Anpanman - The FCC Greenlight: AST SpaceMobile’s Watershed Moment

[00:00:06] Speaker A: This is the AST SpaceMobile Podcast.
[00:00:09] Speaker B: It will just basically come to your phone and be seamless regardless of where you are. We don't want the user even to know that it's connected by satellite. Listen, the opportunity that we have is very, very, very large.
[00:00:25] Speaker C: Hey everyone, thanks for joining on what is a beautiful sunny day here in New York, although it is a little chilly. But what an amazing day. Um, what a complete emotional roller coaster. Uh, I, for what it's worth, I sent Scott Wisniewski a text message and gave him congrats, and he agreed that the last few days has, has been an absolute roller coaster.
[00:00:52] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:00:53] Speaker C: Roller coaster of emotions. So, you know, going down to Florida, celebrating with all you folks of the Blue Origin New Glenn 3 launch of Bluebird 7. And then of course, you know, the rocket being successful, the first stage, second stage, of course, having a failure. And then we lose our satellite. And, you know, everyone went into this stage of mourning and depression. And then of course the market opened and, you know, the stock was down, but it fought its way back. And, you know, I think everyone pretty much accepted that this is just part of space. And, you know, we took our lumps on the chin with the view that nothing about the thesis has changed. And if anything, I think, and I fully believe this, I think losing a satellite for Blue Origin and ourselves was a galvanizing event. I think it's gonna motivate folks at both companies to work even harder to make sure that this constellation for AST SpaceMobile and for Blue Origin New Glenn, you know, 7x2 and 9x4 will be successful. And so, yeah, we, you know, I truly believe like we look back a year, 2, 3 years from now, we will say, man, that was a seminal event. You know, that going through that adversity, just like when the stock was at $2, it forged a lot of bonds between people. And, you know, there's nothing quite like going through that level of difficulty and emotional strain and coming out of it on the other side and reaping the rewards. Those types of friendships, they're incomparable, right? 'Cause you get tested in terms of your mental resolve to the absolute limits. And a lot of us, Stanley, you know, faced financial ruin at that point, but we held with conviction and we came back and we didn't just come back. We didn't just like go from $2 to $10. You know, we went to, I mean, a peak recently, $128, and that's going to be a new low, $128. That's going to be a 52-week low at some point. Once we get back there. And so, yeah, what a crazy journey. I was joking with someone today that perhaps the FCC decided to grant us the application, which is what I'm going to talk about, but they, maybe they decided to do that because they saw that we knew how to deorbit a satellite properly, which is a concern for all these applications. But anyway, the big news. Putting my preamble aside, is that the FCC has granted us full US commercial access. This is a tremendous event. This is something that's been in the works for many years. It's something that, you know, we were told as investors it would not happen by all the haters and doubters, whether they were industry consultants like Tim Farrar, You know, some of these anon accounts. I mean, I'm an anon account, but Free Speech, who else is there? I mean, there's a whole litany of these clowns. And then of course, like all these legacy satellite players who, from the outset, I remember Alan Gottlieb, Charles Miller of Lynx, you know, there are all these people writing these articles. This was like back in 2020, 2021. about how Abel and his engineers didn't know what they were doing. The satellite was going to melt. We couldn't make a link budget. I mean, any number of things. They just injected so much FUD. And obviously the direct advice market, it's niche. No one's going to care because these legacy guys and their paid consultants, they had the most to lose. They had their backs against the wall. For Iridium, we always joked that Matt Desch, you know, that company, once they were generating cash, it was really a financial engineering machine. You know, they used that cash to pay out dividends and buy back stock, but they never reinvested in something new. They have valuable spectrum, but they never put up a new constellation. They just kind of sat there telling shareholders they were going to buy back stock and lever up the company until this little player, AST SpaceMobile, came along. And everyone called Ival a fool. And, you know, he's like, well, I'm going to create these massive satellites with high power, large phased arrays, and I'm going to connect to everyday cell phones. And that's going to be a game changer. And from Ival's point of view, the key was to connect the unconnected and go out to, you know, his mission was to go out to a majority, you know, a large part of the population of the world who didn't have any connectivity, whether that's fixed connections or mobile connections, but to really bring broadband connectivity to those underserved areas and lift people out of poverty, which meant bringing internet, which then you bring financial services, education, health, all kinds of things. And we all know what the benefits are of having internet connectivity. And so that was the primary mission. And then of course, The mission expanded where you, you know, the width of the constellation, obviously, you know, addressing the US market was critical to that. And then we expanded into these defense applications as well. But apologies for the noise here. I'm actually at soccer practice. But yeah, here we are. I mean, through all that hate and FUD and doubters, you know, you name it, and short sellers. Oh my God, the short sellers were the worst.
