Anpanman - Where We’ve Been and Where We’re Going

[00:00:06] Speaker A: This is the AST SpaceMobile Podcast.
[00:00:09] Speaker B: It will just basically come to your phone and be seamless regardless of where you are. We don't want the user even to know that it's connected by satellite. Listen, the opportunity that we have is very, very, very large.
[00:00:25] Speaker A: Can you guys hear me now? Okay. All right, good. People can hear me. Uh, what a freaking day or 2 days. Um, yeah, I just wanted to get people together. It's been, it's been a hot minute since we've done one of these. And quite candidly, I didn't do a space, um, the last few weeks because there wasn't too much to talk about. There was quite a bit of anticipation of when our satellites were going to be ready for shipment and launch. And yeah, I thought Kook was doing just a fine job in summarizing the weekly events. And so there's no need for me. And quite honestly, I've been quite busy with school starting back up for our kids. So I just haven't had as much time to do these Spaces. But of course today, you know, I went apple picking with the family and then had a late day. You know, one of our kids had soccer practice. They actually go quite late. And so I didn't actually have time to prepare for this. I did write down a few thoughts or topics to cover, but, but yeah, I didn't prepare. And so I thought, you know, we'd just get, get together and, and cover a few things and just kind of hang out. Just so that some of you know, I, I did buy a Dr Pepper the other night for good luck, and apparently that good luck is panning out. For people that don't know, it's interesting. I actually enjoyed drinking Dr Pepper back in high school. And then of course our dear departed friend Steve Larison was a big fan of Dr Pepper. And so kind of reintroduced me to the drink. And so I, I went out and bought one. I know Tut and Cook went out and bought a Dr Pepper last night. And so, so yeah, I think we got some positive juju in the memory of Steve for, for, for carrying on this tradition of drinking some Dr Pepper. Anyway, but yeah, what a day.
[00:02:08] Speaker B: I think.
[00:02:11] Speaker A: It's interesting because I mentioned this in a post before, but we did hit, what was it, at the beginning of September, we went as low as $36. There was some FUD around and people obviously doing the short sellers kind of rubbing our faces when stock sold off after SpaceX did their transaction with EchoStar buying the AWS 4 spectrum. And so You know, I think the market does what it does, had a knee-jerk reaction. People panicked, you know, the stock sold off. And of course, like people didn't really fully comprehend what that transaction meant in terms of basically validating our strategy around buying Spectrum, which people had questioned back in January. But then it was kind of like what, what we do. And there's this Borat meme where he talks about his neighbor. He's like, my neighbor Billo, he did this. I mean, I get a TV, he get a TV. I get a dishwasher, he get a dishwasher. But it's kind of like that where we invented the direct-to-cell you know, market. And then of course, you know, that was what, back in 2017, 2018? And then SpaceX announced that they were pursuing Starlink, decided they were pursuing this in 2022. And of course, you know, due to their financial resources, they were able to get a product working and out there quickly, but obviously not broadband. And so, but then, you know, we go out and buy some L-band MSS spectrum to help bolster the service, which that spectrum will be rolled out in 2027 with mid-band Bluebirds. And so of course, rightly so, and it's a smart transaction, Starlink went out and bought EchoStar's S-band spectrum. And so, which is AWS-3. And so yeah, interestingly, the market had a knee-jerk reaction and was like, I guess AST SpaceMobile is screwed. And it's like, no, we're not screwed. It's a validation of our strategy. They want to get to broadband. And so they need that spectrum. You know, there's a question, of course, whether or not they compete with MNOs directly, which I think should make T-Mobile feel a bit nervous. But at the same time, as interesting, you know, Scott today on Bloomberg, when they asked him, are you guys competitive with Starlink? He kind of danced around the question. Although he did acknowledge that, yeah, this market's big. It's going to be big enough for what looks like now 2 players, perhaps maybe a 3rd that we don't know of yet, but the bar you know, the table stakes to play this poker game is that not only do you need to have the proper technology, which we, I believe we have a big lead given our architecture that we're utilizing, but you also now all of a sudden need to have spectrum, which is not easy. Starlink just paid $19 billion for AWS-3, and that's only for the US. And obviously they've got some priority rights to try to go cobble together similar spectrum around the world. But $19 billion is not easy for anybody to pay for. I mean, we, we kind of went about it in a different way where we acquired, and so for Starlink, that's 40 MHz of AWS-3 spectrum and some H-block spectrum as well. We acquired 45 MHz of L-band spectrum out of bankruptcy from Placado, which, you know, it's a messy situation, but because of our technology, we'll be able to utilize that spectrum properly. And we paid a much lower price, but then we also are giving up or not giving up, but we're partnering essentially with Legato in that lease where we share some of the economics and the upside, which, you know, if you were to talk to Cerberus or Fortress who are stakeholders in that spectrum, they see the upside and they're very excited about it. And so we didn't have to pay $19 billion, but we did have to pay some amount of economics upfront and then Of course, ongoing sharing of those economics, and so that's why you know the cost of entry for us was was much lower. But I think you know if you're a competitor looking to potentially get into this market, not only do you have to build the technology, you've got to try to cobble together the MNO partnerships, and then you've got to if you really want to compete, you know acquire some spectrum, which is a pretty tall order.
[00:06:14] Speaker B: So.
[00:06:15] Speaker A: It's interesting. I think the, what I think the market is starting to price in and realize is that this truly is going to be a duopoly. And then if you assume that that's the case, if you look at the traction around MNOs to date, Starlink has 8 or 9 MNOs and we've got over 50. And so I like our position and the fact that our satellites work with cellular low-band spectrum. So that gives you propagation and coverage. And then we've got mid-band spectrum, which will give more capacity in terms of for broadband. And so, yeah, I like our position. I mean, today we heard, God, there's actually a lot to talk about. We heard, you know, Scott talk about, I mean, this was the first time I think they formally have said, yeah, we can work through one wall. The signal will go through one wall, which is, that's where leveraging low-band spectrum is key, which is 600 to 900 megahertz cellular spectrum. That's the stuff that allows your mobile phone to work when you're in the middle of the house, if you don't have, you know, Wi-Fi turned on, or if you were in an airplane, that's gonna allow the phone to work through the airplane when you're, you know, flying and connecting to one of the satellites. For anybody who questions like, oh, well, what does mid-band spectrum mean? Is that, does that prop— does that have good propagation characteristics? If anyone's old enough to remember T-Mobile service back in Oh gosh, when was it? I think it was like 2004, 2005, 2006. T-Mobile, anybody who used that, the service back then, that's when T-Mobile did not have any low-band spectrum and it was all primarily mid-band spectrum. And so I remember when I moved to New York at some point in time, I think it was around 2005, 2006, I remember thinking like one of the cool devices that T-Mobile had, I absolutely wanted to have it. And so I changed service from, I think it was like from Verizon at the time, I moved to T-Mobile and I immediately canceled after a week because it was only mid-band spectrum. I got coverage, it was like difficult unless you were like directly pointing to the sky in an open area. If you went into buildings or if you started walking down the subway, you were, your coverage would immediately drop. And so, but I didn't understand why at the time. I just knew like they didn't have the right spectrum. But then of course, years later I realized like, oh, they only had mid-band spectrum. They T-Mobile didn't have any low-band spectrum at that time. And so over the course of a number of years through spectrum auctions and then the merger with Sprint, T-Mobile was able to then procure low-band spectrum, which is why their service over the last few years has gotten much, much better. But for anybody who used T-Mobile back in the day when they only had mid-band spectrum, the coverage was absolutely shit. And so, you know, when you had service, it was pretty good, but then the coverage was bad and you couldn't go into buildings because you would immediately lose service. So like, Imagine if you're in financial services and you're meeting, you're at an attorney's office and you're doing drafting, or I don't know, you're meeting with management and you go into a conference room and your mobile phone's not working because it's only mid-band spectrum. It can't go through a wall. That was pretty bad. So anyway, I think it's important to note, like, yes, Starlink, they're making strides. They announced some pretty great things, I think, for their service this past week where they're going to start Being able to utilize low-band data for apps that are optimized for it, that's great. And of course, having the EchoStar spectrum eventually when they deploy it in, what is it, I think 2 years, like that's gonna be really good for them to then be able to provide more of a broadband type of service. However, I think it's important to note that their satellites, the current V2, and then of course the next V3, those are all gonna be mid-band satellites. I mean, It's not going to solve the coverage and propagation issues, which is by that time AST is rolling out the Block 2 satellites, which are focused on low band, and then Block 3 will be focused on mid band. But who knows, maybe Starlink will develop a much larger phased array satellite and then work with MNO partners who are going to say, yeah, you can leverage some of our low band spectrum. But I think it's important to also remember that if you're going to utilize a carrier's low band spectrum, You're going to need the right architecture that can put down very specific fixed cell beams on the ground that don't interfere with a carrier's existing terrestrial coverage. And we all know, I mean, we've discussed this ad nauseam, they don't utilize that architecture. And so you're going to have to go back to the drawing board. So yeah, they'll be able to provide a mid-band broadband type of solution eventually, but they're still going to have coverage issues, which I think is important. Coverage issues meaning, oh yeah, the service is going to work through walls and it's going to give the user a A cellular-like service. But anyway, kind of went on a tangent there. But yeah, it's interesting because I think going back to, I guess what I was saying before, we've had a ton of news and it's great to see the company coming out being very— it's funny, I think over the last few weeks we've seen a lot of people come out on Twitter and investors. There's a group of us, we always talk about Reddit being like the ultimate signal, right? Like when people are screaming bloody murder and they're upset and it's just like doomsday, it's just total doomsday on Reddit, then that's a time when you absolutely need to buy the stock because that's like a bottom signal. And I joke about how short sellers, when they do their happy dance and they kind of rub it in people's faces, like, well, we had that drawdown to 36, which was the post SpaceX EchoStar transaction news. You saw all these like these scumbags come out and be like, oh, You know, the stock is at $36 and they're like, yeah, this stock is worth zero. You know, they start pointing out all these potential issues and it's just like, guys, they're not like this bear thesis that you're rolling out or you're trying to scare people with. This is not new stuff. Like you're rehashing old things that everybody already knows. The company has already hit milestones past those. And yeah, look, at the end of the day, we had a delay. There's, I mean, obviously the company was hoping to launch the Block 2 FM1 and FM2 sometime in what it was, June, July timeframe, but it was delayed and it was delayed because of, this is my own speculation, but due to testing, they may have found some things and they had to optimize some things. Maybe there were some changes as well to the satellite. I mean, we've speculated at some of the government use cases, but it was interesting. Like this week, we, there was a few of us talking about how, thank God, Thank God they took this time to fix whatever issues there possibly were. And they took their, they were deliberate. They went through various steps and processes, and now they've come to a point where they're comfortable and we're ready to launch satellites. And so imagine trying to rush this thing through and you find an issue post-launch and it's out there in space and it's like Hubble Telescope, right? Like there's a problem, but you've gotta have workarounds to have the satellite work. Like that's not— Yeah. How this stuff operates is not like SpaceX, where you can keep iterating and just throw stuff in the space and see what happens. Then there's a problem. I guess we'll just launch another one. The culture at AST is different, where the first time they do it, it has to be right, and it's going to be right all the time. Right? And so for me personally, I was I know like there were folks agonizing and and they were upset about not getting a launch date and the company's not communicating. And for me. I was pretty relaxed. I was chill. And, and I know like there's been some criticism from people who are like, you're not being critical of management and you should be, you should be calling them out for delays and all this other stuff. And it's like, that's not my role. I'm not, and people know this, like I'm an unapologetic, yeah, unapologetic bull. I'm not going, unless like there's obviously issues or if there's something bad, but my role, I think from my perspective, so first of all, like I think it's important to know where I come from. Like, this is like, I'm managing my own money. I do this for fun. I kind of, I tell people like, if investing can't be fun, like why bother? Like why be involved in like social media? And, you know, for me, like I find enjoyment out of it. Like I enjoy the camaraderie and I'll talk about a bit more about this, but, you know, I enjoy the ability to leverage research from people from all walks of life, which is very different than if you're you know, a hedge fund bro stuck in your own silo and you talk to the same 5, 6 hedge funds, you all traffic the same ideas and that, that, you know, that can be quite dangerous. But for me, you know, I believe in the company and, you know, I remember, I guess it was over the summer, someone was like, well, why don't you put together a whole list of bear points and reasons, things that can go wrong? And it's just like, why should I do that? Like, we've already seen that from all the skeptics and short sellers. Like, I'm not, that's not what I do. Like I'm here from my perspective, like I believe in the investment, I know the risks and we've talked about the risks, but kind of my role I think is keeping people in the game, like making sure number one, and we've discussed this in Spaces before, but it's like managing your risk in terms of your, what you, what you're willing to lose in terms of sizing and making sure like you're managing your risk properly. And I'll talk about, about a bit more about this later, but you know, managing risk of the hedge fund is very different than for a retail investor. And there's quite a few reasons why the, you know, for retail investor, you have a number of advantages and obviously there are some disadvantages, but through the proper, you know, group of investors doing research together, you can overcome some of those disadvantages. But yeah, for me, this is kind of, you know, I've been able to benefit from leveraging research of others and quite candidly, like, you know, if Katzi wasn't there or Cook or Tut, or any number of people, Kevin, Tanner, I mean, there's a whole host. I mean, every, actually every single person here, I wouldn't be in this investment anymore. Like I probably would've given up years ago, but, you know, I had a high level of conviction and I can talk about, you know, why some of the things that were existing, that existed with this company from my initial calls with Abel and kind of doing initial due diligence, there were a few key things that made me realize like, okay, this one's special and I'm going to stick with it. And God, there was like so much doubt and fear over the years. But if it wasn't for this camaraderie and this, this group of folks, I think we're all really lucky that this all came at the right time. 