Grain Management Just Got FCC Approval — And AST SpaceMobile Is the Only Winner

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[00:01:04] Speaker C: This is the AST SpaceMobile Podcast. We will just basically turn 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. Listen, the opportunity that we have is very, very, very large.
[00:01:22] Speaker D: Hey everyone, another space. So you know that, uh, there's been some news over the course of the day and, um, I did want to cover this FCC filing that ASD put in on behalf of Grain Management. And, uh, I'll talk a bit about the background of Grain, where the spectrum came from, and what it potentially could be used for. I am also taking a gamble on using my desktop PC, which was having connection issues. I, I have Spectrum internet, unfortunately. I've been pushing to get Verizon Fios, but some folks in our neighborhood did not want wires going through the backyard, but hopefully that's going to change. But anyway, yeah, I wanted to talk about grain management and this 800 MHz spectrum and why it could be a little nugget highlighting this T-Mobile potential partnership in the future. And I also wanted to talk about this Wall Street Journal article that came out late in the day regarding SpaceX and potential AI devices, which of course Elon refuted later. But as we all know, he refutes a lot of things and then they end up coming true anyway. So let's talk about Grain Management here. So Grain Management is an investment company. It was formed by some private equity investors, I believe. I don't have all the details of the background, but I'm just speaking on some cursory research that I did. And Grain Management participated in the 600 MHz auction a number of years ago and they won some licenses. And then what ended up happening, of course, is I believe T-Mobile won a decent amount of those licenses. And in T-Mobile's interest, they want to consolidate that spectrum band. And so they entered into a transaction with Grain back in, I think it was May of last year. And then in that transaction, they decided to swap spectrum. And so T-Mobile would give them contiguous 800 MHz spectrum, and in exchange, they would get the 600 MHz spectrum that Grain had, which would enable T-Mobile to consolidate that license. And then they would get $2.9 billion in cash from Grain Management and also some type of arrangement where they would get upside if the 800 MHz spectrum was monetized either through a lease or a sale. or any number of things. And so they have an economic interest in seeing that 800 megahertz spectrum deployed. And so that's an interesting nugget. So they are an interested party in how ultimately that 800 megahertz spectrum gets deployed. And so with that, the parties entered into an agreement and they put that transaction in front of the FCC for approval. There were 2 things that the FCC had to approve. One would be approving the transaction, and so allowing the deal to go through. And then the second part was Green Management asking for an extension for buildout requirements. And as part of that, so this 800 megahertz spectrum, whenever a party gets an FCC license for spectrum, you have to commit to using that spectrum for some type of purpose. over a certain amount of years. And so what Grain did as part of this application, they asked for an extension. I think it was like a 12-year extension to deploy the spectrum. And they also wanted approvals to, in the change of control of the spectrum, that they could become the new party and would have these new rules around it. And so an interesting thing that happened during the pendency of this review, which has been going on for 13 months, Which is normal for the FCC. It takes a while and oftentimes a long time for them to review transactions and approve them. The interesting thing that happened in between the pendency of this deal, and so let me back up. They filed for, let's see here. So the deal, sorry, the deal was announced in March 2025, and then they applied with the FCC, I think it was around May 30th. And so they've been waiting around, right? May 30th, 2025. So fast forward to May 12th, the FCC did approve the SpaceX EchoStar transaction, which was a very fast approval. That's where SpaceX is buying AWS-3 spectrum from EchoStar. EchoStar, if you recall, had a number of years And they got multiple exemptions to build out a network. I think the coverage parameters were like, initially it was like 35% and then after a certain amount of years and 50% and then, you know, 75% and then 85%. I'm talking about like covering the total population of the US. And of course they failed to meet those build-out requirements. And as a result, the FCC put a gun to Charlie Ergen's head and said, hey, if you don't use it, you're going to lose it. And so that's what prompted Charlie Ergen to, one, reach out to MDA Space and say, hey, I want to use your satellites and try to meet my coverage requirements by deploying a D2D network, which was the first time the FCC had ever considered or would have