[00:06:37] Speaker B: Right?
[00:06:38] Speaker C: They were the ones who tried to contort and distract and put out all kinds of, you know, basically bullshit to starve the company of capital so that it would fail and they would profit from its bankruptcy. But they lost, they got their asses handed to them, right? And so what today's FCC approval, what it means is true validation, right? So we've gone through this regulatory review process for 4 to 5 years. And yes, it took a really long time. And the FCC in granting these things, they don't take it lightly, right? Like it's, this is part of the regulatory moat. It's not as if any company can come in and it doesn't matter how big the company is. Like you have to go through this process. You have to prove your technology, you know, from regulatory perspective, you know, what you're doing. And, you know, risk mitigation. I mean, there's all these things that kind of come into play. And so it's not something that is granted lightly, right? And so we have this validation. It's a valuable grant where we can put up a constellation of 248 satellites to provide direct-to-device broadband. And that's valuable. Like, even if AST for some reason does not exist tomorrow, having this this is valuable where even other companies would look to potentially acquire it because it is a true asset, right? And so, but having this granted is, you know, it's a key point of validation for the company. And it's something, for example, you know, Kevin Chen just pointed out that the $45 million that was part of the pre- commercial prepayments from Verizon that just got unlocked due to this grant. Also, I believe FirstNet, you know, there probably were some conditions precedent that, you know, that we would get in order for our contract with FirstNet to be— to go into effect, which we don't know what the economic terms are, but we know that it exists. My guess is that we'll find out that it is going to now go definitive, right? Because now we have FCC approval. Obviously, a person that would want— not want to enter into a contract with us without FCC approval, but now that we have it, I'm guessing in the next few days or so, you know, we always joke imminent, that's going to happen. And so this is a, yeah, this is a tremendous milestone. The other thing is that the FCC is considered kind of the gold standard from a regulatory perspective. across the world. And so by us getting full FCC approval, that actually opens up regulatory approvals like across the world, right? Because we're not some small company based out of Midland, Texas. We actually are, you know, the leading, you know, we created this market. We have the technological lead. And from a regulatory perspective, other regulators around the world are going to come to the US and say, talk to Chair Carr, talk to the FCC, and, you know, ask them questions about AST SpaceBuild or not, because, you know, we already have the grant. And so they will use that as a template, or, you know, it's kind of like you're already pre-approved around the world. Like if you have a US passport, you can kind of travel anywhere. That's kind of what this is akin to, where from a regulatory perspective, this is going to ease things Significantly, right? And so what could have taken long in these other jurisdictions is just going to make it that much easier. And so I don't, I don't, I'm not sure like how much the market fully appreciates this, and perhaps it'll take a few days. And obviously we're still kind of recovering from what happened over the weekend. But this, I think for those of us who have been following the company for many years, This is a true watershed event. This is game-changing. Now, from a regulatory perspective, we don't have to keep going back to the FCC to, you know, when we, we have approvals right now for 25 satellites before, you know, before this grant. But had we not had this grant, we would have had to go back and get STAs, you know, special temporary authority for like another 10 satellites, another 10. Now we can just launch the satellites. Like, that's it. Like, we can build 45, 60, 70, up to 248 and go, just go throw these up there, right? As our friend Kevin Mack likes to say, we can go throw metal up there. And so this is huge, right? Like, we don't have to keep going back to the FCC, wait for the bureaucracy to turn things around. Like, you know, we're open for business. We can, we can build satellites and go launch them. And so this is for the Block 2 satellites. And so obviously, you know, when we get to a point where I think the company is planning to towards the end of this year, we are probably going to start building Block 3 satellites. That will be a separate, a separate application. And that said, it will be easy. Given that we have this in place and clearly the FCC has demonstrated confidence in what we're doing. I mean, going back to what