Anpanman - The End of Smash-and-Grab

[00:00:07] Speaker A: This is the AST SpaceMobile Podcast. 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. Hey everyone, thanks for joining. What a difference a day makes. And, um, yeah, I wanted to cover a few topics. Uh, it seems like we have new news that comes out daily, and so I wanted to discuss AST SpaceMobile first, uh, and then I was going to talk about smash and grab short sellers and what the indictment of, um, or I guess Andrew Left of Citron was found guilty. And so I wanted to talk about that and the potential implications for some of these con artists. And then I want to talk about T1 Energy, which is actually related to the smash-and-grab guys. But anyway, um, let's talk about AST SpaceMobile. So first, I did want to kind of go through a few topics. I just wrote them down very quickly here. And, um, first, uh, What a difference a few days make. You had a number of respected industry journalists and pundits who, after the Blue Origin mishap and explosion of New Glenn and the destruction of the launch pad, everybody came out with all kinds of takes. And I understand that's their job to a degree. Um, you know, lay out what is in the realm of possibility. But I feel like a number of people spoke as if they were talking, you know, facts. And this guy Eric Berger, who I've followed, and some— from time to time he's written useful stuff, other times, um— and I learned this early on, uh, a lot of his takes on Blue Origin have just been absolutely wrong. Um, I think going back to 2024 or 2025, there were a few things that he had written about the program, and I remember just reaching out to ASC Space Mobile Management at some point later and just cross-referencing and saying, hey, this guy Eric Berger, he claims this and this. And then, um, you know, I was told, oh, he's absolutely wrong. And, you know, Eric's one of these guys who has, um, supposed connections at all these companies, and maybe his sources are not high enough, or maybe they have a certain angle or ulterior motive to, um, to put forward. But I think it's important, as many of us had actually posted on Twitter, it's take all these things with a grain of salt. People want to, whether I guess for advertising, like they put out engagement because they want more views and then they get more advertising, which by the way, like for me on Twitter, I think I get paid something like $200 every 2 weeks for the engagement that I have, which at the end of the day, like I don't really care. I give all of it away to charity. Um, but, uh, I, I assume perhaps for these really big accounts they get paid a lot of money. And so if you write sensationalist things that, uh, you know, they can be opinion, then, and you get engagement, then more power to you. And that's obviously part of the role of journalists, right? On the one hand, they, they're— well, some of them are supposed to be objective, but others are there to push the envelope and try to get engagement, right? So if they're writing for Ars Technica or some of these other publications You want to drive traffic to the website, and the way to do that is to just write as sensationalistic stuff as possible that may not have any root in reality or is not even reasonable. So I think this is a big lesson for everybody where there's a number of these folks who are writing, and I'll just throw a few things out there. For example, some people were claiming that Kennedy Space Center was completely down, that propellant was leaking through lines, and the damage at Blue Origin's pad basically cascaded into other pads as well. So there would be no launching. The power was out. There would be no launching of SpaceX or ULA. Then of course, that morning SpaceX launched a rocket with Starlink satellites, and I think that evening they also launched. Then of course, ULA that evening aboard Atlas Centaur. So there's 2 rockets. One is Vulcan Centaur, the other one is Atlas Centaur. Atlas Centaur, which is a smaller rocket, they delivered Amazon LEO satellites the same day, or sorry, the next day. So that FUD was wrong. This guy, Eric Berger, he's a FUD merchant. He was peddling some of that. Then You know, they had a number of other people including him who were saying, well, rebuilding the pad's going to take 18 months to perhaps 2 years. And, um, you know, there's— they're probably not going to launch for another 2 years at the, at the far end. Um, you know, I guess some of the more optimistic doom maxers were saying for another 1 to 1.5 years. Um, and so it was just kind of funny. Oh, and the other one was, um, Eric immediately after the explosion happened said, hey, I'm hearing from a few people that they're just going to skip 7x2 and go to 9x4. Uh, New Glenn, which made like zero sense, like logically, because they— well, first of all, like they, they have a ton of missions that are planned on 7x2, which is the current platform. They already, already have essentially one finished booster that's, you know, never tell me the odds, it's— that's now had 2 successful flights and returns. And then they've got booster number— let's see, it's number 4 and number 5 in production. 4 will probably be done sometime sometime over mid to late summer. 