Fireside chat - Scott Wisniewski speaks at the UBS Global Media and Communications Conference

[00:00:06] Speaker A: This is the AST SpaceMobile Podcast. It will just basically come to your phone and be seamless regardless of where you are. We don't want the user even to know that it's connected by satellite. Listen, the opportunity that we have is very, very, very large.
[00:00:29] Speaker B: Hi everyone, I think we'll get started. My name is Chris Scholl and I'm with the Communications and Media Research team here at UBS. Today we're pleased to have President and Chief Strategy Officer Scott Wisniewski from AST SpaceMobile. Just before I get started, I need to quickly read. As a research analyst, I'm required to provide certain disclosures relating to the nature of my own relationship and that of UBS with any company on which I express a view today. These disclosures are available at www.ubs.com/disclosures. Alternatively, please reach out to me and I can provide them to you after the presentation. So Maybe starting off, Scott, it's been another very eventful year for the company. Maybe just kind of recap over the key milestones for AST in 2025 and what are your priorities as you look out into 2026?
[00:01:07] Speaker C: Sure. And thank you very much for having us. So 2025 has been a fantastic year. It's very much built on 2023, which was about technical demonstration, 2024, which was about partners, and 2025 has been about scaling the business. We've done that with a lot of capital raised. $2 to $3 billion raised over the course of the year. We've got our manufacturing plant almost up to rate as well. That's very important because we're a vertically integrated story, and which means we control the inputs of production and can move fast and innovate and keep that low cost. And we've also added additional partners, put a couple definitive commercial agreements in place, including with Verizon and Saudi Telecom Group. And for the first time as we exit the year, We're having revenue guidance in place for the second half of the year, and we've guided to over a billion dollars of committed revenue as of our last earnings call. So it's been a real exciting year to scale the business across commercial, strategic capital, and manufacturing. And on top of that, we were able to kick off a lot of excitement this year around MSS spectrum with our long-term rights access agreement that we put in place. last January, and that really secured for us additional spectrum within our 4 walls, a real strategic asset that we didn't have before to complement our cellular strategy.
[00:02:29] Speaker B: Maybe we can just start with the launch calendar. Can you just give us an update? Where does the launch cadence look for BlueBird 6 and 7 here in the coming weeks?
[00:02:40] Speaker C: So we're at a fantastic moment where we're deploying network. You know, I think we've spent the last decade building an incredible new vertical within satellite and cellular industry. And doing it from scratch in the face of folks not believing it could happen to suddenly being something that everybody talks about. And that was a long journey, but where we find ourselves today is that we're not talking about the tech or even capital or even the customers. We're talking about network deployment and services. And so that's what it's all about now is we're deploying network over the course of 2026, a launch every month or two on average. Each launch will have up to 6 or 8 satellites on it. And that will get us to our goal of 45 to 60 satellites in order to offer commercial-grade service continuously in the United States, Europe, and other markets that matter around the world. So that's the vision. That's been the plan for about a year now. We're executing on that vision, and that is about to kick off with our first next-generation satellite launch out of India within the next 2 weeks, one to follow shortly thereafter, and then up to 13 launches total through the end of 2026.
[00:03:46] Speaker B: And I think last earnings call you reiterated you expected 5 launches by the end of 1Q. Can you just remind us through the different rocket providers how many satellites can fit, fit on each of the different rockets and what that might imply for a number of satellites in orbit by the end of 1Q?
[00:04:03] Speaker C: Getting to orbit is a strategic topic for us. We have the technology within our 4 walls and an ecosystem that we've created with the operators to make cellular service on a broadband basis available to the 6 billion phones in circulation today. It's a very powerful tool that we're deploying. And to do that, we need to get to orbit. And so our strategy there has been to make our satellites compatible with all the major heavy and medium launch providers out there. And we've signed up launch contracts with 3 big players, SpaceX, Blue Origin, and ISRO out of India. There are other launch providers and more launch coming online, and we're compatible with all of them. So for us, managing that ride to orbit with multiple different providers and buying in excess of launch under contract, more than we need to get to that 45 to 60 number, has been our strategy all along. And you'll see us on each of those operators. We're going to have one satellite on our first rocket with ISRO here in the coming weeks. We'll have 3 or 4 satellites over time with SpaceX, and we'll have 6 or 8 satellites over time with the Blue Origin New Glenn rocket.
