Anpanman - Golden Dome Unlocked

[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: Good evening, everyone. Thanks for joining this last-minute space that I'm holding in lieu of, or because of the news that came out today after hours, which we'll see if the company PRs it tomorrow, which would be quite interesting just given that I think a lot of people have left for the long weekend, meaning institutions, but clearly Retail is probably still sticking around. And as we head into options expiry, which I remember earlier this week I had said that I thought we were going to consolidate around 100 and likely then, you know, move higher after this week unless something groundbreaking came out, which clearly that's just happened. So I think this morning I said it feels like something's going to happen, and indeed something did. Not that I knew, but it certainly felt like it. So, you know, as they say, markets can be efficient, and perhaps some folks out there knew, which was why AST was strong over the course of the day. But anyway, yeah, thanks everyone for joining. I wanted to hold this space because we've hit a pretty significant milestone. I think this milestone in particular is really huge for the company because it's, in terms of the financial impact, it's going to be pretty massive. And then it's a huge validation for what the company's doing. And what I mean by that is, you know, going back to, and I've talked to a few people about this and I remember I, you know, I just actually earlier today just sent Katzi a message thanking him for all his work. Going back to 2021, 2022, it was Katzy who was first to really talk about the dual use case of AST space mobile satellites. Because by having this large phased array orbiting the Earth, besides doing connectivity, there were a number of other things you could do around radar sensing, GPS backup. And now we've learned that there's probably about 10 different use cases besides communications that would be applicable to military applications. And so, but yeah, hats off to Cathie for doing all this work. As I've explained in my Spaces and also Cook has explained, there were some pretty dark times over the past several years where even in the throes of trading down to $2 in the early part of 2024, Cathie continued to put out due diligence, just hammering home the case that beyond just providing communications to warfighters, there were these other aspects of what the company could do around electronic warfare, radar, very particular radar type of sensing applications, what have you. And so I think we all owe a huge debt of gratitude to Katzy for all his work. And even in the face of skepticism, whether that was outside the community or in the community. Because there were points in time where even myself or Cook, um, would question, you know, hey, Katzi, this is great, but I'm not sure, um, you know, this— what you're proposing makes sense, but I'm not sure it's going to be relevant, or maybe the company's not doing it. But lo and behold, like, he, he was right the entire time. So, um, Yeah, I think this award that came out this evening is a big deal because I think at Space Mob, a lot of investors already know about the potential dual use case of the company's satellites, whether it's the existing commercial satellites that are going to be put up or potentially satellites that will be purpose-built for the government. But it's important in that Taking a step back, most investors don't really know what AST SpaceMobile is. Like, it's not on most people's radars. I mean, people understand Starlink. They probably, there's probably a pretty decent, and if you look at like institutional ownership, it's certainly true. Like there's probably most people on the street know Rocket Lab and what they do, right? And out of the gate, Rocket Lab has always had a pretty significant institutional support after they went public. But AST was kind of like this niche company and, you know, hey, it's for the people that spent any, you know, that took the time and did some research, you know, oh wow, this company's like doing broadband connectivity to unmodified phones. That seems like, or that could be a big market. But then I think, you know, in the confusion of things, I think people probably either they didn't know about AST SpaceMobile or they do, they did, but then they assumed it was like something similar to what Iridium does, right? Or, or, you know, we, we saw a few short sellers come out over the last few weeks. What was this guy like, Raging Capital? This guy was, this guy had made his money on building, I think, some social, actually it was like some message boards back in the day, which became popular. And then, you know, he moved into like managing assets and then moved over to the venture side. But I think he tweeted like a week ago or 2 weeks ago about how he was shorting AST because it's basically another Iridium and, you know, the story's the same, which we kind of poked fun at him. Like, yeah, Iridium is a completely different company. I won't go into all the details, but I mean, the key aspect which the guy missed is like, The world is very different than 1990s. Like a lot of technology has changed and what the company's doing has changed and it's providing connectivity to unmodified devices, right? Like there's no friction in turning on the service versus selling someone a $1,000 