5 summer, and then 5 will be done probably sometime in fall, early winter. Um, so why would they drop the program when you have a ton of paying customers and you already have all these boosters completed? And then you've got, um, second stages. I think when Jeff Bezos was giving the tour, uh, he said that they're working on stage— second stage, uh, the 15th one, right? Which would imply that they've got 11 already either fully produced or in production. So why would you just give up on all that? But of course, Eric Berger, I think it was like within the first hour of the explosion, was like, I'm hearing from sources that they're gonna just potentially move on, depending on what's going on, they're gonna move on to 9x4 from 7x2, which for those that don't know, there is some precedent. I mean, Relativity for their smaller vehicle, after that failed to get to orbit, they immediately said, we're gonna go straight to just going to the heavy lift Terran Terran. I think it's Terran R. Um, but yeah, this guy was peddling all this FUD, and then of course Dave Limp, you know, who has information after evaluating the damage, uh, gave an update to, um, the market. And, uh, it appears that the long pole items, uh, or a decent amount of long pole items, um, are— have, you know, are— were not damaged to the point where they would have to go rebuild them. And so he was able to say with some level of confidence, 'cause he's making a public statement, that they are targeting a launch by year end. Now, obviously that's a really aggressive goal. And I think everybody should take that with a grain of salt. It's unclear. And we all know this is space. And so if you set goals, part of it is to motivate the hell out of people internally and to suppliers and contractors and everybody, right? It's like, this is our goal. It's like, when JFK gave the goal, like, we're going to land a guy on the moon, uh, by this time. I mean, this is kind of a similar type of rallying cry, right? And so you do that to motivate people, and you give them a, a vision of where you want to be, and everybody works towards that, right? And so if they get there by— if they launch before 12/31, great. If they launch by, you know, the end of January, great. Um, but that's, that's the marching orders, right? And another interesting thing that I've learned from a number of sources, and Yes, I'm referring— I'm becoming Eric Berger. Things that I'm hearing. But this is actually from people that are at the company and/or there's cross-referencing. So this has actually been repeated by a few people. But yeah, it sounds like the Trump administration has given their full support behind Blue Origin. I believe Trump has had a call with Jeff Bezos and said, we're fully behind you. And NASA is all in. well. And so I think when considering what the company's trying to do in rebuilding that pad, they're going to have every resource available and all stops are pulled. This is not just about Jeff Bezos. This is about the United States getting fully behind this company. And this is good for America. It's not like this tribalistic, oh, Blue Origin versus SpaceX. No, this is for the country. Blue Origin is responsible for national security launches. They're responsible for getting us back to the moon, you know, getting us to Mars. SpaceX is doing that too. And, you know, you're, by the way, like you're un-American if you're hoping that either of these programs are going to fail. Like I'm fully behind SpaceX. I hope they are successful with Starship. And of course I hope Falcon 9 can— the whole idea, by the way, of like these pundits saying, well, I think they're going to drop Falcon 9 when SpaceX, Starship is launching, which I find funny because Falcon 9 is a very profitable program and it's needed by the United States. And these incidents show you that you need a diversity of launch vehicles, right? Because sometimes you might have a vehicle go down because of some problem and there's an FAA investigation. And so if Starship's on a regular cadence and there's one mishap, and then you've shut down Falcon 9, and all those people, the tooling, everything is gone. Why would you do that? You would keep it in the rotation because there's a market for medium lift, right? And you're going to have Falcon Heavy and you're going to have Starship. So this whole notion of retiring these vehicles, to me at least, I'm not the expert, but I think that makes zero sense. But the fact that Trump personally called Bezos, said, we're all in, we're helping you, and And NASA is fully behind them. And, um, you know, there was this FUD, by the way. I think Isaacman was quoted, misquoted by CNBC that, uh, the pad, uh, wouldn't be completed potentially by 2028. What was great is that he came out on Twitter and corrected that. Um, and so I don't know, it's just kind of, it's, it's funny how, um, FUDsters and media people, just to get that soundbite, like they'll throw shit out there and, you know, light a bomb on fire and then And then, um, yeah, and see what's like it. I don't know, it's— I just feel like journalistic integrity has been out the window for so long. But, um, going back to my point, I think Blue Origin has the resources of the nation, um, behind it. And so I wouldn't be surprised. I'm not, I'm not, I'm not saying they're going to launch before the end of the year, but I would not be surprised if they did, right? And, and my— by the way, like, my, um, My whole disposition is to be a positive person, and I'm always looking at the brighter side of things. I think there are some folks out there, I mean, one comes to mind, which is like Tim Ferriss or this guy Pierre Leonet, who is the Space Economist. These guys are FUD merchants. All they do is find the negative thing or create negative things out of nothing, because that's their business. I don't know. I just like, how do you live with yourself? For me, I'm always looking, and that's like how, as an investor, especially for these earlier stage companies that are highly risky, you can't be a Negative Nancy. You can't have a negative disposition because you will work yourself into a tizzy and basically exit out of these things when companies face adversity. when they hit the inevitable bump in the road, which is all risky stuff. This is just part of the— I always joke volatility and uncertainty is a feature, it's not a bug. I've actually spent an afternoon thinking about, man, what if I— it's one thing I've made this analogy. It's like if you're making widgets and you're selling them on Earth, it's very easy. It's like, okay, I'm making toothbrushes and if there was a default, I or a defect, then I can just fix it and then start making new