AST SpaceMobile BB14-16 Shipped, Bluebird 11 Unfolds

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[00:00:58] Speaker C: Hey everyone, thanks for joining. So we had some really great news today. We saw that BB-14 and BB-16, it was confirmed that those satellites were shipped. As we hinted on Monday, there were several folks who were gracious enough to share due diligence that the satellites were actually being packed up on Monday, and we knew that they were on the road. And so, yeah, that, that, that was positive news to be confirmed, or that was confirmed by the company. I know some folks were wondering why the company delayed the PR, and, you know, some of it could be as simple as they were cutting the video right to, to make it interesting for viewers and informative, and that's why they decided to. put it out today, and/or for safety concerns. If you can imagine, in addition to short sellers and people who want to harm the company and competitors and even state actors, you probably don't want to give folks the exact timing of when things were sent or the roadmap, right? So there's a whole host of reasons why you might wait a few days, just like unfolding a satellite too. Because once you unfold the satellite, you need to make sure that everything's operating properly and you don't want to call victory before too prematurely. So according to Kathy, I believe the satellite was fully unfolded on September 28th, and then we got the confirmation from Abel this evening where he also hinted that, or explicitly said that the phased array was unfolded successfully and it was part of the plan. So we talked about this idea where the company, because they— now we're at BB14 through 16, while unfolding these things, the company learns from each and every one of them. So the The first 2 were unfolded very quickly, the fastest that they've ever been unfolded. And then this one, according to Katzi, who throughout all the many years of doubt and scrutiny that he's received, he was right again. The company went through some type of process where they probably were testing out the ability to raise the satellite and perhaps do different maneuvers with it in different configurations. then they unfolded it. There is some possibility that maybe they had some issues with it, and even if they did have issues with it, the fact that they got it done should make you feel really good, right? Because when you are an investor in a company that's doing something that was viewed as impossible and they're making that a reality, you're going to come across some issues along the road, right? And so if you have management team that you believe in with a lot of smart individuals and they come up across problems, they're going to figure it out, right? And that's what you want. When you have a team that faces adversity, they will go through various things in order to fix that problem. And so whether you believe in the one path, which is, this was a planned process and They were testing systems and it took time. And, you know, who knows? There's a whole host of reasons why they might unfold it later. They maybe wanted to go through, you know, put the satellite through different conditions in space and test the ability to maneuver it in bar configuration. I mean, who knows? There's a whole host of things. Or if they did face a problem, wow, this team's really smart. They figured it out. and they opened up the satellite even under adversity. However, we will never know, right? And the company should keep it that way because ultimately this is their proprietary knowledge. And whether they were testing something out for the government or something with the satellites, or they went through some issues, that knowledge is very valuable, right? And if it's China who's trying to copy these satellites, or if it's any number of competitors that want to try their hand at direct-to-device. That's something you don't give away freely. I know there are people on X and Reddit and Discord who are upset. They're like, well, the company should tell us exactly what happened. No, the company should absolutely not tell you exactly what happened. This is when Starlink sends up a new satellite, whether it's V1, V.1, V.1s, V.2, V.2.5s, or the V.3s, they're not going to tell competitors exactly what they're doing with those satellites and when they unfold and maybe something got bricked. No, they're going to keep that to themselves. And so I think people in this day and age, as I've said before, they feel like it's a right that we have a right to know about everything that a company is doing. And it's no, You don't have a right. Some things need to be kept internal, and perhaps at some point in the future, if it becomes not sensitive, then perhaps, you know, maybe they'll share it, right? But yeah, I think obviously it was a big relief today to see the 3 Bluebirds shipped and then Bluebird 11 unfolded successfully, which is great. So in terms of the, Block 1, well, BlueWalker 3, and then Block 1 and Block 2 programs, we haven't had a satellite fail. There's been one satellite that didn't make it to orbit, which