Kook's Weekly - The Japanese Billions and the FirstNet Future

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[00:01:03] Speaker C: This is the AST SpaceMobile Podcast.
[00:01:07] Speaker D: 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. Good evening, everyone. Hope people had a good Father's Day. First and foremost, a lot to be grateful for if you're, you're a dad. Um, I just got some homemade gifts from my kids, which is pretty special, and then was watching the, um, Egypt-New Zealand game, which part of me was like, huh, okay, I guess I'll, I'll root for Tut's team. But then I was like, I don't know, I don't know, like, how he feels about Egypt and Really wanted the New Zealand guys to win, but man, those Egyptian guys kind of earned that. So exciting soccer, football, whatever. Although it's so violent, I just tell my wife, I'm like, there's no way I'm going to make kids play this game. Honestly, at this point, I think I'd rather have them play full contact football, which seems safer than these guys slamming their skulls together at full speed. Seems like soccer is a lot more dangerous than I had anticipated. So anyway, last week was great. I don't know if I've been that tired. When I got back to the airport at Orlando, the TSA agent kind of gave me that look of like, sir, is everything okay? And I thought they were going to take me aside for screening because I looked, I don't know what I looked like, but I definitely did not look like a functioning human being. And so that was sort of, you know, on my way to 29 hours without sleep. And rough. I guess I'm too old to be doing that, but what an awesome week we had with the launch. And it's always a good time to really reflect on how we got here. And so the idea that, I don't know how many people we had at the hotel, but like maybe 20 people flying out to Orlando for a 2:38, 2:39 AM launch event, self-hosted. People bringing food, everyone wearing ASTS swag. Pretty remarkable when you think about it for a public company to have kind of almost like a Grateful Dead following. You know, everyone's like, oh, let's get this launch on like first generation tape and just awesome. And you gotta take a step back and, you know, how did we get here? And it's really the, these thought leaders that are in Space Mob that really drove the curiosity. that drove an understanding of what the opportunity was. And a company that I guess it kind of does tell you what they're going to do, but for some reason no one really believes them. And they're certainly not pumpers. ASTS is not a pumper company. They don't go out there like Nikola kind of talking a big game. A lot of the things they do are very subtle. So the non-communication use cases, they put that as like a modifying clause in a press release, but they really don't go out and pound their chest on things or necessarily explain it in the clearest of ways. I don't know how to be generous with this, but at the same time, they clearly do value their shareholders and it's a very shareholder-friendly company with an owner-operator. But The thought leaders in the retail investment community have certainly are the reason why I'm here, both in terms of my position, but why I'm here doing these podcasts, for example. And it's a time to, for us at Launch, it was really special to see, you know, how many people went down to where Steve Larsen is buried, which was Anpanman's great idea and really one of the like most touching gestures of friendship. That, you know, you could really ever have. And so Steve, as you guys might know, didn't really have any family. And so when he passed away, the people that were there for him were Space Mob, which is pretty cool. And so we like to think that we're carrying his— sorry, I've got a tumor. Carrying his legacy by doing this because this guy had such an awesome story about how he kind of made himself, his resilience. But you know, as a person was interesting, and then his investment story, you know, is one of ain't gonna happen to me again. And so he had owned Amazon back in the early 2000s and then sold it when it popped, and would always tell Anpanman, myself, and Cassie. This is not happening to me again. I am not going to sell the big one on a pop. I'm going to ride it out till the end. And so Steve Larison, unbeknownst to him, is definitely riding this out to the end. He is going to be watching every goddamn launch from Cape Canaveral until the end of time. And, you know, that was really cool for Anpanman to take the lead. on, on that. And then, you know, when you really take a step back, it was the dialogue between Steve Larsen and Katzie during the depths of COVID when we were all trapped in our houses. It certainly turned into a spectator sport for Anpanman and myself where, you know, I think I've said this in the past, but Anpanman are pretty good at like amping other people up so that they do a lot of work and we try to make sure we're in the room so we can document it all and learn from it and