toothbrushes and replace the old ones. And they're all here on Earth and I can distribute them or whatever. But to make a vehicle like a satellite that goes out into space, it's a one-time thing, right? Like you're sending this 4,000-kilogram satellite out to space and everything has to go right. You have to unfold it and all the things that all your blood, sweat, and tears and research that goes into that thing. Hopefully it unfolds properly, it flies okay, it's stable, it's nominal. And then you turn it on, hopefully it turns on, and then you upload, or there's software there, but you probably make some adjustments and you upload other things, check systems. But once it's up there, that's it, it's done, it's on its own. It's like sending your kid off to college. Hopefully you taught it the right things and it has everything, but then once it's out there, there's nothing There's not many things you can do if you do something wrong. And so space is very unforgiving. It's a difficult thing. And we learned that with Bluebird 7, where Blue Origin, due to— I mean, there's rumors, but due to certain bolts that weren't tightened, then one of the BE-3 engines didn't ignite. And so you had this anomaly where when they tried to relight it, for the second burn in order to get the satellite into a proper— from elliptical to circular orbit, that didn't happen, right? And so unfortunately we lost that satellite. And that's, that's why this stuff is hard. And that's why you've got to measure 3 times, 4 times, 5 times, and cut once. Um, because the little things— um, it's not like for you and me, if we're doing yard work or if we're working on our bike or doing something, um, you can be lazy and you might miss something here or there and it's no problem. But here the implications of not being 100% on top of things, there's no room for error. And so that's why this stuff is hard. And I think that's why these companies trade where they do, right? Because for the ones that actually can do it and have made it happen, they deserve a premium because there's— I was reading this morning about one of these new space lab, I think it's called Starlab companies, and They gave Starship, SpaceX, a $90 million contract to launch their space station up. Those guys are depending on Starship to become commercial, right? They have to have a special fairing, and so it's a very bespoke mission that they're paying for, but all their hopes and dreams are on this one launch vehicle. And that also includes StarCloud. And so this kind of gets into my second point, which is, and I want to emphasize this, and I guess perhaps the market is starting to price this in, but AST SpaceMobile, from the beginning, they designed their satellites to be launch agnostic. And part of this is, as you go through, and this shows the innovation of the company, as you go through this process, originally, if you guys recall, the first satellites were supposed to have a control bus in the center and then unfold like a flower, which is BlueWalker 3 and the Block 1 satellites. Excuse me. But then as the company went through those iterations, they learned like, oh, you know what? When we launch these satellites, the LVA adapter, the encasing that goes around it, you can't have— if you're going to launch something to 600 kilometers orbit, you're gonna have to deorbit that casing. It needs to come down. And so you're gonna have to put propellant on it, some type of navigation system, and you need to deorbit 'cause you can't have leftover stuff flying out there due to regulators wanting there to not be space junk out there. And so the company had to pivot. The company, in a very— in the only way they know how to do this, they created an entirely new form factor in satellite, which is the Block 2 satellite. where in an elegant way, the LVA was this donut ring and it just became, it's part of the actual vehicle, right? And so they created a new unfolding mechanism. They also have a tail and then the control bus is inside that donut. And this is something that the FUDsters and haters like Tim Farrar, I remember when they first released the FCC filings related to this new design, he was like, oh my God, they'll never get approval and this is not gonna happen for another, 2 years or something. And of course he was wrong, right? Because that's— and this is like the mentality of people in the industry who are legacy guys who are used to the old ways of primes working on problems. Primes meaning like Boeing, Lockheed, others. And it's like, oh, okay, there's this problem that we're going to solve. Well, we need about 6 years to do it. And then if they have to pivot, oh, well, give us like another 3 or 4 years. No, these companies have different DNA. They have startup culture. It's about innovation. It's about doing things. By the way, it's like being vertically integrated. And I saw this, and I don't mean to be— well, actually I do mean to be down on Viasat, but in their earnings call, they talked about these new satellites that they're building. And of course we all know the crazy delays that Viasat has had. I mean, it's been— their satellites are what, 3 to 5 years delayed? Um, and they talk about being vertically integrated, but then they have primes, Boeing and Lockheed, who are building their satellites. And as Scott has mentioned in the past, like, you cannot build through purchase order, right? You have to build stuff internally because you're gonna find problems as you go, right? And then you need to correct them quickly. And that's something that you can't do with primes. But with primes, I mean, just imagine, they're going to build a satellite and then they're like, oh, you can't— they're going to deliver it to you or you can check in on the progress. I mean, it's just like when you're working in a group and you're, let's say you're building, I don't know, you're building a house and then the buyers come over and they're like, hey, we actually want to change this