Kook’s Weekly - October 27

[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.
[00:00:29] Speaker C: Okay, beaming everyone. That was a sick last-minute touchdown by Aaron Rodgers, but I guess not enough. So tonight we have quite a lot going on. What an action-packed week again. Um, I'm still a little bit sick, so I might— there might be a little coughing on this, but I started to think about, you know, this King Tut guy. I'm thinking, you know, Is there a curse? You just can't be too sure. I mean, Steve Larson, now me. So just be careful who you follow on the internet because I think we gotta just do a little test on whether this King Tut guy kills all the, all those who interact with him. But hopefully I'll get better by the end of this week. So illness notwithstanding, let's talk about our favorite stock. So we had a convertible bond. And so imagine my surprise when this company issued a billion-dollar bond, just wide. And so we've now had 3 convertible bonds this year. All of them are trading great. Actually, I don't know how the last one's trading. It was a little bit of a train wreck for these hedge fund guys that were Trying to get the hedge off, and I'll get a little bit into how that works in a second. But the key thing is that there is roughly a billion dollars of proceeds. It's going to probably have what's called the green shoe exercise, which is going to take the total offering up to $1.15 billion. Then there's fees and things like that. It's a 2% bond struck at 96 There's no cap call this time, which is interesting. We had the first 2 bonds had cap calls, which effectively shift the strike price or the conversion price of the bond from the stated conversion price, which is applicable to anyone that buys the convertible bond. But basically the company typically is layered in a call spread on top of that. And I guess at some level, if I were the board, I'd say, you know, enough is enough. Like, if, if we're now having, um, stock issued at $100 per share, the dilution on that is so tiny that let's not, let's not spend, you know, whatever it'd be, $200 million on a, on a call spread. And also, I, I start to question whether or not the market can bear the size of those call spreads anymore, because remember, the company still has those 2 existing call spreads outstanding. Even when the convertible bond goes away, the call spread remains because even though it is, it has an intrinsic value to the call spread, because the tenor of it is so far out, there's actually a lot of option value left in the short call of the higher strike. And so that means that the company really is better off just kind of waiting to burn off that time value of money to get the full intrinsic value versus if you liquidated it today, you'd get kind of like 50 cents on the dollar. And there's a point where their balance sheet is going to— and I haven't done this math, but their balance sheet, or have I done this math actually? The balance sheet is going to have, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars of these call spreads, which is a weird asset, but an asset nonetheless. And so for example, the The convert— again, we're done. That call spread is worth intrinsic $50 million, and call spread of the July bond is Stock price, how is it? This is $25, is worth. And so, no, sorry, that should be number flat because I forgot the lower bound of that call spread is $72 and the upper bound is $120. Basically just worth $25 million right now. But at the upper limit, that call spread is worth almost $400 million if you take the company's Already at half a billion dollars at the upper strike. And so my thinking is that the company basically is sort of like tapped out on how many call spreads they can do. Doesn't really matter. Oh, let's just think like, well, what to do with all these converts? And so I see Tanner giving me a bunch of thumbs down. So let me see if he had comments to see if I did something wrong. And now everyone's giving me thumbs downs. Hopefully people can still hear me. But anyway, let's look back and— oh, people are saying the audio's poor.
[00:05:25] Speaker B: Shoot.