brick phone that can do texting and limited voice, right? Those are very different value propositions. But anyway, but that's kind of like the general, and I'm sure like many of you have pitched AST SpaceMobile to friends and family and you probably get met with some level of skepticism. And then, you know, like we all say, after that 5 minutes you get pushback, but then after an hour they're like, okay, yeah, I'm going to invest. But that's the general perception by the market, right? Like I think the company is misunderstood. Only a few people truly understand it. And then only a small subset of those people truly understand That there's not just a commercial business here. There's also the defense business, right? There's defense and there's like the first responder business as well. And the defense business, as Scott in his own words, you know, that is a business that is going to be bigger than the commercial business in the early years, right? And so I think for those that do know the news out today, you know, it's, I was joking with Cook about how 'Cause he asked me, he's like, well, what do you think the market reaction will be? And I, and, you know, is it going to be positive? Like, are people going to be confused? And I told him like, yeah, it's going to be very positive, right? Like, I think we've seen this where some of these other companies like Rocket Lab, Voyager, Firefly, they get awards and it's expected, right? And we joke about like, things are priced in to an extent. Like it was priced in for those companies because it was kind of expected. Whereas I think for AST SpaceMobile, people see this consumer broadband connectivity company. They don't truly understand the implications of having a large, massive phased array in lower Earth orbit, like the different applications you can do with that. And so I think people were dismissive of all the things that we've been posting for over a year now, right? I remember putting together, sending out these, the tweets with the Golden Dome, like having Cerberus. The reason why we put Cerberus on there is because Cerberus is a big defense investor. They own a piece of Legato, and we believe that Legato Spectrum is going to be an integral part of Golden Dome. And Cerberus, Steve Feinberg, who is the Sorry, that's my— those are my kids yelling. Um, but anyway, Steve Feinberg, uh, is his number 2 at the Department of War. And so, um, having that connection, that's why we, we tweet those things with Cerberus standing over like this golden dome over the US, um, for those that don't know. But yeah, we've been, um, pushing this, this narrative that they are going to win Golden Dome based off of our due diligence. And lo and behold, um, that happened. today, right? And so this is a huge point of validation. I think even valuations, this like short seller douchebag guy who wrote, who did a write-up, like part of his write-up was he was very skeptical that the company would get anything. He also doesn't, you know, I guess he didn't do his work. Like he was saying, well, the company's just going to be a minor prime, minor subprime to a prime if they get work and it'll be low margin. What he doesn't know is that the company is actually a prime for SDA, and the company is getting direct work, and the numbers are going to be pretty big, right? And so I think that's where, for us as Space Mob investors, understanding, you know, we talk about this whole idea of know what you own is important, right? Because this company is not just about commercial, it's about defense. Which is going to be pretty large. It's also about first responder networks. It's going to, you know, SatCo JV, there's significant upside there in terms of providing a sovereign turnkey solution for Europe, which also leads to potential awards for 2 GHz MSS spectrum in 2027. I mean, there's just so many different threads to this story that I could go on and on and talk about it, but But yeah, I think, I think the, as we saw overnight, or as we're seeing now, I think the stock's trading at $107.36 on pretty decent volume. When I saw the news and the stock was like at $101.30, I happened to have some money that I freed up today. And so I bought 2,000 shares at $101.30. And then, and then I didn't, you know, the stock started to move a little bit. And so I bought another 2,000 at like $103.30, I think it was. And then I think as people kind of started to understand the implications of this, the stock started to move further. And so I think tomorrow, I mean, who knows, right? Like, I think it is pretty tough to predict where AST trades on any given day, just given the algo, I guess we'd call it like, pardon my French, but the algo fuckery that happens and any number of different things that are going on. with this particular stock or different factors. But yeah, I think tomorrow we should open up pretty strong and as people digest this and, you know, we happen to be blessed, by the way, with like B. Riley and Scotiabank who downgraded our ratings a day ago and 3 days ago. That's good, by the way, because like the stock hung in there just fine on the downgrades and quite candidly, like I was able to add some upside exposure. But when you have one of the things on the street that's tough is like if you have a stock that's doing well and everybody's bullish on it, like everyone has a buy rating, there's no place to move. Like they can