'Cause I don't think there's anybody comparable to the Space Mob and, and what the level of research and, and the experiences that we went through together. I don't think there's anything else out there quite like it. But But yeah, we were just really lucky in some respects to have come across this investment and then this community kind of organically grew and now here we are. But I think going back to those criticisms about what I do, it's like, I'm not selling you subscription service. I don't run money. This is my own personal investment. I share ideas from time to time, but AST is like my highest conviction position. It's the biggest position. At times of when the stock has done well, I've told people, Well, on Spaces, it's like, hey, if you are, and a smart thing to do is to sell some of your position, which, you know, obviously some people think that's sacrilege and won't listen to me. And I'll tell you, like, Cook is one of them. But it's like just simple type of, you know, ideas where it's like, if you can sell enough to pay for taxes and cover your initial investment, then that gives you the mental freedom to basically ride this thing to wherever you want, right? And so for me, the initial, that actually, that catalyst happened during the warrant redemption when, you know, I, at one point, and I've shared this with people before, like I had just under a million warrants. And so, but I didn't have the financial wherewithal to exercise all of them, right? Like I actually had to sell some of them to set aside money for the taxes and then use the rest of the proceeds to exercise the rest. Right. And so that was a hard, I guess, node for me where I actually had to take some money down. And, but it was good because when that happened, I think the stock was like in the 30s and then I was able to set aside some money. And then of course when the stock went all the way down to, gosh, it was like 20 or 18, I had the ability mentally, I was like, oh, well I took some profits up. And so I had the, I didn't care that the stock went down to 18. I mean, obviously it sucked, but then I was also able to buy on the way down, which then of course, you know, it worked itself out and here we are today at all new all-time highs. But I think it's important for people to recognize, like, if you have the ability to take some level of profits and lock those in and cover your initial cost basis, maybe I've seen some people like, oh, I paid the mortgage off of my house and I did, all these different things, which by the way, like I used some of the proceeds from that warrant exercise to pay off the mortgage on my house, which is, you know, when you live in New York City and you have a home here, that's a pretty big nut. And so I remember when the stock did draw down to like 17 or 18, in my mind I was like, oh, well, you know, I paid off my mortgage and I have this capital on the side and I've been able to pay for taxes and then I can buy some more. And so I didn't feel bad when that happened. And that's why For the people who, and I, we joke about this, but for the people who are upset about every single tick, you know, they're watching every tick of the stock up and down and it's like, guy, if you're that emotionally immensely upset about it, then I think you're too big.
[00:19:55] Speaker B: Right.
[00:19:56] Speaker A: I think the key thing for us as investors is to recognize like if you have too much on, it's too much risk for you to handle. I've always talked about like not having never being on margin, especially in a high volatility stock. Like that's the quickest way to death because even though you might be right about the company, the macro volatility can tap you out.
[00:20:14] Speaker B: Right.
[00:20:14] Speaker A: And so I think it's important to recognize that. But anyway, but I think going back to my original point is that, yeah, when I joke around about stuff, like for example, today I tweeted, don't be that guy, right? Where the person is about to hit the end zone. This, But the example was that, you know, we're really close to commercial launch, like don't sell right before we're about to take off, right? The context of that post, the original one was September 5th, which was when I think EchoStar, the news of the deal had come out and the stock just started cratering down all the way to $36. And I was telling people like, how can you hold this thing for 1 or 5 years and basically give up and sell at $36? And that was the point of my tweet, right? Which is, go back to all the reasons why you own this stock and think about what that transaction, Starlink's acquisition of EchoStar Spectrum, like what does that truly mean? What does that mean for this company? I mean, even just like the simple stuff where I was tweeting like, hey, if you do a sum of the parts analysis and you look at, obviously we have leased spectrum, it's not owned, but it's leased for 80 years. I mean, if you buy property in China, You don't actually own the land. It's a long-term lease from the government, but it's not as if that lease is really valuable. And so if you look at the sum of the parts value for AST, it's like, well, let's just assume, and this is back when the stock was lower, right? Let's just assume like, you know, Legato Spectrum is worth $15 billion. Then what you're basically getting the rest of the business for free, right? And so that's, and I was joking, like that's how event-driven value guys, GARP guys are thinking about it, but it's true. They're going to do that exercise in terms of valuation and be like, you know, there's spectrum value here and then the rest of it is upside. So those were the points I was making when the stock went down where I think there are a lot of people again, like on Reddit or Twitter who were really upset, you know, because we always talk about how the stock price writes the narrative. But yeah, people were pretty negative and, you know, why isn't the company basically like Because the stock price is down, like the company needs to launch the satellites. So now it's like, well, they can't, like they're not ready yet. You don't want to put satellites out there when, you know, you haven't finished testing and aren't fully satisfied. But yeah, I think from my perspective, when I tweet stuff like that and when I'm buying, which is what I do, I'm trying to give people a sense of like, hey, you take a step back and think about why you're in this investment. And yeah, stock price is down. It sucks. But Nothing has changed. I mean, yeah, Starlink bought some spectrum, but it's going to take them 2 years to roll that out. Have they solved their business model issues about being competitive with MNOs? No, they actually have become more competitive with them. And so instead of reacting to what the market is doing, think about what this means. It means like AST SpaceMobile is becoming even more and more important partner to MNOs because Elon, in this interview that, that I tweeted out, he said like, oh yeah, maybe we'll just start our own service and we'll have our own phone. Like if you're a Verizon executive or if you're an executive at KDDI, which is the Japanese carrier that's partnered with Starlink, you're reading that shit in your pants. You're like, okay, if I, for KDDI, this partner, it's like, maybe I didn't make the right decision or okay, I'll work with Starlink, but I really have to look over my shoulder and maybe figure out an exit strategy because over time, if Starlink is going to become more competitive with what I do, then I'm going to have to seek alternatives.
[00:23:47] Speaker B: Right.
[00:23:47] Speaker A: And then if you're an AT&T or Verizon exec, you're like, Like, thank God, thank God we chose AST SpaceMobile because they're not competing with us. They never will compete with us and they just want to work with us. And so that's important. But anyway, yeah, I guess that's, I'm just rambling here. I don't have an agenda here, but I did write a few things down to cover. And by the way, like if folks have questions or things that they want me to cover, feel free to comment. But yeah, pretty exciting. I mean, I think last week You know, we, some of us were speculating that the, perhaps the company was getting closer to the satellites getting, you know, being, coming to some level of completion. And by the way, we've been speculating this for weeks and weeks and weeks and we've been wrong. So while we do copious amounts of research, it doesn't mean that we're right. This week we were right finally. And that's another thing too. I think I was kind of, from my perspective, I know people were like, oh, when are they going to, when are they going to, when are these things going to be ready? And And there were, you know, there was quite a bit of frustration, but for me, I kind of took peace and solace in the fact that this stuff is inevitable, right? Like, yeah, maybe it gets delayed by a week, 2 weeks, 3 weeks, a few months, but it's inevitable. And we truly are in some respects like, yes, we're in a race in terms of marketing against Starlink, but we're really in a race against ourselves, right? Because like we have these relationships with MNOs, we have a broadband service, it's purpose-built. You know, applications don't need to, you're basically running everything native. And that's very different than what Starlink is doing. And the services are going to be different and that's fine. Like, you know, it's good to have differentiation. Not everybody wants to, people who like BMWs don't necessarily like Mercedes and vice versa. But we're, as long as a company is executing and making sure that the service we do provide is robust and it does what we say it's going to do, then I'm okay with it being delayed. From the company's perspective, when Scott, you know, Scott has been heavily hinting, he's like, hey, we're going to have a handful of launches by through the end of the year. And he talks about definitive agreements with Kemenos. There's going to be, he said, I think it's a couple soon. I take this guy at his word, right? So it's like, I remember talking with Kook earlier. I was like, well, if he's saying a handful of launches, that means that it's got to be coming very soon, right? Because you've got to. Once you ship a satellite to Florida or India, then integration into the fairing, I think takes like, call it 30 days. And so it's gotta happen soon. And so for me, I was just, you know, I relative, and this is like why over the past week there were some people who were just absolutely, they were beside themselves. Like they just couldn't help it. They were just like tweet, tweeting diarrhea that really just frustration, right? Which, you know, you try to like, Yeah. help walk them off the ledge. But after a while it's like, okay, I can't do this anymore. I'm just blocking or muting these people because it's like, it's too much, right? And for me it's like, oh, it's going to happen. Just everybody relax. And that's what I've been trying to tweet for the last, I don't know, 2 weeks or especially this past week. And so it was really great to see. And you know, it's, there are all these people who are saying the company needs to communicate. Well, shit, we got a lot of communication today or the last few days actually. And it was kind of funny because like there were, what was it, yesterday, yesterday or the day before, when the company tweeted the Vodafone, like the CEO going to Midland. I mean, it's not every day that a CEO of a major MNO goes to Midland, Texas, which is out in nowhere, visited the facilities. And that was basically a signal to investors, also short sellers too, like, hey, I think you should be covering because it sounds like something really important is coming. And I was tweeting, I was kind of hinting at that because it's, if you read the tea leaves, it's like, okay, I think, I think this thing's on, right? It's going to happen. But yeah, that was, it was kind of funny because like there was that tweet by the company where the Vodafone executives were, you know, they came for a meeting and they obviously were celebrating something. And of course the next day we got the tweet that Bluebird 6 has been completely, you know, the final assembly had happened and testing had happened and it's ready. And then we also, of course, heard that Bluebird 7 is basically ready to ship as well, which will be sometime later in October. So, but yeah, that, so that was the news this past week. And then I tweeted out kind of looking at the old playbook, which is, you know, when the stock back in, what was it, July 25th last year, last year, 2024, when the company had tweeted that the 5 Block 1 satellites were ready. to launch, I think the stock traded up like 25% that day. And so this time, you know, we, it was a little more muted that first day when we tweeted that it was ready. FM1 was ready for Bluebird 6. I think the stock traded up what, 11, 12%? And then of course we had the follow-through today, which was another, sorry, I've been out, so I don't recall the exact number. Let me just pull it up here on Bloomberg. But yeah, the stock was up a lot today. Follow through from additional news. So, but yeah, it's kind of funny how, you know, Scott obviously was supposed to speak yesterday and then there was the, or what was the day before? Now all the days are kind of running into each other, but he got bumped off because obviously there was important, important press conference from Trump discussing the Palestinian peace proposal. I don't want to go into politics, but obviously Scott got bumped off for that. And so whatever they were planning to announce that day, perhaps like kind of got moved out. But yeah, it's now, let me just look here. Everyone bear with me. But yeah, we're now in this phase where, as I mentioned before in that tweet, okay, so we finished up today 16%.