Chair Carr said in the interview during the Amazon Globalstar deal, he talked about the, you know, hoping that there would be a 3-player market, which would be Starlink, AST SpaceMobile, and Amazon. Obviously, you know, I've talked about this before, but Amazon Globalstar, that that transaction is going to rely on Globalstar's NDA Space constellation for the next, actually for the foreseeable future, maybe the next 3 to 4 years. And so it's unclear what Amazon's going to do for the next, their next generation satellites. Perhaps maybe they'll get something going in 2030. But yeah, I mean, at this point, it's the company's market right now. I mean, Starlink has 650 first-generation direct-to-cell satellites. It's gonna take them probably till 2029 to get V2 going. And that satellite in of itself is gonna be perhaps maybe comparable in some ways, which, I mean, yet to be seen. Obviously, Starlink, they make a lot of claims, but then the proof will be in the pudding. But they're hoping to catch up to what we're doing right now in our current generation. And as Abel's laid out, you know, the current Block 2 satellites, He already at launch talked about getting performance above 150 megabits per second per cell and has talked about AI optimization helping them to tweak things to get 3x performance near term and potentially up to 11x performance over the long run. And so, yeah, I mean, it's not, it's kind of funny because like you hear these skeptics who say that that Starlink is going to crush us, but this company, they're not— they created the market, they've got the technological lead, and they're not sitting on their ass. Like, we've already got several generations of designs already on the, you know, on the plans, and we'll be executing on those. And so it's not as if— and this is a great thing about vertical integration, you can iterate very quickly, right? I mean, just going back to the composite shells, Having to strengthen those after the company tested and figured out that the shells were not strong enough for vertical stacking, we fixed it. We retrofitted the ones that we had, and then we created a new design for the next 7 satellites that we were building. And that's what it takes when you're vertically integrated. You can make these quick adjustments, right? And improvements. And so it'll be quite scary to see where the Block 2 satellites are in terms of performance once the ASICs are incorporated and these optimization techniques are in place. And I mentioned this in another space. I mean, I did ask the company, you know, hey, we lost BB7. Is there a need or interest to build another one and go launch it? And the response was that no, because BB7 was a backup to BB6. But more importantly, That design is old. They've actually, I was told that they moved on to the next generation satellite for SDA. So I don't know what number of satellite that's gonna be, but sorry for all those sirens here, but it just shows like the company is innovating, right? Like they're not sitting by idly and letting the market catch up to them. They're leading the market and they're creating even more space between them. And so, yeah, what an amazing pivotal, you know, event here. I mean, I think, I think, yeah, just, just thinking about all the years of heartache and like wondering from a regulatory point of view if we were ever going to get to this point. And, you know, we got to, we got to, I know from a political perspective, maybe folks aren't You know, they may not agree with this current administration, which is totally fine. I mean, we're all Americans and we can agree to disagree and have different political point of views. And Brendan Carr is a certain type of, you know, he's a unique FCC chair. I'll say that. I've seen, you know, and I invested under many different FCC chairs and Brendan Carr is unique. But what I will say is this guy gets shit done. I mean, you may not agree with him politically, but in terms of cutting red tape and trying to enhance competition and really push forward American companies to lead globally. I don't know if we could have asked for a better FCC chair. And so I think one thing I would ask people to do is, even if you don't agree with him politically, which is totally fine, I would give him props and a shout out for granting this application and encouraging competition. And really driving innovation and leadership. Because I think, I don't think he gets enough credit. And honestly, like, for especially like a very visible group of people like Space Mob, I think it's important to, you know, pat our regulators on the back and, you know, give them their props when they actually do the right thing and move innovation forward, which is what happened today. And so, but yeah, I think, yeah, I'm beside myself. This is, I know, I know there's probably people out there, maybe Kevin Mack will say like, oh, it's priced in the market.