[00:05:14] Speaker B: And you mentioned the different launch providers. Can you just talk a little bit about the flexibility you have as you try to work towards that 45 to 60 satellites by the end of next year? Do you have the ability to pivot between the different providers? Any color there would be great.
[00:05:28] Speaker C: The short answer is yes. Uh, I joke with my friends in the launch industry that they have a tough time with their customers because they're basically a venture capitalist. It's hard to know when people will be ready to go to orbit. And the great thing about us is we plan to launch more tonnage to space in the next couple of years than pretty much anyone on planet, with the exception of 2 or 3 players. So being able to do that and do that with a vertically integrated strategy means we're not waiting for some prime to give us a notice quarterly. We're not waiting when the satellite's up in orbit to see if it's going to unfold properly or not. Our founder who has 80 million shares and folks works on this 24/7, is there with the satellite suit and nuts along with an entire very big team that's done this multiple times before. So for us, getting that right is incredibly important. Being in a position to have multiple stacked options with multiple different providers so that we can hit our cadence with a lot of extra cushion in the system. Is our strategy, and we'll continue to push on that strategy over the course of 2026 and 2027.
[00:06:30] Speaker B: And I think the first Block 2 satellites have been a little bit later than maybe first envisioned. Can you just talk about what drove the shift? Is this just natural growing pains? And once you get past the first Block 2 being launched, do you have confidence that there's not gonna be any sort of bottlenecks that materialize here over the next 12 months?
[00:06:51] Speaker C: Yeah, we've been very fortunate that For a lot of reasons, some of our own making, some not, we're not really exposed to supply chain issues that you see across strategic industries. On our last launch a year ago, we did have some slowdowns based on 2 different component systems, but we were able to bring those in-house, so those are now resolved. And so in terms of rolling out our next satellite, which is the largest ever communications array put into low Earth orbit commercially and 3 times larger than our prior, which was the largest in and of itself. Being able to do that is something that we could uniquely do because one, we're vertically integrated, and two, we actually use many of the same components from the first program. So by not changing each program, we've been able to move fast and basically updating a program with a 3x larger satellite in about 12 months' time is pretty unprecedented in the satellite industry. So The factory is now nearly at pace. The staffing and floor space we need for that is in place, and we've already started to think ahead, including acquiring a 4th site in Midland, Texas, where we're based, that'll be focused exclusively on our microns, which is our solar panels and components, which are applicable for any satellites we build and many other applications.
[00:08:05] Speaker B: You mentioned the new ASIC chip will be incorporated into the satellite starting in 1Q. Can you just remind us what that does for the total processing power and capacity on the Block 2 satellite?
[00:08:19] Speaker C: So there's a number of challenges in deploying this architecture in orbit that we've overcome. The principal ones are making the phone wait. You know, phones are keyed for a tower that's a couple miles away, so the speed of light is just too slow in space. So we solved that problem a number of years ago. Another is managing the narrow airwaves in the cellular.
[00:08:42] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:08:43] Speaker C: This is not satellite band where you have 100 MHz and 20 MHz guard bands. You've got 5 MHz back to back to back. And by having our large satellite, we can manage that interference so that we don't hurt AT&T's network. We don't hurt Verizon's network. We don't hurt anyone else's network. And being able to put that together is really important. And I'm sorry, what was the question?
[00:09:06] Speaker B: So just remind us with the ASIC chip what it does for total capacity and the total processing.
[00:09:11] Speaker C: So the ASIC doesn't solve those problems. it solves the next problem, which is how do you continue to scale and grow the business to hundreds of millions of subscribers? And so the ASIC chip, well, just to give you a progression, our test satellite in 2022 gave us 100 MHz of processing power. Our satellites that are in orbit now since late last year give us 1,000, you know, 1 GHz of processing power. Our 3X satellite basically gives us 3X that. And now with the ASIC, we'll be able to get to our full promise of up to 10 GHz of processing power per satellite. So it basically triples the capability of the satellite, apples to apples.