and this and this, and they keep changing it. As a builder, your inclination is to push back. or charge more money. If you're going to be a pain in my ass, I'm going to charge you more money and I'm going to make it painful where you stop making changes as I build the house. So that's the very odd relationship that a prime has with the customer, because of course the customer's always right, but as a customer comes and they change things, you as a prime are going to be frustrated because it's never-ending. And then on top of that, you're going to charge more money for it. And that's a very inefficient process versus being able to be vertically integrated. It's like AST SpaceMobile, okay, our first design, it's great, but we have this problem. We cannot leave an LVA, launch vehicle adapter, out in space. And so we need to build this satellite to be all encompassed. Like it includes the container, which you launch it, that container now becomes the shell and houses the bus. And so in a very elegant way, you don't create any discard, refuse out there in space. And so when you have a company that's vertically integrated, you can do that. You can innovate very quickly and you can adjust. And that's why SpaceX is so— they've been so successful. And that's why Rocket Lab is successful and Planet Labs is successful. You don't outsource this stuff. You actually have to do it yourself. And so I found it funny, like Mark Denkberg of ViaSat, he was telling the Street analysts, yeah, we're vertically integrated. Well, if that's true, then why are you outsourcing all your production to these other companies? And then the satellite was delivered, I don't know, 3, 5 years late. One of the satellites, by the way, when you launched it, it got bricked out in space, which by the way, that's going to happen to everybody. I get it. But with that company in particular, they have very small number of huge multi-billion-dollar, I think it's multi-billion-dollar satellites out in GEO. And so the stakes are super high, right? Like if you're launching to low Earth orbit, the stakes are pretty low because like, no pun intended, but you launch satellites, they're not gonna be there forever and you can de-orbit them very easily. But when you launch things into GEO, they're out there, you know, you build, you over-engineer them 'cause they get beaten up really bad, right? relative to how cold it is. And then there's not much atmosphere, or there's no atmosphere to protect them from radiation and things like that. So if you're gonna do something on that scale, I would assume you wanna do that as a vertically integrated company, but they chose not to do that. But anyway, going back to what I was saying before, the key thing about AST, and I went off on a tangent, but the company from the beginning, And this was Abel's vision. His vision was, I'm not gonna make some satellite that needs a bespoke fairing or specific vehicle. I'm making a satellite that's gonna fit every vehicle. So Soyuz, Relativity Terran, Rocket Lab Neutron, Blue Origin New Glenn, SpaceX Falcon 9, SpaceX Falcon 9 Heavy, ISRO LVM-3, Ariane 6, Ariane 5 back in the day, ULA Vulcan Centaur. I mean, any and all these vehicles, as long as they can carry weight up to space, my satellite's gonna fit them. And in the original configuration where it was like these little beer cans, that encapsulated satellite around a folded deck of cards, and then of course the new one where it's a donut and it's got the array that pops out, it's all going to fit. It's going to be standard, right? And so that's— and so the company has been planning this since inception, right? And so I think what the market perhaps is starting to get its arms around is the fact that one, we have some good news. Blue Origin New Glenn is coming back online according to the company, and we'll see, but it could happen before year-end. Very aggressive timeline, reach goal, I get it. But now you've got light at the end of the tunnel, and it's not this like doom-maxing FUD crap of 2 years from now. You've got the US government throwing its full support behind that. That's important. It's not like some startup company. Obviously, Bezos has a ton of money, but it's not some small company that no one cares about. This is like a national security priority. That's good. That, So you got Blue Origin, New Glenn, and then of course the company has, from public disclosure in terms of what the company has said, they have a handful of Falcon 9 launches this year. I also think that the company is in an active mode to add additional Falcon 9 launches and they probably will have to end up paying full sticker or whatever it is, which to me, from a market perspective, I don't care what they pay. you guys to put in a baseline of Falcon 9 launches that will give us certainty in terms of cadence. And if you have to pay a premium for that, that's fine, right? We've got over $3 billion of cash. We have a massive market cap. The market is paying you for certainty. And I think, by the way, the market also has some level of doubt of whether these guys can actually produce at a cadence that would meet launch. you know, that, that will require that launch cadence. But, um, but I think in the next few months we're going to see that. We're going to see production cadence really kick into high gear. But the reason why I'd said about, you know, adding more Falcon 9 launches, I think if you want to get the market comfortable putting in some level of fixed amount of Falcon 9 launches and layer on top of that some ULA launches, and then you have these like optionality vehicles. Right? So if you, if you can string together Falcon 9, ULA Vulcan Centaur, that gives you some baseline. And then you start layering in options. What I mean by that is like New Glenn, um, you sign an MLA agreement with Ariane. Ariane is booked, by the way. And so this is something that people don't understand, like Ariane is booked, I get it. ULA Vulcan Centaur, that's