considered. They actually didn't have to make a decision, but would have had to consider that type of framework where you could, instead of being forced to utilize a terrestrial network, to meet your coverage requirements, you could actually use a constellation, a satellite network to meet that. And so that was not tested at the time, but of course, Ergon got bailed out with the advent of AST entering into the Ligado transaction back in January of 2025. The value of spectrum started going higher, right, for S-band. And so of course, SpaceX and EchoStar, SpaceX saved Charlie Ergen and bought EchoStar spectrum. And then the FCC was like, okay, great. It's going to be utilized. And so I don't have to pressure these guys anymore. And so the AST Legato transaction kicked off what ended up being a rapid consolidation of MSS spectrum. So you saw EchoStar get acquired by SpaceX. And then of course, Amazon announced a deal for Globalstar. And then this past week, you had Rocket Lab acquire or announce the acquisition of Meridian. So interestingly, what was important is that in the SpaceX EchoStar transaction, uh, in May— on May 12th, 2026, when it was approved by the FCC— and remember, uh, that transaction still has to go through regulatory approvals internationally— but in that approval, uh, the— this was the first time ever that the FCC said, hey, uh, and you, you can actually use a, um, you can use a constellation, satellite constellation, to meet out build-out requirements for, um, mobile service, right? And so in that order, um, SpaceX committed to— and these were like pretty low-bar, uh, orders— but they, they had to meet a certain amount of coverage of the population in 1 year and then in 2 years. And then of course, I think it was maybe like 10 years. I actually need to go back and read that more closely, but the speed requirements were very, very low, right? And so interestingly, grain management saw that and were like, hey, this is a new paradigm. I don't have to build out a network using threshold towers. I can actually utilize a satellite provider to meet my buildout requirements, right? And so Enter AST SpaceMobile. Um, and so Grain has been working with AST, as we learned in this filing today. It, it had been speculated, and, and I gotta give a big shout out to One More Smith, who's been writing about this for quite some time. Um, he's been doing— he's been going down the Grain Management rabbit hole for quite some time. I actually didn't go there. Um, I did read his stuff, but I didn't want to highlight it until we had more certainty as to who the party, uh, Grain was working with. And of course today we saw— or yesterday's filing, but that came to people's attention today— we, we now see that Grain is working very closely with AST SpaceMobile. And so for those that haven't seen this filing, AST put a letter in support in the docket, and they talk about how this, uh, you know, getting This satellite spectrum approved for this use will enhance the broadband connectivity choices for US consumers. Now, very in particular, GRAIN is asking for this spectrum to be approved for terrestrial use, for satellite use, for— it's basically an open-ended type of approval. But here we know that, and this is very important, there's only one party that can actually help GRAIN meet their buildout requirements, and that's AST SpaceMobile. And so in AST's letter of support here, it talks specifically about how AST can use the 800 MHz spectrum and importantly, the 850 MHz spectrum that AT&T and Verizon are putting forward together as a solution sits right next to both in the upper band and the lower band. It sits right next to this grain management spectrum. And so as we know, ASD SpaceMobile Bluebirds can put together almost like putting together a zipper of spectrum. It can actually weave together all the spectrum to be used in a contiguous fashion. And this is great because grain management has 7 MHz by 7 MHz of spectrum. And this is going to be on top of, depending on which markets, but the AT&T and Verizon band can be as little in some markets as 1 point— I think it's 1.5 gigahertz or as large as I think maybe 7 to 10 megahertz. And so if you add the 7 by 7 on top of that, that's a very robust contiguous network, right? And the reason why I mentioned T-Mobile before is that They used to own this spectrum. They sold it to Grain, but now they have an economic stake in the upside. And of course, we saw that T-Mobile walked away from, or is going to walk away from Starlink, and now they have an economic interest in seeing this spectrum being utilized properly. And so to me, it's not by chance that T-Mobile is joining this joint venture with AT&T and Verizon. And they're pulling together spectrum resources. And of course, this grain letter comes out where— all right, someone's giving me a thumbs down. Am I breaking up here? Let me see here. Did someone— am I— let me just look here.
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[00:13:05] Speaker D: Someone's saying to. Okay, Tanner's coming up.
