AST SpaceMobile x Deutsche Telekom - Europe conquered

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[00:00:45] Speaker D: Good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining. What an exciting time. It's, it's, um, It's pretty funny how you can talk about a topic for, for many, many months, actually years, and then hold a space yesterday and talk about something that actually then comes to fruition the next day. There's nothing quite exciting like that. But yeah, thanks everyone for joining. I wanted to fire up a space to talk about this massive piece of news, which it looks like now the market's starting to Catch on a bit, but yeah, ASD Space Mobile—they just announced that they're—they've started integration and testing with a number of European carriers—all the ones that we already know. However, the big piece of news today is that they are now working with Deutsche Telekom. Now, does that mean that we have a commercial agreement with them? No, but we—we are working with them. And so this is the initial step. And I would expect that eventually we will get a commercial agreement with them. And by the way, I also did listen to Deutsche Telekom's earnings call today, which was very interesting. And I'll go into detail on that, but they also acknowledged AST SpaceMobile on the call. So the first time they publicly breathed the words AST SpaceMobile. They dropped some interesting nuggets from a regulatory perspective on EchoStar and their chances of getting 2 GHz spectrum, which for everyone that knows, EchoStar is being acquired by Starlink, and it's a critical puzzle for them to roll out service. So things there don't look too good for them, but we'll cover that in a bit. But yeah, let me first talk about the markets. So SpaceX, I'm sure everyone has read all the doomer articles that, oh my God, there's an impending lockup expiry today. There's going to be 90 billion shares that are going to come to market. By the way, the stock has already traded 98 billion shares. And so heading into this lockup expiry, you've had all of these folks in the media and hedge funds talking about how there's going to be a tremendous amount of pressure on SpaceX stock, which by the way, there has been. I mean, the stock is at $110. It's below the offering price of $135. It hit $220. And so when we say, we always joke around that, well, it's priced into the market. Well, I would argue that this lockup expiry has been well priced into the market. Me personally, and I could be wrong, but I don't expect SpaceX stock to go down much further from here due to these lockups. coming off. And that in turn, with SpaceX going down, that has dragged down the entire space sector. A lot of folks have ignored the fundamentals of the companies and have just pretty much tried to trade the sector along with SpaceX. And there's a whole host of reasons why that is, whether it's algos, people who are long SpaceX and short other space stocks, they will trade in tandem. When you have trades that are set up like that. And so hopefully this is the beginning of some level of disconnect, separation between SpaceX and some of these other names like AST or Rocket Lab, or I mean, you pick. But now that we have the expiry coming off, the event is happening. And so you have insiders that are selling, some of the people who got shares distributed from the IPO, They could be selling the SPBs if those folks have them. Actually, people who have SPB exposure, it's going to take a few days for them to get delivery of shares. So that may take a while. But the important thing to note is that you've had— let me just look at real-time short interest. Real-time short interest for SpaceX is, as of yesterday, basically 300 million shares or 298 million shares. That's a lot. That's That's approaching, what, 50% of the float. So there's a lot of people who have taken a directional trade because of this lockup expiry, but there's also people who probably have boxed positions where they're receiving shares and they've already economically sold them by shorting. Then when they do receive shares, they will collapse the box. They'll take those shares and then close out their short interest. But other thing to note is that, and I've talked about this dynamic before, when institutions buy into an IPO, whether it's Fidelity, T. Rowe, Invesco, Vanguard, I mean, you name it, Massachusetts Financial, Jennison, even our friends at ARK, these folks typically will participate in the IPO. They'll get a toehold position depending on how much is sold. So here it's truly, it's not even a toehold. It's like a nail hold position because only 5% of the company was sold. So these institutions will take an initial position, but they understand that the true liquidity is going to come when lockup restrictions come off. So they've been waiting, sitting on dry powder. So when you've got FinTwit saying, oh my God, there's all these shares coming in and the stock's going to get completely hammered. Well, the stock has already been hammered, first of all. Then second of all, these institutions