booked to a degree. Um, but as Cook has pointed out, if you get if you become an NSSL mission, then you get pushed to the front of the line. And so we'll see how that plays out. But for these other vehicles, ISRO, LVM-3, and then you've got Relativity, which by the way, they're planning to test this year, before the end of this year. And so that'll be interesting. If that vehicle is successful, then that opens up world of possibilities. But as we know, just because you have a successful test launch doesn't mean you're now out to commercial cadence, or it's a given. But what's important is if you build this baseline of launches, and one of it is just being willing to pay up for it, which is Falcon 9, then you have the optionality stuff. So Ariane, also MHI, but if you can layer on, let's just say, MLAs with like 3 or 4 of these guys, including Blue Origin. Let's just say we pick Blue Origin New Glenn, Ariane 6. We also have Relativity. And yeah, let's just take those 3. Then you have optionality for step-functioning launch cadence, right? Because then at that point, let's just say Vulcan Centaur and Ariane, if those companies, by the way, if you're on standby for some of launch capacity. We all know both of those vehicles take up a lot of government payloads. How many times do government payloads actually arrive on the target date? It's very rare. And so you have the ability to step into a launch that's booked with government, but then the payload hasn't finished testing or hasn't finished assembly, or they found problems and they got to go back to the drawing board. then you can step into those. And that's the optionality that I'm talking about where, again, people have pointed out like Arianespace doesn't have capacity. Well, they do if some of these guys don't show up. And if you can layer 4 or 5 of these guys together, then the picture becomes very good. You have these baseline of launches with Falcon 9, and then you layer on all this optionality. It's almost like this it's like Tetris, right? Eventually you're going to have this ability to slot in launches, enough launches to actually perhaps accelerate where you thought you were going to be. And so I encourage the company to look at some of these newer vehicles and it's almost free optionality where I'm almost certain that Relativity would love to have AST as a customer and the cost of signing MLA, and there's probably no prepayment to do that, why wouldn't you sign up for that optionality? And it's not as if in its previous form, the whole thought behind Relativity was like, we're going to use 3D printing to make this entire rocket and it's going to be reusable. And they had all these really ambitious goals, but then the previous management team kind of flopped, but they did accomplish quite a bit. And then you had Eric Schmidt, formerly of Google, with a lot of money step in and say, I'm going to take this program, make it serious, and get to where we need to go. And so one thing, as they say, don't bet against Jeff Bezos. I wouldn't be betting against Eric Schmidt either. And so I think that's an ideal scenario for AST where If I can paint the next few weeks and months for you, it's like we've got the BB8 through 10 launch, which is going to happen sometime by mid-June. So we'll probably get a launch date, target launch date by the end of this week. And then the next batch will be batch— we'll just call it batch 2. That's probably going to be early July. And as I mentioned before, I think, you know, I don't think the company's going to be doing huge launch events anymore. They will be doing perhaps, well, they'll do more of these, but they're going to be less frequent, right? Because to have Abel and executives down there every single launch, especially if you're doing this once or twice a month, it's not a good use of time. And so maybe they'll do this like launch party once every other month, but yeah. So you've got, you know, Cook talked about this before, but the market can only focus on so many things. And so what it can focus on right now is the fact that we're launching satellites in the next 2 months. We're launching 6 of them, which doubles the number of satellites that we have out in orbit in terms of the commercial constellation. And then during the interim, we're going to find out more about what the company is doing around launch, because I think unfairly, a number of investors are like, well, hey, the company should 8-K this and give us a better update on what the year-end number is going to be. And quite candidly, they don't know. They're still in the process of assessing where Blue Origin is going to be with the program. Now we've had more specificity on where they think New Glenn is going to be in terms of launch. And then they're, I mean, just like any astute management team, they're out there wheeling and dealing. And so I'm sure right after Blue Origin New Glenn, when the incident happened, their phone was ringing off the hook. They've got a number of people from various launch providers saying, hey, I'm really sorry. I saw what happened, but do you want to get a ride on our vehicle? And here are all the terms. As Kukas mentioned, we're like the prettiest girl at the dance. We're launching over 400 tons to low Earth orbit. This is a kingmaker type of commercial contract. And so there's going to be a number of other players who are rubbing their hands together saying, shit, this could really make us. So let's pull out all the stops. And so So I think, you know, within a reasonable time, I'm sure the company will update the market on, you know, for me personally, 45 satellites, uh, by the year end. That was a stretch goal given where, you know, delays have been. Um, but we'll perhaps, we'll get an update, um, what they— and, or maybe they'll just move that 45 out. They'll say, oh, we thought originally 45 end of December, now it's going to be more like, uh, Q1. And that's what I would expect. And so if you're looking at a company that's pursuing a $750 billion TAM just for the commercial side of the market, and then add military and other things, and that probably gets you to well over a trillion, 3 months doesn't really matter. 