spur them on and get more questions going. But then be smart enough, which we are, to leave it to the people with subject matter expertise. And so Steve Larison was a software engineer. Katzi is very gifted with the mechanical aspects. Together, almost like Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, those are the 2 critical pieces of expertise you needed to figure out what was going to happen here. But you needed both. You needed the mechanical background to understand that the array would work. In terms of unfurling. And then you needed someone with the software background to understand how a software-defined architecture would work in terms of these network cores and things like that. Steve had also had a background in the defense industry, which certainly helps. And so they really kept this fire burning. And I know Steve would be really touched to know that someone like Tanner, which I don't even know if he knew Tanner, probably a little bit, You know, we'd be sitting in that chair to pay him a visit. So pretty cool. And what's also cool is that we actually got inserted into the right orbit this time. So thank you, SpaceX. I bought a pair of these SpaceX sunglasses as my way to throw them a bone. And the space— the sunglasses are awesome. They're really high quality. I'd highly recommend for everyone to go buy SpaceX swag. It's pretty cool. And then hopefully ASTS will come out with also some ultra high-end stuff. I know someone actually in the sunglass design business and pitched Scott on some really cool sunglasses and I would definitely buy them. But we had a successful launch. It was incredible. If you haven't been to a launch, you need to go to one. All of a sudden the sky just lights up as if the sun is rising. It's silent. And then the thunder of those Merlin engines hits and it's, It never gets old. I love it. I intend to go to every single launch I can go to. And the company nailed it. And then they promptly disclosed that there is Bluebirds, uh, oh, but what are we on now? 11 through 37 in production with 11, 12, and 13 in final prep to ship. And so this means that they added 4 more, model down. Um, but I believe they added 4 more. Bluebirds to the queue. Last time we were going through Bluebird 32. So it just shows you that that pipeline continues to scale. Obviously the 3 additional ones and the engine is humming and it's going to be exciting when the next batch, batch 2 ships, which I believe could happen the first week of July. That's sort of what I've come to believe. And I think that the market will be Interested to see that the cadence is picking up. It's hard for me to actually tell what the market thinks. I personally believe that the market isn't really thinking about the delivery cadence because they're still stuck on the idea that there's no launch vehicles, but satellites leaving the facility going to launch is the best litmus test for launch vehicle availability coupled with operational cadence. And we will, um, soon find out, I believe, that ASTS has at least 5 Falcon 9 launches lined up in short succession, which then gives them ample opportunity to backfill into some other launch opportunities. But going back to Batch 1 launch, the satellites were caught quickly, which is important. It just shows you how dialed in this company is. They, How do you say this? They have a culture of extreme testing. They're not in the business of blowing stuff up for data, even though the last launch they did blow up a satellite because of Blue Origin and they did get a lot of data. And it just shows you how these guys have refined their process. So the satellites, what happens is you launch them, deploy them, and then you have to catch them. You have to basically get that initial Uh, TT and, and C-Link going, and sometimes that can take hours, but they're locking these satellites down in minutes, which is just showing you how robust the platform is. Everything perfectly, which, which is great. All systems are nominal, no dead birds, which could always happen but did not happen. And then they look like they've already achieved de— detumbling. I haven't actually had a chance. I've been so busy with everything to load up my own, uh, birdwatching program, but Katzi did, of course. And it is showing that they are in good orbit, which is great. We have it independently confirmed also by the Harvard professor who certainly looks like an astrophysics professor if you've seen his picture. And so it just shows that this culture of extreme testing pays off. Their hit rate so far, absent launch vehicle error, has been a high 100%, which is pretty incredible. I mean, these are big satellites. We really don't want to lose them. I've always said at some point we will, but I'd much rather lose a satellite further into the launch program than upfront. And I'm sure ABL just never wants to lose a satellite and they've been doing a great job. So for perspective of what was achieved, Kevin Chen did a really cool analysis. That every