wait for these liquidity events to then gross up their exposure. And so I've mentioned this before, but Baron Capital has 0.78%. I mean, Fidelity is the only holder that has 1.6%. I do believe they have some private shares, so it may not be reflected in the holders list, but every institution has a fraction of a percent ownership. And so Capital Group, BlackRock, all these guys, when shares come available for sale, they will be looking to gross up their positions. So there's going to be a tremendous amount of demand. So yes, there's going to be a lot of insider selling, but there's going to be a lot of institutions that are like, I can't own only less than 1% of SpaceX. I need to own 2%, 3%. I need to build a position. For Fidelity, I've mentioned this before, for high conviction positions, their mandate allows them to go up to 15%. Yeah. I mean, they're not necessarily going to get there, but 15% is very different than 1.6%. 1.6% that they own is 124 million shares. They're going to be looking to increase that. And so this whole notion of the lockup expiring and just really tanking the stock, yeah, it could be volatile and it can perhaps move lower from here, but I don't think you're going to see a 20% leg down because insiders are selling. anything, I think it's going to be pretty orderly over the next few days. And then once those shares are digested, then we're good. And the other dynamic is, I believe, I got to go back and look, but there are some lockup milestones. And so if the stock is below, it has to be above a certain premium to the IPO price for the next tranche to unlock, which could have happened in I think it's this week or next week. I got to look, but that is not going to happen. So it is going to be whatever it is, the 10%, not the 20%, because that milestone has not been sustained. The price is trading much lower. So that's my thought there. I mean, we'll see how the stock performs, but going back to AST SpaceMobile, I think you had some good earnings from a few space companies. I think Redwire, Satellogic, and BlackSky in particular reported good results. And so that's certainly helping the sector, but I think also there's probably some degree of relief, right, that this SpaceX lockup Armageddon isn't happening. And so people are like, oh, okay, that's a non-event. I can actually go look at fundamentals of companies. So talking about ASD SpaceMobile, yesterday I covered how At OLLY, we've got wellness down to a science.
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[00:10:06] Speaker D: It was going to be fait accompli that T-Mobile is joining, and from what I understand, I think the company is in talks with T-Mobile. And then obviously they are in talks with Deutsche Telekom, which was acknowledged today. And then this press release, right? This press release pretty much outlines it, that Deutsche Telekom is working with Satellite Connect, which is the JV between AST and Vodafone. And so this is a massive piece of news, right? Because as a reminder, Deutsche Telekom owns 54% of economic ownership of T-Mobile, but they, for all intents and purposes, they fully control T-Mobile. And so what the parent does, the child or the subsidiary also does, right? So the fact that Deutsche Telekom disclosed that they are working, doing testing and integration with Satellite Connect, which is AST, that means that T-Mobile is going to do it. It's just a matter of when, not if, as I've always talked about. But this press release is huge because in essence, AST SpaceMobile has locked up the European market. Now, obviously, again, it is premature. We don't have a commercial agreement yet with Deutsche Telekom, but I think it's just a matter of when, not if. The fact that SpaceX is going to eat everybody's lunch, makes that existing relationship untenable. And going to the— Deutsche Telekom today reported earnings. I would say 60 to 70% of the questions were around satellite and the Deutsche Telekom executives had to kind of dance around, be very diplomatic about it because they still have a relationship with Starlink. And they said, we're still working with Starlink. T-Mobile obviously has the first-generation relationship. And then we signed a an MOU to work together back in March. And so it's funny that just 5 months later now, they're starting to work with Satellite Connect Europe. But in that call, people just pounded them. They're like, well, how is satellite going to impact your business, especially now that we know that SpaceX is coming for your mobile business? And so they had to dance around the question. They talked about how their mobile networks are superior to satellite and that it's not going to have a competitive impact. And of course, they've got to put on their best face. They've got to talk down. When you're a mobile network operator, you don't say that your network isn't good. You talk about how the network is really strong, and then for these edge use cases, we're going to add satellites, so it's going to be even better. That's always going to be the marketing message. You're