move targets up, but then that doesn't really give you the financial juice, right? But when analysts are forced to upgrade stocks by ratings, and either they do that on a single rating or they do what we call a double upgrade, Right? So, so for example, Scotia is primed to do a double upgrade at some point, right? They're on a sell rating. So eventually, um, and you know, they have the, the notoriety, they and, um, B. Riley, of downgrading the stock, uh, on the eve of our first Golden Dome Award. So, um, another, another, um, I guess badge of honor for Scotia, who's been Pretty awful. I mean, after getting turned by hedge funds to be bearish on the name, they've been pretty bad on their timing. Or I guess you could look at it as pretty good, right? Because they've become like a few other characters, like they've become like inverse indicators, right? But the good thing about that is you now have this award, and we are expecting another one. And for those Those people who've continued to doubt like Space Mob due diligence, yeah, you're, don't, don't do that because we actually are pretty good at what we do. But yeah, there's, there's basically like 2 awards, right? And so this first one is the first piece. Now I'll talk a little bit about the 2 awards and, and I will, I will say like I had to have, you know, Gemini helped me out in kind of deciphering some of this stuff. But today's award was for the 3rd tranche of the Missile Defense Agency SHiELD program. And so this one in particular, they call it Scalable Homeland Innovative Enterprise Layer Defense, which the acronym is SHiELD. The total program ceiling for this is $151 billion, and that's shared over multiple awards for 10 years. And so what this does is You know, this is a contracting vehicle, the primary contracting vehicle for the Golden Dome initiative. And, you know, this in particular is to, you know, develop a multi-domain system to detect, track, intercept advanced threats like hypersonics, ballistics, and other cruise missiles. And so what this means for AST is that, you know, AST was named as a recipient, which is an IDIQ, which is indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity. And what that means is that this gives the company now the license, you know, it's like the entree to then go pursue billions of dollars for contract work, right? And so you have to kind of pass this first stage in order to start doing work for Golden Dome, right? So it prequalifies them. And so now the company has the ability to go in and win work. And I think what's important about this is that this is a— this is a validation of the dual use of the technology, right? And so the Department of Defense, what it says is, and I guess taking a step back, heading into this, we have 9 military contracts of which the SDA gave us like $43 million. And the SDA is part of this, by the way. And so, FM-1 and FM-2, which is sitting down in Cape Canaveral right now waiting to launch on Blue Origin New Glenn 3. Those 2 satellites are HALO satellites. So HALO, in that project from the SDA, they allocated money to various contractors to develop 2 prototypes to prove out their technology, right? And I believe HALO actually pays Pays for the launches as well. So, and maybe you know this was one of our questions for Scott, but I believe LVM three and you know Isra LVM three, but then also this New Glenn launch will be paid for by the government. And so, but yeah, so AST is part of that program. They also, you know, some of you guys may have read this past week about the DIU. The Defense Innovation Unit. And that is like, it's basically like Skunk Works, right? For the Department of War. And so when I, and then that program, AST got $10 million from that department. And the purpose of DIU is to evaluate new next generation technologies and then figure out ways that that technology can be used in the various departments of the government. defense, the different armed forces, whether that's like the Navy, the Air Force, Army, et cetera. So today is the 10th, now we've been assigned or we have the ability to go hunt for Golden Dome work, which the company feels very confident in their position in that. And I guess one thing I would, in terms of characterizing that, The company had mentioned, I think it was at Bank of America, the Bank of America conference where they reiterated the guidance of $50 to $75 million of second half revenue. We'll see where that comes out. I think there's probably a reasonable chance that it'll come out the lower end of that. And the reason why is that we've, we are, in terms of our launch, have been delayed. And that's been, I've talked about this before, but FM1 and FM2, From what we believe, I can't say this definitively, but I think there were some changes in terms of government requirements. And so the satellites needed additional time and then they got out the door a bit late. And then of course, there were some launch provider delays as well. And in particular for New Glenn 3, refurbishing those boosters, which they're planning to reuse, and this is part of the program to see if they can turn them around pretty quickly. I mean, this is the first time they're doing it, you know, using the same booster. That's going to take a bit more time than they'd expected. And so instead of a January launch, you're probably looking more like something in February and perhaps even