Bluebird adds 20 to 30 minutes of daily coverage in the key markets. So 3 Bluebirds add 60 to 90 minutes. And at 20 to 25 Bluebirds, then there'll start to be initial non-continuous service with some consumer beta. And then at 45 to 60 satellites, you'll have continuous coverage in the key markets. So the constellation gets built And this is one thing where I don't know if the average market participant really understands this, because if you're conditioned on Starlink's model, which is the baby birds, you need hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of satellites for a constellation. So this will be an interesting thing if we're so knowledgeable about the thing that we own that we might have a blind spot of the market really not understanding just how leveraged the constellation is to a few launches versus Starlink. It's not clear to me if the market understands how few launches we need because of how big our satellites are. So the tricky thing with investing in a stock like this, or really any growth stock, is it's really easy to sort of get too used to the thing that seems to go down or trade sideways, and then you get bored with it or anxious with it or annoyed with it. And patience or lack thereof is your worst enemy. And then all of a sudden there's a big bang moment and the market re-rates you and looks very far out into the future. And then you go, wait, what happened? Like, why did I sell those covered calls? And, you know, I took all the risk and only made 30% or something. And this happens all the time. And it's something that, you know, I've reflected a lot on. There's this guy named Littrell Spackwell who, I'll never forget, you know, he, he, you know, kind of taught me in a funny retail way about the moonbags because I've always been kind of an all-or-nothing type of guy. It's like a position, if I get annoyed with it, I'm just like, I'm, I'm out of this thing. Like, I just want to clean my sheets and, and get out of it if it pops. But on some of these sort of big white space ideas, you, you do kind of want to have that moonbag just in case your crazy upside case comes to fruition. One name I'm kind of thinking about right now, and I'm not pitching this by any means, a lot of people know I own it, is Horizon Quantum HQ. I got into this thing because of Anpin, Mann, and Tutte, and then they all sold without telling me. And the joke is on them because now the stock went up a ton. And turns out laziness can be a dominant strategy. For me, I was willing to be lazy about it because there's a founder, owner, or CEO who left a tenured professorship who really knows what he's doing. And it's an interesting idea around harmonizing quantum software, has a network effect element. I don't know, it's not a big position for me, but it started to go. And, you know, it's a $500 million market cap at the trust value. And given something like that, if you slapped a zero on the end of it, I don't know that I'd even bat an eye. That's a great example of where a moonbag can be applicable. ASTS, I don't think I need to go over what the bull case is here. But it really could be the case once they start to get more satellites and the revenue model proves out, people realize this is competition for the internet. This is the biggest idea ever. And, you know, I say competition for the internet and I kind of laugh at my own inside joke. When I was in high school, my best friend, we'd hang out in our garage and we'd be like modifying our cars, which was lame because it meant I just put like a dead A dead pedal on my car because it was automatic, but then I would like screw in some Momo aluminum plate for my pedal. And I made my own leather-covered steering wheel out of a skirt I bought at Salvation Army. This is why I didn't have a girlfriend in high school is because this is how I spent my time. And to have a custom-made leather steering wheel on a Volvo, I thought was pretty dope at the time. But as we were sitting around, I, I would ask him like, hey dude, what business should we start? How are we gonna, how are we gonna make it? And he kind of jokingly said to me, he was like, Cook, I didn't go by Cook at that time. I was like, Cook, we should just do competition for the internet. And this was in the '90s and I thought that was the funniest thing ever. And so 30 years later, I, I still have this in my mind and part, part of it's like my guiding investment thesis on ASTS is this is finally when I've had a chance to invest in competition for the internet. I'm kind of doing the joke. It's a big idea. Elon did the joke and created competition for the internet with Starlink. $2 trillion or whatever the implied valuation is. It's a big idea. There's not many people that would have anticipated that Starlink would be worth trillions when there had already been satellite companies, you know, the ViaSats and things like that, but done in a low friction consumer friendly, scalable way was a game changer. And so that's the type of big idea I'm