is Bluebird 7. But aside from that, this company is batting 100, which is great. And so I think that's going to be a pretty big relief for the market. And I guess I'll just, the obligatory, I'll need to say something about the market. I know people are frustrated that the stock days in a row has gone up and then it's gone down. And I think I've tweeted about this. I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that rates, the 30-year, has matched the highs of 2002. We haven't seen that since essentially, what, 24 years ago, which is crazy. So the market is totally fixated on rates. I'm not exactly sure what's going to turn around. Obviously, if the Maybe not obviously, but if the conflict in Iran ends, that's going to bring oil prices down, you would hope, and bring rates down to a degree. But there's some concerns about obviously the fiscal situation in the US. And so that's kind of leading stocks, right? So today, space stocks were up a lot and then they closed flat to down, right? And of course, you saw the same people come out and say, oh, it's manipulation. There's all these things that are going wrong. No, it's the market. If you look at Rocket Lab or any of these companies, Planet Labs, they all follow the same exact daily pattern. And we followed, to an extent, we followed the same intraday pattern as Russell 2000. So It's frustrating, but at the same time, the company, we just had 2 amazing pieces of news, which is great. And as, yeah, Dave, who I see in the space, had pointed out earlier, putting aside those things, I mean, if you look at the past month of September and all the accomplishments that the company has executed outside of explicit PR, but advancing the ball on the regulatory front. I mean, today we just saw that Abel met with FCC Chairman Carr and talked about 6 GHz spectrum, the ability to utilize that for direct-to-device, this unlicensed spectrum band, and then positioning the company for this potential auctioning of spectrum in the 1600 MHz band, which would fit very nicely with Ligado. There's a lot of things that are going on. We know that Abel has been in Washington, DC for quite some time, and we saw that with the meeting with Chairman Carr, and there happens to be a lot of tech execs there as well. Then Pete Hegseth also spoke today. There's a whole host of reasons why Abel and Scott Wisniewski are in that area. Perhaps we'll learn more in the coming days. But yeah, I think for a lot of people, this is a big, big point of relief. I mean, for me personally, yeah, I can handle uncertainty and stress and volatility. And for me, in my mind, there were some points in time where I was like, well, I'm not sure what's exactly going on, But I knew that these guys were going to pull through, right? It's just a matter of when, not if. And so yes, Bluebird 14 through 16, that was delayed, but I never had a doubt that they wouldn't get it shipped out the door and launched. And then for Bluebird 11, yeah, there was reasonable— there was a reasonable case to have some doubt, right? 'Cause it took longer, although that said, within, It did happen within the timeframe of other bluebirds that took approximately, what, 50 days to unfold? But I had faith that these guys would figure it out, whether it was intentional or not. From Abel's tweet, people were asking for more. I think Abel told you, this was planned. So perhaps maybe, people do ask questions on the earnings call, maybe they'll address it, but outside of the earnings call, without context, I don't think the company needs to do that. So yeah, very interesting week and exciting times. I guess I tweeted last week that we are poised for a recovery. Now, obviously rates continue to go up, which they seem to do every single day, then that will be delayed to a degree. But someone had mentioned it earlier about how AST is kind of like a basketball that someone is holding underwater and at some point it's going to pop out. And I truly believe that. I think there are some catalysts ahead that even if the market conditions are pretty bad, I think the stock would, and investors and short sellers would have to take the stock up, which one, for example, is T-Mobile. If we get a definitive commercial agreement with T-Mobile, that would be absolutely huge. And I would expect a big reaction on that news. But yeah, there's a lot to look forward to. And I think now we've put to bed these 2 things that have been weighing on people's minds. And of course, they will then focus on the next thing, which is what we do as investors. But the nature in which we do that, I think, and the ability to handle and process that, I think, is what kind of differentiates good investors from bad investors. And so anyway, today someone— I had a few questions like, well, what What rocket is gonna launch this current batch? And for those that don't know, it's SpaceX Falcon 9, which I, based on the timeline, I think we probably are looking at a launch date as early as October 21st, 22nd, 23rd, around there. And then maybe at the latest at the end of October, but we'll see. I think it'll, we'll see eventually when— that the company discloses the exact date and we see it on the manifest, which I saw some people who were skeptical. It's like, well, they shipped the satellite down there and there's no—