[00:29:30] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:29:30] Speaker A: 16% today. And what yesterday was like 12%. So yeah, it's pretty close or it's more than 25%. But yeah, as I mentioned before, this is like what we've all been waiting for, right? And so going back to I guess April, we were all hot and heavy about this multi-launch campaign starting. So now that we finally have it, I mean, you can just see from AST stock price, like this thing has been coiling for months and months and months. And now we're here at this point in time where, and just going back to the touchdown, the end zone analogy, like now you don't want to drop the football, like you want to run in and score. Right. Because now after many months of consolidation, we're finally here. We're about to, so Bluebird 6 is going to be shipped on an Antonov plane to India. Was it October 12th? And so my guess is like, depending on how, I'm not sure how quickly they can integrate the satellite into a fairing, but you're probably looking at what, 30 to 45 days, and then they're going to launch that sucker. And then in the meantime, you're going to have Bluebird 7 sent down to Cape Canaveral and hopefully the company invites investors again or some group of investors. My guess, by the way, like I would tamp down some level of expectations because I would think that the company is probably going to invite more corporate guests. I mean, they might invite retail investors too, but for folks who don't make this next one, by the way, like you can just go down to the Cape and watch it from afar, which is what I'm planning to do if I don't get an invite, if they do the lottery again. But, you know, from this point on, it's not as if there's going, it's gonna be a one and done thing. Like there's gonna be another launch of 3 Bluebird satellites shortly after, probably sometime, my guess is December. And then, you know, so that's 3 launches and then you've got another 10, which is gonna be throughout 2026. And the one I'm really looking forward to is gonna be Blue Origin be, you know, they're, they're gonna put, I think to start, 6 Bluebirds on that one. And then eventually once they've optimized the Bluebirds for weight, and of course if Blue Origin is comfortable with the weight as well, they'll, they'll get up to 8 Bluebirds on, on that launch. But that will be pretty crazy to see. 'Cause, you know, we, we've seen the Block 1, the prior Block 1 satellites obviously all launch on, on one Falcon 9. But of course, you know, the Block 2 satellites are much bigger. But yeah, so we're at this point now where, as I, you know, I put on that tweet, I think going back to July 25th, you know, the stock rallied, it hit a high point of basically up 200% because I think the stock was like at $13. And so at the peak during, you know, the frenzy trading up into the launch of the Block 1 satellites, it did hit $39. And so it was like a 200%, you know, it was up 200% at one point. But of course the stock, you know, did settle back down to the price of $26 and change once the satellites were launched on September, or the successful confirmation of launch was September 12th. But of course, like in the interim during that period of time, and this is, you know, the company was in a very different spot. You know, we still, Did need capital at the time. And so I think when the stock had rallied to $39 and then sometime shortly thereafter, the company did put in an ATM, or sorry, no, the company redeemed warrants, which then raised capital. And that of course forced me to sell some of my warrants and exercise the rest, which I was happy to do because, you know, the company needs money, so that's good. And then, you know, the company did put in an ATM at that time in order to raise additional capital. So when the stock did settle down to the $26 level, You know, all those things have happened. And then of course, like once the satellites were deployed, you had this period of time, which we thought was going to be several, you know, call it 2, 3 quarters, but then ended up being longer because obviously these satellites were delayed in terms of building. You know, we thought the next satellite's not going to be too far off. Sorry, the next launch is not going to be too far off. Like perhaps it's going to be late spring, but then obviously we're now here at the End of summer, I guess we're in Q3 or sorry, we are past Q3, but now at the beginning of Q4. But what's different now is that obviously we've got, you know, I think Ryan O'Connor calls it like the trebuchet of launches. You know, we've got BB6 and we've got BB7 and there's going to be 8, 9, 10 together, and then there's going to be another 3. And these things are just going to be popping out like hotcakes, right? Like you've got launches that will be happening. on average every 1.5 months. And so, you know, there's going to be something very tangible about that where it's going to get people to focus, like institutions, where it's like, okay, this, they're putting the constellation up and they're getting closer and closer to full commercial service. And so, you know, we talk about the concept of the unlock, like this is the true unlock, which is, you know, putting the full constellation out there and then of course monetizing it. And so it's going to be a very exciting 2026. And so that's, you know, when I wrote about that, you know, when the stock price in the previous launch campaign, and that again, that was only one launch, had basically appreciated from $13 to $26, which was like a, what was it? That was a 61% appreciation, you know, applying, I mean, this is kind of dumb logic, but it's the best that we have. Because who knows what the future holds? Not everything's priced in, as some would say. You know, if you applied that 61% appreciation to kind of this initial launch, you'd go from $49, which is where the stock had closed, I guess it was what, Friday, to call it $78, which is pretty close to like, you've seen some of these technical guys, technical analysis guys saying $77 is kind of the next stop. But, you know, I think, you know, again, that's very simple math and just kind of trying to fit what had happened before to what could happen now. But obviously things are different now. Like we've got $1.5 billion of cash versus back then, which was like we had a few hundred million dollars of cash. And then, you know, obviously we've progressed much further along in terms of the FCC review for commercial service, which I think we're— The comment period for our commercial initial, you know, commercial Market access, I think that's kind of towards the end of October. So that's coming pretty quickly. And then as Scott mentioned, you know, this kind of relates to the news today. There's 2 MNOs that I think are going to sign definitive commercial agreements here. And to me, that's Verizon, which I think is probably coming very soon. It's imminent. And, you know, we can joke about how imminent it was several months ago, but as we all know, these MNOs work very slowly. And for Verizon, I'm sure it's a very complicated commercial agreement that you've got to work out with also your rival AT&T. You're combining spectrum together and you're doing all kinds of things together. You have to make sure that you're protected. But that, I believe, is imminent. And the other one that I think you can pretty much— is going to be fait accompli, maybe it will be priced in or it is priced in, is Bell Canada. And so what the An interesting conclusion from today is that Bell Canada announced that they had successful testing of voice, data, video, you know, native voice with HTC Space Mobile. And, you know, interestingly enough, they talk about how the testing had successfully been done over the summer, which is interesting, right? Like if it had been successful back then, why didn't you announce successful testing back then? And one of the key things, like from a commercial perspective, is if you're negotiating a definitive commercial agreement, you don't announce stuff like successful testing before that commercial agreement's done, right? Because it's perhaps like, just in terms of being conservative, you announce successful testing and then what if you can't agree to terms and then you don't come to a commercial agreement and the partnership ends? Well, you're going to look pretty stupid and you're going to have an egg on your face for saying that, hey, this was great. We had testing was great and you were fully committed and then you actually don't get to a definitive commercial agreement, that would be really dumb, right? And so for Bell Canada, the fact that they announced successful testing from the summer today means to me that we must be pretty damn close to that commercial agreement being executed, right? And so, you know, it's, it's, I, you know, Bell Canada did make an investment in the SPAC IPO, and so they, they did make an investment upfront. So I'd expect this time around there's not going to be an investment. But there probably is going to be commercial prepayments, just like what AT&T, Verizon, and Vodafone, you know, this is kind of table stakes, like for an MNO to sign an agreement now, you'll have to provide some upfront prepaid commercial revenue. So that's something that I'd expect. But yeah, today I think for me, that was quite exciting to see Bell Canada finally, because we, you know, they've been a strategic partner for a very long time, but Now to see that announcement today tells me that commercial agreement is coming very soon. The other thing that I would point out is for those that listened to Scott speak at a recent investment conference and then today on Bloomberg, you know, they've, the company has been pretty coy, not coy, but they've, they've like talked down Golden Dome. They'll refer to the fact like the technology has different military applications and obviously we're generating revenue from the military. You know, we're working with SDA, DIU. And we were part of the testing out in the South Pacific or yeah, South Pacific with all the branches of the armed forces recently. But recently at this investor conference and then today, there was this mention specifically of Golden Dome, which based off of our due diligence, we think there's a very high chance we'll get that. And so of course the government has to shut down now, but I would assume that we'll find out soon. It's not It's obviously not a full given. There's always a chance that Golden Dome is not awarded to the company in this initial round and it'll come later, but I think we feel pretty good about that. But anyway, sorry, I'm kind of just hopping all around here because again, I didn't put together a timeline or an outline for, for this space. But I guess another kind of topic that I referred to before, but I want to cover now is the difference between retail investors and professional money managers and the weird dynamics that kind of come out of that. Especially for social media? First, I would say like there are quite a few institutional investors. And when I was in that seat, I did of course pay attention to social media and the whole advent of memification of stocks and, you know, post-COVID. Before it was kind of a peculiarity where people would follow social media to a degree and maybe there were some interesting accounts. And of course on the professional money management side, you would follow people like You know, you'd, there would be like Bill Ackman and any number of folks who would be active on social media. You'd follow them for some level of insights, right? But it wasn't really a signal or people didn't really derive that much value from it until COVID, right? Where then all of a sudden, especially for short sellers, it's like, oh, you better pay attention to these retail investors because if you don't and they start coalescing around stocks that, you know, it's great if they coalesce around stocks that you're long, but if they're, they start becoming interested in stocks that you're short, you might get blown. blown up. And we saw that happen spectacularly for the guys who were short GameStop and any number of other meme stocks back then. But it's interesting because now I think social media now offers like a pretty decent amount of alpha. I mean, there's obviously a ton of noise and there's bots and all kinds of garbage that's out there, but I think you will see some social, I mean, some professional money managers active Whether it's through doxxed accounts or anonymous accounts. Because basically everybody, I've talked about this before, like Bloomberg has functions and APIs where you can check sentiment and you can check, you know, let me see here. I can, like, there's a social media trends window in Bloomberg where you can pick stocks based off of social velocity, social volume, news volume, social sentiment, news sentiment. UseRadar. I mean, there's a lot of different tools now because it's actually important. Like, and of course, like, those tools aren't foolproof because people game the system too, right? We see bots show up for ASTS or any number of tickers, and bots are becoming even better. Like, back in the day, bots would just be, they would just repeat the same shit, right? It'd be like, oh, this person generated a lot of money, you should follow them. But now bots have AI built in where they will reply to your tweets and give some level of insight, regurgitate some insight related to the stock ticker, and then of course try to force you into some Telegram or Discord. But anyway, I guess my point is that social media is important now, right? It's a signal. Like I joke about how before I mentioned like when Reddit is really negative or you see a lot of people post negative things, then that's a good indicator that perhaps like in a given situation you might be bottoming.