[00:05:25] Speaker C: Okay. Let me just do some comments real quick and just see if My microphone is correct. People are saying it's better now. Okay, maybe I just wasn't speaking clearly into it. So let's just look back historically at whether these convertible bonds are, are good or not. And so when we look at the first bond, which was basically taken out because it was flushed, the way I would look at that Is what would've happened if we had issued straight equity versus the convertible bond inclusive of the cap call. And so you can see this, there's a lot of numbers here, and I realize it might be kind of difficult for people to follow it all, but when you see that blue line, it shows the total shares issued at the flush, which is when they kind of took the bonds out. That was 9.6 million shares. And then you have to adjust that for the benefit of the call spread they put on. And so that, and I use what's called treasury method to adjust for that. So that means that they effectively issued 7.6 million shares on that January convertible bond. Now, what would've happened had they issued straight equity at the time, assuming a 15% discount to last, which is anyone's guess whether or not They could issue a bond at that spread. And my calculations show that they would've had to issue roughly 11.8 million shares. So 7.6 million shares at the end of the day versus 11.7. Now at a stock price of $74, more or less, that saved the company $300 million of value. Pretty good when all's said and done. And so the whole point of a convertible bond is effectively to minimize dilution, and you're trading off the fact that you're giving people a senior call on the enterprise value because of the bond feature. And so it's a little bit of a bet that, you know, your stock will go up. In this instance it did, and the company, you know, somewhat meaningfully reduced dilution by doing this to the tune of, you know, roughly 1% of the shares outstanding. So that's that's why they're doing it. The other thing that we're seeing is their use of the ATM. So the other update we got was that to date they've used roughly three hundred million dollars of the ATM. And so now when we look at the sources and uses, I have my own model that I keep as people might imagine. And so when kind of adjusting what we know, they gave us a a period-end cash number, which was actually coming in really close to what my model was saying. I thought they would end the quarter at $1.3 million— sorry, $1.3 billion of cash, and they ended at like $1.22. So they probably pulled forward some CapEx or something like that. And so now taking into effect the convertible bond, taking into effect the ATM, taking into effect some modest cash flow. And so they gave some guidance. We'll see if they hit it for revenue from Block And then I have a big CapEx number for Q4, and I could be too high on that, but in any respect, I have them ending Q4, which is the quarter we're currently in, with $2.2 billion of cash. And at this point, we'll be pretty deep into the satellite construction program. And so Pretty nice to advance the ball. I don't know how many of the satellites will be fully done, but we know that they have something like 40 satellites in some degree of completion. And so you have to think about it as the $2.2 billion of cash that they'll have at the end of the period, plus the money that they'll have on the balance sheet for work in progress, WIP. And that's Really, then you know the two numbers to watch against the full capex of the constellation. So now none of this matters if you're not putting the birds up. And so what we also found out this week is some updates from ISRO. And so the latest updates coming out of ISRO are that a Prime Minister Modi is going to announce the launch, which is pretty cool. And then that the launch could be in early December. So that's all tracking pretty, pretty well. And what we don't know is whether or not FM2 might actually be launched first. And so we're watching really closely any telltales of FM2 leaving the facility to go to Cape Canaveral. And the company had guided that that satellite would be ready to ship within October. I think what we learned in August is that the definition of ready to ship, will ship, sort of the, you know, the Bill Clinton, what is the definition of is, can be somewhat in the eye of the beholder. And so we'll find out if the layman's term of ship of satellite on a truck, not in Nederland, which is certainly a strict definition of ship. is going to be met this week, or if we're going to be into November, you know, for, for it to actually match up in terms of when SpaceX can take delivery of the satellite. I don't think the market's really going to care at this point because it's very obvious that the company is cranking. And after that, we have again just the research that people figured out that the Indian Prime Minister is, is going to announce the formal launch date just tells you what a big deal this is. Uh, it's really exciting. It's going to be international news. This does matter for the stock price because people go, well, what is this thing? You know, I always am amazed at how simple the world can be where people just hear it, you know, what is AST SpaceMobile? You know, and they, they look at a stock chart, they do some basic work, and you're going to start to have, you know, billion, billions of people start to be exposed and hear this name for the first time, which is exciting. Some of those people are just going to convert. And you always think about this as supply and demand for a stock. This is certainly going to create net-net more demand for a stock. So now let's just think about launch itself. Something a lot of us have been thinking about for years, is just simply the idea of orbital pollution. And so the other day we actually had what we think was a SpaceX satellite hit a plane as it was deorbiting. And so this is just sort of the law of large numbers. When you have thousands and thousands of satellites, there is just a higher probability of a deorbiting going wrong than when you have 100 satellites, just simple probabilities. And so this idea of SpaceX's approach of sending thousands of satellites to achieve a thing versus a constellation like AST SpaceMobile that can do the same thing with 100 satellites, at some point someone is going to wake up and realize that the regulations need to be aware of this difference. I think AST has been very deliberate in their strategy. And we even have Jennifer Manor, who's our head of public— what is she? She's the VP of our— I kind of think of her as our spectrum lady, but she is our regulatory affairs and international strategy person, very talented. And she says, unlike some larger constellations, we need 96 satellites for global coverage. And so While ASTS is ultimately going to have more than that, 248 is what they've applied for. They're very clear that they are not talking about thousands of satellites and therefore this deorbital risk is lower. This is something that I do think will matter. I think orbital pollution will become a thing. I, when I