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[00:14:31] Speaker C: AST is not on SpaceX's manifest, so there's no launch. Well, we don't send satellites down there unless a launch is booked and we need to send it. You have to process it within a few weeks and then you're ready to go. And so for some of these people who I guess don't follow the situation closely, they claimed that that was bearish, that because there's the rocket's not on the manifest, like it's not gonna happen, which would be a first, right? The first time that AST sends satellites down to Cape Canaveral for processing, but yet they don't have a ride. So anyway, but yeah, I guess I did wanna take a few, say a few things this evening. And so I did tweet out earlier that, and it's, I mean, I'll just say it, some of the biggest FUD people who were FUDing were, or claimed to be, AST SpaceMobile shareholders. And so this past cycle where we had this extended period of chop, which by the way, I know, and this is where you can understand where some of this is coming from. I mean, as I mentioned before, since July, we've basically been range-bound. So we've been at the low end, perhaps low 50s, and at the high end, low 70s. And so I encountered a number of people who were pretty ugly and just demonstrated pretty disgusting behavior, whether that was on X or Reddit or I heard there were people saying stuff on Discord. And look, let's separate it, right? People who have reasonable questions and are skeptical, that's fine. You're more than welcome to do that and you can express your opinions. But for those people who were claiming that Abel was a liar and a fraud, or accusing Cathie, Cook, or myself of pumping and dumping, whatever specious claims they were making, come on. It's like, if you're going to claim it, okay, you can say bad stuff about me, fine, whatever. But to say stuff about Cathie and Cook, I mean, we've all been invested in this name for 6 years. I mean, that's a really long time. We've freely shared due diligence. We don't run subscription services or do whatever the hell. We've had drawdowns ourselves. For AST, I was down, what, 85% or something like that back in 20— at the lows at 2024. That's kind of like a badge of honor. I cut my teeth and and got used to everything that we saw over the last, what, few weeks, right? All the doubt and people losing their minds. But yeah, I guess I would just say it's a privilege, not a right. When people share, like Katzee or Cook or others in Space Mob, when they share their due diligence and their For example, there are some individuals who had shared information about the— and this is due diligence that they did on-the-ground work, and they found out like, oh, the satellites have been boxed up and they're going to be shipped. When people share that, the reactions that folks got was just really ugly. People are asking for war. They're like, well, which— I guess is fair, right? Like if someone shares something and then people ask for proof, then fine, right? Like you can either believe me or not and we'll see where this goes. Or like when I had shared that information, there were some people who were questioning my, I guess my, if I was being honest or it's anyway, I was just shocked at some of the behavior of people, and it's like you know we've been doing this for six years, and so yeah, do we get some things wrong? Absolutely. But but for the most part, like we're doing this with good intentions, right? Like this is my best view of things, or this is my best guess of what's going on. And but I don't I don't claim to like know everything. But but yeah, when people are we're going after you know Katzy or Cook or or others. just look at yourselves, man. This is a community. We're all retail investors. We're doing this out of the goodness of our hearts and just hopefully sharing information and challenging each other and hopefully getting to the right answer. But yeah, I just saw a ton of disgusting behavior, especially again, going back to the point of calling Abel a fraud and a liar. I mean, this guy's been at it since 2017. He bootstrapped this company with his own money, and he's had a tremendous amount of execution since then. The company is what? The company went from, I think at the lows of like $600 million in market cap. Now it's a $20 billion company working with all the global MNOs, 60 global MNOs covering 3 billion subscribers. We've got contracts with the US government, Department of War, Space Force, DIU. I mean, just a whole host of things. We're deploying service and created a JV in Japan, also in Europe. It looks like we're going to get spectrum allocations there, but there's all this stuff going on. Of course, yes, we're going through production hell. The company is trying their best. There's Actual people in Midland, Texas. They make mistakes, but they're doing their absolute best to build these satellites, and people are just shitting all over