[00:42:55] Speaker B: Right?
[00:42:55] Speaker A: Like if it's a very retail, if there's a bunch of retail activity in a certain stock, then it could be a signal to, oh, you might be at bottom or you might, or conversely, you might be at a top. But yeah, so nowadays there's a lot of professional money managers who do follow social media. They might even have their own accounts. There's obviously a lot of people who claim to be managing capital. I know we joke about how some people put, you know, retail people put like, I have an $8 million net worth, like in their bio as if that gives them more credibility. Like I joked about how maybe I should change my tag to say $50,000 net worth, or I have, you know, I have a Pokémon collection worth, you know, $3,000 or something just to fuck around with people. But yeah, it's interesting because now you've got, and it's what you'll see hedge fund guys, whether they're junior people or maybe they're senior people and moved into running a pod, They'll tweet stuff, right? And so what's interesting is like, especially in this day and age and in this time right now, post-COVID, but we're clearly in this market now that is, I mean, you know, it is a frothy market and a lot of stocks are working. Kevin Mack, I don't know if he had a rough day today and he threw some barbs at me, which is fine. People gotta release their stress somehow. But he's right. He's right there. This is a frothy market and there's stuff that, there's things that are somewhat questionable that are working.
[00:44:19] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:44:20] Speaker A: And so a key thing to investing is recognizing those environments and making sure whatever you're invested in is doing well because of the company, not just because the market's going up and it's riding, you know, it has a high level of beta and everything's going up. And so obviously, like in markets that are doing really well, everyone feels like a genius, right? Like everyone's, you know, Scott's stock you pick is doing well, even the questionable ones. But I think it's, you know, Taking a step back, it's interesting because I think for professional money managers, there is a decent, there's a high level of envy, right? So if you can imagine, like if you work at a pod shop, when I talk about pod, it's like Millennium or Citadel or any number of these places. Like that is a really fucking hard job. Like imagine if you have a book of, I don't know, you pick the number, like if it's a small place, maybe $200 million, or you have a book that's like a billion dollars, right? And so Imagine you're a portfolio manager and then you've got like 2 or 3 analysts working for you and you've got these crazy tight risk limits, right? Because you, your focus is just to generate alpha. You cannot be riding beta. You cannot. The reason why then why I say that is like you've got to be factor neutral, meaning like you've got to hedge out to your best ability. You have to hedge out the noise and you can, and you're, you know, you're able to manage a billion dollars because your book is hedged, meaning like, you know, if the market goes up or goes down, Theoretically, you should be indifferent. Your book is going to basically be somewhat neutral. But then because you've picked the proper winners and you've picked the proper losers, meaning the short ideas, which by the way is like a really hard thing to do. Like I like beating up on shorts, but then also I recognize like that's a hard fucking job, which is why I'm glad I don't do that job anymore. For hedge fund managers, like you've got an impossible job, right? You've got to Come up with ideas or some differentiation, some unique strategy. Like I remember, you know, when you go to allocators, they're like, well, what makes you unique? It's like, well, my investment process is unique. I focus on this area and I'm able to pick the winners. And whether that's on, if you can imagine like hedge funds, you're not only, you're measured on a day-to-day basis, week to week, month to month. You can have a big drawdown, like, you know, and you've gotta be able to generate true alpha, meaning like this, there's something very particular about the stocks that you're long and the stocks that you're short that are going to outperform other guys who are doing the same thing. And that doesn't mean like if the market's up 30%, it doesn't mean like you need to be up 30%. But from a risk-adjusted basis, if you were up like 10%, but you didn't take, it wasn't because of data and it wasn't because of all this noise, like that's true alpha generation, right? And so like For these large shops, they're going to hire a ton of teams. They're going to be managing like billions of dollars and then they're going to leverage it up, right? They're going to lever, if they're managing $10 billion, they're going to lever it up 4 times to $40 billion. And they've got to make sure everybody who's running money is running it very tight. Like you cannot have a blowup. You can be wrong on a few things, but you know, if you have a drawdown of, if you're down 5%, 7%, 10% in a year, you're out. Your job is done, right? And so it's a very different business and it's high stress. It's not easy. If you're good at it, the ones who are good at it are crazy. You have to be a certain kind of crazy, which is why like when people listen to Cook, it's like, oh yeah, he's that kind of crazy. And I was that kind of crazy to some extent, but it's a tough job. So you have to recognize like where those people are coming from. And so when they're on social media and they see retail mom and pops, like, you know, I see some of the people in the crowd here who are pharmacists or who do different jobs. They might work in construction, might work in a factory or whatever. And then they, these people, these retail people who have decided for whatever reason, you know, whether it's serendipity, they came across an idea or whatever it is, but they glommed onto the right idea and they made a shitload of money. Like these professional money managers have this envy and they hate that. They hate that shit. They're like, wait, I'm so smart. I know every single thing about some of these companies. I pay experts, I do due diligence. I pay for like cutting-edge research. Like, you know, we used to joke, I mean, back in the day when there was the ability to generate alpha, like, you know, let's see if Best Buy's going to beat the quarter. Like I'm going to call regional managers through expert networks, or I'm going to count cars in the parking lot. But all that shit is like arb'd out. Right? Everybody does that stuff. But now it's like for these professional money managers who have tremendous amount of resources to know what's going to happen to a company in every, any given quarter and have insight, then they see like retail people who are basically like, you know, long a stock and maybe they're long in size and they hold it and it keeps compounding and they're making a shitload of money. They can't stand that. Imagine like if you're a doctor and you've got That, you know, you went through whatever it is, 10, 12 years of education and some yahoo off the street, like somehow all of a sudden, like, you know, they're able to do surgery and they do it, you know, without even going, getting all the, you know, certifications and then an education. They somehow do surgery and it comes out okay. You would be upset too. You'd be like, what the fuck? Like, I paid my dues. How is that person performing so well, right? And so that's why like there's this condescension of when you see professional money managers or people who work at places and they're on Twitter and they're just shitting on people and they're shitting like, oh, that company doesn't make sense. Or it's like, it's a pre-revenue company, it's overvalued. And this is the same stuff, by the way, like if you want the example of what happened, this is exactly what happened with Tesla back in the day. It's like every hedge fund was short Tesla. They're like, This doesn't make sense. It's overvalued. They just couldn't because they couldn't see beyond their nose, right? Like they can't, when you're in finance and you're, when you're working at a hedge fund and you're focused on companies that have financial results like here and now, you're focused on quarters, you're focused on, you know, what is the, is the company going to beat? And not only are they going to beat, are they going to raise guidance or are they going to miss and lower guidance? I mean, it's a very simple game, right? And so you need to know every single thing about that company. In that case, when you're conditioned that way, you can't think of pre-revenue companies unless you're a biotech investor, which are very specific, special case of people. Because in biotech, like you have to think about timeframes like 10, 20 years out and be able to discount, you know, cash flows from a drug being approved and then some level of adoption. So in some respects, we're all biotech investors, right? For pre-revenue companies or VC investors. But for public hedge fund investors, like they're, they can't think beyond like real financials and quarterly, what's going to happen this quarter, what's going to happen next quarter. They can't look beyond that, right? And they can't think at a higher level, which is why they totally missed Tesla and they were short and got their asses handed to 'em. And which is why, you know, in this day and age, and look, there are certain sectors that I don't understand or I'm somewhat skeptical, But I know this company, AST, and I know what the opportunity is and I know like there's 6 billion phones, like an existing install base that can be leveraged. And once this constellation's up, like you can turn on those phones. And so that's pretty fucking compelling, right? Like I don't know what the end state number. And so that like when people challenge you on, well, what's the company's revenue going to be? And, you know, how much EBITDA are they going to generate? And if you do a discounted cash flow, what is it worth? It's like, I can't tell you. I mean, I can run models and sensitivities, but at the end of the day, like, I know the TAM is huge and I know there's a massive install base and this company has 50 MNOs working with it. And there's, you know, if those 50 MNOs have 3 billion subscribers and, you know, if we, I don't know, we get like 3, 4, or 5% of those subscribers paying $10 to $15 a month, like that's a big fucking number. Like we're talking about at a much higher level of the abstract. This company is going to be worth a lot and I can go through those numbers, but then, so people can't get beyond that point. It's more about like, oh, the launch is delayed by a week, so I'm going to short the stock because people are going to freak out and I'm going to make like 5 or 10%. It's like, you're such a fucking dumbass. Or, and that's the hedge fund mentality where it's like, okay, I'm going to try because the company is delayed or there's some, there's going to be a runaway delay. Like, oh, the company can't build the satellites on time. So Everything's, everything's going to get pushed back. And it's like, but they're kind of missing the bigger picture, which is this company is getting closer to commercial service. They're executing. Yes, there's some delays, but in the grand scheme of things, it doesn't matter. This service is inevitable. It's going to happen. And, and the people, by the way, like we can go through layers and layers of bear cases that got disproved or basically fell by the wayside. I mean, one key one, I mean, it was huge. This is back in 20— 2020, 2021, when I started sharing this idea on Twitter, it's like, oh, it's a niche market. No one's going to care. Like it's not that big. And then of course, fast forward to 2022, it's like, oh, Starlink is getting into the market and Apple was like trying to provide SOS service, but yeah, yeah, no one's going to care. It's too small. And then of course today it's like, oh, Starlink spent $19 billion on spectrum and every legacy guy is trying to get into this market because they see opportunity. Those same legacy guys like Iridium and others who Pooh-poohed this thing. It's like everybody's now stumbling over themselves to try to get into direct-to-device, and it's just, it's kind of funny, right? But I think, you know, it, when you see professional money managers who are condescending and like they kind of nitpick at stuff like this guy, is it Major Tom supposedly, you know, manages money. He's like, well, you know, people should be aware that Starlink is out there and they're well capitalized and they have a history of execution. So You should be careful. And it's like, it's like as if this is brand new news. Like, oh, you're right. Actually, you know what? That's a really great point. I should just sell my entire position today. It's like, oh my gosh. Like, we're— but I think that's where there's like this cognitive dissonance is happening where these people don't, they can't figure, they don't understand, or they can't think of the bigger picture where they're going to find all the reasons why you shouldn't invest in it. And of course they're going to pat themselves on the back and point that out on Twitter, especially when the stock is down, when it's like $36, they're like, ah, see, I told you so. And then of course the stock's at $66 today, but they can't kind of think bigger because hedge funds, these investors are not, they're not built to do that. They're built to basically scalp and chop out a living of generating risk. But of course, risk adjusted, it's a very good return, like high Sharpe and all this other shit. you know, 10% a year with low drawdowns and volatility versus retail investors. And that's the thing that they hate because they don't have the freedom. And of course, historically, retail investors have been disadvantaged and unfortunately got taken advantage of and all these different things, right? But that's why you see all these professional money managers who will come out and just totally shit on different ideas or make