never going to admit that you have some type of disadvantage. But yeah, they said that they were surprised by SpaceX's announcement, but then they acknowledged that SpaceX is very ambitious. And so then they talked about other developments in low Earth orbit. Of course, the obligatory, they said Amazon is there, but then there was also this ambitious AST SpaceMobile who are going to bring capacity to the network or capacity to low Earth orbit services. And so that was the first time that Deutsche Telekom specifically talked about AST SpaceMobile, which is huge, right? Because it's Previously, and just like the rest of the press or anybody who supports Starlink, no one ever talks about AST SpaceMobile. It's like saying the name Voldemort in Harry Potter. You just don't talk about it. Don't ask, don't tell. But today they talked about it. And there was a reason why they talked about it, because they knew that this press release was coming out. But it was interesting because you had analysts that were unconvinced of what Deutsche Telekom was saying. So people kept pressing them about satellite and its competitive impact. Obviously, it's not just mobile, it's also on their fiber business. And this is something that's going to keep happening with all of these MNO execs. They've got to be ready for these questions. And these are good questions. But Deutsche Telekom, they were diplomatic. They tried not to talk down Starlink. However, The one part where they did, because the facts are there, someone asked them about European spectrum and how is that going to— does Deutsche Telekom need to buy or acquire through partnership MSS spectrum? And then specifically they said, well, Starlink has EchoStar, they're buying them and they're going through a regulatory process. However, they talked about how EchoStar is having difficulties with the European Union where some of the political winds have shifted. and how EchoStar may not get its reallocation or might get a much smaller one, because they talked about how— or the analyst question talked about how Starlink was complaining that they can't provide service over 10 MHz by 10 MHz band of S-band spectrum, which by the way, AST, if you ask them, hey, if you get 10 MHz by 10 MHz, can you provide service? AST would be like, yeah, great. We totally can do mid-band services over that amount of spectrum. So it's kind of funny, like EchoStar and SpaceX, like this also is happening down in Brazil. They're upset that they might get only 10 by 10 megahertz, whereas AST is like, great, this is all we need because our satellites are built to be highly efficient and deliver a ton of capacity and speed over very small amounts of spectrum. We don't need a massive amount because we, first principles, we built our satellites to perform as such. So in the Deutsche Telekom call, they talked about how EchoStar might have a problem getting an allocation and that it could be politicized. And as a result, they may not work with Starlink. They might have to work with other providers who do get spectrum in Europe. So that was a pretty telling and interesting nugget. And all this stuff is happening, by the way, like this press release and this Deutsche Telekom call, all this is happening while pre-market. Whoever the algos— I saw that, by the way, Citadel was a top pre-market trader in AST. This is like the stock was going down to like $65 and change, which pre-market and the opening market don't ever get headfaked by this stuff. Today, I was actually buying pretty aggressively because this is massive news. I was telling myself the market may not reflect it because of macro or fears around SpaceX, but who gives a shit? Because ultimately when things settle down and people can actually focus on the fundamentals, it's like, oh my God, these guys added— they're in the process of adding Deutsche Telekom, which means they're going to get T-Mobile too, which is insane. Again, going back to 2024, if I told you, okay, today we have AT&T, but in 2 years' time, you're going to have Verizon and T-Mobile. So you're going to have 100% of the US market and effectively— let's go to Europe, by the way. Effectively, so I asked AI about the impact of adding Deutsche Telekom to AST's existing European partners. What does that mean in terms of the European market for market share? And yeah, by adding Deutsche Telekom, AST will now have Coverage over 70 to 80% of EU mobile connections. That's insane. So you're telling me that AST is going to have effectively 100% coverage in the US and 70 to 80% coverage in the EU. And the answer is yes. That's what this means. So, um, sorry, I'm, I can't, uh, I'm, I'm so excited. I'm like shaking, but, uh, and then the other statistic is that in certain major countries in the EU, that will be more like 80 to 90% of subscribers. So how do you value a business that has effectively 100% of the most profitable market in the world, which is the US, and then will have 70 to 80% of the EU? If the uptake is, let's be really conservative, like if it's 3, 4, 5%, 10% for $5 US, that's absolutely