them. It's like, come on. This is a company that is doing something that was once thought impossible, and yes, the timeframe has been expanded. By the way, the last slide that they had shared back in August, they're behind by a month. And yet there was this one person posting, claiming that the company was fraudulent and liars, and they told us that it was going to be on this timeframe and it slipped. And it's like, take a step back and think about what you're doing. Yes, you can be skeptical and you can have criticisms of management, but to call them fraud and liars, if that's truly how you feel, Then you should just sell and move on. Who invests in a company where you think that leadership or the board are liars and frauds? That's on you. You have the ability to push a button, sell your shares. There's thousands of other investment opportunities out there. In public markets, there's thousands of stocks. you don't have to own this one. I don't know. I just find it very bizarre that people FUD their own stock and the management team that they're invested in. They're like, well, someone had commented the other day, well, I like the company, but I don't like the management team. What is the company without this management team? I remember back in 2024 and 2023, there were people calling for Abel to be fired. Imagine if that had happened at that time. If you fired Abel, the company would not exist. This guy, he has an office that overlooks the factory floor at Midland and he sleeps there. He's on top of— he's to an extent micromanaging, but he's making damn sure that these satellites are going to get built. There's not going to be any fuck-ups. There can't be fuck-ups. So when they find one, which is what clearly happened with BB-14 through 16, did they put some tape on it and like, it's okay, maybe there's a 50/50 shot it'll be okay, so we'll just send it out the door and go launch it because some guys on Reddit or Twitter want us to be on time, No, they're absolutely not going to do that. This management team, their approach and philosophy is to get things right every time, all the time. We talk about this idea of measuring twice and cutting once. These guys, it's not a fail-fast company. They're here to get it right every single time. people who were demanding that they ship the satellites and launch them. If someone said, hey, you know what? Let's say you were in a rush to go, I don't know, on vacation, and you're like, hey, you can take this plane over here and it'll cost $300 and it'll get you there faster, but you have a 50/50 shot of making it, or you can take this other plane that costs 3 times as expensive and it's going to take you, I don't know, twice the time to get there, But it will get you there with almost 100% maturity. Of course you take the second plane. That's the choice that these guys have. If you find a flaw, and maybe it's not a big one, but if you find one, you fix it. You fix it, and then you fix it on the other 2 satellites, and then you put it back into testing and you see what happens. I don't know, maybe in testing it failed again, Then they had to go fix it again. That's a management team I want to invest in, not some fly-by-night team that's going to slap stuff together and see if it works. So I think people lose sight of the fact that these are multi-ton satellites. You're launching 3 at a time on a Falcon 9. It's going to cost you, what, $70 to $80 million for 3 of them? You don't want it to mess up. If it's going to take you an extra few weeks, you're going to take those weeks. Imagine the PR if they were to have launched 3 satellites and 2 bricked while they were up in space. That would be an absolute— I mean, well, it would be a disaster, but of course they could get over it to a degree, but then you would question yourself. You would question management. It's like, well, Crap, if they sent those up there and they got bricked and it was their fault, how am I supposed to think about the other satellites that they're working on right now? So again, this company is batting 100. Every satellite that they've sent up to space that reached orbit, the launcher got them to the proper orbit, they are now perfectly batting 100. That's a huge accomplishment. I don't know if people understand that. This stuff is really hard. Largest phased array in low Earth orbit, and that was for Block 1. Then they're like, hey, you know what? Let's do something crazy. Let's make something 3 times bigger called Block 2, and let's unfold this. By the way, going back, oh wait, Now, due to regulations, we can't have a launch vehicle adapter floating out there in space, meaning the Block 1 satellites, they had this— if you imagine a can that was cut in half, that kept the phased array together with the satellite bus. So when you launched it and you orbited in space, when they opened it up, there were these 2 pieces that came off, these really big pieces that kept it together, and they floated out in space. And then what the US government did is they said, hey, for future satellites, you can't have these LVAs at these altitudes where they don't decay