snide remarks and kind of hint at like, oh, well, you guys don't know something and I do, or I'm more qualified to think about this. And it's like, that's the great thing about investing is that it's truly democratized at this point. It's like most people, if you have access to the internet, you can go to, you know, you can get a decent amount of information through, you know, SEC filings. You can go to Yahoo, Google, like all the tools are pretty decent. And then if you pay a little bit of money, one app that I recommend people use is Koyfin. K-O-Y-F-I-N. It's kind of like a retail, but quite powerful. It has a lot of the features and functionality of Bloomberg, not quite there, but pretty damn good, right? And that it only costs, actually, I don't know what it costs anymore, but it's probably like, I don't know, $60, $70, $80 a month. But yeah, there's all these different tools out there. And so the advantage that there's like some structural and data advantages that that retail has actually against professional money management, right? And so I know people were kind of beating up on Kevin Mack today, which he's a guy that I highly respect, but I think people need to understand like he is operating under very different parameters, right? Like he has LPs, he's got to generate good risk-adjusted returns, and it's a very different game, right? And so you're kind of comparing apples to oranges. For retail, as I mentioned before, like before historically, the biggest disadvantage was information. Right. And so that information edge has dropped to a degree, but obviously hedge funds still have a tremendous amount of resources for edge. But then one cool thing that's kind of happened recently is the fact that this is what, you know, when I talk about space mob, retail now has a, not a comparable, but sometimes, I mean, depending on how special a community is, like it can have a pretty high level of edge, if not Or actually in a lot of cases, more edge than hedge funds. But, you know, for hedge funds, I think it's important to understand that a lot of names in the book, they might have, I don't know, you might have 20, 30 names in a book that you know really well, but you're not going to know it extremely well. Whereas, you know, some of the people in the space mob, like all they think about is this particular company and all they do is, and again, this is coming from different disciplines, whether it's, you have your attorneys, you have some finance people, you have people Who come from a defense angle or have worked in production. I mean, there's just a whole host of, you know, different people to leverage. But if you can get a community of people who kind of work together to figure out, you know, all the different things about a particular company, the risks, you know, execution for different aspects, then retail actually has a pretty big advantage. So, I mean, just in particular for Space Mob, you've got a number, like Katzi is a technical expert and he's kind of Ransom's man. He understands the satellite technology. He also understands regulatory process and so do, you know, a few other of Space Mob as well. When I think about the raw like horsepower and brainpower of Space Mob compared to when I was a hedge fund manager and I think about different names that I was invested in, I would be at a huge disadvantage, right? Like, and that's where I think the space mob can be kind of cultish and maybe not childish, but I guess maybe condescending back to, you know, people who are skeptical about what the company's doing. That level of assuredness is the fact that, you know, these people in the space mob have been doing research for, I don't know, I mean, some people it's been 5 years, right? And they've been through the ups and downs and it's not just the research, but it's also having gone through the pain, right, of the volatility of the company where it had almost hit the point of probably near bankruptcy in early 2024, things really coming together and the company getting to the next level, right? Because it doesn't matter, like if you've got the best technology, if you don't have the capital and partners behind it, and you know, you've seen this throughout history, there's sliding door moments, right? Where a company is able to make it and they take the entire market or they become a big player versus others that had the right technology, didn't either, maybe they didn't have the, you know, the business model or the distribution. But I think where retail is different is that, you know, that information advantage has been, in some cases it's become somewhat more even. And then in other cases, in this case of HD Space Mobile and Space Mob, like the retail advantage in terms of information is much, much higher than hedge funds. Because quite candidly, like a lot of hedge funds out there, and we saw this, right? And this is quite Funny, but there was like this whole group of EchoStar investors, which by the way, God bless 'em, they turned out to be a home run for them compared to like the company potentially going bankrupt over the summer. But now, you know, Charlie Ergen was forced to sell Spectrum and basically sell off pieces of the business and that stock has been a tremendous win, right? But then this is where hedge funds like get into trouble, right? They're like, oh hey, I'm going to run this position and I need to hedge it instead of using a sector hedge, like maybe an ETF or something, I'm going to short AST SpaceMobile against my long position. I'm going to do a pair trade, right? Because now like EchoStar is kind of a proxy for Starlink, SpaceX. And so what better hedge than shorting AST SpaceMobile? And so they're shorting AST like in the hole at $40 down to $35. There was one account that was kind of like doing victory laps, which I kind of corrected him today. But it's like, hey, you should have the trade on long EchoStar and short AST, which by the way, EchoStar now is a I mean, it does have, you know, there is the SpaceX holdings, which, you know, you can argue whether that's fully valued or not. And then you've got to discount that by, you know, when Ergen and Hamid potentially either monetize that or do something with it, there are going to be some tax implications. But for the most part, like EchoStar is a holding company. It's now that stake. And then they've got Spectrum Holdings, which they've sold a few pieces off and there'll be some tax implications there, but you're basically long like this event, this NAV play. And this is where there's what we call basis risk, right? Like you're basically long this one thing and then you're short something that's, you're something totally different, right? Like AST SpaceMobile. Yeah, there is some relatedness to Starlink, but there are also, you know, there's some stuff that doesn't, they're basically like 2 different trades, right? And so you're long this thing that has some limited upside. Like it's when these events happen, the value gets unlocked and maybe stock trades higher. And then you're short this like company that has a tremendous amount of TAM and white space and you're going to get fucking run over. Right. And so, but you know, hedge funds, they can't think beyond, you know, they can't think beyond their nose. So they're, hey, AST SpaceMobile's a great short. I'm going to go short it against this thing that I'm long. And they're kind of related, but they're really truly in terms of risk reward, they're totally opposite ends. Right. And so those guys have gotten completely run over, right? Like they shorted AST at I don't know, 40, 36 maybe at the lows. And then they're long EchoStar at 70, 75. And today they got, they got fucking run over. I mean, if you look at where they closed in, you'll see EchoStar was basically down slightly and then AST SpaceMobile was up a ton. And I guarantee you, like there were guys that were getting tapped outta that trade by their risk manager that was like, okay, you had the wrong hedge on, you need to cover. You need to cover AST and perhaps maybe even sell some of your EchoStar. Like I've had enough of this. 'Cause AST has, you know, gone from their short of $40, now it's at $66. Like they just got that trade wrong. And, you know, I joked about it with, with Kook the other day. It's like, you could have shorted Iridium. Iridium is the company that's going to get their lunch eaten by AST SpaceMobile and EchoStar, or sorry, not EchoStar, but SpaceX. You should be, you should have been short that. And of course, like people are afraid of Iridium's dividend, but You know, that stock was like $30, $35, and now it's at $18, right? And so that would've been, that in my opinion would've been a better hedge. But anyway, but yeah, I think, you know, for retail investors, as I was saying before, like, you know, that information advantage has been kind of leveled between professionals and retail. But then more importantly, for some of these specific names, retail actually knows the name better, right, than professional investors. And of course, like, There's this argument that, well, maybe they're not doing the proper due diligence or valuation, whatever, yada, yada, yada. But I think where retail can excel is the fact that they have a longer time horizon. And you can think about holding an investment over years, not thinking about, again, hedge funds will say, hey, there's no revenues here and they're not— they're trading at the classic line, it's trading at 100 times revenue. This year's revenue, it's like no one's investing in companies based off of historical results. People are investing in companies based off of future potential, right? So, you know, in AST's case, like, is it a company? Let me just look on Bloomberg here. You know, who knows what cons— if consensus is right, but let's just take 2027. The estimates are all over the place, right? Like there's a, the median estimate for revenue in 2027 is $900 million. The highest estimate is $1.5 billion. And then of course, I don't know where this is coming from, but there's a low estimate of $120 million, which doesn't make any sense to me. But yeah, I mean, if you compare the enterprise value based off of where revenues are going to be in 2027, then it looks a lot more reasonable. And taking into account the fact that a lot of, because of the way that the company is structured, a lot of the top line is actually going to go down to It's, you know, you're looking at EBITDA margins of 80, 85%, 90%. And so when you look at it based off of multiples out in 2027, if they can get there, then the company looks pretty cheap. But obviously, you know, if you're short the company, you're going to harp on the fact that it doesn't have that much in terms of revenues today, which by the way, the company is going to generate, is going to, is starting to generate revenue now. Q3 will be interesting in terms of, you know, the company has guided to $50 to $75 million of a second half revenue for 2025. So they're going to start reporting that stuff, which is great. But yeah, the other thing I think is important is, and it matches this time horizon, is that retail can buy and hold. They don't, as long as you're not doing something stupid, getting margined, having a lot of margin on, or just going nuts with options, which, you know, I've talked about how you can do short-term plays and as long as you have a very good sense of price and timing, But also be recognized, like if you're, this is if you're long options, but recognize like this is a tear-up. You've got to accept the fact that you're going to be wrong most of the time, but the risk reward and potential payoff is compensating for it. You might be able to take, you know, you might take an option position, but the key thing about retail is like you can have a 10% drawdown, you can have a 20% drawdown, 30%, as long as your spouse, your husband or your wife is okay with it, or maybe they don't know, you can ride volatility. And yeah, maybe from a mental perspective, you know, it may not be the best thing for you, but if you have a 7 to 10% drawdown at a hedge fund, you're basically done. Like in a pod shop, you're done. You know, they cut your capital, it's hard to make it back. And for all intents and purposes, like you're out of the game and that's really tough. And that's where I like, from a, if you can imagine, like some of you guys have put on an option position and it doesn't go your way and you're just like, you're praying that something miracle's going to happen, or you're, or this is where some of the people on Twitter, they lose their shit. They like, you know, copy the CEO, CFO of a company and they're like, you need to do something. And so like usually those people are the ones who are long short-dated options because they truly need to get bailed out and they need a miracle. Imagine like you are at a hedge fund and you're down, again, this is like all child's play for the, for most of us, but if you're down 6, 7% on your book, like you're going to get Pretty much fired. And so that's a tremendous amount of stress. And again, like managing money professionally, and this is for pod shops, it's tough, it's super stressful. And that's why you've got people, and I joke about this, it's like the true short sellers who make a lot of money, they never post on Twitter because they're making money and they're fine. The ones who are losing money and are desperate are the ones who post on Twitter. It's like the Pivotal Capitals or Onata Capitals who I think Onoda, that Onoda guy, I think he had shorted AC/DC Global like in the teens. And then he literally tweeted that, I think I'm covering at the top, which was like $39. Indeed he did. And he lost his ass, right? But the people, the short sellers who consistently lose money, they're the ones who are posting on Twitter because they're trying to be out there to influence the stock price because they need to get bailed out. The ones that are like true professional money managers, who actually make money, who are not on the short side, who are not smash and grab guys like Carisale, they don't post on Twitter. They just like, they get edge and they let the stock