really intent on capturing with AST Space Mobile. So moving on, um, one of our Space Mobbers just came up with some cool AI-generated stuff. I wish this had been the mission patch. It was awesome of Falcon like basically having 3 bluebirds as like payload. It's pretty cool. So there's a lot of excitement about this launch. Move on for that. But really, you look at it, this launch is incredible. And I'm really glad that I didn't understand the technical difficulties. And so if anyone that was watching the feed remembers that the carbon fiber rings on the satellites have load-bearing capacity to support The Statue of Liberty to support a 747. It's wild what loads can be supported on this structure. So the hacking issue, not to give the FUDsters any credit, but they were right in identifying this was in fact an extraordinary engineering. Challenge. What they refused to acknowledge is that it was in fact an extraordinary engineering feat, a feat that was achieved by this team with extensive testing to when they had achieved it to get their ducks in a row, get it done despite the obvious challenges which caused the delay. But now they did it. The benefit of getting this composite casing done is massive because it reduces our weight from, I believe it was 6.5 tons on FM1, FM2 to around 4 tons going lower, which just dramatically improves the economics of the constellation because for a fixed dedicated cargo, having more satellites Just amortizes your launch costs really as measured by square feet of phased array. So you're able to put a lot more phased array in a fairing if you can make the whole thing lighter. You ultimately hit other constraints like volume and again, weight, but you're again getting way more square feet of array for a pound of cargo. So the company really gave us a great education about this, teaching us what some of us already knew, um, because we had done a lot of research after having become aware of the challenge. Did I know about the challenge of carbon fiber satellite casings 4 years ago? No, I did not. There's a lot of things I didn't know. And so a lot of my research tends to be reactive. This is why it's important to know the team. I am not a satellite engineer, unlike Lucky Stewie, but unlike Lucky Stewie, who would've said the whole thing was impossible, I was ignorantly blissful on some of the challenges that would be encountered, but I was absolutely up to speed on knowing the team that I had invested behind who's working for me as a shareholder to address those challenges. And there's a pithy statement around this. Is those who bet on the horse and those who bet on the jockey. I've come to the belief that the biggest investment returns are made by correctly betting on the jockey because the jockey can train a horse, get a new horse, do all these things, and they're dynamic and they can rise to the challenge. They can pivot, they can expand, they can do all these things. The key is to have the best team. And that's what I am increasingly convinced of. The more I always learn, the more I'm impressed by what this team has been able to do. And this iteration to the next generation satellite that we currently have is astonishing, far surpassing what I understood to be possible back when I originally made this investment. And we can only imagine, and imagine I do, what the future product roadmap will have in store for us. This is the thing that I really want to see from the company in terms of the product roadmap. Probably a little premature, but I want to see if the data bird is real. I think it is. It's pure speculation on my part, which I'll freely admit to, but freely speculating can be a really healthy exercise because just imagine what a board is doing. You think they're blind to the opportunity? No, they're thinking about this stuff. So you want to think like this. You want to think like a board member, and that's how you can anticipate things that are not yet announced but are likely to happen. And then think about the value implications of those things. So enough about that topic. And Panman released or shared really cool research from Niche, which is more commentary around the JV between AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile. I think this kind of slipped burner for people. You know, there's been a lot of noise with New Glenn and things like that, the SpaceX IPO, but in May, we had that announcement where the 3 kind of sworn enemies all teamed up seemingly against space sections of this JV, um, by FUDsters versus space mobbers. You know, we've, we always can err in seeing the world through our own lenses. I have not seen the JV and released because it has not been. So I don't really know, but intuitively, you know, that it's going to pass FTC muster, which means that it can't be a single buyer pact, which means that each company like ASTS will still have individual contracts. So there can't be price fixing. Um, so it really does look like a mechanism to box out SpaceX, which then really means it's meant to Aid and abet AST Space Mobile. But you can read this note for yourself. It's posted in the weekly. And then we've also had FirstNet confirmed for the 568th time. And so in the FCC docket, once again, it's just written as clear as day that ASTS to provide additional capacity and coverage for the first and only space-based mobile broadband network to its MNO partners. AT&T and Verizon, comma, as well as FirstNet in a regular regulatory document. So we'll get a deal when we get a deal. I still don't know what a deal would look like. I suspect my strongest suspicion is that what it looks like is about $1 billion a year of revenue through usage and subscription agreements.