made this investment, I really thought about orbital scarcity. And I thought about it the same way that, you know, my great-great-great-great-grandfather, if he were a kook, would've probably thought about speculating on railroads and thinking about who can lay track the fastest to get all the land grants. That's the way I look at this. This is a rule of capture business because orbital real estate is something that isn't yet priced. And so imagine if you could get all the air rights in Manhattan before people thought about charging for that. Get it all. You imagine if you could lay track and then grab all the land adjacent, you know, over the, you know, the expansiveness of the great west of America and just figure, well, maybe there's some mineral rights there. Get it all. And so ASTS is getting into orbit they will then have priority of those orbital slots. But at the same time, someone's going to wake up and realize it's not in the societal best interest to have a constellation that has thousands of satellites with all the environmental damage that's occurring for us to that. I think that bill will be paid by SpaceX at some point. And so we continue to see our partners very excited. John Stankey of AT&T, you know, can't help himself and just reiterated how excited they are to be working with ASTS and really just the excitement of these LEO technologies. So it's good to see that, you know, make sure our partners continue to reiterate what we believe to be true. And then we are having some new people show up in the press. And so Vodafone has been very active with these labs they've started in Malaya. Which is part of Satco, and that's where they have a testbed where they're helping other MNOs around Europe as well as other players experiment with the technology and do testing. A name that keeps coming up is Meta. Quote: The inaugural project within the laboratory will involve a collaborative effort with Meta. The initiative seeks to optimize and ensure the high quality of WhatsApp audio and video calls once the services are launched, guaranteeing excellent communication across hybrid space and terrestrial networks. Hyperscalers will care. We've always thought that was going to be the case, and now it is. And so it really shouldn't be a big surprise. On the opposite end of the spectrum, what better way to alienate yourself from the MNOs and from the hyperscalers than to to show that you are going to compete with them. So an interesting article came out about Samsung, which is developing, quote, an AI-powered Exynos modem chip for SpaceX with an integrated MPU. Not quite sure what MPU stands for, for satellite communications aimed at enabling direct LEO satellite connections. So this article, and then there's another one about Apple and SpaceX was flying around And what's interesting about it is a plain reading, a FUDster could go, oh, look, Samsung's working with SpaceX. A more detailed reading exposes all of the flaws in the SpaceX design. And so then Katzi, and this link is provided, it's under the tweet, meanwhile, how to alienate yourself from MNOs 101 by SpaceX. Katzi, as usual, just nails it with his redlined annotation of the article. And so his point is that when you have a solution that is garbled and hacked together, you don't have a first principle solution and therefore it's going to require all sorts of backbending. And so what SpaceX has as a problem is to make its service work, it needs a dedicated chip because right now it's power hungry. It doesn't work, can't work with unmodified phones. And so when you have flawed architecture, then you need to start adjusting the handset. And then you also have the problem is they do not have fixed earth sets, which means when ASTS is making a connection with your phone, think of, you know, something that's kind of locked on, that beam is locked onto your phone and the beam is holding a constant position. To create that cell as opposed to a fixed cell, which is think of like a flashlight you're holding in your hand, just sort of moving over. And to keep the light, you'd have to have a lot of flashlights sort of cycling like a little carousel. The problem is then you have all these handovers. It gets very complex versus a constant beam, which can hold for as long as there's a look angle. And so you have all sorts of problems with the SpaceX solution. And now it looks like they're trying to figure out more direct solves by modifying the handset, which maybe it will create a functional service, but that means then you have a very limited market because the propagation of those chips. The other thing that was really blasting around this week, weekend is this Apple SpaceX article. And again, of course, Apple is going to work with SpaceX to make sure that its spectrum can be supported. Although I actually have my doubts as to why Apple would really accommodate them at all. So to me, it was sort of like, why would you enable that spectrum to help this kind of would-be competitor? So I can see it both ways. But then if it's really Apple having to accommodate T-Mobile, well, then I can kind of get it. And interestingly, it's coming at a time where you had a lot of weird things this week between the billion-dollar convert, which could have just been opportunistic, but it could have been something else. The Iridium conference call, which was just bizarre. It was total defeat by the management. It's really worth a listen. And I haven't remembered a time when I've heard a worse conference call by management, really just kind of saying like, well, yeah, our pants are around our ankles right now and we're in public and Aw shucks, that's embarrassing to have been caught totally unprepared. And I think we have some value, but we haven't really talked about it yet because we're not smart enough to have communicated to people about our company. And we think that our business probably will last until 2030, but after that, I don't know. That's a kind of a summary of the call. It was really just bizarre. As a side note, this is why you want to invest in founder-led companies. This is just a case study of what happens when you have finance guys run a business that requires innovation. They went into CapEx holiday, they got drunk on this silly concept of we'll just do capital return and that will drive, you know, drive the stock higher. Well, that works for a time, but when you have a competitive industry full of change, if you're not reinvesting in your business, all you've created is a cigar butt. So those share repurchases aren't going to do a whole lot if your business goes away in 5 years. You know, those dividends are great, but again, you can't maintain them when your business goes away in 5 years. And so now they're, you know, doing the obvious roundabout, but you have that, which is interesting. And they talked about SpaceX a million times on the call, but they never once mentioned AST SpaceMobile, which is one of those things where the silence is is really deafening. And then you had Globalstar out there with a rumor of, you know, we're going to sell the company for $10 billion.