possibly moving into March. But the cool thing, as I mentioned this morning, is that, you know, sending FM2 on New Glenn 3 is going to be pretty badass. And having the opportunity to go down there and see the new spacecraft, which is FM-2, going up on the new rocket, New Glenn 3, that's going to be pretty special. So yeah, so I think— where was I going with that? Oh, so going back to Bank of America, Scott had mentioned how— This coming year, 2026, will be the year of commercialization, of course, but that he wants to move from people counting launch cadence to counting revenue, right? And part of the characterization of that was the fact that this coming year in 2026, a majority of the revenues that are expected are going to be defense revenues, right? And so This year, a majority of financial performance will be coming from defense contracts. And my guess is, you know, you mix a bit of FirstNet in there as well. And then he was saying you'll have commercial revenues from their MNOs start to kick in in a meaningful way, in a more meaningful way in 2027. And so what does that mean if you're looking at And I think the characterization is like hundreds of millions of revenue this year. So if that's the case, like in addition to those 9 contracts that go from items of record to something much bigger, that would indicate that the company has expectations that they are planning to get something from Golden Dome. And so in particular, in that conference, Scott had mentioned the idea of potentially ramping up, expanding facilities to ramp up production from 6 satellites to potentially 10 to 12 satellites. And just given how quickly they want to deploy the commercial constellation, that would suggest by building those additional satellites, and he also mentioned a government shell at the end of that talk, It would seem that they are expecting some pretty material military contracts to come in this year, or not contracts to come in, but those initial orders to expand quite materially. And as you mentioned in that presentation as well, that they are looking for another site in Midland to solely dedicate production space to only building Microns. And so clearly the company moving from 400,000 square feet, which was, you know, we thought was pretty big, to 500,000 square feet, which is where they are now, and then probably flexing that up to 600,000, 650,000, 700,000. I mean, who knows where it kind of ends up, but that means that they're expecting some really big work ahead and it's not going to be just the first low-band constellation or the second mid-band constellation, which will utilize the Gato spectrum, but We're probably talking about a constellation that's focused on defense applications, so a third shell. So, so that's, that's pretty damn exciting. And so going back to the what today's, you know, award or, you know, the, the IDIQ for AST SpaceMobile, this opens up a lot of DOD work around Golden Dome for them. In particular, I guess the potential for the company, and I think, I mean, I don't know, we've tried to, we've tried to like put some numbers around it, but I feel like the company, you know, you could be looking at billions of dollars, like $1 to $2.5 billion this first tranche. I mean, we'll see, but this is a mechanism where You know, the company goes to a program of record versus a one-off experiment. And so I think the key thing, as I mentioned before, is that now we've moved from BaseMOM speculating that the company is part of Golden Dome to actually it happening, right? And it being a reality. And so the timing, like we had talked about, I think we had pushed it back to like mid-January and And lo behold, it's January 15th. And so this initial part is just, I think, one of 2 programs that the company has talked about with investors. And I believe, I could be wrong here, but I believe this is the smaller part of it in terms of potential dollars or early potential dollars. And so today they got the IDIQ for this particular piece. There's another piece which I think is relevant for the company as well, which is Let me just go through some notes here. So the company is being evaluated for the MDA Noble. It's nimble options for buying layered effects. And this is listed— well, I won't go through the solicitation number, but this particular— let's see here. This particular area is specialized. It's a specialized umbrella vehicle design specifically to bypass traditional slow military procurement. It also allows for MDA to rapidly award contracts to non-traditional sources like commercial space companies for disruptive technologies. And so I guess the mechanism of this is that instead of a single rigid contract, it operates as a continuous open door where companies can submit white papers that they propose against specific needs, and then If MDA likes the idea, then they can quickly fund it. And so why is that relevant to AST SpaceMobile? Well, in particular, let's see here. So the non-traditional designation, this solicitation explicitly targets companies that don't typically do defense work as a primary business, which that's AST SpaceMobile, which as we all know, you know, is commercial first, cellular broadband provider. So it fits the non-traditional definition. And then there are some specific, I guess, requests in that, in this area where AST fits quite well, which is the call for space-based sensors. And under the