[00:13:21] Speaker E: Hey, can you hear me?
[00:13:22] Speaker D: Hey, how's it going? Hey, yeah. So the FCC just approved it. Ah, great. It just dropped.
[00:13:29] Speaker B: I saw.
[00:13:30] Speaker D: I saw your text here. Minutes.
[00:13:31] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:13:32] Speaker D: So okay. Well, let me change. Let me change the frame of the conversation. Okay. So this this transaction was approved. Yeah, that was that was all. We're still. Or I'm still reviewing the document, but wanted to jump in for you there. Why don't I keep going? You review the document and you can jump back on. Yeah. And we can tweet or something. Okay. So this was breaking news. So the transaction was approved. I think it'll be interesting to see what the buildout requirements are, but I think it's important to— so yeah, we're— you're on a live podcast with breaking news. So Grain Management got FCC approval, which is huge. This letter which came from AST SpaceMobile, and Senator Ted Cruz, who has been pushing for the utilization of this spectrum, he also wrote in support. This is huge, right? Because going back to what I was saying before, this spectrum sits right next to the 850 MHz spectrum that AT&T and Verizon have contributed to AST SpaceMobile. And so AST SpaceMobile has a lease on that 850 megahertz spectrum, and you can assume that they're going to get a lease from Grain Management for this 800 megahertz spectrum. And so it's going to be a contiguous band of spectrum which will be able to do broadband, and it will also be, you know, it's cellular spectrum. So you have the ability to penetrate walls and great propagation and all that. We had some nuggets in this letter that was filed yesterday A few things I would point out. Obviously, AST talks about how they can already utilize the spectrum with 10 satellites that are currently in operation, and we're about to get another 3 launched. The other thing is that AST, Jennifer Manor, they are going to put forward an application for experimental testing, which I assume we'll probably see in the next few days, especially given that they've gotten approval. And I'll add that to the Catalyst tracker. The other thing, the other nuggets that we learned from this letter is that AST has in production over 80% of its Block 2 satellites in this frequency band. So they must be talking specifically about the 45 to 60 that they need. And so they've got 80% in production, which is great. Another piece of nugget, which is good, is that they talk about having launch contracts All the ones that they need to deploy the entire constellation, which is consistent with the milestones that they talk about in Attachment A, which I'll go through in a bit. But for anybody who is concerned about launch, the company has enough launch to get the constellation up. Now, the key question, of course, is how much of that launch and how far out are the Blue Origin launches? But currently, in the end, it doesn't matter. Uh, because I do think the company is going to get additional Falcon 9 launches, and of course they will add Falcon 9 launches, um, for 2027. And then as we saw and we're seeing very pro— I mean, I think David Limp should be running, um, a social media account for ASD Space Mobile, but he's giving day-by-day updates on the repair work at, uh, or not repair work, the new build-out of SLC-36A over at Cape Canaveral where Blue Origin is rebuilding their launchpad. But yeah, that was another nugget. And then finally, what was interesting is that in the last bullet point, they talk about how the Block 1 satellites have reached speeds of 98 megabits per second. And then Block 2, you know, the next generation, which is currently 3 of them, or actually 4 of them are in orbit and we're about to send another 3. Here, interestingly, the company talks about how they will be able to provide speeds of hundreds of megabytes per second, enabling 5G connectivity. So speeds of hundreds of megabytes per second, I assume they're talking about, when you say hundreds, they're talking about 200. But of course, with the AI optimization and some of the things that they're doing, you know, we could see speeds north of 200, maybe 300 or Or what have you. So, so I think that's those are some pretty interesting nuggets. And when going to the attachment A of this letter, there are three milestones, right? They they put forward three, which I'll talk about briefly here. One is the first milestone is that, and I won't go into too much detail, but they'll need to have let's see service availability in ninety percent of the total geographic. area, and they'll need, let's see, uplink of 200 kilobits per second, and then downlink of 300 kilobits per second, which, and this is per beam, right? And so these are pretty low requirements, right? And so that's the first milestone. Year 2, that, let's see, and by the way, there's like some SINR related to this as well, but that, let's just assume, let's just say—
[00:18:35] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:18:36] Speaker D: For, to keep it simple, that it's still 90% of geographic coverage. And then the speed goes up to 400 kilobits for uplink. And let's see here, I think 350 kilobits for downlink. And then in the final milestone, which is 8 years out, you're still at 90%, but then the speed needs to be at 600 kilobits up and then 700 kilobits down. And so we all know that these are really easy milestones to hit for AST, obviously. I mean, not easy if you don't have a constellation up, but—
[00:19:04] Speaker E: Yeah.