quickly. You can't have these LVAs just floating out there. If you have a launch vehicle adapter around the satellite, you will need to put a propulsion system and bring it, deorbit it quickly. And so this company was like, And by the way, this was like a new thing back in, I think it was like 2025. It was something that came into effect, I guess, over 2026. And so the company was like, well, we gotta go back to the drawing board. We have to re-architect this satellite to incorporate what we now call the composite ring or the donut. That is gonna be the launch vehicle adapter that then holds the payload. And it's actually gonna become part of the, the spacecraft, like the body. And so they re-engineered it. And that was a very— that's not a very, you know, sorry, I'm trying to think back. Actually, so this came into effect over 2025 and they had to re-engineer it over the course of that year, right? And so this is something, by the way, that Tim Ferriss was like, there's no way they're gonna be able to do this in a reasonable time. And they did. And they had some growing pains. Like when they got the first composite rings back, They actually, I think this was in January of this year, they failed. Structurally, they failed. They've talked about the idea of each composite ring has to hold the equivalent of a Statue of Liberty or a fully loaded, what, Boeing 737, I think, or 747? But it has to be able to support that amount of force, right? Because these are not just the spacecraft bodies. They actually have to they stack on top of each other, right? And so they go through a tremendous amount of force, but they had to re-engineer that in a very short period of time, and they did it. They came up with a completely different architecture to deliver the payload, which is the large phased array. And so not only did that, not only did they do that, they also put this tail, right, which also has additional power generating solar cells. And then we've speculated that perhaps there's more arrays on there as well. But anyway, I guess my point is that this company is doing really hard things. And it's not— some people think like, okay, they've designed the satellite, they're going to produce it. And after that, once they get the constellation up, it can be tools down. No, that's not the case. They're working on Block 3, is the mid-band Bluebirds, which they've hinted at, that next satellite is going to probably launch at some point in, I think the first ones may launch in early next year. So that's a parallel program. They're also on the drawing board is Block 4 and Block 5. So when you hear from SpaceX guys, they're like, well, Starlink V2, V2 direct-to-cell is going to blow AST out of the water. It's like, well, AST's not sitting around on their hands. They're developing the next generations too, which by the way, that V2 satellite, I think it has— it's expected to reach 140 megabits per second. Well, the Block 2 satellites, which is our current generation, not the next generation, is expected to reach 200. And with spectrum optimization, you could— Bell's talked about the idea of going from 3x improvements to as high as 11x improvements. So anyway, but going back to what I was saying before, yeah, if you don't have confidence in management, then sell and move on. And I know some people, I don't know, they can't help themselves or they're afraid of missing out. I know that there's like one investor who recently— some people have psychological issues, I think, where this person over the years has gone through cycles where they've lambasted management, called them liars and frauds. And then when things do eventually turn out to be positive, which if you had patience, you knew that was going to happen, They've turned around and they said, oh, I was wrong. And I'll just be— this is a person on Reddit and Discord who I've known for quite some time. I actually recently blocked them because it just became too much. But it's like cycles, right? Where inevitably there are going to be periods of time where as a shareholder, you're going to be challenged because things are uncertain. Maybe the company's not communicating because they're going through some period of who knows what. Maybe they're having strategic discussions with, I don't know, particular partners and there's production issues and they don't want to let on to what's been going on. So it's going to be quiet and some people can't stand that for some reason. But this is investing. I mean, you pick any stock. it's not something that's particular to AST. If you go to any growth company that's chasing some big idea, you're going to be challenged, right? Because not everything is smooth. The journey from point A to point B isn't a direct line. It's very volatile, which is why I think a lot of what we call OG investors who've been around since $2 can handle this type of period, much more capably than other folks, which, look, I don't expect everybody to be able to handle pressure, especially retail investors, because most people have day jobs. They haven't had a professional investing background, and so it's tough. It's tough, which