specific call, let's see here, MDA is asking for space-based sensors and integrated non-kinetic and electronic warfare. And so that fits what ASD is doing quite well. Let's see here. So what this suggests is that MDA is not just looking for bluebirds on the commercial side or for communications, but as Scott mentioned, for non-communication applications such as using, you know, the large phased arrays as sensors to detect RF launches or tracking hypersonic signatures. And then there's, of course, Electronic warfare, so jamming signals, you know, gathering intelligence and all that stuff. And so in this particular program, what the government's looking for is rapid capability development. So that kind of mirrors what AST is doing, given that we are launching a constellation. And that constellation can actually do, in addition to its primary work, which is, you know, communications, it can do these other things as well with very limited Very limited changes, maybe at software and some changes to hardware. And so the strategic implication is that this moves AST not from what we would typically view as communications applications, like sending data to warfighters, like drones, coordinating between vehicles, things like that, which you typically would think of as a as a communications provider company, it moves from that to kill chain. So what I mean by that is a network that's used to detect and stop missile threats, but also within that framework for defense work, that means that the company could command much higher margins and stickier contracts than just standard connectivity. And so That one, let me just take a look here. I don't think that— so that one is going to be awarded later. And I believe that one, that one is what the company refers to as, you know, in terms of sizing, there's this big thing, and then there's something that's massive. And so I think what we got today is big. And then this particular area could be massive, right? And so, so yeah, I think, I think when taking a step back, we've come pretty far away, right? We are now, we are now, I guess, in terms of the most visible program, Golden Dome, we're now you know, developing, doing development work for Golden Dome. We'll provide technology, um, everything that Scott has hinted at and people have, you know, speculated. And of course skeptics have said that's not going to happen, you know, whether that's our friend Dim Spacebar, Tim Ferrar, or Valuation, some of these new shorts who all say the defense work is a pipe dream and it's something that SpaceBob has made up. Um, that's not the case. We actually are in line to get Golden Dome work. And I don't think it's just going to be, I mean, to a degree it's going to piggyback off the current constellation, but I also believe that it is going to expand into potentially a dedicated constellation, which is why the company is getting additional production capacity in space. So let me pause there. I'm going to see if there's any questions or comments. There's some pretty funny comments here. But yeah, I actually, I don't see any questions. I do think, you know, it'll be interesting to see what the research analyst community response is. Like I said before, you know, you had B. Riley downgrade the rating, although they did raise the price target to $105, which is now the highest and happens to be under our current trading price. And that is a risk, I will say. If you look at the Street, like Scotia, of course, is at $45.60. You have UBS, which is pretty stale, stale meaning the beginning of December. They're at neutral at $43. You've got Clear Street, which is a mid-November price target of 87, Deutsche Bank 81, Roth Capital 82.50, Cantor 80, Barclays, oh yeah, they downgraded to underweight, which is basically sell in mid-October. That was 60. So these analysts, they're going to have to make some adjustments probably with this news because some of them, I don't expect Scotiabank to do anything because they seem pretty dug in. But what's funny is, like, in their downgrade and their notes since June, they have not talked about the defense angle. I don't believe, or I can't remember, I don't think they've really talked about it, or if they did, they downplayed it. So they're going to have to go through some gymnastics to explain this away. But some of these other research analysts, just, you know, I think it's important to know that their price targets are much lower. And either, you know, they'll probably have to raise the price targets, but you might have more of these rating changes to the neutral side from buy to justify that, you know, a price target that's not much higher than where we are. I mean, I don't know, maybe some of these guys will be more bullish, but I think probably a decent amount of the street is waiting for several launches and of course for BB6 to unfold before they get aggressive on changing their ratings upwards and price targets upwards, which is, you know, that's fair. But I do think, as I mentioned before, I think the reaction to this news this evening, which is pretty material, and hopefully Scott's listening and he'll put out PR because I think, and they have done this in the past, like when they got the SDA award and the DIE award, they They did put a PR out and I think, I don't know if I was outside counsel or if I was general counsel, I would be recommending to the company that this is pretty