[00:19:04] Speaker D: they will have the constellation by that time. But it's important to note that in this approval, and now it's kind of, it's a moot point 'cause it's been approved, but in this approval, they had put forward this idea that this spectrum is going to be available for use for any competition. You know, any folks that are interested will be open to, for terrestrial use or for satellite use. And so that said, it's the constraining factor is the buildout requirement, right? So it's not as if you could go to Starlink or Lynk, L-Y-N-K, Lynk, and say, hey, I want you to use my spectrum. And when can you use it? For Starlink, the answer would be we can't use it, right? Because we don't have satellites Currently the roadmap or no plans to use cellular spectrum. So in this case, 800 MHz spectrum. And then in Lynk's case with L-Y-N-K, that company I think has like 10 satellites or 13 satellites in orbit and they haven't raised any funding. And of course, there's— I won't go through the technical limitations of that solution, but it's pretty much a non— Not a competitor, right? And so while Grain Management went to the FCC saying that this is going to be a spectrum that we'll negotiate with any number of parties, or we promise to have a deal together in the next 30 days once you approve this, really this is tailor-made for AST SpaceMobile. And so I guess I'll add it to the catalyst tracker because they committed to having a negotiated solution in the next 30 days. And so that, you know, you can just add that to the hopper. We will probably see some type of transaction that's agreed to with Grain Management. But ultimately, I think this spectrum will get added to the AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon joint venture. And so AST in that joint venture, of course, AST is bringing satellites, the low-band spectrum, you know, Block 2 satellites, and then eventually Block 3 satellites with mid-band spectrum. But now AST will bring this important spectrum to bear in that joint venture. And so, you know, again, some people have talked about, well, what if AST doesn't get attractive economics or they get squeezed on the 50/50. People forget that, well, first of all, AST is an important player in countering Starlink's ambitions in attacking the terrestrial market. And so for AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile, you know, AT&T and Verizon have multi-year agreements that are in force and then eventually will get replaced by You know, the joint venture. But for these players who've seen their stocks get absolutely hammered on concerns that Starlink's going to eat their lunch, you don't want to suffocate your strategic partner. You actually want them to be incentivized and well-capitalized and earn a decent return. And so that 50/50 is going to stay there. Not only that, but AST's not only bringing the constellation to the party, which is the key strategic counter to Starlink, but it's bringing L-band spectrum, which is going to augment the wireless carriers' networks. But then it's also, in this case, once it signs an agreement with GRAIN, and my guess is it'll be some type of leasing agreement, maybe they'll commit to some financial payments, but more importantly for GRAIN and their investors, they'll probably get some percentage of the economics. But AST will bring this to bear in the joint venture. And so it's actually bringing a lot to the table. And so it'll be interesting to see how the economics get split. But it's also important to note that for Grain, they need AST. They need AST actually probably more than AST needs them because this is a nice to have. It's not a need to have for AST because we already have Spectrum and we already have our partnerships. But it's valuable. I mean, I'm not going to talk it down. Like, this just makes the service way more robust. But Grain needs us because Grain has these milestones, right? And so there's no other party that Grain can go to and say, hey, you have a constellation, can you light up my spectrum on day 1 where I basically meet all 3 milestone requirements? No, there aren't any parties out there unless tomorrow we learn that Starlink comes out with a low-band Starlink V2. 5 or whatever, a low-band satellite, which given what Starlink has said publicly against the MNOs, I don't think any MNOs globally are going to enable that, right? Like they're not going to let Starlink lease or use their low-band spectrum. You might be able to find pockets of it and acquire it. You know, there's a company called ATEX that owns some low-band spectrum and that thing has been On fire because people assume that somehow they'll monetize that spectrum. But yeah, for all intents and purposes, like I don't see how Starlink can piece together enough low-band spectrum to make it economic to build a low-band Starlink satellite. And by the way, like you can't, these satellites, the way that the phased arrays are spaced and the technology, and Katsi has