is why I think it's also important to understand positioning. If you have a high volatile high upside but highly volatile stock, then size it to what you can stomach. If 10% of your portfolio, which is big, is what you can handle, then great. If you're watching the stock every day and you're stressing over it, you're probably too big. Instead of 10%, it should be 5% or 3%, whatever it is. And some of the people who are crazy, myself included, have a much bigger allocation Part of that is because of, in my case in particular, the position grew so large and I have no interest in paying taxes and I believe in the company, I'm going to stick with it. But I'm okay because I'm in equity. I have some small positions in options and I have a little bit of leverage through an ETF for trading purposes, But I'll tell you, my use of that is less than 3% of my portfolio. And so I will say this past cycle, as I was saying before, the stock has been range-bound. And so there are some people who are really upset with management of not delivering on the timeframe, of not shipping and not unfolding Bluebird 11, as if that was going to change the performance of the stock, which as we all know, if you look at any company in the space sector or any high-growth sectors, they've all traded in tandem, right? So maybe AST would be higher by a few percent if these things came to fruition earlier. But during this period, everything's been driven by the war and rates. And so I was telling someone earlier today, Someone was lamenting that they were down on AST because they had bought in, I think they had bought in towards the highs and then averaged down, but their initial starting position was like $15, but they had averaged up and their average now is like $60. And I was thinking to myself, well, if you had bought most any other company in the space sector, you would still be in the same position. Someone was pointing out to me that I think for the month Rocket Lab and AST were basically within 1 or 2 percentage points of performance of one another. And so yeah, investing's hard. We're in this period where everything is kind of trading together, and until something happens on the macro side or there's something that's just overwhelmingly positive on the micro side, meaning for the company in particular, for AST, it's not going to change. This is where your options can be dangerous because you can be right on what you perceive as game-changing catalysts, but if the macro environment is not conducive to reflecting that, then you're going to be in big trouble. So a lot of the people who were upset I've read comments and I responded and I asked people, I was like, well, how are you positioned? Almost to a T, it was, oh, I have options, or I'm in margin. It's pretty sad. There's a few people out there, and I've talked about this before, but each day I've learned about a few more people and a few others who've got completely nuked by just being long options. Especially for folks who got heavily involved in May in options and then basically bought all the way down, it's tough. On the one hand, I feel awful for these people, but on the other hand, going after management for not shipping Bluebirds sooner and unfolding Bluebird 11 faster, that wouldn't have saved you. And by the way, I had some options that expired in August, and that's on me. I owned some options. I was pretty optimistic on some of the things that were going to come to fruition. And so I took some speculative positions. It wasn't that big, and they went to zero. And I sized them to zero. But as we all know, August and September have been absolutely brutal. So am I going to go after Abel to make myself feel better or to justify having— that it wasn't my fault losing money? No, I'm not. I mean, think about it. This CEO tonight at 10:30 or whatever it was, he tweeted. The guy's excited and he's up late. He's probably at their satellite operations center in Maryland. He's like, I want to get this news out there, and he tweeted it himself. He didn't wait for the official account. He did it himself, which he's done before. Someone had asked, well, maybe because there was a problem, he felt like he needed to tweet it. It's like, no, he actually tweeted, I think it was 8, 9, and 10 from his account. Of course, people are trying to read into it too much, but But yeah, the guy's excited. This is his company. Like, he's enthusiastic and he's ecstatic, just like I think Kuka tweeted, you know, when he saw the PR, he was doing cartwheels and scaring his daughter, like screaming. But yeah, I think after all we've been through over the last few weeks, I was mentioning before, the stock has basically been flat, but people are crying bloody murder and losing it. I think someone had replied to that tweet that I had talking about the fact that some of the biggest spreaders of FUD were AST shareholders. The point of that was, that's not for everybody. It's just a few people. Someone had reached out today that said, hey, from the silent majority. I know it's a cliché, but it's like, we appreciate all that you've done and it's helped calm me