massive. And so yeah, the market, once this news is digested, I was joking with someone today. There's so Scotia Bank. There's this research analyst named Andres Coelho, and he used to be a bull on AST, and then he got flipped by hedge funds. So he's like been very negative on AST. He always writes negatively about it. One of his key tropes is that he always talks about how AST sorry Starlink is going to take AST's MNO customers because they are delayed in deployment. deployment. Well, what is he going to write about now? Because AST is now working with Deutsche Telekom. How do you spin that? If you're Tim Farrar or this absolute clown, Stuart Taylor, how do you spin that? Because everyone talked about how Starlink is going to eventually take customers from, or MNO customers from AST. Well, you just had Deutsche Telekom comes over, which for all intents and purposes, it's happening, and by extension T-Mobile, then what is the bear narrative? How do you spin that as negative? Which is why these guys who were short, I mean, you should be covering today and closing out your position because the cat's out of the bag. I mean, this is a complete narrative change. Deutsche Telekom is working with AST. That couldn't have been a possibility. It was unimaginable a year ago, 2 years ago, 3 years ago, but it's happening. The company is in talks with T-Mobile. What better story is out there? You're going to have I know Elon talks about Starlink being able to potentially deliver a vast majority of data services globally. Well, AST SpaceMobile is going to become the largest wireless carrier in the world. Now, it's not going to be the largest wireless carrier as in we own all the customers, but we are going to be the largest wholesaler. We're going to be working with all these MNOs, leveraging their customer bases, leveraging their terrestrial spectrum, bringing our own spectrum as well to bear, I don't know, if you were to talk to somebody, a growth investor or anyone, value investor, and say, hey, in a few years' time, this company's going to have 2 billion subscribers paying, I don't know, on average, across developed and underdeveloped markets, $3 to $5 per month ARPU. 85% to 90% gross margins, how do you value that business? So when people talk about SpaceX and the $1 to $2 trillion valuation, then you start getting into that conversation about AST. Now, obviously, that's a long ways away, meaning— well, actually, it's not that long ways. Maybe it's like when you get to those numbers, maybe 2, 3 years from now, but Yeah, it's a huge white space. And so obviously they've got to execute and get satellites up, but that's the endgame. That's the prize. The bears who talk about, well, AST is not going to have that much in terms of— or didn't have— they're trying to value AST on 2025 revenue or 2026. Yeah, the company may do $150 to $200 million of revenue this year. And by the way, that's not with any commercial service deployed yet. When you start getting to $2, $3, $4 billion of revenue and EBITDA of 80% of that, which how many companies actually have those type of EBITDA margins? There are none. And so that's why ASE SpaceMobile investors are fanatics, right? We're crazy because you have to stay focused. Yes, the path to get there is going to be bumpy and volatile, But that's the endgame, right? Let's see. So going back to this press release, I did want to talk about— there is another section in here which is critical, absolutely important, right? And this is the part of the press release where they talk about accelerating deployment of the network to expand coverage, to fill coverage gaps, enhancing network resilience. And then they talk about public safety communications, emergency response capabilities, And then, of course, connectivity for consumers, enterprises, and government. So the key— one critical thing here that a few folks pointed out, this is going to be critical for public safety and emergency response, and then, of course, government. So we're talking about the equivalent of FirstNet in Europe, which is important. Like if you recall the floods in Spain not long ago or the current fires in Spain and France, You need resilient networks. So it's not just providing coverage when towers get taken out, but that's very important. It's also providing coverage in these areas where towers get burned, there's not good coverage. And so if you can imagine people on the ground, and kudos to Starlink, because I think they did offer their service to some of these fire-stricken areas, but I know this because of my investment in Bridger Aerospace. When you have fire assets out in these, whether it's wildland fires or suburban areas, there's no connectivity. And so it's absolutely important for first responders and firefighters and air assets to be able to communicate with one another. And in these areas where there's no mobile connectivity, the firefighters on the ground and the fire trucks and bulldozers and all those things, they can't communicate. So they can't get real-time updates. They can't provide updates of where the fire's