gone over this, multiple times, but you can't use one satellite to address all spectrum. You actually need purpose-built spectrum— sorry, purpose-built satellites with phased arrays that work within a certain range. And so our Block 1 and Block 2 satellites work between 600 and 900 megahertz, and that's low-band cellular spectrum. The mid-band Bluebirds will have the ability to communicate with mid-band spectrum, which is For these satellites, 1.5 to probably 2.4 gigahertz. And Starlink similarly can operate in mid-band. So their satellites currently with T-Mobile, they work on 1.9 gigahertz, the G-block for PCS. And they will have the ability, actually the next generation satellite will have the ability to work with S-band. So frequencies than 2 GHz range and slightly higher. And so, so yeah, that's, that's thinking about this relationship and ultimately how this will get negotiated. Grain needs AST more than AST needs grain, but it's a win-win for both parties where it's, you know, 1 plus 1 equals 3, as the Rocket Lab guys would say. And so here, By locking down the spectrum, the robustness of AST's solution is going to be very high, right? Like it's actually by having this particular band of 800 MHz spectrum that's contiguous, it actually is going to overlap with the carrier spectrum. And so even in dense cities and areas where there's a terrestrial network, this layer can be activated by AST SpaceMobile Bluebirds. And so yeah, this changes the game. This allows the carriers to then offer maybe dedicated network for IoT devices and other things that you may not want on the terrestrial network that's congesting it. And someone had— I didn't cover this in the space earlier, but someone had asked, hey, what do you think is the revenue potential for AST. And they had said, you know, if you assume that $5 is the ARPU, I went through that math and some people have reposted it, but $5 of ARPU is really attractive economics. Like that's $5 and you multiply that by 12, that's $60 a year for one connection. And then you multiply that by over, by let's say a billion. That's $60 billion, right? And so EBITDA margin of, I don't know, 80, 85, 90%. Those numbers are astronomical. And so there's been some pushback. It's like, well, a billion, that's a lot. That's a lot of subscribers, which I agree, it is a lot of subscribers, but people forget, like, we're not just talking about one person or one line. Like a family has 4 people, but then how many devices do you have, right? And we're just talking about consumers. So You might have a connected laptop. You might have a watch, right? Our kids have an Apple Watch each, and so a one user may have three devices that are connected or four devices, right? And then we're not talking about even IoT or military applications, but people forget that when you have this proliferation of devices, one billion is a small number. Like if there's eight billion people in the world, but how many IoT devices are connected, like let's say on your farm and you've got monitoring devices all throughout checking for, I don't know, moisture and what other things. I think like Iridium and some of these other players, Globalstar, they charge something like $20 or $30 a month for these little devices that keep people connected and transmit data. basically IoT stuff out on the farm, which is insane, right? Like that's more than what someone is going to pay the assumption for the ARPU on your mobile phone for satellite connectivity, right? And so, and these are narrowband devices. These are things that are just sending back data maybe once an hour or something. And so a billion is probably bearish. It's not enough. Like there's going to be way more devices that are connected. If you send out, I don't know if it's a military application and you've got 1,000 drones, defensive drones, let's not talk about offensive, but 1,000 defensive drones, what does it cost to connect all of those in a contested area? I think the Wall Street Journal article talking about how the Department of War, which by the way, I don't understand how this would work, but the Department of War is like, hey, can we use your Starlink service to provide internet connectivity to normal citizens, everyday citizens in Iran. And Starlink gave them a proposal that it would require a $500 million fee upfront and then $100 million every month to do that. And so that's a lot of money. That's a lot of economics for one country for a very interesting and important application. But Starlink can't service mobile phones. Like, If you want to do that, you got to talk to AST because if you're going to go to the Iranian population and try to provide them service and hack the system or whatever it is, that's not happening on mid-band spectrum. And by the way, those phones in Iran are probably what, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 years old. You're going to need to use cellular spectrum and there's only one guy who's doing that and