[00:09:46] Speaker B: And then you mentioned the manufacturing milestone of reaching 6 satellites per month by the end of the year. It seems like you're close. So is it fair to say that these new facilities in Florida and Texas, they're fully operational? And it also feels like that pace is maybe a bit faster than what you're launching now. You need to be at 6 satellites per month, or is eventually— do you anticipate that on an annual basis you will be launching that many satellites?
[00:10:14] Speaker C: So one of the keys to our success is that we've run a lot of parallel processes. So, you know, we're not waiting for anything. If at some point some part of the program slows us down, that'll be true. But at the moment, no, we are getting to 6 satellites per month and we're pushing on that very hard. And the additional manufacturing locations that you mentioned are 2 of Several that we brought online in the last six months. Those two are still ramping, so they're not actively contributing. But what they're going to do is give us more resiliency in the system and allow us to continue to produce and pull efficiencies out of it as well. There's a lot of what we do is we've thrown labor at things to make them move faster, to meet our timelines, and and and and and used the fact that there's very rigorous rigorous testing on the ground to manage yields. So even if something doesn't work, we find out through the testing process and we. We swap it out. Going forward, what you're gonna see is a highly automated, very efficient set of organized manufacturing that allows us to not only hit that 6-satellite-per-month target, but also have flexibility to go beyond it and also flexibility to grow with new growth opportunities ahead of us.
[00:11:30] Speaker B: Maybe just shifting over to the commercial momentum that you cited earlier. So Over $1 billion of revenue commitments with your carrier partners. Over how many years do these contracts typically run and how will these revenues ultimately be recognized?
[00:11:46] Speaker C: So we've been very fortunate from the beginning to have a really good following with the operators. I think it's because we solve a very real problem they have on the network deployment side, which is how do you cover all of population globally with terrestrial towers? It's an almost impossible task and space is so well suited to it. So From the beginning, they've been in the room with us as part of the conspiracy, building the technology, helping us on regulatory, contributing capital on a group basis so that everyone's contributing a little bit. And this is very much a network for the operators. They're— we're the partner of choice in the direct-to-device build-out. They own 20% of our equity and sit on our board. So the operators collectively, we have over 50 agreements. that cover nearly 3 billion subscribers. So our ecosystem is profound and we're very excited about that. And what was the last part of the question?
[00:12:42] Speaker B: Just how do the revenues get recognized and how long are these contracts typically?
[00:12:48] Speaker C: Yeah, so as we've started monetizing, or monetizing, putting into contract with definitive commercial agreements, these relationships, We've, I think our strategy is pretty much to sign longer-term contracts rather than short-term. I think our customers view this as infrastructure, even though it's very much growthy at the moment and a new offering, it's very much infrastructure, right? So you've seen that theme across the board. So we've signed agreements for 5 years, 6 years, 10 years, and one for 2 years. And those commitments you can think about as kind of, you know, we're not gonna give weighted averages, but based on that layout, you know, pretty, Pretty weighted towards the front, I would say, on average. But you're going to see more of those from us. And, you know, they're going to build up over time. So, but they're not backend weighted at all. Those are definitely heavily weighted towards the front.
[00:13:39] Speaker B: And I think it was September when you announced the new definitive agreement with Verizon. Can you just help us understand how did that agreement expand upon the initial partnership you announced back in May of 2024? And How did this definitive agreement stack up to prior definitive agreements in terms of the revenue share elements or even just the go-to-market approach you're thinking?