1 month doesn't matter. 2 months, whatever it is. For people who've been invested in AST for 5, 6 years, That's okay, man. I've I've I've been here for this long. I'm not going anywhere, right? And so these setbacks happen, and I'm here to see it through. Just like our friend Tanner in Bloomberg article, he's like, "I'm here to see it through," which I fully agree with. But I think yeah, I think you could have this scenario where the company over the next you know few months there will be an update. They'll talk about pushing that timeline out. Maybe you'll hear about new MLAs being signed with. just throwing it out there with Iriun, with MHI, with Relativity. In my opinion, they should be signed up with everybody, right? And they should be qualifying and doing integration work with everyone because you need that optionality. And as long as you have that baseline launch, which is what they have, and then you layer in optionality from all these different providers, you're playing the odds, right? This is where, when I made the reference to this space, it's like, we have an open-ended straight flush draw. You want to have so many outs and you're drawing to the nuts. You're going to win the game. You feel good with your hand and you're drawing to the nuts. I think that's what the company is setting up for. In some respects, yeah, these guys, they're going to turn something negative into something bullish. Yeah, they actually could end up being bullish. The fact that the company before felt like, and they didn't, there was no need. Like they, they had confidence in Blue Origin and, um, they were not wedded, but they're like, okay, these guys know what they're doing. And, and, and we had every, um, there was every, uh, you know, sign that the, this, this vehicle was destined for success, right? Just given the, the wins that they had for the first 3 launches. And then unfortunately you had a mishap on, on a static power, which is probably something that no one would have ever considered, right? But it happened anyway. But yeah, that's, I think, having the baseline launch and then having the optionality for everything at once, I think that's a pretty good place to be. And we'll probably learn more about it in the coming weeks. Let's see. So moving on, this kind of is applicable to AST, and then it's also applicable to T1 Energy, but Yesterday, Andrew left. He was found guilty of pumping and dumping. And so, for those that don't know, he runs Citron, which is an activist short seller. They they're well known for their smash and grab pieces that they did, and it was either on the short side, and then they started doing it on the long side. So AST interestingly, Andrew did this with AST where he said he he was like. This was back in 2021, where he made the case in a tweet, if all these other space companies are worth a lot, AST should be worth a lot too. And he obviously went long beforehand, the stock rallied significantly. And in the tweet he wrote, I'm going to publish a report soon. And then of course he sold on everyone and the stock came down. And then later, maybe, I don't know, maybe it was like 2 weeks later, he was like, well, given where the market is, I'm not issuing a report. And we sold out our position. And so that was very on brand for the guy. But he was found guilty for manipulating stock prices and pumping and dumping, whether that was on the long or short side. And so yeah, I know some people have come out and said, well, what about all these retail accounts who pump stocks or do this or that? I think it's important to make a distinction between those two because this guy has a very big platform, He's running institutional money. A very important aspect is that he coordinated with other hedge funds. And so oftentimes these wolf packs, they share short ideas and then one of them who is the mouthpiece will publish and create uncertainty. And usually it's targeting stocks that have some level of retail investor involvement. And then specifically here, this was an excerpt from Bloomberg. Here it says, earlier in the trial, prosecutors presented emails that they say Sho coordinated with hedge funds on stocks he planned to short and bragged his hot voice with retail investors meant they could take candy from a baby. And so yeah, this is something that I personally dealt with when I was in the hedge fund world. If you were long something and then you had an active short seller come out against it, it was one of the most painful things. Because Imagine being an institutional investor and you're pretty much restricted from posting on social media. So that wasn't even a thing back then, but you're kind of ham-tied. And so does the company respond to this stuff? If it does, is it kind of indicating that there's some truth to it? There's this whole rigmarole that as someone who's long a position and you have one of these smash-and-grab guys come, You're like, oh crap, they've taken the stock price down. And then what if they— well, most of these smash-and-grab guys, they get their bag and then they leave. But sometimes you'll have these guys come in and there's this cloud over your position because it's like, oh, now I've got to deal with these guys. And then they might come back with more stuff and what am I going to do? And then oftentimes even the institutions, not just retail, institutional investors are like, you know what? This is too much headache, brain damage. I'm just going to sell out. But with the advent of social media, you had these smash-and-grab guys go after— because they had a much bigger audience, right? And I guess retail investors who are more vulnerable in these situations because they might know something about the company to a degree, but they don't