that's AST SpaceMobile. So you can put forward a proposal, but I don't know how Starlink would actually execute on that. But anyway, yeah, this is pretty exciting stuff. And of course, I'm going to have to go back and maybe do another space later because this thing that I'm talking about, grain management, they just got FCC approval, which is huge. And so I think this is Space Mob. Like, people are ahead of the curve. One More Smith, like, he's been analyzing this for several months and he was absolutely right the entire way. Like we talk about how Cathie was always right. Well, another Smith was always right on this. He was early and he was right. And so now we have AST working with another partner here in the US who's going to, obviously they want to monetize the spectrum and the best use of that spectrum is with AST. And then AST is going to sell that capacity through the MNOs. And so that's going to make the service more robust. Yeah, it's a win-win for everybody. So let's see here. One other thing I did want to cover before I end the space. I did want to talk about this Wall Street Journal article, which came out kind of late in the day. Let me just pull it up here. And so of course it was denied by Elon Musk because it's not good for their relationship with the MNOs, which is already fraught to begin with. But there was an article from the Wall Street Journal and it looked like it was sourced by a number of people, including investors. And so apparently, you know, the company is— this article claims that SpaceX is working on a slim device that is going to, you know, I guess it's an edge AI compute device or basically an alternative to your phone. But this is something that Elon has been working on. Now, the company is trying to get into a lot of different businesses, right? Like X Money just went live and, you know, it looks pretty interesting to me, but they want to become kind of like a super app that some of these Asian tech companies, and they were covered in this article, some of these Asian companies provide pretty much everything that you need, kind of, I guess, similar to what Amazon does, right? But But yeah, SpaceX is pushing forward with this potential device, which ultimately is going to replace an iPhone, or I guess augment an iPhone. But eventually, you know, no one wants to carry around 2 devices. Like, this is something that's going to be a replacement. But this is really important because it's clear what SpaceX's ambitions are, right? And I think, you know, there are a few people when I posted this article, And so I guess taking a step back, this device is a big threat to Apple. It's a big threat to Google, to Samsung. The, you know, Apple iPhone is the bread and butter of that company, and iOS is the bread and butter of what drives, you know, Mac sales, iPhone sales, you know, iPads, whatever. And so here in this article, it talks about how they are developing their own OS and their own device. And so When you develop your own OS and your own mobile device, that is the template and the platform which then all things else come, right? So whether xAI is going to eventually develop an iPad or watches or a computer, a desktop computer, a laptop, once you build that OS and you build that device, then it's pretty much it's pretty easy to then branch out into these other areas. And so that's why if you're Google, who owns Android, and of course Chromebooks and all that, and all these connected— like I have a Nest Hub, I have Nest thermostats, I mean, and Nest Hubs at home. All those devices are at risk, right? And for Apple, obviously Apple has you know, people have praised Apple for not plowing money into AI and then just waiting for some leader to develop and then just, you know, basically resell Google Gemini. But Apple is, they're vulnerable, right? Like they, they are focused on their hardware. And so any threat from X slash SpaceX is a big problem. And so this is when, you know, when I talked about how The SpaceX-Tesla vertical stack, people like saying stack, but that stack is becoming increasingly competitive with everybody else, right? And so Apple, of course, has its Global Star service and Amazon's taking that over and promising some minimum service level, but Apple's not about minimum service level. They need to do something bigger, right? And we know that Apple has been testing with AST SpaceMobile, Google is in the same, you know, Google has a strategic investment with AST and they're going to have, you know, competitive pressures from this new X device. Because at the end of the day, like Google wants Android out there, it wants its platform out there, and then it wants to be able to engage people with Gemini, with search, with all their apps. But if xAI is doing that and, you know, xAI, it's not just about AI, it's They're moving into money, they're moving into all these different verticals. All these guys are about to butt heads, right? And so that's what I mean by AST becoming