through this difficult period. But that message was directed to a few people, which is interesting because some people responded to it positively. Others were like, hey, there's a big difference between skepticism and FUD. It's like, hey, look, if you've been reasonable, last few weeks, this doesn't apply to you. It's not really a comment about you. It's about people who truly were being quite ugly. As I mentioned before, if I had to guess, there's nothing scientific. If I had to guess, the vast majority of those people were overleveraged or in options. They felt the pressure, and that's human psychology. where if things are going wrong, you start lashing out and you demand things. It's my right that the company ship these things on time, right? Anyway, but yeah, I think over the last 2 months, I learned quite a bit about some of the people in this community. I don't know, quite frankly, I was I was a bit ashamed. I even contemplated like, hey, maybe I should just take this red A off my name because there are some people who are just really nasty. And I think I didn't want to be associated with them because it's like, wow, this is just really disgusting behavior. But look, I know that a vast majority of people are fine. And look, sometimes people act out of character because they're they're under pressure and they don't know how to handle it. I do think for a lot of folks who went through a difficult period of time, I understand. I tend to be pretty stoic and I can handle drawdowns pretty well. Obviously, I have a few other names that have had bad drawdowns too. I'm okay with that because having been an institutional investor before, I've been through some really bad shit and I've lived to tell the tale, and that's okay. But I think for some retail investors, it's hard. It's hard to invest in individual stocks. One of the great things about AST SpaceMobile is that the community is really strong in terms of due diligence and sharing that freely with others. That's what I think one of the attractions is for people to invest. It's like, oh, there's actually people who really understand the company well and are willing to educate others. By the way, I think that also is what makes bears and skeptics really pissed because there's independent consultants and some of these other guys who who just can't stand it. They hate this company because it's disrupting the industry that they're supposed to lord over, and all their buddies who are legacy companies are getting disrupted or they're being sold because they either have to sell or go into obsolescence, and they hate that. Then there's a bunch of people who are reasonably smart, who are calling their bullshit. I guess I'll mention Lucky Stewie. This guy is just absolutely unhinged. It was so entertaining because I blocked this guy, so I really don't know what he writes, but someone had tagged me and said, you should look at this, and I looked and it was hilarious. This guy overnight claimed that I had a space where I talked about how the satellites had shipped, on Monday, which is true, which is, that space is pinned on my profile, but he said that once the company didn't PR it, I guess it was like Tuesday or today, that I frantically deleted that space and that myself, Cook, and Katzi were deleting all of our tweets claiming that the company had shipped the satellites, which I found so bizarre. It's like, what is he talking about? I never deleted the space.
[00:43:40] Speaker B: It's there.
[00:43:41] Speaker C: But I don't know. The guy's— he's just unwell, I guess. I pointed out the timeline of events of how this guy came to be. For the longest time, I guess he just tweeted about playing poker, and then he glazed Mark Dankberg at ViaSat Because by the way, this guy had a distressed investment in ViaSat. I guess he was in at $8 or $9, and it wasn't until AST did the Legato transaction, which basically saved that company, which then rerated ViaSat from 10 to where it is now, which is 70, which is great. It's a great win for shareholders and the company and employees there. They've been saved. But what's funny is the very company that saved Viasat, which was AST, which highlighted the value of MSS spectrum, is the very company that this guy's going after. So I did tweet earlier today about the timeline of when, curiously, when AST did the Legato transaction, and of course Viasat and Marsat were hoping that Legato would go into bankruptcy and they would be able to get their grubby hands on Legato spectrum, but AST came in and saved Ligado and entered into this agreement, which then made Viasat and Inmarsat really upset. And so fast forward from January— was it January 2025? To then June, when all 4 parties entered into a mediated settlement and Viasat and Inmarsat promised to work cooperatively with AST. And Ligado was like, oh, great. But then in August of 2025, we then found out that Viasat and Inmarsat had seller's remorse basically, and they tried to legally get out of the agreement. And then all of a sudden, this scumbag Stuart Taylor, Lucky Stewie, who by the way, had never tweeted about AST SpaceMobile, not once.