[00:14:00] Speaker C: Sure. So as we've built out the ecosystem, you know, the sacrosanct North Star has been a 50/50 revenue share for add-on revenues. We want to be a growth engine for the operators, which typically operate in more mature industries, very valuable industries, but mature ones. And so being a growth engine and a revenue source as opposed to a cost center has always been our strategy. So that 50/50 rev share has worked great for us. We're dedicated to it, and that's very important. So all of our contracts lay out that revenue share. As we've expanded the relationships with the operators, these definitive commercial agreements, they cover everything. I mean, this is not a tack-on texting service. This is 100+ pages bringing in 20 different cross-functional groups across the company led by senior management to drive a new product offering that we think is going to be worth hundreds of millions of dollars by customers. So this is something that requires a lot of new thinking. It pulls on historical roaming agreements, but it's new thinking and in that way, very sticky. It's complicated and that we view that now having been on the other side of a lot of these as a good thing for us. And so we're going to continue to push through our customer sheet and build out the initial markets that matter and those who will have service in '26 and then from there. And that's how we're going to structure and prioritize those relationships. These agreements, they're not only legally binding and provide minimum revenue commitments and even significant prepayments in some instances, they basically provide the vehicle through which we will build a business together.
[00:15:45] Speaker B: And now that you have a few definitive agreements in hand, are you finding that with your other commercial partners that conversations are progressing more quickly towards a definitive agreement?
[00:15:55] Speaker C: Yeah, there's not an operator around the world who doesn't want to meet with us and think about how we can work together. The constraint has largely been on us. We want to build out with our partners, those who have been aligned with us, those who have brought equity investment, minimum commitments, alignment around spectrum strategies, and prepayments. And so that is our strategy. We're continuing to grow the team in scale. You see that in Europe with our joint venture with Vodafone. That's going to allow us to move into that medium and long tail faster than we otherwise would've. But for us, 2025 was very important to build out these initial agreements and build consensus around what that market's going to look like. And yeah, I expect A lot of these to come in 2026.
[00:16:37] Speaker B: And then you also recently announced the Saudi Telecom deal in October. Can you just talk a little bit about the opportunity you see in that region and again, how those terms might compare to some of your other relationships that you have to date?
[00:16:49] Speaker C: Yeah, same, same type of contract, very much built on the same principles of revenue share and add-on services, minimum commitments and prepayments. And we're very aligned. They are the leading operator in Saudi Arabia, which is the largest cellular market and the largest market in general in the Gulf. They have a very broad view on businesses, having made an investment in Telefonica, growing a towers business, and they're very forward-thinking in how they look at telecom and how they can support it with their connectivity. And I think they think of us in the same vein. So we— this agreement is built around their core market of Saudi Arabia, but it's across various markets in the Middle East and North Africa region. And this is something that from the board on down, they feel very strongly about, and we're really excited to have them as our partner in the region.
[00:17:42] Speaker B: And then maybe shifting over to the government side, I think there's been a lot more headlines around the government opportunity for your business here in the past year. Can you just remind us how you're thinking about the TAM and the types of use cases that AST might be well positioned to target?
[00:17:58] Speaker C: So when we first went public, government wasn't really part of our story. But if we had a story that didn't have the US government, it would be the first space story ever. So it's not surprising how things went out. And over the last 3 years, they've kind of gradually integrated into our story and our revenue stream. And today are a majority of our initial revenue. So at the end of the day, what we can do is deploy more power to orbit faster and cheaper with larger arrays than anyone in the history of civilization. So that is a very valuable tool for connecting 6 billion people who go in and out of coverage, as well as doing all the normal communications stuff that the US government does, whether it's upgrading legacy services from the last millennia or It's moving towards more programmatic buys of standards-based services so that the troops always have connectivity or have redundant connectivity, all the way to enabling new devices, headsets, wearables that are low profile, that look and feel like a cell phone, but can enable next generation capabilities or drones. And so there's a lot of communications capabilities that we're going to enable. And then there's the non-communications capabilities. So Because these are the largest arrays deployed commercially and very close to the largest arrays ever deployed and definitely the largest ever deployed at this cost level, we can do other things with our frequencies, including radar, that support a lot of very strategic capabilities for the U.S. government and its allies. So, That is what's brought us into the Golden Dome conversation as it's evolved over the past year, where we see, you know, we had a very positive U.S. government investment in space backdrop over the last 5 to 10 years, but with this year, it's really accelerated. There's currently a $150 billion RFP open for a lot of the stuff that's involved, will be involved with Golden Dome over time. These are really big use cases that are really relevant where the government is looking for dual-use capabilities, which means government services free-riding or riding on commercial investment, which is what we are, as well as avoiding vendor lock, which means you're not stuck in a, you know, a contract with one prime for a decade because you've made some investment. You want to dual-source it. So managing dual-use technologies and/or deploying dual-use technologies and avoiding vendor lock are key strategies that AST SpaceMobile is in a perfect place to provide, in addition to a capability that we can offer that's never been offered before and can be offered on the timeline of this administration.