material and that you'd have to at a minimum 8-K it, but, you know, put out PR. So hopefully that comes tomorrow. And as I mentioned before, just to give people an update, I think, let's see, short interest real time. has actually come down a little bit. So maybe some guys got smart and covered what was going to be a complete disaster for them. So on January 9th, like the short interest was $40.8 billion, and then January 12th it went down to $38.5 billion. So there was some covering, and obviously like there's some noise too from convert arbs who are trading deltas. And so when the stock goes up, they'll short some, and when the stock goes down, they'll buy some. That's how you monetize the underlying call option in a convert. So there's a bit of that, but over, let's see, January 12th, January 13th, January 14th, it's been pretty flat. Like it's been 38.5 million shares short, right? So that said, yeah, I mean, I think it was Kook that reached out to me after this news came out and asked me point blank, you know, if you're short, like, what's the thesis now? And of course, like, you can, I think for a short seller, like, the valuation argument is always going to be there, right? So it's, if you look at near-term financials, like, you know, the company is still on the cusp of generating material revenue. But on the other hand, if you look at And this is the game that Scotia played. It's like, pick your year, pick your out year, right? Scotia picked an out year that suited their downgrade, which was like 2028, 2027, where their free cash flow, I think it was like $3.5 billion. But then the following year they modeled $6 billion, and then the following year was $10 billion, and then it got up to like $17 billion, right? For 2032 or something. Which I think someone astutely pointed out that if they are, if AST SpaceMobile is able to get to $17.5 billion of free cash flow a year, that would put them in the top 10 companies, 10 public companies of free cash flow generation. So yeah, I think perhaps you can make a valuation argument and everybody can argue one way or the other, but What I would say though is that the short case has always been built on, I mean, the recurring theme is, are people going to adopt this solution? Are they going to pay for it? And that's just the commercial side, right? But then they haven't really, no one's really made a valuation case or argument for or against on the defense side, right? Like, so how do you quantify that? And I think that's where with this administration where Trump is Saying, you know, he wants Golden Dome to be up and running and operational before he leaves office, which doesn't leave that much time. And if you look at the needs, you know, if you talk to the company, they're the, you know, Bluebird large phased arrays, like there's nothing else out there that's comparable in terms of capability. And so I think, you know, for the US government, like, what is that worth? And I don't, I couldn't tell you, like, I think it's probably, You know, maybe a few billion in revenue a year, depending on the use cases. And it's not just like communications, but, you know, we're talking about radar sensing, electronic warfare. I mean, there's a whole slew of applications, right? So what is that worth? And in a situation where we're now in this large space race against China, who's basically trying to duplicate everything that we do, Yeah, you want this company to succeed and you want to give them the financial resources to get there. And it's not, you know, we kind of like to joke that and, you know, beat up on Starlink, but in reality, I mean, as I've said before, you know, the company is big enough, or sorry, the market is big enough for the two. And in a lot of ways, it's not, they're not really adversaries. It's really China that we're competing against. And if you look at FCC Chair Carr's recent comments, he views direct-to-cell as a key area of focus and an area that's important for US leadership, but it's beyond that, right? It's not just the commercial application, but it's also the applications on the defense side. We talk about dual use case that it enables, right? And so, yeah, it's— On the one hand, we've got this like massive white space on the commercial side, but now this defense side becomes much more visible and the street can't ignore it, right? And so research analysts, institutional investors, when they look at the company, it's not just a cell phone company, it's a defense company. It's electronic warfare, it's spoofing, it's jamming. It's backup GPS. I think we're seeing that now in Iran where Starlink is now viewed as like this light of freedom, right? Where obviously they're having some— you have Iran with Russian technology trying to jam people's access to it. But Starlink's fixed wireless business, like that is going to be, or that is a very useful tool. And so I think these companies that have dual use case, especially, you know, we talk about this theme about that space is going to be big. Yeah, more focus is going to come to the sector and for what AST is doing, people are going to have to adjust the way, you know, adjust the lens at how they analyze the company. It's not just commercial business, it's not just this this big swath of spectrum. Legato, for the sum of the parts analysis, you know, I think some people have questioned like, well, isn't $40 billion a lot for