strategically more important every day because now the chess pieces, people are starting to see the moves. And so, you know, with that, there has to be a competitive response. And so the MNOs are feeling, the MNOs are getting punched in the gut. Right? Like their stock prices are getting derated off of this. And then soon enough, like some of these other players, if SpaceX comes out with its own phone or X device or whatever they want to call it, Apple's going to have a problem, right? Because there's obviously a lot of people who enjoy Teslas and really are fans of SpaceX and will give that device a go, right? And they'll be patient with it and they'll, you know, it's a very different proposition than when Amazon came out with their Fire devices, which by the way, like Amazon did carve out a niche. Our entire home has Fire TVs attached to our TVs. And so like we love that interface and that way that we love that way to consume content. But yeah, SpaceX is a big threat. And so I think all these players, they're going to have to align or work together in order to counter this competition, which by the way, like this competition is great. I hope SpaceX comes out with a phone. I hope they do go after the mobile network operators and release their own service because competition's good, right? You want to give people a choice. And these MNOs, like the strategic importance of AST goes up, right? Like, because that's their partner, that's the only counter that they have. And so yeah, this is all good. At the end of the day, like I'm a consumer and it's good for me, it's good for you. And so we should want to see this happening, right? Because at the end of the day, with more competition comes innovation. And yeah, some of these, like I talked about in the space earlier today, some of these older companies like Globalstar and Iridium and ViaSat that have generations-old technology that are sitting on valuable spectrum, they do need to be consolidated and new innovation needs to come in. Like new New breaths of life need to be pushed into these entities and that spectrum be, you know, ultimately be put to better use. And so this is all good in the name of, you know, innovation and enhancing customer experience. And so anyway, I'm going to pause there. I don't know if Tanner had anything else to say after doing some cursory reading, but But yeah, this is, this is all really positive. I, um, I probably have to do another space, but, uh, to cover the approval. But this, um, yeah, this, this is freeing up additional spectrum for AST. So not only do we have low-band cellular spectrum from AT&T and Verizon, uh, for AST to use, but we also have Legato. And now Grain Management is going to bring to bear another 7 MHz by 7 MHz of 800 MHz spectrum. So this is great. So anyway, I'm going to stop it there. Um, let me just check real quick if there's any questions or comments. And again, let me, let me just reiterate, um, big shout out to One More Smith, or Another Smith here, who's done a yeoman's work, like just tremendous work around, um, grain management and the likelihood that the— that these guys are going to work together. Um, just Tremendous work. Okay, so let me just look down here, some few questions. It has been a while since Scott mentioned the rural 5G grant. Do you think it is still a possibility? Also, do we know if the Homestead, Florida facility is operational yet? So the 5G Rural Fund grant, I don't know if that's still a possibility, but right now it actually doesn't matter. I mean, it would be nice to have, but given where the company is in their progress, getting a grant would be great, but if they don't, they're not going to wait around for it. Um, Homestead facility, I'm not sure actually. We haven't, I haven't heard from anyone recently. I might have to check in with a Space Mob down there to see if there's been any progress, but, um, that Homestead facility, I think maybe it could serve as an integration facility. Who knows? Um, let's see. If Elon was truly telling investors about a device, would SpaceX have to disclose this to the public? Not too sure how disclosures Such as this work? No, they don't. As a public company, they don't have to disclose it. You don't have to disclose trade secrets. Now, if there was a material partnership or contract that they signed, then yeah, they'd have to disclose that. But no, as a public company, you don't have to disclose trade secrets. Let's see. So many good news, but there was no single change in price target coming from official analysts. Okay, so let's talk about the research analyst. And this is like the fun part. So most research analysts updated price targets or talked about the company back at the end of May. We had a number of downgrades, by the way. And so what this does is as more of these pieces come together and positive news comes, these analysts who downgraded the stock before have the catalyst and the ability now to upgrade the stock, upgrade the ratings, raise