have an ability to backcheck some of these reports or really understand what's the motivation behind this short seller report or what are they doing? And so over the years, someone like me who's dealt with these guys, because I left the industry and I'm just on Twitter and I'm just a regular guy who's investing my own money and I share ideas and opinions and I make money sometimes, I lose money often, but I had to deal with a number of these guys. One was Caresteel, of course, because they showed up in AST SpaceMobile back in 2022. And then Spruce Point, when I was invested in Genius Sports after they de-SPAC'd, they had put out a report. And then of course with T.1 Energy, you had Culper Research put out a report in January and then you had Fuzzy Panda come, I guess it was like a month ago. But yeah, I've dealt with these guys for a long time and with each one of them who published pieces, I responded because I was like, oh, I'm not I'm not just a normal retail investor. I've had experience dealing with these guys, so I can point out the tactics that they're using, which is obviously you put together a report. Oftentimes there's this tactic of like, I'm going to write a 300-page report. So the fact that it's so thick that it has to lend some level of credibility to it. Man, these guys really do their work. Then I'm going to go back and look at executives and try to character assassinate them. I'm going to do all these things because what I want is for the stock price to go down 20% to 30%, and then I cover my short position, or if I have put options, I cover deltas by covering the stock. So I've locked in profit or I sell the put options, whatever it is. But oftentimes, and there's a big distinction, these activist short sellers are the smash-and-grab guys. They're there for the quick buck. It's like a quick hit, which is what this guy Andrew Left was talking about, being a hot voice and taking candy from a baby. They're there to yell fire in the theater. And as everybody exits, they make their money and then they're out. But that's very different than back in the day, like David Einhorn or when Bill Ackman was doing a lot of activist short selling against Herbalife or Einhorn. It was against all the investment banks like Barclays— not Barclays, why am I forgetting? Lehman. When he was going after Lehman, when it had toxic assets on its balance sheet, these were guys who were doing real research and they were sticking with the trade. They're like, I'm betting against this company and I truly believe in it. And some of those bets ended up being huge winners. Some of them, they didn't. But that's a very different fundamental approach. Whereas these guys are throwing sensational spaghetti at the wall and they want the stock price to go down 20%, 30%, they cover and they're out. So the trial, I haven't been able to go through the legal documents and see what exactly the conclusions were, but I think it is important and it's kind of a watershed event for the industry because A number of these smash-and-grab guys have pretty much been able to do what they want as long as they put the proper legal provisos. For example, in Fuzzy Panda, their disclaimers are like, when we publish a report, we can immediately cover our position, lock in profits, and do this or that or whatever. So by writing that, of course no one reads it, but by writing that, they feel like they've covered their ass. But yeah, I think this verdict an outcome is a shot across the bow for all these guys. You can't operate without any— there are repercussions in terms of making these specious claims or trying to drum up— and this is where investing, there's kind of a gray area. You can put forward an opinion and you can try to put together a mosaic of information and say, okay, well, this company's worth more or it's worth less. But some of these guys are like, this company's worth zero. Like, this company should go down to zero, or this company is a fraud. And because of this X, Y, and Z, I'm going to draw the conclusion that this company is fraudulent. Like, you, you can't, you can't make, um, in my opinion, you shouldn't be able to make those types of claims, right? Like, you, you can say, uh, this could be bad, or, um, these connections, this could, you know, whatever it is, right? Like, versus these guys will put out reports and say, for example, in T1 Energy's case, like, oh, they are not fiat compliant and they will not get this and will not get that. Or in Karesdale, it's like with AST SpaceMobile, the technology won't work, the satellites will melt. But if they happen to— if the technology actually works, well, then there's no market and there's no this or that. But if there is a market, then a Bell's never run a company this big. And it's just like, Yeah. I mean, it's, I don't know, they're given way too much latitude for the stuff that they're publishing. And the counter to that is like, well, there's all these retail guys who are pumping stocks, which is true. There's obviously some real pump and dump, like back in the day, Zack Morris and those guys were manipulating stock prices and doing all kinds of nefarious stuff. But yeah, I mean, I think regulators should go after both. I remember for people who claimed that Space Mob, like me and Kook and others, were like, oh, they're just doing pump and dump. Well, it's been a pretty long pump. There's been no dumping. We've been bulls on the company for 5, 6 years. I don't think anybody, and I'll be the first to admit, I'm a permabull and I'm very positive about the company. And I believe that's why I've owned it since $1.80 or whatever it is. and continue to support the company through thick and thin. And I've had egg on my face. I've been wrong. It's like, then that's just part of the investing journey. But at the same time, I've never dumped. It's like, no, I'm a long-term holder. And so there's a big distinction between what those guys are doing, which is blatant misinformation