[00:20:48] Speaker B: And I think within the government sector, the end goal is usually transitioning these initial use cases into programs of record. What gives you confidence that some of these initial use cases you're supporting for the government will turn into programs of record? And what does the typical timeline look for something like that?
[00:21:06] Speaker C: Yeah, we've talked about programs of record before because it's a good way for folks that don't traffic in the government industry to understand how companies like us get big contracts and support the US government. And so I think about a program of record as over $100 million of revenue opportunity a year. And, you know, multiple use cases that we can support. We've set up to 10 different use cases that we can compete for over time. The way to think about this cycle is usually a 2 to 5 year cycle, depending on how ingrained you are as a supplier generally. And so some of these capabilities we've been working on for multiple years and others are much more fledgling and early stage, but we think that once we're deployed, you know, at scale. The one thing to note is there's only been one LEO constellation in the history of the world that's gotten to the finish line without going bankrupt first. And so, but the promise of getting there has always been very strong. If you could get over the initial capital timeline and technical difficulties, which we believe we have at this point. And so once you're built, the add-on opportunities and the marginal economics and barriers to entry associated with those add-on opportunities are profound. And so we think that once we're at this baseline service offering in low band globally, that we'll be able to have a number of these opportunities available to us. And we're developing those in parallel to be ready.
[00:22:33] Speaker B: Maybe if we shift over to the spectrum conversation. So it seems like your thinking has evolved a bit here since when we first started speaking. And so maybe just kind of talk about why you think it's important for you to own your own spectrum now, as opposed to relying just on the carriers for your capacity.
[00:22:53] Speaker C: So our strategy from the get-go, consistent with the partner ecosystem strategy I talked about in developing the operators and developing the system with them, was using their spectrum because we wanted to make their phones work better. We wanted to stand on the shoulders of their investment in spectrum and building out their customer base. And so naturally we had to solve the problems. And the idea of putting new spectrum on phones seemed like an insurmountable hurdle, as well as the cost associated with buying spectrum. So our service and our capability and our technology is pretty uniquely set up to capture the 1,000+ megahertz of low and mid-band spectrum that our operator partners own and deploy around the world today. We can use it where they're not using it, and we can use it in an efficient way that gets more value to them, more value to the regulator, more value to the end user, the consumer, those of us who want our phone to work. And so that is a really great strategy, and having a lot of power in orbit with a big satellite helps us do that, even on highly trafficked airwaves. So then you fast forward, and, you know, there's 2 big bands available in the world for mobile satellite services, the L-band and the S-band. And what we did earlier this year was we signed a long-term lease agreement for over 80 years. To use 20 plus 20 megahertz, which is the majority of L-band in the United States and in Canada, the United States being the most valuable wireless market in the world. So we secured a very valuable spectrum position that we can deploy in the years to come and enhance the services for our customer, the MNO, which more spectrum means more traffic, more subscribers, better services, and doing it in a strategic market. We've also taken steps to enhance that around the world in different bands. But for us, taking one of the two in the most valuable market in the world has very profound implications for how direct-to-device will evolve over the decades to come and is basically how we, with a technology advantage today, have secured ourselves in the decades to come when that advantage may erode and the industry becomes more mature. So the simple thing is we've got this nice baseline of cellular spectrum. And on top of that, we've added an own spectrum strategy that increases the amount of services we can offer, the more subscribers we can serve.