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[00:24:36] Speaker D: But we'll find out. Another interesting piece of research that caught my attention is from one one one. Say that ten times. One is in the number, one is in the currency, or one as in past tense of I win, and then one as in Spanish for John. Found a cool thing in a job description for a junior software developer, and it says very clearly. due to NSA requirements, sponsorship will not be offered. Um, says it's a project between Nokia and ASTS. NSA requirements, huh? I thought we were just solving dead spots, bro. So that's cool, I'm working for the NSA. In other words, this call is being monitored. Hi, NSA. I'm sure they'd approve of this because I'm helping them Get their technology, and then Reform Trader pointed out in the press release that we all read. Actually, this is from Chris Knight at Real Genius Stock highlighted and brought to our attention that is the press release on the successful launch of batch one shows to highlight that satellites have quote high power generation in orbit. I specifically call that out. Power is not the end product that ASTS sells. They sell RF connectivity, which can have high power in orbit. But to specifically add that seems like a Scott move. Um, that's communicating to us that the on-orbit power generation birds, AKA data birds, are coming. And actually, as I kind of think about this, an interesting model would really just to be selling Powerbirds and the payloads are really owned by someone else and ASCS is just hosting it. So what they're truly selling is a power platform and other people plug into it. That actually, as I think about it, might make the most sense. And really then it just becomes like an independent power producer and I'd have to think about those economics a little bit. But maybe that's what Scott's signaling to us as I think about it. And other codes that we decoded are from the Decatzee code as he looks at all the patches. And where this guy knows where to look is really beyond us. But he points out, you know, where the old patch had MILNET in Morse code on it. He picked up on a new clue around ACE. So ACE, Non-Terrestrial Network, blah, blah, blah, lots of crazy stuff. I'm not honestly sure that I even understand all this, but More coded messages in these patches, which makes sense. People that there's a real culture around these patches, which is just awesome. And so it makes sense that there's going to be some coded messages in here, and the codes we're deciphering actually make total sense because we know that they have non-communication use cases. What I would have loved to see is a patch that said "Konnichiwa," which brings us to our next topic, which is the J. Leo. Um, escalation. So this is something that actually hadn't been on my radar. And so leave it to Space Mob, our distributed global workforce of figuring stuff out. It brings attention to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, um, program called JLEO, which is basically a billion-dollar subsidy to operators to bring D2D satellite constellations managed in Japan. Cool. Seems like something that would be up our alley. We have like Connect Europe setup that navigates some of the sovereign issues. It would make sense that we could do the same thing in Japan. We have Rakuten as a partner in Japan. Our new head of APAC is based in Tokyo. He had worked for NEC, which had been our key partner for Microns. A lot of cards flip that make sense. It doesn't make sense to me that our head of APAC business development would be based in Tokyo if this weren't a real possibility, because for those of you that are really familiar with the history of this company, the Rakuten deal that ASTS has really sucks. They basically had to give away the service component to Rakuten in exchange for capital back at the Series B. So it's really not that juicy of an economic contract that they currently have. And so you wouldn't be basing your people out of Tokyo for that. In fact, I'm almost certain you would not. And so something else would have to be happening in my estimation, because you place your important people where the opportunity is. You don't place them in a faraway place. For example, we're going after like Indonesia. For all of Asia, only have that person