do its thing, whether it's a fraud or something bad happens, and then they make their money. Like they're not out there trying to influence the stock to go down. I tend to find like the people who do that are the desperate ones, right? Who the trade is going against them and they need it. They need to develop or put FUD out there in order for And they believe like somehow it's going to influence the stock and they're going to, you know, make their money back. But the key thing for, you know, retail is that you can hold the stock. And the extreme example of Space Mob, like there are people who had 80, 90% drawdowns on this position. And of course it was an outsized position, so it was an even more brutal financial hit. So you can like, hedge fund manager and say, hey, drawdown on this position. Not only that, I didn't sell on the way back up and I held it all the way through to a 2,000% return. They would lose their shit. And this is where professional money managers are like, that's not supposed to happen. Like, I know what I'm doing. You don't know what you're doing. How could you do that? How could you go all the way down, not take a loss, and ride it all the way back up. That's insane. That doesn't make sense. And that's why, like, you know, that's why they lose their shit when they see retail investors who go through this like crazy, you know, levels of volatility actually make it out on the other end. And by the way, like it doesn't always end up happy. Like there's people who have put a decent amount of money or net worth into a position and it's gone south and then it never returned. Or there were, and this, these are the really unfortunate stories. There were people who were long AST SpaceMobile who were dedicated and were in it and believed for a year or two. And then when the big drawdown happened, they held all the way through. And then for whatever reason, like something snapped, right? Whether it's people who are FUDing, which there are quite a few of them, or they just, yeah, they reached their limit. They were, they didn't, what they risked was too much. And for whatever reason they decided, hey, down 90%, I'm cutting this. And you know, maybe, hey, it's a Tax write-off. I mean, it's going to offset some capital gains or whatever it is, or they did what they had to do to get right and then they didn't get back into it. And that is brutal. Like, I remember talking to a few people about it where I don't know what I would've done with myself. Like, I had a high level of conviction. I mean, everyone knows, like, it's not as if it's blind. Everybody, when you're in a position and it's down a lot, you question it, right? And that's what every good investor does. You're like, well, did I get something wrong? Am I, is there a blind spot? I'm not seeing something. And then, and you re-underwrite the position and you're like, okay, you know, I think I'm right. I'm going to continue to hold this or I'm going to buy more. And that's where retail's different because you have the luxury of being able to wait stuff out as long as, of course, as long as you're not in margin and you're not long options, you know, perhaps LEAPS, I guess. But you have the ability to ride cycles in markets, right? As long as you do it in a responsible manner. Whereas professional money managers, they don't have that luxury. They have to always be performing. And it's a really tough job. And so I think like, I think when on the one side, when people, professional money managers are telling you what you should be doing and criticizing you, like you're dumb to hold this thing, then you can kind of like understand where they're coming from, which is like, oh, they have a different perspective, but they can't operate that way. And so you have to kind of recognize that and not beat people up for it because it's a different mentality, right? And on the flip side, like From perspective, like they're not going to understand you and that's okay too. You know, it's like, I think whenever people are tweeting stuff, you just have to understand their perspective. If they're selling a subscription service, you know, one of the things you have to ask yourself is like, why are they selling subscription service? If they're really good at what they do and they're making a lot of money, then why do they need to sell subscription? But then there are people who are young, who are young, who don't have capital to manage or they haven't been in it long, but they're really good with ideas. Or there's some people who are actually really good at ideas and they can't manage capital. And there are people like that. For example, some people are in the sell side, they come up with great ideas, but then when it comes to actually investing and pulling the trigger, and this is like in investing, there's different kinds of people. Like if you're a portfolio manager, you need to be able to manage risk and pull the trigger. Like that's a really tough job, like pull the trigger and cut losses, right? But then you might have an analyst who's really good at researching ideas, but they have no no way to like understand when to enter a position, when to exit a position, how to size it, how to manage risk, you know, but they might be a good fundamental analyst, right? And so there's a lot of different, you know, types of investors out there, but I think it's important, like when people, and this is, you know, having respect for professional money managers, like it's a really tough job. And I think like the mentality that you have to operate there, it's very different than from a retail investor. And for a retail investor, you can make a ton of mistakes and it's forgivable. Right? Like you're only answering to yourself or perhaps your spouse, but it's a very different construct to operate in. And I think it's important to recognize, like, you know, there's some people out there who are like, well, AST SpaceMobile is like 80% of your portfolio. That's like totally irresponsible. Well, hold on. Like, let's put some context around that. AST SpaceMobile used to be 20% of my portfolio and it just happened to grow into 80%. Like if you give someone the context of that, it's like, oh, okay, so you're playing with house money now. And okay, that kind of makes sense. And you believe in the company, like why not just And you think you're positive on it, you're still positive on it, and you've sold a decent amount that recovered your investment and paid for taxes. And you're basically, and this is like nirvana for me, which is, you know, I keep trying to tell Kook and other people who are like in Kook's camp where they're just like extremists. It's like sell a decent amount where you're comfortable, where, and to the point where the rest that you have, you can ride it to Valhalla. Like it doesn't matter if it's like down, 30% one day, or if it's up 2x the next day, like you're just happy, right? Because you took your piece of the cake and you've set it aside and the rest, like it's just gravy. And so like that's my position right now where I have a huge like long-term, fortunately the warrants though that I exercised last year, they all, all the stock that I exercised in the taxable accounts that went long-term at the end of September. And so But then, you know, I've got a lot in retirement accounts, which is great too. But for me, you know, I'm able to ride volatility because I really don't care because I've already made a lot of money and I took aside some of it. And then the rest is just like, you know, people talk about like generational wealth and all this other shit. It's like, yeah, I can just ride it. I don't care. Like, and I can let the company cook, like let them do their thing. And I'm going to go out there and educate people on what the company's doing and, you know, And by the way, like everybody talks their book, right? Like, so I'm bullish on AST because I own it. And if I wasn't bullish, then I wouldn't own it. So like, that's the, that's kind of like when people are like, well, I don't know if he's biased, or it's like, yeah, I am biased because I own a shitload of this company and I'm very bullish on it and it's done amazingly well for me and other people. And so I'm biased and I'm okay with that. Like that's how investing works. That's how you build up conviction. You can, also be skeptical, which I've been skeptical and there's risks of course, and I think about it every day. But at the same time, like I talk about this company because I believe in it. Like if I didn't, then I wouldn't talk about it. And so, but I think, you know, going back to retail investors and for AST SpaceMobile in particular, you know, everyone has different risk tolerances, right? And so I think someone who just bought the stock today has very different risk parameters and a different view versus someone who has owned this thing for 5 years. But obviously, you know, Cook said in this space, you wouldn't be buying the stock at $66 if you thought that the upside was only to $70. You're buying it today at $66 because you think that this is going to be, you know, $100 by the end of the year. It's going to be, has the potential to be $300 in 2 years. That's the framework that people are thinking through when evaluating this company. I think Interestingly, it has been a lot of the research and conviction around the name has been retail focused, but obviously that's been changing over the years where, you know, there was a handful of institutions before, but that of course has been growing more recently. And as we get closer to commercialization, I think that's going to ramp up significantly, right? Because, you know, there's a lot of different ways to, if I was to go to a hedge fund dinner and pitch an idea, you know, one of my opening things for this would be like, oh, hey, there's Starlink. It's Valued at $250 billion, and here's AST SpaceMobile, and they're for this particular market, which is massive in size, which is providing broadband connectivity to your mobile phone. They're leader, and Starlink thought it was important enough, and they got into the market as well, and they spent $19 billion on spectrum. What could this company be worth? Right? If Starlink, and obviously there's like the fixed broadband business for Starlink, but if you look at Morgan Stanley and other research analysts who have published on Starlink, all the growth is coming from direct-to-device in the future. It's not going to be fixed. And so what would you pay for a SpaceX bubble? Like the fact that, and I mentioned this before in a conversation I had, I talked about like how crazy it is that we, in my case and a lot of people's cases, like we've held this stock for, well, first of all, we bought it, we got involved and for most people it was by serendipity, you know, it was by chance. But then as you researched it, you know, for someone to buy it in 2020, 2021 and to hold onto it for all these years, it's like, What were the clues, right? Because there were obviously a lot of companies that came public in 2021. But for me, the biggest thing when I saw the deck when they went public was the fact that you had Vodafone, American Tower, like all these MNOs and infrastructure guys invested in the company. And then the key thing for me was AT&T, right? The fact that AT&T was a strategic partner, they hadn't made an investment at the time, but they were working closely with the company. Vodafone had been working closely, their engineers with companies since 2000. I think it was like they started working together the summer of 2018. But it was like the fact that the MNOs were there, they had solved the business model problem. That gave me conviction because at the end of the day, like I'm just a retail investor. Yeah, I was a professional before and I've, I had due to, you know, I had calls with Abel and Scott before, but at the same time it's like, I'm not an engineer. I'm not a specialist. I don't have an ability to discern whether this truly will work or not. But for me, the fact that the MNOs were backing it and they had tested it and they had committed to it, you know, AT&T, they had signed a 5-year exclusivity. For me, that's what really did it where I was like, when I looked at the past of all these satellite operators who had failed, this company like came up with a really novel idea of working with existing phones, which, you know, that solved the install base and they're working with MNOs, which is distribution. And then those guys also invested. I mean, those were huge validation points for me, which it wasn't easy in 2022 and 2023 to hold onto the thing, right? When the market was down and, you know, there was a lot of doubt and of course, you know, naysayers or whatever. But those things are, you know, the M&Os have always been a key aspect of what differentiated this company. And the fact that when it went public, it had like, I forget, I did put the numbers together, but it was like, I think it was like 13 M&Os. In 2021, and now we're at over 50. It's like, okay, yeah, maybe one or two MNOs, maybe they're not very smart and they, you know, they made it, their engineers aren't that smart and they got bamboozled, but it's like 50 MNOs and like Vodafone, AT&T, AccuTend engineers who are working closely with the company. They all keep striking checks and they're all still working with the company. Then Verizon, you know, 2024, they evaluated Starlink, they evaluated AST SpaceMobile. And they went with AST. It's like, okay, that's a huge validation point. That's, I mean, when Verizon came on board, that's when the stock went from the teens to, you know, it rerated to the 30s. And so the reason why I pointed that out is that part of it, part of it coming across this investment was luck for me. But then once the deal was announced and I reviewed it, the other part was like being able to assess like, there's something truly special here. Like they're attacking a massive market and they've got these strategic partners. that it's not just fluff. Like they're helping develop the technology hand in hand. And so, and then that kind of dissuades like this whole idea, like it's not a real market. Well, if