[00:17:24] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:17:25] Speaker C: It's probably priced in to some degree, but I don't think, I think this is a true, you know, validation event and people You know, those people who may have dismissed AST in the past, there's no way around this. And so I mentioned, you know, I tweeted it's going to be very fun and entertaining to see the mental contortion and gymnastics of these bears and the, these, you know, whether it's Tim Ferriss or some of these other supposed industry consultants who are, by the way, paid by Globalstar and Iridium to basically throw shit at us. How are they going to spin this? My guess is that Tim Ferriss will just like retweet the FCC, you know, whoever tweets like the full approval, he'll just retweet it, but he's not going to comment on it because the guy looks like a complete ass. Like he has been completely wrong this entire time. And there's just, there's like no negative way to spin this. I mean, I am looking forward to any potential creativity where he's going to try to find some portion of the application where maybe they didn't get some part approved, or maybe it's kind of up in the air, or maybe it's, I don't know. He's just going to try to spin it negatively. And, but that's his brand, right? And he's just a, he's an awful human being. And, and so are the rest of these guys. But anyway, yeah, what an amazing day. I'm sure the Space Talk Weekly will, will We'll, we'll talk about it this evening. And, um, yeah, I, I don't know. Let me just look at the comments here. There probably aren't as many. Someone's asking, to what degree do we think this was priced in? Uh, it was probably priced in, um, and, you know, we've been talking about it for, for a really long time. But, um, I don't know, that's a good question. I mean, uh, it, it probably has been priced in to some extent, right? I mean, the fact that Chair Carr Last week said it's a 3-player market, which by the way, like for anyone who thinks that going from a duopoly to a potential oligopoly of 3 players, that's still a really great market from an economic standpoint, right? I mean, just look at the US wireless carriers. But I would argue that Amazon is not, well, Amazon and Starlink, they're— Starlink has a minimally viable product today, but Neither of them are broadband and neither of them are going to be broadband for the foreseeable future. So it's really just a monopoly at this point. But even if it does devolve into an oligopoly, like, that's going to be good. So, so yeah, but let's see. But in terms of, you know, how much is priced in, it was probably priced into a degree, but we'll see. I mean, the market, there's going to be a PR that comes out from the company. People are going to be writing about this. Who knows? I mean, what's not priced in is a ton of institutions and retail who have no idea who AST SpaceMobile is, who then will learn about the company. You know, obviously the negativity from the Blue Origin losing the AST SpaceMobile satellite, like that actually brought some attention and awareness to the company. This is going to do it. So from that perspective of bringing potential new investors, that part's not priced in. So we'll see. Someone's asking, is the satellite, 248 satellites for US or worldwide commercial use? Satellites by their very nature are for worldwide use. And this constellation is built to serve MNOs globally. So this is for worldwide. However, the US application is specifically for the US, which is the most profitable market in the world, but also being domiciled here and being a US company, we need that FCC approval because that also allows us to operate worldwide. So, so it is, so it is, it is global. But yeah, we will, when serving other markets like SATCO, who's operating in Europe, we will need to get separate, you know, regulatory approvals from Europe to operate. Obviously, that was it 2 weeks ago. We got The final step to the final step, UK approval from Ofcom to operate there. I believe there's one more process that has to take place before we get full approval, which is why the company didn't PR that just yet, but that's coming, I believe in May. And so, by the way, like people talk about, hey, there's no catalyst coming. We just had one drop now and there's a lot more coming. And so, and there's stuff that we at Space Mob, believe it or not, with all the due diligence that we don't even know yet or haven't seen. So yeah, let me look where— what does this approval mean for debt financially-wise? Better rates, more institutional interest? This approval is— it unlocks a bunch of business. Obviously, you know, the— I think the FirstNet contract is going to— is going to go hard at some point, you know, definitive. And so when you have these definitive commercial agreements with real economics, then you can, if you want, you can raise debt against that. You can do all these different things. And yes, it brings institutional awareness. People who might have dismissed AST, oh, that's a science project. They don't have approval for a full constellation. Oh wait, hold on. They have approval for a full constellation. Like it's real. And they're launching their service this year. And what I, From 2 or 3 years ago when it was like in a developmental phase, now they're actually putting up the constellation and providing service. That's a very different story to underwrite for investors. And so when we talk about de-risking, getting full FCC approval for US market access for a 248-satellite constellation, that's about as de-risked as it gets in terms of, you know, the regulatory process, right? And so that does change the game. And it becomes a very different story that institutions, you know, if you have some that are more risk averse, or even retail investors, you know, more risk averse, this, this de-risks the story quite a bit. And so I think you'll see quite a bit of demand from perhaps folks that were sitting on the sideline. Let's see, company has to PR this surely. Yeah, there's going to be a PR, my guess. And I would hope that they just, they don't PR it this evening. I think they should PR it first thing tomorrow morning, hit the newswires where everybody's awake having their coffee and, and, you know, people go to town, right? And algos pick it up. I mean, whatever. Like if you PR it now, people are unwinding at home and, you know, it's just zealots like us that are doing an X space. So maybe they'll wait.