in Tokyo. And so, you as it stands, as we know it today, is kind of a subpar contract. So there's a lot of spec. And this also ties to the cards we saw a flip around. It's having agreement with Mitsubishi Heavy for the H3 vehicle. All and the MP man points out. There's more local content. Content is key. Launching with ISRO, very important to ingratiating ourselves with the Indian market. How people wind up in Japan starts to put value chain in Japan. And then you do the tricks we did in terms of management of the constellation, the JV. Agreements, blah blah blah. The base is all of a sudden AST constellation is Japanese sovereign systems. So pieces, as the Pan says, are clicking into place. So I'm really not sure on this. Wasn't on my bingo card. Don't have a view. I'm generally inclined because I. I'm full of hopium to believe it is true, but could immediately be disproven. And so we do have people with some counterpoints. And so this guy, Alex D, says, sorry, AST folks. Look, dude, we're used to it. You don't have to apologize for anything. But he believes that MDA has a legitimate shot at winning. Could make sense. MDA has been sort of the Swatch of satellite making. They kind of supply the goods, or try to supply the goods, to all the people that want to have paper constellations and pretend to be doing something real, only to then flake on it because it was a way to have a batna. EchoStar used them to force a sale. GlobalStar did it because they're hopeless and forced a sale. And then Amazon's going to do it themselves. So maybe MDNA is going to do that, but where I get stuck on MDA is either technology probably sucks because usually the third-party primes doing this type of stuff don't do it well because they're not owner operators of it. They have different set of incentives, but I still just don't understand how the economics could work. Japan is a small place on the globe. A constellation dedicated just to Japan doesn't really make a whole lot of sense. it should be a global constellation with then sovereignty built into the control when it's needed over certain geographies. That's how I would think about it. But I included the counterpoint here for everyone to read. But I would say that if you're making an investment decision based on Jay Leo speculation, that's probably misplaced. So whether this happens or not, I think will just be a positive surprise. But because it's really only just something that I'm even learning about now, I'd be shocked if it's in the stock price. Um, so if we don't win it, I don't think it really matters. But then we have, you know, the same thing going on in Europe. Europe is trying to do it. They're getting further behind. Europe has the problem of being— trying— Europe is trying to be a United States It's really united countries and countries are more difficult to unite than states. So it's very difficult to get in France and Italy to not feed their local elites. It's a European constellation fraught with pork complexity and also doesn't have the same level of innovation. SpaceX is criticizing the plan for how the EU is going to distribute the satellite spectrum, which is really the 2 GHz issue. People can read this article, but it'll be interesting how Europe deals with this. Helping to develop their I2 network, which is a constellation of UTSAT, SES, and Hispasat. Again, Europe did this. Is something history hasn't generally seen happen. So good luck to them. And it seems like Vone has figured out the fast track model, which is just partner with ASTS, paper it legally so that it's sovereign, and then Europe will come running when it's up. That's my best guess of what happens, but it also shows how their solution is being packaged and why it should make sense to do the exact same thing in Japan. And I hope it is. So we're going back to New Glenn. New Glenn is telling people that they're back. And for my own mental therapy, I watched the full 41-minute hot fire of their engine. Pretty crazy to watch a rocket engine fire for 41 minutes. I mean, these guys are going to have one hell of a natural gas bill. I can't like the utilities must just be licking their chops with these guys. Like yeah, they burn it for one minutes, making their quarter right there. And so they're burning these engines. I'm amazed to see that it can burn that long. I thought these things would just melt. Can you imagine like redlining a Porsche at 9,000 RPM for 41 minutes? Maybe you could do it. I don't know anyone is crazy enough to even try that, let alone fire. So David Limp is showing that they are not messing around. They've got incredible technology, incredible rocket. And I learned from a space barber, I'll just keep him anonymous, that the, uh, we could call it a mishap, which is kind of the understatement of all time around New Glenn 4, was really just a fluke accident where a sensor was working, but just the software tied to the sensor just didn't cut things off when it noticed the liquid oxygen, which is just so