this market cap? Well, let's see if Legato's worth $12 or $15 billion. And so you've got like $30 left or $25 left, and that's how you value the commercial and military business. No, I don't think it's that. I don't think it's unreasonable. And so funny enough, like when people would value EchoStar, people wouldn't ascribe that much value to the spectrum until Charlie, of course, he had to sell it. And then all of a sudden Starlink, AT&T paid up for it and now EchoStar is trading really well, obviously partially because it's a proxy for SpaceX given the shares that they received. But yeah, I think now with this news and we expect more news, So this is the first award, you know, Shield Award for Golden Dome. As I mentioned before, I think there's going to be another one coming. You know, I'm not sure about the timing. Maybe it's, maybe it's a few days, weeks. I'm unsure, but I am certain that we are going to get additional business and yeah, the market's going to be surprised just like it was today. So it's funny enough, like while I'm speaking, Of course, someone, by the way, like Seeking Alpha is a, is kind of a trash website. Like they have all these different contributors who I don't think they really add value, just like Stone Fox Capital, our friend. But they put some pretty bad takes in this, I guess this firm or this person, Pythia Research, just put something out, AST Space Mobile Reality Check. So Oh, and let's see here. One of their things is American Tower sold 2.28 million shares pre-launch signaling valuation-driven risk management despite retaining 0.84% economic stake. Okay. Well, I've covered this before. I'll just make a quick comment on this part. Like American Tower, I don't know if you guys have seen these tower companies, but they've all been, their stock prices have been going straight down. After EchoStar pulled their buildout of their network, people have become pretty bearish on the towers because now you don't have a 4th player that's spending money on towers and stock prices have suffered as a result. And then of course, I think now, and Iridium faced this before, but I think now the market is starting to price in risk that supplemental coverage from space is going to really put a crimp on tower companies. And so as a result, you know, American Tower did sell a part of their stake, their Class A shares, but they still kept Class B shares. And so I think it was just, you know, like smart financial planning. The company's under quite a bit of pressure. Let me just take a look. They've got $1.9 billion of cash, but then they've got $45 billion of debt, right? So they raised some money from selling some stock, which I think is Was a good thing. But yeah, all these tower companies, whether it's American Tower, let's see, Crown Castle or SBA, they've all been taking a lunge in this year. We saw something similar to Iridium too, where I think investors for the most part kind of dismissed, and Iridium dismissed supplemental coverage from space. And then one day people all of a sudden became smart to it. And then Iridium went from like $40 to, I think like $19 now. Yeah, $19. So yeah, life comes at you pretty fast. And so I think for American Tower, who's a great strategic partner, early investor, for them to sell part of their stake, they made a pretty hefty return. I think, yeah, you can't really fault them for that. But let's see. So I'm going to see if there's any questions or comments. I've been speaking now for 45 minutes. Just look here. Tut Capital. I read a Substack that Golden Dome was hopium. Care to comment, pumper? Yeah, it's not hopium. I guess, yeah, I guess I'm a pumper. He's making a joke about valuations. Which is funny. You know, it's like, I guess I'll just comment on this. This is something that we should all expect as the company executes and moves up in terms of valuation. There's going to be people that come in and think that they can, you know, they come in with like some new angle or view to be short. And this is something that, for example, Tesla experience for many years, right? Where I think people were, the short sellers looked at near-term fundamentals like valuation and hey, you can't justify the company's valuation based off of this coming year or the year-over-year growth or any of that stuff or margins. But then, and they would short and they would get run over, right? Because they couldn't see the bigger picture or they couldn't think beyond that, which I always talk about this, how Hedge funds tend to, well, they have to manage their book on a day-to-day, week-to-week, month-to-month basis, right? And so they can't really think in terms of even quarters now or years or multiple years. They're just focused on the here and now. And so when you're kind of geared to do that, then you tend to miss the forest from the trees, which is, you know, I posted a video today that someone else had shared where obviously, you know, there was this like news reporter who was skeptical about Amazon and, you know, some of the criticisms back when Amazon was losing money back in the '90s was that they would have to sell every single book on earth in order to turn a profit. Well, lo and behold, like that was the common view. Whereas of course Amazon moved beyond books, they started selling everything. And then they moved into outsourced infrastructure, which is AWS and all these other areas because