[00:24:21] Speaker A: Let's see.
[00:24:26] Speaker C: Your voice is super upbeat. Yeah, I'm pumped. I'm pumped, man. Like, this is nuts. So let me see, there are more questions here. But yeah, I, like I said, this is an absolute emotional roller coaster to go from the agony of defeat of losing your satellite, you know, celebrating Seeing folks I haven't seen in a long time, meeting new Space Mob members, seeing Abel, Scott, Michael Pollack, Chris Ivory. I even saw Dave Marshack getting on a bus and I took a picture with him and then he told me to contact him. I told him I was Ant-Man, and I was like, hey, I'm the guy that leaked your video, your due diligence video. And he laughed and, you know, we had a chuckle about that. But Yeah, to go from meeting everybody and having a successful launch to losing our satellite, unfortunately, and then kind of having to deal with all the negativity and the haters who were trying to spin however they could, you know, this past weekend's event as negative and that somehow AST was responsible for it. Going through that and of course seeing the stock rebound, you know, Going from $70 low overnight to closing at $81. And then, yeah, getting walking in today on Tuesday for full FCC approval. And by the way, like I mentioned before, this is a huge regulatory moat for the company. Like, this is not something that perhaps startups or other companies are looking to enter the market. They're going to have to go through the same process. Now, is it going to take 5 years? Probably not. Because back when AST came up with this idea and they pushed forward the— they pushed this forward, the regulators were like, huh, are you sure? Like, what is this? Is that possible? Does it work? Which is why, partially why it took so long. And so they've blazed a path for others, right? Like, I think maybe other companies who potentially want to enter this market, it might be a bit easier, but it's not going to It's not something that you can like file and expect approval overnight. It's gonna— it's something that takes years, right? And so anybody who is not in the industry contemplating to do this, that's part of the uphill battle that they face, right? And so, but anyway, but yeah, this is a tremendous event. I can't underscore how important it is from the company in terms of You know, its business prospects and obviously, you know, other regulators around the world and MNOs too are going to look at this and say, oh, this is serious. Like, we're— this is a real player. The FCC is fully behind it. And we saw this, by the way, like the fact that the FCC was filing on behalf of the company to the NTIA for spectrum coordination. I mean, little signs were there, right? I mean, nothing was ever fully guaranteed, but But yeah, we're here. We are. And by the way, so maybe I'll shift topics a little bit just to talk about it. I did say Guten Tag in the beginning of this space because we did see some pretty interesting news. Bloomberg reported that Deutsche Telekom is potentially looking to reconsolidate and take, basically buy out the minorities and bring back in T-Mobile, which would make it a fully foreign entity, which there's, there's a lot of funny things about this because, well, first, the head of regulatory affairs over at SpaceX, Dave Goldman, this guy, in trying to object to AST SpaceMobile's constellation, which as we can see, he failed because he tried to slow it down and tried to, you know, throw, throw sand in the gears and, and stop this process. But guess what? We got approval. So fuck that guy. Yes, I cussed. But anyway, but one of their arguments was that AST was working with foreign MNOs and that I guess maybe somehow they weren't to be, they were not to be trusted. And then, you know, they talked about how perhaps, you know, we had, there are all these like retail meme stock people who were trying to influence the process. I forget exactly. I got to pull up the filing, but What really stuck out to me when he and his group went after AST with some of these arguments is that the AST— oh, sorry, in the regulatory docket for FCC approval for full commercial access, AST had a number of foreign MNOs, Vodafone, Orange, Rakuten. I mean, quite a few number of their strategic partners around the world. commented on how direct-to-device is a critical service and that they fully supported approval. And Starlink poo-pooed that. They were like, well, these guys who are foreign companies, they should not have any say and undue influence over what's going on in the US. And I think that was their angle. And then of course, it was funny because T-Mobile at that time and currently is through high votes is controlled by Deutsche Telekom economically. I think Deutsche Telekom owns like 45 or something just below 50%, but from a voting perspective, they fully control T-Mobile. So it was just funny that SpaceX took this tactic trying to point out foreign influence when their biggest customer, their marquee anchor customer is a German company operating in the US. And If you talk to some conservatives and I guess now some ultra-liberal or ultra-left-wing folks, they all question why Deutsche Telekom owns all the spectrum in the US through T-Mobile. Is that a national security risk and all that? But it's just funny now that if Deutsche Telekom does acquire T-Mobile, then you've got a fully 100% German-owned company That's going to be working with Starlink here in the US. And so those arguments, and this is why you have to be super careful in what you argue and what you lay out in terms of lobbying efforts at the FCC, because you've got to be super clean in those arguments because they can always come back and bite you. And right now we're about to see that. We're about to see the arguments that SpaceX laid out about foreign influence.