going, what direction. I mean, you can observe some of that from planes, but then people on the ground, you can't direct them, right? That's absolutely critical where, unfortunately, that's how a lot of firefighters lose their lives, where the fire's moving so fast and it overtakes them. It circles them. They get cut off. We've had a number of really bad incidences here in the US, but this is important stuff. And this is where satellite, and this is the value proposition of AST and Satellite Connect Europe. Imagine going to regulators and saying, hey, we want 2 GHz S-band spectrum when it comes up for renewal in May, and we'll take 10 by 10, or if you feel generous, 15 by 15. But as part of this, we are going to provide service for consumers, But also, we are going to provide the ability to enable first responders and public safety workers the ability to communicate during these natural disasters, even when the network is down, because satellite's going to light up that spectrum. If you have people who are trapped, surrounded by a fire, or maybe there's an earthquake, whatever it is, they're going to be able to communicate and have the ability for first responders to get to them. And so this is a big deal. And then going to government users, as they disclose in this press release, now you're talking about defense. And so we all know, Space Mob, not the general markets, but we know that NATO has been testing with AST SpaceMobile in European countries. And so Satellite Connect is going to, my guess is gonna probably have something similar to Japan where There will be— I mean, not yes, it absolutely will be. There will be a kill switch and there will be an ability to utilize the satellites when they're overhead, or perhaps there even might be a separate constellation as part of the federated constellation where there might be Eurobirds, whatever you want to call them, that will be used for defense purposes, right? And we do have manufacturing capabilities in Spain. Maybe some of the final testing and production will go there so that it can be draped in the flag of Europe. And then I'm sure there could be Ex-Im funding, also subsidized launch for Ariane, launching some of the satellites there, which we can launch, I think on Ariane 6 in its heaviest configuration, can launch 6 satellites. So there's a whole host of things that get opened up. And when you have the top key European players, Vodafone, Orange, Telefonica, Deutsche Telekom, all going to bat with European regulators for you, then that makes things a lot easier and it opens doors to a tremendous amount of opportunity. Now, talking about Satellite Connect Europe, there was a Bloomberg article, I think it was maybe 2 weeks ago, where they talked about how Satellite Connect Europe is well positioned and will get an allocation of 2 gigahertz spectrum. Bloomberg is usually very good on reporting about these matters, but there was a wrinkle where it said that the current way the rules are drafted, AST would have to modify the ownership structure of the JV in order to get approval. So my guess is that Vodafone has to be a 51% owner and AST would be a 49% owner. But there's also some talk of each of the MNOs lobbying European regulators to change some of those rules so that Satellite Connect will be not only eligible for the commercial, US commercial side of the 2 GHz spectrum allocation, but they might qualify under Europe, or they will actually, they are going to be qualified for Europe as well. And so I think there's 3 different buckets of spectrum that's coming up for tender, or it's being divided into 3. One's going to Europe's IRIS-2 constellation, which we all know has had a very slow start, and the MNOs have all publicly expressed skepticism as to whether or not that venture is going to get off the ground. And then there's an allocation to European operators, which AST will qualify under with Satellite Connect Europe. And then there's an allocation to US operators, which AST Could qualify as well. I'm sure they're going to apply to both. But this, you know, I don't want to. I think it's important to not underestimate the fact that ASD has the largest MNOs in Europe backing it, right? And so going to regulators is a very, very powerful tool. And Deutsche Telekom CEO Tim Hoj. I forgot how to pronounce his last name, but. He specifically said, if you guys will recall back in, maybe it was April, that SpaceX is heavily dependent on Deutsche Telekom to help them on the regulatory side. And so in essence, their future is in the hands of Deutsche Telekom as their advocate. And so if Deutsche Telekom is testing with AST and they decide that this is the better way that they want to go, where does that leave SpaceX? their regulatory affairs, because I think that's a very hard hill to climb. If all the European M&Os who didn't really trust you before, but then now that you've taken the mask off and you said you want to come eat their lunch, they're not going to be working with you with EU regulators. They're going to be working against you. We know in Europe, and