it's not a real market, then why are these MNOs who know their customer best, why are they investing and why are they fully committed to this? The reason why I pointed that out is that, you know, in 2021 there were all these companies that went public that were absolute failures, right? And they were interesting ideas, but then They didn't make it. And so, and I think this is where retail, obviously people get a bad rap. It's like, oh well, they, retail got fleeced on these different names that didn't work out. Which by the way, like I was involved, I invested in some of the names that didn't work out. And that's just, by the way, like that's part of investing. Like if you're batting above 50%, if you're batting 60% winners as an investor, like that's a really high batting percentage. And for this, this name in particular, And this is, this is something I wanted to talk about after, you know, chatting with some people in SpaceBob, like this is a, was a very unique situation, like right time, right place, like AST SpaceMobile should have never gone public. But because of COVID and, and the amount of liquidity that was in the market, pre-revenue companies at that level of development, which, you know, this company was basically a Series B or Series C company that went public. They shouldn't have gone public, but we were able, for better or for worse, we were able to invest. And kind of see this company through all the different stages of development. So AST, and I can say this now because we're at the right point, in a traditional market, AST would be going public now on the cusp of generating revenues in the second half of this year. Actually, I take that back. In a traditional IPO process, AST SpaceMobile would be going public in the first quarter of 2026. And I would say like it'd probably be coming out at this valuation or slightly higher. But imagine that we actually got involved 5 years ago. We got to see as a public company how the sausage was made and all the company's ups and downs, but we got in at such a low valuation and we suffered for it. We lost hair, you know, whatever it is, sleepless nights. We were able to invest at that early stage. And of course the company got scrutinized and short sellers, all that shit, right? But now it's kind of funny to think that at the company stage of development, it would probably be going public in the first quarter of next year. The reason why I say that is, you know, you want to take a company public when it has, when it's achieved like revenue and it's on the cusp of commercialization, all this other stuff, like that's probably when it would go public. Actually, if it were to go public with the constellation fully deployed and it's generating a lot of revenues, then it wouldn't be coming out at $20 billion. It'd be coming out at $100 billion valuation. I mean, who knows, right? It's just kind of funny how because of COVID and the Fed, we were able to invest in this company. And I, you know, I look back and like I talked to Tut and Patsy and Cook about this. I mean, we were all really lucky. We caught lightning in a bottle, right? We, this was all an organic, like on the one hand, this was a SPAC and like, you know, I happened to invest in the SPAC prior to the deal being announced. And so I was forced to look at this name. And then when I looked at it, I was like, holy shit, this is really great. And so I just kept buying more of it. I got too big too early. And then of course, like the company went through 2022 and 2023 when the Fed like raised rates and tried to fight inflation and basically killed all these speculative names. But the company had to suffer through that. And of course delays, like if you're a company trying to achieve the grand ambitions of what they're trying to do, you need capital. And the company was starved for capital. And so there was this like the time death march of trying to make it through, just scrapping. But during that period, like this, it's like this community, investment community from all walks of life came together unlike any others out there in the, in this age of social media where people could connect and leverage different research. Yeah, it's a very unique thing and we're lucky, quite candidly, that it all worked out. I mean, for the company there, I'm sure there were plenty of sliding door moments where They had to raise the $100 million of equity after the AT&T and Google and Vodafone invested in, and there were a lot of people when the stock cratered, they gave up on the name. Scott and Abel knew like, hey, we need to raise this additional capital to get us through and make sure we have a cushion because they're not going to operate this company as they've said, like as an option. They're trying to operate, they're trying to build like a long-term business. They needed to raise that capital, that painful raise, absolutely painful. To make it to the point where they would then, and I'm guessing like Verizon needed more time for due diligence, but then come May, hey, we got this, got this investment from Verizon there and we've got this MOU and we're going to work towards a definitive agreement. But Verizon's working with AT&T, they're contributing spectrum. And that was like a complete game changer. They had to raise that $100 million to make it to the next, the next node, which then was the money shot, right? It totally. Changed the game. And we've heard this from Scott that all the Department of Defense, like all these people in government started calling and they're like, oh shit, they've got Verizon and AT&T. Like, okay, these guys are real. But yeah, it's, we were all lucky. And it's funny, like how it's not funny. Well, we can laugh about it now, but when you hear everybody's personal stories of like the pain they went through, how they came across his name and then how they got involved and how they were on the precipice of financial ruin.
[01:26:40] Speaker B: Right.
[01:26:41] Speaker A: And for me, that was true too. You know, I've had a pretty decent career in the finance industry and saved a decent amount of money and, you know, was somewhat comfortable, I guess. But I also believed in this company and got involved in SPACs and made a lot of money, paid a ton of taxes, like got wiped out in 20— my public portfolio, like in 2022, 2023, or sorry, '24 was the worst. AST obviously was like at $2. And yeah, for me, like my warrants were worth, they got down to like a few hundred thousand dollars in value. And it was, that was really painful 'cause I was down a lot. And then of course, like for that, from that point in time over May, June where everything turned around, that few hundred thousand that was left in that position ended up being worth tens of millions of dollars. And that's a story that, I mean, like, you know, I'm, I consider my position that I have today like really large, but there's other people like Kook who have larger positions. And then there's people out there who are very quiet on Twitter who I've had conversations with who are comparable in size to Kook or not far off. And so there's actually quite a few people. And of course, like, you know, there's people out there who, I mean, basically everyone, it's like life-changing money. It's not just tens of millions of dollars, it's hundreds of thousands or whatever it is, right? And it's really gratifying to see that, you know, we all were part of this company that's, you know, trying to change the world and bring connectivity to everyone. And we believed in it and we stuck with it, right? And we researched and we galvanized our conviction around it. And, you know, there are people who will say things like, you guys are crazy and you shouldn't, you know, you should be telling people to sell and do this and that. And it's like, Dude, don't assume that people are dumb. Like everybody manages their own risk tolerances, right? And they, I'm sure a lot of people have sold some amount and, you know, whether it's to pay off mortgage or the house and, or do certain things. And I've seen people tweet or thank me, like, you know, make donations to their church. You know, I'm planning, I mean, I guess this is a nice plug. If you've done well in the stock and one very powerful way to donate money to charities or nonprofits or your church or, you know, your local PTA set up either. You can do it 2 ways. You can donate long-term appreciated stock directly to those organizations if they have it set up, like if they have a Vanguard account. The great thing about donating long-term appreciated stock is that you can donate the entire amount and get, like, if you donate $100 worth of stock, you get to write off $100, which is great. And then the organization receiving it, they get the full $100. So no taxes paid, which is amazing. Imagine that versus like if you were to sell stock and you pay long-term capital gains and you only give the organization, you know, whatever that is. The other route is you can create a donor advised fund, which is you can donate your stock, long-term appreciated stock to Fidelity or Schwab or whoever. And then they will invest it into things that you determine whether it's like S&P or whatever. And then from that pool of, you write it off that year that you donate. And then from that money that they invest, you can tell them specifically like, hey, I want to, you know, I want to donate whatever it is, like $10,000 to this charity. And then they will sell and donate it to the charity and the charity gets, you know, the $10,000. So you pay like a, I think it's like for most places it's either a fixed fee of a few hundred dollars a year or it's a fixed percentage. But anyway, I'm doing that this year. I did it last year. You know, and this is part of like karma. I think for people who've done well, it's always good to give to good causes that you support. Just a reminder. But anyway, but yeah, I think, I think as I was saying before, yeah. And I think for Space Mob, I think we should all be humbled and grateful, right? Because we're blessed and we are very lucky. I mean, lucky in a sense of coming across this investment, however, which way you did. And then people from different disciplines and people who decide to put themselves out there to kind of educate investors and give them a sense of like, oh, this is what the company's doing. This is why it's worth an investment. I remember in the early days telling people in 2021, like, yeah, this is a, I mean, this is, don't risk more than what you can lose, but you don't have to size it. You can size it pretty small and it could be a massive return for you. Right. But yeah, over the years, I think just this community of people and it's grown. It's like, you know, it's all over the world. It's funny, like we have, there's like different chats that people have and people are doing work constantly. And so I think the great thing about the community is that, you know, all the work is for free, right? Like people are providing perspective. You know, Patsy is probably the bedrock in this community that got us through the most difficult times where I think people questioned a lot of technical aspects of the, of what the company was doing. But because of his expertise, you know, I can truly say like, I would've never held my investment through those years without, you know, Cathie's insight and a lot of the things that he, you know, his perspective provided. And even the speculative stuff, like, yeah, some of it was wrong, but a lot of it was right. So how many times in life are you able to, do you go into a situation where a complete stranger is like, oh yeah, this is, These are the, here is a guidebook as to how to navigate this thing. And this is right. This is wrong. This is right. This is right. This is right. And you should have conviction. And then that first, that complete stranger is right. And you've made a lot of money because of it. It's truly extraordinary. And so yeah, I think as we kind of reflect on, I didn't really, again, I didn't have an agenda for this space. I was going to try to develop one, but then I just got so busy during the day that I didn't. But But yeah, I think it's good to take a step back and have some perspective, kind of where, where we came from, where we're going. And when I say where we're going, I do mean it. Like we, we're at the cusp of commercialization. This is, and you know, that tweet that I had before, this is it. This is why we've been invested for 5-some-odd years. And I think taking stock of the fact that, yeah, there's going to be delays and whether it's days, it's weeks, there's going to be, you know, There's going to be hiccups along the way, but this is it. This is why we've been investing and have been doing the research. You know, now it's coming to fruition. 