tragic of what happened. But clearly the type of thing that shouldn't happen and not an indictment of the architecture of the rocket itself. And these guys showing these rockets operating with this sort of performance envelope is pretty astonishing for someone who isn't a rocket engineer by any means, but does understand that firing a rocket engine for 41 minutes is probably pretty impressive. And it's also good to remember This time last year, SpaceX blew its pad up, and they're back. And so there's that video if you want to see another sort of incredible explosion. Hopefully we don't see more of these explosions. Hopefully this will just be the archive of things that blew up. But from fire, they rose back. So next week, the market's a little shaky. It is a little bit perplexing. The relationship ASTS has with SpaceX. SpaceX goes up, ASTS goes down. SpaceX goes down, ASTS goes down. It's like, guys, come on. What are we going to do here? What's our correlation? But we are max lent out on ASTS. I'm monitoring this very closely. So basically every share that can be borrowed has been borrowed. So I believe it's a lot of people hedging their SpaceX. I have friends whose entire net worth is in their SpaceX investments. Good, good for them. It certainly been a monster for people and gonna you know already one of my friends quit his job because he made enough money on what he believes to be his SpaceX gains SPV economics notwithstanding that he pursue a different path in life. And I know he's just been texting me all day. You know, should I hedge? How should I hedge? What should I do? Um, and so if he's doing that, everyone's doing that. And I think people are kind of doing what Goldman Partners did when Goldman IPO'd, is basically whatever you could do in life to hedge your Goldman Sachs stock risk, you were doing in that moment. Guys were setting up hedge funds where the sole strategy was to short Goldman Sachs stock and getting Goldman Partners to invest in that fund to try to like get around all their restrictions. I don't— I know the guy that was pitching that at the time, and I don't— he did not get that off the ground. So I know he specifically did not do it, but that's what people were trying to do. So I think that the hedging bid for SpaceX is maximum. And so we're taking the brunt effectively of providing SpaceX investors with a form of liquidity because they short ASTS, they can short Rocket Lab, they can pray. And at some point, we're going to have a funny reaction where look at my hedge fund career, I mean, this, this is a tale as old as time. You, you have a really like, and you're super focused on it, you're doing 10,000 hours of work, and then your PM is like, all right, that's cool, how are you going to hedge it? And you're like, I don't know, let's throw some shit on. And so, you know, you randomly, you know, short some stuff and then you get your face just blown to pieces. It's so painful. I know Anpanman could probably sympathize, although I'm sure he never did it because he's a better investor than I am, but I did it. And it sucks because you spend all your time on your long, and then you got to offlay the risk somehow. And so you have a lazy short, and you really don't think about it. But this is where the basis risk comes in. Turns out, the ability to monetize your long is as directly a function of your short as it is whether you're right on your. And so a lot of people are probably going to find out the hard way. That ASTS is a secular growth stock, very unique advantages, and they're going to find out that they were short this thing. And then they're going to find out that all the people that are also long SpaceX are going to sell their SpaceX. So they're going to have SpaceX probably go down, one would think, on the unlocks. And then all these people are going to be looking to cover their ASTS, or God forbid, ASTS is going to launch more satellites, announce more multi-launch agreements, win Golden Dome, maybe win something like JLEO. And they're going to wake up and go, oh my God, why did this thing double in my face? And then they're going to look around and go, oh my double God, everyone has the same trade on. Everyone has this as the dead leg short in the middle of summer when liquidity is gone and we have Russell 2000 about to happen. It is interesting, and I know I was thinking about it Just a second ago, kind of what I was going to say on this topic. I try to always be pretty forthcoming with my sentiment, AKA if Santa's listening, the Kook Bottom. Funny story too, Tanner's daughter couldn't believe I was wearing a Kook Bottom shirt. So in the eyes of like a small child, a grownup wearing a shirt with a big golden butt on it was like mind-blowing at launch. And I'd like turn around and Tanner's like, my daughter's right behind you. And she'd just be staring at my back because I had the catsuit shirt on with the flamethrower in the front and then the butt on the back. This girl is gonna have a story her