[00:31:04] Speaker E: Yeah.
[00:31:07] Speaker C: Their anchor customer, their marquee customer, T-Mobile, T-Satellite powered by Starlink is going to be German owned. And so that's going to be, I mean, there's, that's hilarious to me. But more importantly, the CEO of Deutsche Telekom during Mobile World Congress, I think it was out in Barcelona, they did announce a small deal with Starlink to provide Starlink service, direct-to-cell. I mean, I think most of that deal was focused on fixed wireless, but then they did announce this direct-to-cell partnership with Deutsche Telekom. But that partnership wasn't going— is not supposed to kick in until 2028. And the reason why that is, is that the current generation of direct-to-cell satellites that Starlink has have an inability to beam down accurate cells on the ground. And of course they have interference issues too. And so Europe, which obviously has small countries that have very complex borders, those current satellites do not work and cannot work in the European context. And so Deutsche Telekom announced this deal with Starlink, but then, you know, not until 2028. And of course in Starlink time, 2028 probably means like 2030. So they need the V2 satellites to actually work in Germany. And so when people were interviewing the CEO of Deutsche Telekom and said, hey, we saw you, you did this deal, he didn't hold punches back. He said, well, you know, Elon's not a very popular guy in Europe, and so he needs us from a political perspective. But then also, you know, they've got the only service available today, which is true. However, if there are other providers that can, that offer better service in Europe, we will use other providers. And then he ended some of those quotes by saying, we're not dumb. We know that we're basically dealing with a tiger when we're doing business with Elon, because everyone knows that eventually Elon wants to get into the mobile phone business in terms of being an MNO. Well, actually providing hardware and being in the MNO. And so at the end of the day, like any MNOs that are working with Starlink, you're basically, you've brought in the Trojan horse. You're giving them your customers and you're giving them free marketing, which is, you know, for Starlink, they are a direct-to-consumer business where they sell satellite terminals to your home to provide internet. And then eventually they want to provide some type of mobile service to you directly, right? Cutting out MNOs. And they might be able to do that if they become a virtual network operator. You know, they enter in some type of partnership with with a terrestrial provider to use their network, and then they directly sell it to you. But anyway, I don't want to go down that rabbit hole, but I think it's important, and I pointed this out today, that if Deutsche Telekom takes over T-Mobile, I think T-Mobile working with Starlink, which that relationship, the exclusivity ends this summer, I think that actually becomes a jump also away from like T-Mobile could be T-Mobile slash Deutsche Telekom could be a relationship that AST could actually win. And it's crazy to say it. And I've talked about this multiple times where I never thought Verizon would join AT&T in working with AST SpaceMobile, but it happened. Like, I thought that was like not even a zero chance. I thought it was like a negative chance, if that even makes sense. But now Deutsche Telekom, who Clearly is wary of working with Starlink. Is there a scenario one day where they could work with AST SpaceMobile? And obviously Verizon and AT&T are going to have a word and say, and if that's possible, and if those 2 parties say, no, we don't want to let them in on it, then that's the end of the story. It's not going to happen. But in a world where Elon is buying You know, spectrum, mid-band spectrum, which obviously is not good for terrestrial coverage, but it's great for data. You know, he's spending $23 billion. He's going to go into the AWS-3 auction to try to buy more. This guy is going to be, you know, he's going to be trying to build a competitive wireless service, and that's got to give every MNO around the world some level of pause. And so I think in a scenario where T-Mobile were to go to Verizon, AT&T and say, hey, look, man, let me work with you guys and I'll contribute some spectrum in the mid-band and we can all use it together. And maybe, I don't know, maybe I'll just get less favorable economics since I'm not contributing low-band spectrum, but let me in. And then if Verizon, AT&T say, no, we're not interested, we're going to take your subscribers. Then T-Mobile could say, well, if you don't let me in, then what I'm going to do is I'm going to take us all to hell. I'm going to enable Starlink to become a full-fledged wireless operator by letting them be an MVNO and basically lease terrestrial capacity for me. And just like Mint Mobile or some of these basically marketing brands, but I'm going to let Starlink do that. And yeah, I'm going to I'm going to lose customers to them, but I'll make back some of the economics by obviously getting a wholesale agreement with them, but then also getting wholesale revenues from the subscribers they take from you, AT&T, and you, Verizon. And in that scenario, I think that's where AT&T and Verizon could, and this is all high stakes, by the way, but that's a scenario where AT&T and Verizon could say, well, you know what? Let's let these guys in because we don't want to have to deal with Starlink as a potential competitor. on the mobile phone side, which obviously has implications too around fiber, 5G home, which Starlink competes with all of them today. But that could be a