quite frankly, I mean, most Most of the world has become a bit more protectionist, but yeah, there is this desire to protect national champions. So those EU regulators want to open up Vodafone, Deutsche Telekom, Orange, Telefonica to US competition. That also goes to the core of sovereignty because ultimately Starlink's network, when it's over Europe, the traffic is generated in Europe and then it lands in Europe, but it can also go across Starlink's network globally. Whereas with AST, it's a bent pipe. That traffic goes nowhere. It just stays on the satellite and goes back down to the country. So these are all important questions, which by the way, that's the approach. Interestingly, which I don't fully understand, but well, actually I understand to a degree, Amazon, when they buy Globalstar, Globalstar today is a bent pipe architecture. So it's something similar to, I mean, much older, but similar approach that AST is doing. However, when they filed for their new 5,000 satellite constellation, they specifically are adopting the same approach as Starlink. Now, what that means is that the future Globalstar constellation will be a completely separate network that will carry all the traffic. It's going to be separate from MNOs. You don't have control of your data. You don't have control of your customer. It's a roaming network. That's good for Amazon because then what Amazon's going to do is when they sell you Amazon devices, if you can imagine, it could be part of your Prime subscription, you're going to have the ability to use some of their data services globally, which is pretty cool. But in the MNO's eyes, that's a big no-no. That's not something that they're They can talk about being interested in working with Amazon, and you want to do that with regulators from an anti-competitive standpoint, but it has the same fundamental flaw that Starlink has. You're not going to be working in partnership with MNOs, you're going to be working against them. So that's what I think is going to limit them in terms of being able to garner some level of traction with MNOs. But But yeah, so going back to this European solution, yeah, AST is well positioned. And as I mentioned before, this is a first step, right? This is a crack in the dam, and people who are ahead of the curve like us understand it and can extrapolate what this means, but the rest of the market for all intents and purposes, they're not going to discount this until it's already done. Something has slapped them in the face, where Deutsche Telekom announces a commercial agreement with Satellite Connect Europe and T-Mobile has a commercial agreement with the joint venture, which is going to work. And they'll have to, my guess is they'll have to enter into a commercial agreement directly with AST. These are all things that are going to happen. And so as I've said before, don't be on margin, don't be at options. The timing of all this stuff is unclear and the macro backdrop, if the Fed's going to be raising rates and this Iran conflict keeps going on, who knows? You can have the best news out there and the stock could still drop because of macro. But eventually when the market gets on firm footing and you have these things that are where the market can't ignore them anymore, that's when things get priced in. It's why today, yeah, I was like, well, we have another crappy macro day, and the stock was down $2, but I'm going to be buying. I'm buying because this is a huge piece of news and the market may not reflect it, but I understand what it means, and so I want to own more. And so, I mean, I guess the stock has rebounded now to a degree, but, um, but yeah, this is absolutely massive. Um, and I think I was excited before I got on the plane yesterday and obviously today I'm, I'm over the moon. Uh, cause this is, this is huge. Um, but anyway, I'm going to, let me, if anyone has any questions or comments, feel free to, to post them and I'll try to address them. Sorry for starting this space late. I actually, uh, I was creating this meme where I used Gemini to put the logos of a few of the key partners that we have on that Block 2 stack of Bluebirds, 8 Bluebirds. And so I thought that would look pretty cool visually. But yeah, it'll be nice when we have formerly T-Mobile and Deutsche Telekom added to this stack, which I think is gonna be great. But let me just see if people have questions. Someone's asking, what about the few other MNOs that are working with SpaceX? After SpaceX just confirmed they are going after their customers, won't they end their agreements with SpaceX and go with ASD? Uh, over the long run, yes, I think that's likely going to happen. Over the short run, um, no, it's not, because a lot of these carriers, you can imagine how embarrassing it would be. They've rolled out— they basically They've done all the marketing and pumped up Starlink's name. And I'm talking specifically, for example, T-Mobile or KDDI, NTT Docomo out in Japan. And so especially the Japanese players, with great fanfare, they rolled out SpaceX Starlink service. They basically provided