[00:21:38] Speaker B: And you might—
[00:21:41] Speaker C: one makes you wonder, nothing is ever really random in life. And so my theory is that ASTS is going to do something like a spectrum lease agreement with Iridium, which would would be a smart thing to do for Iridium. They have spectrum that's not being utilized. I don't know that they really have a hope to do it. I think their best bet is to do what Charlie Ergen did and sort of create a spectrum holding company, run off their existing business, and then get some equity in ASTS and their spectrum lives to fight another day. That's one thing that'd be going on. Another thing that would be awesome is if ASTS is about to buy Globalstar. And so I don't know how you kind of fix the Apple contract because you want the spectrum really unencumbered. You don't want to be giving 85% of your capacity to Apple for that service, but it would be cool to provide the emergency services for Apple, grab all the S-band spectrum, grab the cash flow, nuke the obligation for the replacement satellites because you obviously don't need that. And I could see either one of these deals being realistic and frankly being a stroke of strategic genius for AST SpaceMobile. And because it would get you all of a sudden global spectrum rights, potentially a bunch of near-term cash flow that then you can really high-grade easily on your own constellation. So you're basically just buying a book of business that you could probably 10x. just within that customer base. And you also then just clean up the market. One less chatterbox making false claims about being an actual competitor. And so a lot of stuff going on last week that makes me believe something is happening. And when you look at AST SpaceMobile, I mean, the jury's still out. Do we have a Mark Zuckerberg at the helm here in terms of being able to create hundreds of billions of dollars through M&A? It's an interesting thing. No one ever really thought of Zuck, you know, 15 years ago, no one ever really thought of him as, you know, the world's best M&A guy, but he is. And what we have with AST SpaceMobile with Legato so far, you know, early, but looks to be a masterstroke. And I'm starting to see some angles here where, you know, might not seem obvious is, you know, hey AST, you have this, you know, incredible innovative growth company. Why the hell would you want to go buy Iridium or Globalstar. But when I squint, and I'm not an expert on those companies, but when I squint, I can see some real strategic genius where the market would wake up and go, holy shit, these guys just moved 6 spaces faster on the chessboard than we had anticipated. All of a sudden, you know, again, buying these commercial portfolios, getting in this global spectrum could be super cool, but I'll leave that to the professionals to see if that's actually a you know, what makes sense and be what they can pull across the finish line. We also have just another example of just how quickly this market is developing. We have some news out of Japan about what looks to be the groundwork for a Japanese FirstNet. And so 8 of the major carriers are seemingly getting together, creating a cooperative disaster relief system. And they're starting to test on spectrum. And so we had some people highlight to me, Inner Italia for one, flagging to me, you know, there's some interesting frequencies that are being tested. Makes sense that the rest of the world is going to follow the US for disaster relief. Japan has this problem in spades with tsunamis and things like that. And then a lot of remote populations on islands, be a fantastic thing for them to roll out. And AST SpaceMobile is going to be right there to offer a solution. And it really answers the why now question. And so why now would all these countries and continents be rolling out these new disaster relief systems? Well, because now there's technology that offers truly a unique way to solve this problem. The initial way the US solved the problem after 9/11 is to build a redundant terrestrial network. That has its own problems. Now you can address emergency response sort of in hyperdrive where the cost, even though ASTS should be a very low-cost solution, where cost is really not the question. It's reliability of being able to provide a service when you need it most. And that's the why now this is exciting. And I would expect to see a lot more of this. So let's go back to the convertible bond. And so we had some interesting analysis just on the language in the indenture. And so we have Keys did a really nice analysis. This is under the tweet on my tweet thread of convertible bond language change. And this first thing goes through, it's a lawyer. So lawyers are good for this type of analysis and goes through the change in the disclosure from the old convertible bonds to this one. And they wrote that the use of proceeds is to fund development of its global constellation to expand its space mobile service into incremental strategic markets. They could have just said general corporate purposes. So why the change? Well, you change something because you either have to or you really want to, but the default thing would be don't change it because you generally don't have to change from general corporate purposes. That's pretty clear. And so the company's trying to tell us something and they know we would do this type of analysis. So you can say, well, okay, they're sending us a message in a bottle. What is that message? Incremental strategic And so this to me could be consistent with