[00:25:12] Speaker B: Maybe just to follow up on the S-band deal you announced earlier this year, you now have a seat at the table to try to secure these licenses on a country-by-country basis. Where does that process stand? And outside of the US and Canada, do you feel that you have everything you need from a spectrum standpoint, or could we see you be opportunistic to secure other We like our spectrum strategy.
[00:25:35] Speaker C: The cellular strategy is a pretty strong one. It gives us a lot of flexibility. And outside the US and Europe, there's more spectrum more available than, you know, you typically find in our market. So it's a good strategy. It's one where partnering with operators is key. For instance, SPC has S-band rights in Saudi Arabia themselves. It's not owned by a satellite company. So that is a strategy that's market-by-market dependent. It's classic regulatory stuff where you go and you bring your filing and you say, listen, I can— I have network already deployed. There's no build-out requirement in terms of time or money. And I'd like to offer services to your citizens and help them with work, travel convenience, and life-and-death situations. And so that's a compelling argument and one that we plan to take to regulators around the world. In the US and in Canada, we have our L-band strategy. In Europe, we've formed a joint venture with Vodafone in order to participate in spectrum opportunities in Europe. And then around the world, we expect other opportunities over time to supplement our cellular strategy.
[00:26:46] Speaker B: A frequent question we get talking to investors is about competition in this space. Maybe can you just talk about What you believe are the advantages your technology offers versus what other players like a Starlink might be bringing into the market?
[00:27:01] Speaker C: So we're standing up a new market that could be worth tens of billions of dollars. It's basically making the 6 billion phones around the world work when they don't otherwise work well. And it's basically providing connectivity, which is the lifeblood of society today, to people when their phone works a little, doesn't work much, can't afford it, there's no towers. You know, there's a lot of gaps and cracks in these evolving and imperfect networks. So that is a strategy that we think works really well. What was the last part of the question?
[00:27:35] Speaker B: It's how the technology you have compares to what someone like Starlink is offering and what advantages do you have that maybe investors don't appreciate?
[00:27:45] Speaker C: Yeah, well, listen, we think this is going to be a big market. So first of all, we're in a race against ourselves to deploy this as fast as we can because the operators that we're partnered with, over 50 globally, nearly 3 billion subs amongst them. If we do a good job with that group, we're going to have a fantastic business and we're very excited about it. We're partnered with 2 of the 3 players in the United States. We're partnered with Vodafone as the largest owner of spectrum in the world. Bell Canada is an investor. American Tower is an investor. Google is an investor. Rakuten is an investor. So we like our playing field very well, and we believe that we are the partner of choice for the direct-to-device industry. We play very well with partners, we always have. It's very symbiotic. And so the way we've built out the capability we're about to start launching is we think we've done the right balance of good for the consumer, good for government regulatory good for the operators and good for AST SpaceMobile. Our technology is broadband, which we think is the right solution. It's hard to compare broadband with even voice, let alone text. We're not talking about apples and oranges, we're talking about apples and aircraft carriers. These are really different. And yes, we could have started with text 3 years ago, but we went big out of the gate with broadband because we think that's the The killer app for direct-to-device is cellular broadband. So that's what you're gonna see from us launching next year, and that's what differentiates us. But even still, we think it's a big, beautiful new market that's gonna have a lot of demand, and the operators need a solution, and we think we're a fantastic solution for them.
[00:29:25] Speaker B: And we saw the EchoStar and Starlink announcement back in September where they purchased a large amount of spectrum. What implications of any does this have for your business and what was your reaction to those headlines?
[00:29:39] Speaker C: Well, it closely mirrored the transaction that we did in January. There's basically 2 bands of spectrum for this globally that are big. One is L, one is F. We made one move in L and they made a similar move in F. So these are the 2 big bands that are available for direct-to-device. And these transactions cover the most valuable market in the world, which is the US. So I think our view of that transaction was that one, it validated that we had an important asset on our books and we made a good transaction. Two, that the market is very healthy and going to be big in expectation because otherwise the purchase price that was paid for that spectrum would not make sense. And third, it more closely aligned us with the operators who we plan to go to market with exclusively through the business model that we described. So we're very— we think it brought us closer to the operators, it enhanced the value of the asset we already had, and it showed the value of the market we're creating.