free marketing. And then for them to have to do an about-face, shortly after, that's pretty embarrassing. So they'll probably keep that relationship in place. And then, well, for the Japanese, they don't really have an alternative, right? Because Rakuten has exclusivity, unless Rakuten changes their mind and welcomes them to work with AST. But for T-Mobile in particular, I've talked about this. I think if I was them, I would deemphasize the satellite service. I would probably take all the marketing collateral off your website or deemphasize it heavily and still offer it to a degree because obviously you don't have an agreement with AST. There's still some level of risk with AST because you got to wait until the service gets launched. But by the way, we're on the cusp of beta service later this year, so we're not that far off. But I think for a player like T-Mobile, you would want to slowly integrate it, or you can One of the things, a way to do a more elegant marketing pivot is to go to T-Mobile customers and say, hey, as part of T-Mobile's uncarrier approach, we're giving customers choice. We've got this great new broadband service called— I don't know what they're going to brand it from AST. Maybe it's T-Space Mobile or whatever it is, but they'll call it Space Mobile. They'll call it T-Mobile Space Mobile. That's a lot to say, but they'll say, we're giving customers a choice. You can use this great new broadband service, or you can stick with T-Satellite, the pioneering service that we created with Starlink, which does texting, but this new Space Mobile service is even better. In that way, they can look pretty cool. They can say, we pioneered this service, supposedly, and then we're offering an even better service. And that's up to you. It's up to you what you want to pick. And that would actually go down well with regulators because they'll be like, oh, okay. Yeah, they're offering both of them. But that's what I would do if I was T-Mobile. But for some of these other carriers globally who didn't— I mean, T-Mobile pretty much blew their brains out. They went all in and branded and pumped Starlink as much as they could. It's going to be a gradual but calculated pivot. But for some of these other players that kind of rolled it out willy-nilly, they can pivot pretty easily. So Rogers in Canada, they did roll out Starlink, but it wasn't a wholehearted attempt to sell that product to the market. And so I could see them pretty easily pivoting. And in Canada, there's no exclusivity. So we're working with Bell Canada. We added TELUS earlier this year. Rogers, by the way, on their earnings call, they did get a lot of questions about Starlink's competitive impact on their core business and their mobile business. This was pre-SpaceX yesterday, so this was maybe a month ago. So the questions weren't as tough, but even in that call, people were asking them, okay, you're working with Starlink, but yet they're coming after your rural connectivity business. Isn't that a problem? So we'll see how their tone changes. But I do think Starlink is working with, maybe it's 20, 22 MNOs globally, some of which are not named, but I think that's going to change. By the way, some of those are companies that we're working with where we don't have an exclusivity. So for example, I think Globe Telecom in the Philippines, Starlink is currently working with them, but we've had that relationship for a long time. It's not an exclusive one. So Globe is still working with us, and once our service is up and running, then they'll figure out who they want to push more. And that's the way it's partially— and this was, I think, for skeptics of AST, this was one concern, right? Where people are saying, well, what if Starlink and AST are both offered by an MNO in the future? And that was a true concern. I think if you had— I would feel obviously confident in AST's solution because it's broadband from the ground up, but over the long run, Starlink will eventually get there. They'll eventually get to a service that is good enough, that can compete with AST to a degree. And that was always a concern of mine for some of these MNOs that are offering both. But then again, going back to the SpaceX call, when SpaceX finally decided to take the mask off and say, we actually are rolling out a global mobile network and we're going to compete with all MNOs, that makes the decision pretty easy for the MNOs. Why would they offer or push Starlink service? So I think a lot of those, in regards to this question, I think a lot of those carriers that are working with Starlink, they eventually believe. But it's a matter of timing. When they've already rolled out the service, you don't want to rug customers. You probably keep it until something better comes, which is what AST is. But I think you're probably going to de-emphasize it and not carry the water of Starlink. The last thing you want to do is continue to push Starlink, your service powered by Starlink, when Starlink is is looking to compete, right, for mobile service and also for internet to your home. Let's see.