the price targets. There's positive news. Obviously back then the news was not so good because obviously Bluebird 7 didn't obtain orbit because of Blue Origin. Then Blue Origin also blew up their launch pad. And so that was bad. But it's hard to stay bearish in the face of good news. And so all this news is tremendous. And so I think in the coming weeks and months, probably, my guess is that we'll probably see some upgrades at around the time that we have the Q3 update, which is in August, which also happens to coincide with Bluebird 11, 12, and 13 launched. So that's going to be good. Let's see. At what point do you think the Goldman hedgers start covering? Could it happen sooner in August? Yesterday's IOI was led by GS. Yeah. So just to give people an idea, Goldman was active today, so they traded 1.7 million shares. They were the largest by far trader of advertised volume for AST. And so when will they cover the hedge? By the way, like I'm using Goldman as kind of a whipping boy. Any banks, Morgan Stanley, Barclays, they can trade a basket on swap and help people to hedge. It's not just Goldman. However, Goldman has a really great desk. They will put together a customized basket for you. They'll look at correlations and they'll see what securities will fit the trading characteristics of what you own, and they'll help you hedge that. And they'll do it in a very clean way. They'll give you one security, which is a swap-in swap, and then they'll charge you a de minimis fee for that. So that's why like Goldman is pretty popular for this stuff. But I wouldn't expect these hedges to unwind until the first lockup. So come August 20th, I think that's when SpaceX, the first slug of 20 to 30% of shares can be sold. That's where you're going to have these guys starting to unwind this trade. And so it just happens that we've, we're at the all-time short high, you know, all-time high for short interest. We've got these crazy catalysts that are coming up, which I talked about earlier, and it's going to be on the cusp of SpaceX selling. which then people who sell their long SpaceX stock, they will then go out and cover the basket. And so it's lining up perfectly, which is why I'm excited for the summer. You're probably going to see some of that trade start to unwind in earnest, you know, maybe 1 to 2 weeks in advance, people are going to start front-running it. And so, so yeah, it's going to be, it's going to be awesome. Let's see.
[00:44:00] Speaker C: I'm Mark Schmanning.
[00:44:01] Speaker A: I'm Madison Skinner. I'm Eva Jovic.
[00:44:03] Speaker B: I'm Dakota Moore.
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[00:44:13] Speaker D: Think you have what it takes? I think that's it. Yeah, I think there's— oh, when do you expect this to actually be in beta? Is the T-Mobile agreement a precursor, precursor to utilizing this? So beta service is actually starting now. When they open up more Bluebirds, they are going to start beta service. It's going to be intermittent. It's not going to be widely available, but that's going to happen. And then the testing around getting an STA to test with this spectrum, that's going to happen soon too. And this FCC, the great thing about Chairman Karr is that he's been very Gung-ho about pushing this stuff through quickly. And so I don't think we have to wait around very long to see this spectrum in particular tested or enter testing. And then separately, T-Mobile doesn't own this spectrum. It's actually Green Management, but they have an economic stake. And so they're interested. And I think what probably opened up T-Mobile's interest to work with AST SpaceMobile was partially some negotiations around this spectrum in particular. Where T-Mobile probably saw this and was like, okay, AT&T and Verizon, they have pooled 850 MHz spectrum, and then AST is going to get access to this that we just sold last year. Shit, I need to sign on because this service is going to be superior and I'm going to be left in the dust. And so I need to go talk to these guys and see if there's a way that I can work with them. And hence, John Stankey, the CEO of AT&T, who was the one who invited Verizon, saw that, hey, let's bring T-Mobile on because we really need to circle the wagons here. Anyway, so that's all I got. I don't know if there's any other questions that people have, but I'll maybe do another space. I need to review this approval, which is exciting news. Again, I don't think the market fully comprehends all the exciting stuff that's happened in the last 3 weeks. But when it does, the rerating is going to be violent and it's going to be sudden and people are going to be like, what just happened here? How did I miss this? So with that in mind, I'm going to end the space and yeah, until the next space, which is probably later tonight, we'll talk again soon. Take care, everybody.
[00:46:33] Speaker C: 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. Listen.
[00:47:08] Speaker D: Mmm, waffles.