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[00:46:30] Speaker C: Since Abel founded the company in 2017-2018, this guy, this you know industry consultant who supposedly is well regarded, this guy had never tweeted about AST until the exact. Maybe it was what? I guess it was like a week later after Viasat had tried to legally get out of that contract. You know, his friend Mark Dingberg, all of a sudden he just started tweeting negatively about AST, and it was like slowly, and then it was just everything at once, right? Like this guy, I don't know. I think he lacks awareness, and you know he's a narcissist, and I don't know he has some other. Psychological issues. But if you look at his— and again, I've blocked him, so I didn't really know all these things that were going on, but I looked at his timeline and it's been solely focused on AST. And every day it's several tweets, anything he can dig up or try to create negative FUD about AST. And then for whatever reason, he's been really acutely focused on Akatsi. trying to discredit Cathie, which by the way, if you followed AST for as long as we have, Cathie has been right about everything. There's no ifs, ands, or buts. He has been absolutely right about the technology. He has seen the vision well before others have when it came to military applications, radar sensing, PNT, all these things. Cathie was talking about them in 2022, and he's written extensively. It's not as if I'm telling you and I don't have any receipts to back it up. You can look at his— go to his Twitter profile and just go back to 2022, 2023, 2024. So it's just funny that this guy, I don't know. I think it's because he doesn't have friends and he's kind of this like loner where I guess, you know, he doesn't have family and his only sense of joy is like going to play poker at these tournaments because he's unemployed as well. And so, and he, I think he really is upset that there's this community, right? And that we're all close. And especially the fact that Katzi is so well-respected and that people, and by the way, like— For those that don't know, Katzi is this Renaissance man. He is an actual Swedish farmer, but he's also a politician and he has military background. He clearly understands RF engineering, space, basically any number of disciplines. This guy has somehow, and this is before AI, I will remind you, he has very deep knowledge. He's just well-rounded, but a wonderful person. I haven't met him in person yet, but we actually know who each other are and we've talked. Of course, we're close friends over the years, but for whatever reason, this guy just has it out for him. It's just funny where today is just— I don't know. It's just fun that he's been, once again, for the 100th time, he's been discredited. He's like, Bluebird Levin is having— Him and Tim Ferriss, by the way, They were like 2 schoolgirls over at the satellite, I think it was WSB out in Paris. They were tweeting rumors that BB11 was having problems, that AST wasn't telling any of its close partners what was happening. And so just absolutely disgusting behavior, right? Like they're making all these false assertions. And just like, you know, back in, earlier this summer when Tim Farrar and Stuart were claiming that the Block 2 Bluebirds did not fit in a standard Falcon 9 fairing, which was hilarious. Because it's one thing for me to say, hey, the satellites were boxed up and they were shipped on Monday, and there's probably either I'm right or wrong, Right? But that claim is not crazy, right? Whereas Tim Farrar and Stewart were saying back then that somehow the AST SpaceMobile engineers did not take into account the size of a Falcon 9 fairing, and so unfortunately the Block 2 satellites would not fit. And so these guys ran with that. They ran with it for weeks. They told hedge fund clients and guys were— we actually saw this in TIGAS reports, expert networks, where you saw the hedge funds talking to former AST SpaceBoulder employees and they're like, hey, we've heard that the Block 2 Bluebirds don't fit in a Falcon 9 fairing. People actually believed that shit. Then of course they were proven wrong. Then the block, the Bluebird 11 unfolding, they claimed there were all these problems, and of course they're proven wrong again. So I don't know, what shred of dignity do these guys have left? It's just, I don't know, it's some sad shit. If you think about Tim Farrar and Stuart Taylor, or Stuart Lucky as he calls himself, There's nothing lucky about this guy. He's just a disgusting individual. Anyway, yeah, brighter days ahead. Good news today. It's getting late. I'm actually quite tired. I need to go to bed, but aside from the macro and of course rates going up and smashing all growth stocks, from an operational execution standpoint, Yeah, just a lot of great things happened today. And so I do know that the company has been busy, and it sounds like there's a lot of stuff going on in the government side, which a few folks in Space Mob are working on this updated award, MDA Shield IQ Award, which there's some interesting implications there, which I kind of hinted at. A little earlier, but hopefully we can dig into it a bit more and we'll learn more. Although I think Scott is going to start disclosing more, hopefully soon. But anyway, yeah, great day. I guess as a reminder, don't get overleveraged. Don't be on margin. Options are a drug. They can be the death of you and make you do crazy things or act crazy. So yeah, just own stock, don't be bargained, and just sit back. I mean, eventually as the market returns to some level of footing and hopefully if rates start to come back down, we'll see prices reflect the actual fundamentals. So with that, I'm going to end it. Thanks everyone for joining and maybe we'll do another space tomorrow. Take care. Bye. Thanks for listening to the AST Space Rover 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.
[00:54:26] Speaker B: Listen.
[00:54:31] Speaker C: Mmm, waffles.
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