versus what we're doing, which is like, oh, we're researching things. We might be wrong on certain things, but it's not like we're blatantly putting misinformation out there and we're trying to profit from it in the short term. Because we always joke, we're like, oh yeah, we're good at the pumping part, but we're not good at the dumping part, which we used to joke with each other. It's like, oh, we should have— this is like when the stock went down to $2 and things were looking pretty bleak. We would joke with each other. It's like, we never figured out the dumping part. We just rode this thing all the way down. But anyway, but yeah, I think You'll probably see, or I would be shocked if you didn't see a change in tone with some of these smash-and-grab guys. They're not going to be as aggressive because they're— and even I wonder if Panda, Fuzzy Panda, our friends, I wonder if they're going to go back to their timeline and delete some of their tweets. Because for example, they were talking about some idea that Bear Cave had written about and they're like, oh yeah, I think Bear Cave's wrong because there was this hedge fund that was pitching that idea to a number of us and we decided to pass. And it's like, oh yeah, it's all there. It's like, you're trying to look unbiased, but you just gave the market your business model, which is like people are pitching you these ideas to do their dirty work, their short, and they're going to pay you a fee to go publish this negative report and create the alpha, create the catalyst. But anyway, I think that's We've reached this interesting point with the markets. And as I've mentioned before, I think social media and social investing in general has evened the playing field where there's not this asymmetry anymore between what hedge funds and institutions know versus what individual investors know, or I guess we call ourselves retail. But with this crowdsourcing of information, I've seen it firsthand where with AST SpaceMobile, the playing field is level. Actually, our information is much better than the guys sitting across the table, which are the institutions. So oftentimes we'll know stuff well before they do. That's just based off of very deep due diligence and having so many different people working on understanding the mosaic. So it's a pretty empowering thing. So as I've posted before, I think these smash-and-grab guys are a dying breed. Because what they're doing, it's just not effective anymore or not as effective. You need people who are vulnerable, who don't know what they own, who will react, have a knee-jerk reaction in order to profit from that. And that's just not the case anymore. And if anything, some of these guys have been turned into jokes where when they publish something, people actually go long immediately, or they're like, oh, hey, these guys created a dip for me. I'm going to go long. And then as the rest of their hedge fund buddies cover, you'll see an overreaction to the upside where the stock actually outperforms. So pretty interesting stuff. I guess finally, before I look at comments, the one thing I wanted to kind of highlight is I saw this, and this is like an ongoing thing where you just see posts and information over and over again. But there was this guy, Doug Lewin, who posted that he talked about the amount of energy that Texas has added. So here he talks about how Texas has added 10 gigawatts of power in the last 7 months. Majority of it is dispatchable. And so he was saying like, this is fast even by Texas standards. And so what I thought was cool about this chart is that solar— so he has storage at 4.9 megawatts. And then, but in particular, in terms of contribution, solar's 4.2, Natural gas diesel is 1.5, and wind is 148. And so, or sorry, 4,243 megawatts for solar, for natural gas, 1,515 megawatts, and then wind is 148 megawatts. But it's pretty clear that we talk about the need for energy and that's the biggest bottleneck, which is why we're trying to push all these data centers off into space, but the meantime and for the foreseeable future, all the electricity needs here on Earth are going to be met by solar. And it's cool to see that Texas is leading the way, which happens to be where T1 Energy's solar module plant is in Dallas. And then of course their solar cell fab is being put up in Austin. And so yeah, almost on a daily basis, I see data like this, which I don't know. I don't think we're bullish enough, but anyway, let me just pause there. Let me just look and see if there's any questions or comments. No, not really. Okay. Well, that was it. I've got to actually close up here because I got to go meet someone for lunch. It's actually related to investing. And so, but yeah, thanks everyone for joining again. Just, I guess, quickly, The FUDsters, the FUD merchants were wrong about Blue Origin and about the Kennedy Space Center, about ULA, about SpaceX launch, and they're wrong about America. So fuck those guys. If you're bearish on America, then you deserve what you get. And then for AST, I think there's going to be a lot of positive news coming. And so keep your eye out for additional launch agreements, additional launch capacity. This company is not sitting on their ass. They're making shit happen and that's their DNA. And so if you're betting against them, you deserve what you get too. And then for these smash and grab guys, Andrew Left, you got what you deserved. And Fuzzy Panda, Culper Research, all these other scumbags. Yeah, it's coming. Your day's coming. And then finally for T1 Energy, yeah, I mean, solar is the solution for AI data centers. And yeah, I think hopefully in the next few weeks here, we're going to have an update on the financing package, that overhang gets removed. And then once the overhang's removed, who knows where the stock's going to go. So anyway, thanks everyone for joining and we'll talk again soon. Take care. 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. Mmm, waffles.