scenario where they actually let them in. And so the news today, this all goes back to the news today. If Georgia Telecom does try to merge, bring back in T-Mobile, then I think that Starlink relationship becomes even more precarious. And so, yeah, I don't— this, the market's not pricing in, which by the way, like back in May of 2024 and every day prior to that, the market did not price in any amount of potential that Verizon would step in and join AT&T in working with AST T-Mobile and the stock was trading at what, $5, and then rallied to $39 over that summer. And that was primarily, I would say, yeah, primarily all of it was driven by the fact that AST went from owning a third of the US market to owning two-thirds of the market and working with the two largest, most reputable carriers. I mean, putting T-Mobile aside, right? T-Mobile has always been viewed as kind of the lower end, the lower end, but maverick type of player. So just imagine like if T-Mobile joined AT&T and Verizon and AST locks up 100% of the US market, what would that do? What would that do to the stock price? And of course, like put that on top of the fact that we've got SEC approval and yeah, I mean, I can't imagine. I, yeah. So I guess, yeah, you pick the number. It's probably too low, right? So anyway, I'm gonna look at— there's a lot of comments now. Let's see here. Yes, let's see. Eddie Garcia, once FCC approves, every other forward agency is inclined to do so, provides the top cover. That's correct. That's 100% correct. Let's see here. Someone's saying, Every— they're joking. Everything is priced in except when a sat goes down. People think it's going to take 50%. Yeah, those people were absolutely wrong. By the way, this guy, SPAC Man, he had gone through a rational analysis and came to the conclusion that stock would probably be down once everything kind of settled at 3.5%. And he was absolutely right because like losing one satellite in the grand scheme of things, it pushes your timeline back a little bit. But when looking at a reasonable DCF valuation, it doesn't really take much off, right? And you, and by the way, like when you lose that one satellite, you lose some time. If you can ramp, and I know it's the company, it's been taking a long time for them to ramp production, but if they can catch up and exceed what they were, you know, what they were planning to do, then you can get that value back. But the key thing is in his post, he was saying based off of, you know, losing that one satellite, he was like, oh, maybe you'll have like a 3.5% market reaction. Ended up being 5. And then you were saying maybe you'll drop, you know, down to 70, was it 73 was the analysis? No, 74. And we actually went to 73.5 intraday yesterday. But yeah, just like I've been kind of talking about for the last few weeks, like don't listen to these doom maxers, like these people who are engaging, trying to get you to engage. And especially these, these like snake oil salesmen who will come in and just like shit all over AST and say, well, you know what you're invested in, it's got problems, but you should just go buy this other company, which is great. It's the best thing since sliced bread. Like, guys, come on, we can see through all that shit. We've like been through this for 5 years. Like, you're trying to pitch some other company in, you know, trying to prey on vulnerability of like the company going through a negative event. Come on, like at least try better. Do something else. Try a different ploy. Like it's not going to work. But anyway, let's see. Someone's saying, this rule helps build a price floor. Yes, that's right. That's absolutely right. Having full regulatory approval is highly valuable. And as I mentioned before, even if AST decides to shut down business tomorrow, they could sell, someone could acquire AST in order to get the valuable FCC approvals for this specific, you know, constellation. Obviously they would modify it to a degree, but, uh, there's a ton of value in that. Let's see here. Someone's saying, can't believe after all these years, the highs and lows this week are insane. Yes, absolutely. That's, that's correct. Uh, it's been a total emotional roller coaster. Uh, but that's what makes investing fun, right? It's like, lows suck and you, and you, you suffer and, and, you know, grit your teeth and, and, you know, do that hopefully with like other friends who are invested. But then that just makes the highs that much sweeter. And, and today, yeah, I'm, I'm on cloud nine. Let's see here. Is the Kussing and Penman a leading indicator? Um, I don't, I don't often cuss, but, uh, but I, I guess I, I do sometimes. But yeah, I did. Yeah. Someone's saying, don't hear Infinit excited too often. Usually calm, recently stressed out, but now happy. Yeah. No, I'm, uh, I'm, I'm elated, man. This is, this is amazing. Especially after, again, like going through the loss of BB-7, kind of going through that, that the 7, the 7 stages of, of depression, you know, whatever it is, like cope and depression. To have this is just absolutely amazing. Anyway, I think my kids' soccer practice is about to end, so I might end the space here. I'm going to try to join Stock Weekly tonight, but I'm not sure in terms of schedule. So I know we'll be well covered by another Space Mob member, but maybe I'll try to fire a space up later this evening if I'm not on Stock Week. Stock Talk Weekly, but I'll try to join. But, but yeah, everyone crack, crack open a Dr Pepper in memory of Steve Larison. Have a beer, get whatever favorite drink you want. You know, everyone just take a step back and take a breath and just enjoy this moment because this is, this is huge.