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[00:42:28] Speaker D: Someone's saying, my read of the update was that it's a way of announcing Deutsche Telekom without doing it directly. The rest was nothing burger. No, I disagree with this. Yes. So on one hand, I think the companies wanted to avoid having a standalone press release that Deutsche Telekom is working with Satellite Connect, because maybe that's too aggressive, just given the current relationship with Starlink. So by doing it in this form, it lessens the blow a bit, and also just shows with regulars, it's not just Deutsche Telekom solution. It's actually all these European operators working with Satellite Connect. And so it's trying to show regulators like this is a European solution. But I don't think the rest of the press release is a nothing burger, because here the important thing is that integration testing is now underway across all these operators, across all these countries. And so this is a pretty big press release. Let's see here. Someone's asking about the SpaceX lockup expiry. I already commented on that. Oh, to the extent people have shorted AST against a long SpaceX position, yeah, you could have some unwinding of that trade. So there could be— I mean, maybe we're seeing that with some space names. There could be buying pressure to cover that leg of the trade. Let's see. Do you think this was simply a reaction to SpaceX earnings comments, or was it planned this early to align D2D with because of its competitors? SpaceX was never a final solution. Oh, okay. So maybe this person's asking was Deutsche Telekom's stock price reaction related to this? No, Deutsche Telekom actually reported good results and they raised guidance, and they they reported results in the more. morning. And so the stock had been grinding up all day and then they had this Q&A afterwards. And so we'll see. We'll see what research analysts and the press write about Deutsche Telekom. I'd be shocked because it's just not— there's no attention to detail, but it would be good if you started to see in Deutsche Telekom research reports and media news that they are working There's this potential to drop Starlink into to work with AST, and perhaps maybe they throw an Amazon in there just for just for fun. Someone okay. I think those are all the questions or comments. Let me just refresh this to see if there's any more. When do I expect T-Mobile news to drop? I don't expect it to drop for quite some time because that. That is going to take time. It's probably something that happens after the joint venture goes definitive. Maybe it gets announced with the joint venture, which would make sense. Maybe as part of the joint venture, AST enters into some MOU with T-Mobile to explore services together. So that would be huge. But yeah, I think it's going to take time. So just the key thing is to be patient. This stuff is not going to happen tomorrow, although I guess the call yesterday I said be patient and then Deutsche Telekom got dropped today. But it's important. I know we can all get excited and think that, man, there's just smooth sailing ahead, and then people go crazy on options. Don't do that because this stuff is going to take time. And as I said before, the macro environment, who knows, right? Things can change on a dime. We're in kind of a fragile time. And so you want to have someone like— someone said it before very well, for this type of investment, this amount of upside, but of course you're working against various market factors and uncertainty. You need to have duration and duration means not being in margin and options. Now, can you trade a little bit of that, maybe some small percentage of your portfolio? Sure. you can do that, but do not put a majority or a very large part of your portfolio in double-levered ETFs, margin, or options. You want to have staying power because you need to see this thing all the way through. But yeah, thanks everyone for joining. That's kind of all I had. This is absolutely massive news. This isn't the big one yet though, because the true big one would be an MOU and/or commercial agreement with Verizon Telecom, and of course the eventual T-Mobile partnership as well. So a commercial agreement or MOU there, which I think we're probably months away. It's going to take time, but could we get a little nugget that they are testing together? Yeah, sure. That could happen. That could happen in the next few weeks or who knows. But yeah, just own shares. Don't go crazy on margin or anything like that. Because I did explain this to a few friends that were down at launch. When you have margin or leverage, it just makes you do crazy things and it does things to your head. So instead of being patient and just waiting and seeing things unfold, it's when I see posts on X where people are upset with management. It's like, why aren't you putting out more press releases? Or why aren't you fighting to save the stock price, it's typically those people who are on margin because they're on a ticking clock and they need things to work now. They need things to work yesterday. They have options expiring, they need them to work. And so they'll conveniently look over that, oh, the entire space sector is down 60%. All momentum factor names, semiconductors, whatever it is, is down 50%, 60%. It has nothing to do with the company, It's just the macro backdrop, right? And that's what you're trying to avoid. And I'm sorry to keep harping on this, but yeah, it's unfortunate. We had a number of friends kind of go through that ordeal. And yeah, those that we saw very publicly and also those that I've heard privately. So yeah, be safe out there, know what you own, and just sit back. Have a position where you don't have to sweat it and just, just enjoy the ride, because I think over the next few months, um, it's going to be absolutely tremendous. And with that, I'll end this space, and thanks everyone for joining. Thank you.
[00:49:36] Speaker E: Thanks for listening to the AST SpaceMobile Podcast. If you enjoyed this episode and you'd like to help support the podcast, please share it with others, post about it on social media, or leave a rating and review. To catch all the latest news about AST SpaceMobile, make sure to subscribe. Thanks again, and I'll see you next time.
[00:49:55] Speaker B: Listen. Mmm, waffles.
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