[00:30:39] Speaker B: I appreciate this question. It's a little early, but can you just help us think about once this constellation gets scale and you start to see the monetization flow through to the financials, how are you thinking about the operating leverage of this business and maybe compare those, that margin potential to what you see from other satellite players that are public today?
[00:31:00] Speaker C: So when you look through the history of satellite companies, last 20 years, when the businesses have been doing well and growing, you see 85% margins for wholesale businesses. And when you dig into those companies, even today, where there's attractive segments, there can be 90% plus marginal economics, EBITDA margin, filter margin. So for us, there's a big CapEx upfront. We all know that. That's why we funded the business the way we have. Uh, once it's in orbit, very little cost to maintain. There'll be a small maintenance CapEx line item over time as the 7 to 10 year cycle of the asset is recycled. But our OpEx, which is in the 60s million per quarter today. Might trend up a little bit with growth. The opportunities we're seeing are phenomenal. But if you're looking at that plus some lease expense, you still have a pretty fixed margin business. We have some revenue shares, including with the operators, but those will all come out of the— before we get the growth revenue on our income statements. So the flow-through margin here and the operating leverage is pretty special. And we expect that to be in excess of 90% over time.
[00:32:20] Speaker B: And then you've made a lot of funding progress over the past year. I think on the earnings call you said, you know, have funding in place to launch over 100 satellites. As you look out into 2026, is it fair that we could still continue to see you be opportunistic as you fund the future business, or is it gonna be a little bit of a digestion period there?
[00:32:41] Speaker C: So we've tried to be on our front foot with funding since the beginning of the company and be opportunistic and flexible and access different diverse capital markets and funding sources. We've said, you know, since early 2024 that we really want to develop our operator partnerships around prepayments and minimum revenue commitments that could also support financing efficiently. We've been doing that. You see that accelerating, including with a prepayment this year of $175 million, as well as support from other operators over the course of the year. And so we've been successful using the capital markets. We think that the convert market in particular was very supportive of us as a growth scaling company this year with really unique and differentiated tech. As we go into next year, you know, with over $3.2 billion of pro forma cash and liquidity on the balance sheet, we feel really well positioned for the opportunity. And like we said, have capital for over $100 million satellite deployment, which is well in excess of our $45 to $60 million target for next year. And so, uh, we're gonna be reactive and efficient, but, uh, management is very aligned with primarily equity compensation. Uh, our founder and controlling shareholder and 24/7, uh, support team, he's, uh, got 80 million shares and doesn't take a salary. So We are organized around maximizing the terminal value of the VCF. And I think we're at a period now where you've pretty much seen the major capital structure moves that we'll make and everything else will be tidying up.
[00:34:14] Speaker B: And I think when we've talked about the long-term business model, we used to talk about continuous coverage, I think like 90 or 100 satellites to meet your business goals. But is it fair based on the demand drivers you're seeing today, that your plans can go well beyond 100 satellites over time?
[00:34:34] Speaker C: I think so. So, you know, we're building out a low-band constellation now. There's other frequencies that are relevant. There's potential government constellations. And once you've built out these shells, especially over time, as space gets more constellations, we think that We'll have a really attractive position as an operator of a couple of these very valuable shells. And what you see in speculation in the market is, what do you do when you have a lot of power delivered to orbit in a very low-cost fashion and big markets and demand that support that and strategic interest of governments to support that? The add-on opportunities are really impressive, and you see that with all the data center conversations in the last— Yeah. Week or so, um, whether it's communication services, non-communication services to the US government, or the next generation of commercialization of space, we'll be in a great position to build that out being vertically integrated and having this fantastic ecosystem and then having an orbit architecture.
[00:35:37] Speaker B: I think that's a good place to leave it. Thank you being with— for being here today, Scott.
[00:35:40] Speaker C: Appreciate it very much.
[00:35:44] 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. 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 NMOs.
[00:36:44] Speaker B: Listen.
[00:36:44] Speaker C: Mmm, waffles.