[00:43:29] Speaker A: This is—
[00:43:29] Speaker C: I can't emphasize how important this is, what this means for the company and the business. And yeah, whether it was priced in, in terms of, you know, that actual stock price or mentally, it doesn't matter. Like, there's nothing quite like if you're expected to win a championship and then you, and, you know, leading up to that, everyone expects it, but then when it actually happens, there's nothing quite like it.
[00:43:56] Speaker D: Right.
[00:43:57] Speaker C: And so, so again, I think everybody should just, yeah, just soak it in. I hope Hopefully the company doesn't PR it this evening. They wait for the morning to just drop it on everybody. I hope that's the case. But yeah, there's going to be a lot of ink written about this and future regulatory approvals from different jurisdictions and a lot of commercial business being unlocked. This is great. So I'll end it there. And everyone, thanks for joining. We'll talk again this evening, probably at 8 PM. And yeah, looking forward to everyone's takes and, and again, looking forward to some of the bears' takes as well. I can't wait to see the mental gymnastics and the negative narrative that they're going to try to spin on this, which quite frankly, like there's nothing negative about this. This is just unbelievably positive. So take care everyone. Thanks for joining and congratulations, man.
[00:44:54] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:45:07] Speaker E: They call us pumpers, call it a meme, say we're delusional chasing a dream. But we got news for every short that shorts, we are the space mob, we hold the fort. Every crumb of data, every weekly meet, we know what's coming. We know the heat, the paid lie.
[00:45:26] Speaker D: Yeah, we see it clear, but we believe in what we're building here. ST Boosters, future billionaires club. Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey. ST Boosters, we don't need your help. Connect the unconnected, that's the plan. Satellites and soldiers, we're the space mob clan.
[00:46:15] Speaker E: Call us a cult, but we know the truth. We know the result.
[00:46:19] Speaker D: Everyone wins when the space mob wins. That's where the future begins. FT Boosters, future billionaires close. FT Boosters, we don't need your road. Connect the unconnected, adapt the plan. FT Booster, Future Billionaires Club. FT Booster, we don't need your love. Make the unconnected, that's the plan. Satellites and soldiers, we're the space mob clan. FT Booster, Future Billionaires Club. Future Billionaires Club. ST Booster Future Billionaires Club.
[00:47:59] Speaker A: Thanks for listening to the AST SpaceMobile Podcast. If you enjoyed this episode and you'd like to help support the podcast, please share it with others, post about it on social media, or leave a rating and review. To catch all the latest news about AST SpaceMobile, make sure to subscribe. Thanks again, and I'll see you next time.
[00:48:18] Speaker B: We're doing something very very big, and I think with this technology we can really affect a billion lives. AST SpaceMobile is the only company that has proven technology to deliver cellular mobile connectivity directly from space to the everyday smartphone. People will just basically turn on their phone and be seamless regardless of where you are. We don't want the user even to know that it's connected by satellite. Our role is to bring this into reality, always in partnership with the MMOs.
[00:48:58] Speaker E: Listen.
[00:49:03] Speaker D: Mmm, waffles.