the M&A. There are a lot of incremental strategic markets. For example, being an emergency service provider to Apple would be an incremental strategic market. Wouldn't that be exciting? I could see Golden Dome, which might have its own captive shell of satellites, which they have to fund upfront. We'll get to that in a second. That could be the case, but it is something. And hopefully we'll find out soon what that is. But the company is trying to tell you that this, that there, there is something, there is a pot of gold at the end of the pot here. And so now let's talk about Golden Dome. Golden Dome is a big project, but it's also a complex project. So there's some interesting articles that came out this week, and thank you for those who set Send me these articles. So Golden Dome's rapid timeline collides with industry funding fears. And so the problem with Golden Dome is they're using this hybrid architecture of trying to use commercial systems as, as defense systems, but then you're not having the same funding mechanisms as many defense contractors would normally expect. And so a quote in the article, participants may have limited opportunities to recoup funding via prizes awarded for completing certain gates or demonstrations along the way. And so, quote, such a proposal is a tough sell, particularly for smaller companies with promising but still emerging technologies, or for those that must justify their investments to shareholders. And so they're making the companies fund these upfront. Which in a way could be actually great news for us because right now we have access to capital in spades. And so we're finally in the position where access to capital is a competitive barrier where previously it had been, you know, something we were really worried about. And Golden Dome seems to be one of these things where you are going to have to take some capital risk to get into the main running of it. And we're extremely well positioned to do that. Our tech obviously is incredible, but now our ability to take some more merchant risk on this is also available in no small part to that convertible bond. And then, you know, the casual quarter of a billion dollars we raised that no one noticed on the ATM as the stock went from, I think when the ATM was announced, it was like $72 and then the stock ripped to $102. And it just goes to show you now that anyone that sells the stock on an ATM announcement is really, really not thinking that well. And the money is very valuable. So then we also have another really interesting find this week, which goes into, you know, track the talent. And so ASTS added a VP of engineering for federal programs. And so Alan Chip Walcott, is now VP and Chief Engineer of Federal Programs for the company. He previously had been Director of Radar Technologies at General Atomics. He had been at Raytheon for 22 years, Chief Engineer Missile Defense Programs. If only the title of his job told us his expertise. I mean, what possible duties could fall under Chief Engineer of Missile Defense Programs? Raytheon. I don't know. Might have to run that one through ChatGPT. And so the type of people that are being hired at ASTS could not scream louder for Golden Dome. So, you know, you've been warned. And then not to be left out, let me take a quick sip of water as I cough. Mexico. So there was a really interesting deal that looks like a wholesale deal for Spectrum in Mexico. What we know about Mexico is the company has had a focus on this area for many, many years. Let me just mute real fast while I cough. All right, I'm back. They are where ASTS is working with a company called Altman Redes, a Mexican public-private initiative, which is trying coverage in Mexico. And so they've got a lot of spectrum and now they're going to start testing on it. And so our belief is that this is going to be a way to access the MNOs in Mexico. We do know that the company has Had discussed, you know, some sort of relationship with Carlos Slim in Americamóvil. And we know that Carlos Slim does not like Elon Musk because Elon Musk called him a drug dealer. And so reason stands that on any given day, we could expect to sweep Central America, which would be very exciting. But just more behind the scenes that show you the scope of our opportunity. And the continued sort of gathering one way or another of spectrum. And then we also going back to the defense, Fairwinds is great because they really just kind of tell you how it is. And so we have Tanner finding a really nice article today, or I'm sorry, this week with some Fairwinds people. And they just talk about how they're going to bring ASTS directly to The warfighter. And so, quote, Fairwinds Technology has partnered with AST SpaceMobile to advance this technology within the military. We recently learned user testing in Hawaii, the value being pushed to cell phones, which is a real game changer in the industry. We don't have to carry such large equipment anymore, and it's available anywhere in real time. Well, there you have it. And so the military business is going to be pretty exciting. So then we talked a little bit about Iridium earlier. And so, you know, let's just watch this because they have, I think it's 10 megahertz, I forget the exact, but they've got these S-band assets and, you know, you have Lynk and OmniSpace now merging with SES. I don't know where that's going to go. But you're kind of, you're seeing people kind of realize they have to make some moves. Iridium is a company that I think has some major strategic challenges