses. And so a lot of the stuff, if you're just serving NASA, you know, it just wasn't that interesting to me ever. Because what you don't really want to be is these narrow sort of engineering service companies. There's just really don't have an ability to extract a lot of rent. And so that's why things like Redwire, you know, bless their heart, were really never interesting to me and will never be. Those are businesses that I just don't think will ever amount to much. And the history of satellites has been that the only real scalable meat on the bone application has been telecom. And maybe that will change in the future, AI data centers and things that either don't exist or I haven't really thought about, but the scalability of LEO, I think, is the theme that, that matters. And so that's why space is relevant now. Launch is really a means to an end for that thing, but the thing is LEO telecom in my view. And I think that the SpaceX IPO And the S-1 is really going to show that as well. So I believe we're in the right spot. I truly hate competition, but I am humble to the fact that in a world where you can't avoid competition, it is good that the market then has an industry around which to invest, to educate themselves. And so one thing that was taught to me by a very smart friend is what's called the generalist dilemma. And I'd never heard about this, but it's an interesting concept is when you have, let's say you have an N-of-1 type security, a generalist really can't justify the time to learn that one thing as opposed to learning about AI or learning about crypto or things like that. You know, there's 20, 30, 40 securities that then they can translate that knowledge to. And so you can underwrite the time to have an analyst covering it, things like that. And so space previously really wasn't a sector. It was sort of looped into telecom and general EMT type stuff. It was sort of an afterthought. You weren't going to have a space analyst. I mean, could you even imagine, you know, being at Millennium and be like, yo, I'm the space analyst. People like Public Storage, or, you know, are you with Chris Sambar? You know, people would know like what you were. And now with SpaceX, AST SpaceMobile, you know, Rocket Lab, I hope, hopefully Blue Origin goes public, things like that. We're going to start to actually have a meat on the bone space industry where there's going to be real space coverage. And you have guys like Adam Jonas that really paved the way too at Morgan Stanley, who I think is one of the best analysts out there in terms of a big thinker. Like this guy is a crazy big thinker and he'll just sort of will industries into existence because he really sees where the ball's going to go. you know, 2 to 3 years ahead of the other Wall Street analysts. And that's what we're, I think, poised to have. And what that means though is that we're early in terms of the capital flows. And so liquidity drives all things, most importantly price. And I believe we're early in the liquidity cycle for this industry. And then as it becomes more mainstream, as there is what is recognized as an industry, As the excitement builds, people see Artemis going around the moon. No Vestival event there, I guess maybe Lunar and things like that, but it just shows people that we're on this new age and it becomes very thematic. But most importantly, themes must have real businesses to just not be simple flash-in-the-pan bubbles. People are going to see Starlink as a real business and hopefully in the next 6 months, the inflecting financial results of ASTS will show the market that same thing as it relates to our company and our investment. So that's what I have for this week. Thanks everyone for joining. I'm kind of surprised actually how many people can join at this hour. So I guess it's almost 8 o'clock New York time. Definitely not that time for me right now. I'm about to go to bed. So happy Easter for all those who celebrate. And I hope we have another good week. I'm, I'm very excited about the next week because we're really starting to close the window on New Glenn 3, which now I believe is slotted somewhere around April 14th or 15th.
[00:54:34] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:54:34] Speaker C: If we could just delay that an extra day, then I might be able to go. And then we're getting very, very close to batch 1. And so I might tweet a little bit just to heckle Scott, 'cause you never know. Sometimes you never know when me posting that meme of Christophe will finally get to Scott and he's going to go, goddamn it, Kook, and give us an update. So I'll try to drive him crazy, as is my sacred duty. But we are, we are very close to batch 1. And what's, what's exciting about the setup this time is we're going to have FM2 go off and hopefully successfully, but then the market is going to look very quickly to Batch 1 developments and the uncorking of the Constellation Constipation. And that should mitigate the sort of debacle we had over Christmas after FM1, which was just like stupid. A lot of us made a ton of money on that because we were able to buy all that stock. And then, um, ASTS just ripped. I think it crashed Christmas Eve or whatever and then ripped right on New Year's. So that was unfortunate. The stock has that volatility, but also You know, if you had a lot of bravery, you could monetize it. I hope that doesn't happen again because I do think that we're going to go from strength to strength. And a lot of the TA guys are seeing us lined up really nicely on the charts, which is always sort of, you know, on one hand, black magic, but on the other hand, really the distillation of all market participants and their emotions. And it's certainly looking like the bottom was last week and the people are looking in the frontview mirror with some exciting things happening. We finally, thank God, got done with March. So I'll end it here. Thank you everyone for joining. I appreciate all the great research people did, and I will end it right now.
[00:56:36] Speaker A: Thanks for listening 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.
[00:56:57] Speaker B: We're doing something very, very big, and I think we need to know that we can't really affect a billion lives. AST SpaceMobile is the only company that has proven technology to deliver cellular mobile 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 to the animals.
[00:57:35] Speaker A: Listen.
[00:57:42] Speaker C: Mmm, waffles.