of basically like pieces of business that branched out from what originally they were doing, which is kind of like what AST is doing. Or you can make the analogy of NVIDIA too, which is moving from graphic processors, those processors being applicable to other applications. And so our satellites, Providing broadband connectivity to mobile phones, but then, you know, using the satellites to do detection and radar, right? And so, so I think like as we kind of move along this journey, you're going to see more skeptics come out, high-profile shorts. And I'm hoping that that's the case because that's always fun. But yeah, these people will come out. They often like don't, they kind of see this retail community from the outside and assume that it's just a bunch of crazy people that don't know what they're doing and that it's just a meme. And they come up with like the same tired, you know, short thesis points of companies are overvalued, there's no adoption, there won't be adoption, or a big TAM. And, you know, they won't even They won't even address like the military side because they probably don't understand that. And then they'll come up with the same stuff and then they'll get beaten up and then, you know, they'll lose some money, they'll cover, and then we'll move on, right? They'll be onto the next cohort of short sellers who think they've got, you know, some new angle and that they're smarter than retail. So yeah, this is just going to be part of the normal lifecycle of this or this journey of this investment where going to be new short sellers. They're going to— some might actually come with like some new ideas. I mean, like this guy Valuations, um, he kind of cooked up the same old arguments but then really came at it from the meme perspective, like, oh, this company is, uh, these, these investors are, are a cult, and so, um, I'm going to take them down, right? I'm going to scare the shit out of them and make them, you know, sell the stock down, and then I can cover. Um, which I would say like the old days of smash-and-grab short sellers, like, those are long gone, right? Like, people are much smarter now. Like, the times when you would have activist short sellers like Carisdale or, you know, some of these others who would put out sensational stuff, hope that the stock goes down 20, 30%, and then cover their position, probably cover like half to two-thirds of the position on that first day of trading and make most of their money. And then, you know, they might publish one thing here or there, But there was always this like specter that they're still out there and they could come out with more stuff, right? But the great thing is like if you've been following this company for 5 years and you've been through every single up and down and you understand the thesis, you know what you own, you know the other side's arguments to a tee, then you can't be shaken from the investment. And if anything, I mean, it's always good to hear the other side, but yeah, you just build your conviction. And so anyway, I think like, yeah, it's just part of the normal journey and we'll see what happens tomorrow and in the coming weeks, months, and years. But I do wholeheartedly believe like this year is the year for space investing. Like we're in the right place at the right time. It's a clear area of focus for this administration and Golden Dome, $151 billion to deploy this protective network that's going to require a bunch of satellites. It's going to require a bunch of people working together. It's going to be good, right? And there's only a few public companies, a few different ways to play this. And there's going to be, you know, I tweeted earlier today, I think there's like 4 or 5 space-focused ETFs that are about to come out. And so yeah, it's almost like I hate to say it, but it's like the early days of crypto, right? When there wasn't much focus. I mean, you couldn't, if you were to tell people you're invested in space companies in 2024, people would laugh at you. But now it's like the companies that we're invested in are the top performers for 2025 and they've already started for 2026. So anyway, I'm rambling now. I'm going to end the space here. It's been 50 minutes. But yeah, I'm looking forward to— I just got back from a restaurant for a closing dinner. I had like a few glasses of wine. I was quite happy, but I haven't even had much time to digest this stuff. So I'm going to do some reading this evening and we'll see what happens tomorrow. Maybe some news will come out overnight and maybe I'll do like a quick morning space before trading opens. So anyway, thanks everyone for joining. Yeah, uh, today is a great day and, um, looking forward to seeing hopefully PR from the company or not. If not, that's okay. Um, and yeah, we'll go from there. All right, thanks everyone.
[00:49:04] 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 To catch all the latest news about AST SpaceMobile, make sure to subscribe. Thanks again, and I'll see you next time.
[00:49:24] Speaker B: We're doing something very, very big, and I think with this technology we can really affect a billion lives. AST SpaceMobile is the only company that has proven technology to deliver cellular broadband connectivity directly from space. It'll be 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 MNOs.
[00:50:08] Speaker A: Mmm, waffles.
[00:50:09] Speaker B: Mmm, waffles.