teachers will never believe. But the sentiment I have—so enough about screwing with young children by wearing butt shirts. The sentiment I had when I was thinking about it is: Yeah, I feel like next week, my sentiment is is kind of crap right now. It does feel like oh, stock can't go up. I'm not saying this is a kook bottom because I'm definitely not crashing out. Sorry, but it feels painful. And I remember this feeling from a couple weeks ago when the stock was, I think it was in the 80s and then it ripped, you know, straight to the 90s and the 100s. And I remember I was like a day late where I was like, oh, I really should buy. It feels shitty and I hate this thing. But Reformed Traders charts, it's like the triple trifecta of, you know, full moon and a high tide and like the running of the grunion. So I should probably do something. That's kind of my feeling right now. And so I don't know what I'm going to do. I'm going to— I know what I'm going to do. I'm going to try to wake up tomorrow early and go surfing and, you know, whatever. But I'm thinking that this might be one of those sort of crash-out bottoms. We had New Glenn. People don't seemingly care about the successful launch because it's being overwhelmed by all the SpaceX hedging. SpaceX is going to calm down, I think. You know, these shares are going to find their home. The indexing starts. I think the guys Kind of panicking about their SpaceX position, really just need to chill out. You know, they have an awesome company. SpaceX is awesome. I got my new SpaceX sunglasses, as I think I said, and I was wearing them today, and my daughter's like, don't we hate SpaceX? And I was like, no, this is our launch vehicle. These guys are awesome. And she's like, but I thought they were our competitors. And it's like every time we go by a T-Mobile store, they want to like TP it and deface it. I'm like, no, no, no. Don't don't Molotov cocktail the T-Mobile store yet because they might be our partner. So this is where I always tell my kids: I'm like, look, the market's dynamic. Just because Daddy's complaining about T-Mobile all day doesn't mean that will be forever. And just because we're really mad at Starlink doesn't mean we don't love SpaceX. And so these guys, I think, just need to chill out and realize that SpaceX is unbelievable. They have a monopoly on launch for now. The Falcon Nine is a true. Masterpiece of humanity. Starlink is incredible. They consumerize the internet in a way no one else has done for. And AI data centers, which are probably going to work and are probably pretty amazing. Elon was first to buy up every Nvidia chip and now is just everyone by leasing them back to Anthropic. And there's a lot of really exciting things going on with SpaceX and you have all the indexers go and buy it. And so guys kind of calm down and realize that they should know what they own and that SpaceX is not going to zero, then I think that hedging demand could also calm down quite a lot. I hope so. And so the first week of July has tended to be a pretty good week. Summer tends to be pretty good for ASTS. We're going to have Bluebird shipping pretty soon, I believe, for a launch in, I think, August. I always just push it back. by a month, because that's usually a pretty safe assumption right now. But things are humming, so I'm pretty excited. I do feel this sort of morose energy right now too, which is usually something that comes before a snapback. And so I might be doing something to take advantage of that for anyone, you know, playing from home. So thanks everyone. It was awesome meeting a lot of you guys at launch. Again, I just think it's so special that we have such an incredible group of people Really from all walks of life, willing to make the trek, watch a launch, share a lot of good conversation as we waited for, I mean, what was it, 7 hours? Pretty cool that a bunch of randos on the internet can just sit in a hotel lobby, drink Dr Pepper, and all get to know each other while waiting for a launch. It's a good group. We have something really special and It's, you know, once again, really a time to really thank Katzi and Steve Larison. And there's some other people people don't know, like Spack Torrey, uh, was important for my own learning back in the earliest days. He was a former, um, signal intelligence officer with the US Army, long since gone from the investment, but he really helped me, um, learn about this. He was kind of Katzi 1.0 for me. And so it's these people that really caused this all to get together to know this stock so well. And never forget, the goal was not just to make a lot of friends. In fact, that's not the goal. That's the, the happy side effect of this. The goal is to have this thing 10 to 20x from here. That's what I hope, that's what I think, and that's what I'm playing for. So have a great night, everyone, and we will have an exciting week ahead, I'm sure.
[00:45:38] 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.
[00:46:10] Speaker D: Mmm, waffles.