ahead of them. Stock market is telling you that, management's telling you that. And I still think that there's probably something to do with ASTS. It's now not a very big company, $2 billion market cap. And so you could see ASTS buying them for cash and stock. And, and frankly, what's crazy is that ASTS wouldn't even miss a beat. And then there'd be, you know, just imagine a, a broader corporate takeover just for a minute. And so let's say that were, you know, a billion dollars of cash, and then call it $2 billion of stock for, you know, a 50% premium for Iridium. That would get them back to the trading price of, you know, earlier this year. And then you wake up tomorrow and ASTS has worldwide S-band, $500 million of EBITDA for narrowband service that they're going to be able to roll over all those customers to very, very different services over time. I think that that could be really exciting. I think the spectrum alone, the high, you know, the value use of that spectrum for ASTS would be worth multiples of the Iridium stock price. And then in the meantime, while you're waiting, you have the $500 million, which sort of buys down your deal price pretty quickly. So it is interesting what happens as this industry flips so quickly. You are, I think, seeing kind of a lot of parallels to what happened with the hyperscalers, with like Google arriving on the scene and all of a sudden they start buying DoubleClick, they buy YouTube, they buy Motorola Solutions, things like that. Some of these older legacy companies, YouTube's obviously legacy company, but some of these things tuck in on these platforms and are then worth exponentially more than they could have ever been worth by themselves. And I think we're seeing history repeat. And we had a talented C-suite at ASTS. Think about Scott. He's a banker and a good one. And Abel has done M&A before. So I'm starting to be pretty optimistic that we might again, really be able to flip the script on the speed at which the value creation happens. Not that ASTS needs to do any of these, but I think the Legato deal again showed us just what's possible, where you wake up one day and, you know, you're happy with your MNO strategy for spectrum, but then you have the opportunity to have 45 megahertz of premium spectrum in the US and you go, holy crap, that's a game changer. And then look at how fast the industry just went, oh my God, look at how these satellite companies can now bring so much more to bear with the M&Os. And so just keep, you know, keep some mental flexibility on how fast a Super Bull case can emerge with smart M&A when you really think about the value of something standalone versus the value at use. So maybe some big things will be happening. You know, they call it Merger Monday for a reason, and the stock, let me just check where it was, but it was kind of ripping again overnight. I was kind of surprised because I thought we'd still have some panickins, you know, seeing some SpaceX news and, you know, whatever, you know, silly people are usually deprived of their shares. But, you know, I saw before I started this call, the stock price is up like 4 or 5%. And so it's almost like people are conditioned now whenever they see the SpaceX kind of fake articles come out, people know that that's just SpaceX front-running some awesome news from ASTS. That's certainly been our experience. But then also if anyone's looking to get up to speed, the report by Crossroads is really great. So I've linked that out. I found actually the full PDF, so you don't have to deal with the sort of gated way that Crossroads put it out. So that full report is there. And then we had a really great Spaces from Anpanman, this guy Trone, who wrote an incredible letter. the other day. I really enjoyed his shareholder letter to his own LPs. And then also with Ryan O'Connor of Crossroads. So this is a 2-hour Spaces that was done on Friday. And then finally we had B. Riley showing up, the winners that they are, increasing their target price to $95 from $60. And just noting that the convertible bond, quote, removes a funding overhang. Which I don't think really was a funding overhang. But now the the balance sheet's just so bulletproof that people know these guys can go the distance without having to come knock on doors unless they want to. And I would dial this in as you know also former for full ATM, and say while there's a restriction on them using the ATM, like fifteen day care member, couple days just to give it to. Hold on, guys. Some space to hedge. You know, I would imagine they'd probably bang more, and then you'd be looking at pro forma cash by Christmas of, you know, potentially más o menos like three, which certainly gives the company all the flexibility they need to push really aggressively on on growth initiatives. Previously, they would have had to rationalize. And I think one of these big opportunities is going to be government work. So that's what we have. Sorry for the poor connection in the beginning of the Spaces. I heard from people just in the chat that it's back to choppiness. So maybe that is a good reason to end the call. Not quite sure why my internet's kicked out, but I hope everyone has a great rest of your Sunday and a great week. Bye.
[00:39:58] 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.
[00:40:19] Speaker B: We're doing something very 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 bring this into reality, always in partnership with the animals.
[00:40:56] Speaker A: Listen.
[00:41:04] Speaker B: Mmm, waffles.