2026 is going to be a huge year. Like if you liked 2024 and you like 2025, you're going to love '26 because that's when this becomes a reality. And so I think it's important to stay focused. You know, on days like this, it's great. Everyone feels great and everyone's high-fiving and drinking Dr Pepper and ordering like an extra large steak for dinner. But there's going to be those negative days too, right? Where you're going to have, and, you know, some of the accounts that are out there, I think Antonio Linares, you know, he's, I guess he's polarizing to some extent for some people, but I think one of the things, did he say, or, you know, he was like, oh, you know, for high-growth stocks, a 30% drawdown for no reason is just, it just happens. And it's true. It's like for names that have a high level of potential but are uncertain, you're going to have 20%, 30% drawdowns, right? Which is what we had after, until you have a solid business that's executing and there's, you know, generating revenues and cash flows. Like it's easy for a stock to kind of get bumped around because people, whether it's like someone wakes up on the wrong side of the bed at some institution and decides to sell, you know, 20% of the position and it moves the stock, like that's going to happen. But I think it's important for people to understand in a a huge opportunity, but very volatile name like AST SpaceMobile. I like to say this, it's like big drawdowns and volatility are a feature, they're not a bug. Like it's just going to happen. And that's why I tell people, do not, do not margin, do not trade on margin. Or if you, I mean, actually I take that back. Do not invest on margin. If you're going to trade very short-term and like be kind of on margin, then I guess that's okay if you know what you're doing. But don't ever be on margin because that's the quickest way to ruin. If you, here's a volatile stock, great opportunity, but it's going to be volatile. And then I'm going to marry it with leveraging up in margin. That's the quickest way for you to lose money because just day-to-day chop, you're going to get tapped out of your position at the wrong time. And that we saw that with a lot of people before. And I think the other thing is like, the other thing I want to talk about is just very briefly is the fact that You know, when executives at ASTC Global sell stock, which by the way, they haven't really sold much of anything. I mean, Abel had a slight collar transaction to hedge some part of his position, but he's pretty much balls in. I think it was like 5% of his position. And then you've got people like Scott who are, you know, who sell some stock from time to time, but most of it is for taxes. These guys have been eating, sleeping, like living AST SpaceMobile. Well, in Abel's situation, 0%, he's not taking any salary. And then for Scott, he's taking like, I don't know, $250,000, which the guy is like commuting between where he lives in the Northeast and like Miami. And he's traveling all over the place. He's got a family. His wife's at home probably, you know, taking care of these kids and they probably need her help. Like that's not a lot of money to survive on. For my executive, the company that I'm invested in, like I want them to not live hand to mouth. Like I want them to live with some level of comfort, right? And so selling some level of stock is just a good thing to do. I remember when I worked in banking, one of the senior partners told me, hey, when you get stock grants, you should sell because not only are you receiving, you know, you're getting your own stock in this company, but you're also generating income. So you have 100% exposure to this company. You should sell the stock and then go invest it somewhere else. Like go invest in the market or go do some other type of investment. I think this whole notion of like that, you know, you from time to time, especially on Reddit, oh my God, there's like a bunch of animals there. You'll see them say, oh, they shouldn't be selling any stock. Scott, if he believes that there's all this positive stuff, we should just be all in and he should just, this is a good one. He should get a margin loan against all of his holdings And just live off of that. And it's like, okay, so you want the executives to get into leverage transactions on their stock or against it. And then when the inevitable volatility happens or they get margin called, or like if the company has a setback, you want them to be in a desperate position to make bad decisions. No, no, you want them to be financially comfortable to a degree, But be incentivized on the opportunity. Like they want to be positively incentive to, you know, incentivized to do what's good for the company. For whatever reason, some people have this like crazy notion that the company, no executive should ever sell stock ever. And if they do, then that's the time to re-register, which is really stupid. But anyway, I'm going to pause there. I've been rambling, which actually today I went apple picking with the family and then, and I was like trying to, trade to some extent and then I was tied up, but I, yeah, I was thinking about all these different things as the stock was going up. So yeah, so I just shared all that. But anyway, let me just look at some of the comments here. I'm going to drink some of this Dr Pepper. Let's see. Here's some questions. What do you think comes next? Verizon DA, FirstNet, Golden Dome, or something else? That's a good question. I think all of them could come next. I don't know in what particular order, but I think I think Verizon is very close. I think FirstNet, that's the one that we always joke about because it's always imminent. But then I do think, and this is the funny part, right? Like there's all these data points in the market, like FirstNet board meeting, they talk very specific about satellites. And so they basically told us, and yeah, is it priced in? You know, I don't think it's priced in because for most institutions who have like barely a cursory knowledge of AST space mobile, they have no idea that the company's working with FirstNet, but I think that investment and/or commercial agreements coming soon. Golden Dome, who knows, right? Like the government shutdown's probably not happening right now, but it will happen. And that could be in the next few days or weeks. But the thing that I would point people back to is that this stuff is, it's inevitable. Like I know like everybody gets frustrated and they want stuff to happen yesterday and it's like, oh God, I want to own options. And so it needs to happen by next week or the week after. I would say like, just own stock and just sit back and just let things happen. Like the company's executing and things are happening on their own timeframe. And we all know space is hard. Like some of this stuff is going to get pushed out. And so don't lose your shit if it doesn't happen in the timeframe that you think it should happen. Just let it happen. The people were crying at $36 and Oh God, there were quite a few, or people who were upset and stock was at $50 who were saying, were complaining about execution. It's like now fast forward, what, 2 days, 3 days, the stock's at $66. And yeah, the market, by the way, like as I mentioned before, the market is frothy to a degree. And so there's probably some level of like, you know, beta as well. But clearly the market, given what the company's announced recently, but I've the Bluebirds are ready, they're ready to ship. And then, you know, you've got Bell Canada and today Vodafone also announced like the opening of the testing center in Malaga, Spain. These are all positive things and you just have to wait, like just let it happen. You don't, just be patient. There's that meme where there's a picture of Jesus and it's like, and the guy's like all beaten up and he is like, why do you have to give me all these difficult, you know, tests? And then Jesus is like, all you, it's simple. All you have to do is hold the stock. Like you just have to hold ASTS, just buy it and hold it. You don't have to do anything. Stop beating yourself up. Stop trying to overthink it. And I think I, that's one other thing that some of us have talked about with each other is like overtrading stuff, right? Like I have a core position and I'm not, I don't ever touch that 'cause most of it, by the way, is like in a taxable account. So I don't, and this is another aspect that people kind of forget is like Taxes are real. Like if you chop, you know, you have these like smarty pants Twitter people or hedge fund guys like, oh yeah, I chopped, I chopped 20% here, 10% there. And if I do it, if I can do it 100 times, like I'll make a ton of money. But it's like, oh, you also have to pay taxes. Short-term capital gains is a real bitch, especially if you live in New York versus like, oh, if I just hold onto this thing and I don't sell it and it keeps compounding, I don't know, 30, 40, 50% every year into perpetuity, during its growth phase, why would I ever sell it and have to pay capital gains? Because like when you trade short-term, you're basically chopping your capital up by 40, you know, depending on where you live, like let's say 40% or 45%. Why would you ever do that? It's really disingenuous. People try to compare trading to investing. They're just two different animals, right? And I do a decent amount of trading like this year. I mean, fortunately I'll be having to pay like a ton of short-term capital gains, like For example, that position on Satisfye, which, you know, people know about, like I made almost $2 million on that. I'm going to have to pay short-term capital gains and that sucks. But as my dad used to say, just be thankful that you're able to pay taxes. It's a blessing. But anyway, let's see. Someone said, I love the talk about donating with appreciated long-term stock and donor-advised funds. I work at volunteer nonprofits. Yeah, I think that's great. Again, like donating long-term appreciated stock directly to your charity or Creating a donor advised fund, you get way more bang for your buck. You get to write off 100% of it instead of selling, paying taxes, and then writing off whatever it is. Like if it's long-term appreciated, like 80%. So definitely look into that. It's definitely, it's worth it. And then the organization that receives your money, they get 100% of your proceeds versus like you selling and then they only get after tax.
[01:42:48] Speaker B: Let's see.
[01:42:49] Speaker A: What else is there? Yeah, Koi Fin. Great, great tool. Highly recommend people looking, look for that. I actually reached out to the founder of Koi Fin, I think it was like 2 years ago, asking to see if they were raising a round because I really liked their product. We just never, never ended up meeting with them, but I highly recommend them. Let's see, what is this? Sorry, I'm just going through some of these questions to see if there's anything in there. No problem. Do hedge funds? Let's see. Hedge funds hire fudsters to sow lies. Yeah, they actually do. So there are there obviously like industry consultants who spread fud because their clients might be positioned a certain way. There's also I mean you see bots right like trying to control sentiment whether that's on Twitter definitely happens on StockTwits Reddit there's quite a few people there most likely hired guns it's like especially these people like who have no supposed financial stake and they're just like constantly posting negative stuff about the company it's one thing. Like if you are negative about AST SpaceMobile and you're short, then I, hey, I get that. Like you're trying to talk your book and you want the stock to go down, so that's fine. But then there's these like random people who just post negative stuff who purportedly have no financial incentive. And so I kind of question like, what are those guys doing? Like if I had that much free time, I'd be looking for productive things to do or fun things to do versus like living rent, having AST live rent-free in my head and You know, be trying to tear down the company, which it's funny because like there's these anonymous accounts on Twitter, or of course like your favorite consultant, Tim Ferriss, and it's like, I know better. Like this company is never going to be able to make it. And you know, they'll give, they'll give you like all these different reasons why. And it's like, okay, so you're telling me that you're this anonymous account on Twitter, you know better than AT&T, Verizon, American Tower, like all these companies who are investing in the company.
[01:44:38] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:44:39] Speaker A: Okay. Yeah. I will take your opinion over theirs, you know, the Department of Defense, you, SDA, I'll take your opinion over theirs and I'll just sell my position. No, it's not going to happen. But anyway, let's see here. What, at what point do we know the full satellite constellation will work at scale? How do we define scale? Well, I mean, there's 5 satellites right now and they're testing those. They're doing, if you can imagine, like those 5 satellites they're testing with all the MNOs, like Verizon, AT&T, Vodafone, doing handoffs, like any number of testing you can imagine that they would do ahead of launching Block 2 satellites and then, you know, launching full commercial service. I'm guessing, and this is just my speculation, I'm guessing they've figured out that this does work at scale based off of those satellites. So then moving forward with the bigger satellites, there's going to be, again, there's going to be like bumps in the road and kinks to work out. But I think they probably have a good sense that things are going to work. And so that's why they're obviously launching the full constellation. But yeah, it's going to take time. They've talked about 45 to 60 satellites. My guess is like for full coverage, that's really good. It's going to probably be on the further end of that scale, that 60 number. But yeah, I mean, we'll see. Just like there's going to— it's not going to be like Starlink, but Obviously Starlink started service with, with a lower number of satellites and it's, it's going to be similar to that where the service is going to be very, it's going to, it could be a little buggy initially, but then they're going to work kinks out. They're going to add more satellites and then it's going to get better and better over time. And I expect that with Starlink, like that service is going to get better over time. And as we've talked, the FUDsters will say, oh my gosh, all these guys are, well, what is this? This is kind of funny. AT&T just— so we were all up at midnight, huh? Are you serious? I think AT&T is talking about us. I gotta tweet this right now. This is pretty damn funny. Let me tweet this. You guys should all look at AT&T's account. Yes. Space Bomb is up on Twitter Spaces talking about AT&T and UST Space Mobile. That is pretty cool. I mean, I think they're talking about us anyway. That's pretty neat. But anyway, uh, now I just lost my train of thought. I forgot what I was talking about. All right, I'm gonna move on cuz I just, it's getting late. Um, just look at some of the work. Do you think professional Professor Kevin is angry with us? How do we get him back? Also, Space Mob, we can do better. Is he angry with us? No, Kevin's not angry. He's an adult. He also has a pretty thick skin and he's an academic. Like he's, um, I, I, I'm guessing that he's probably, there's probably some annoyance of people kind of dogging him, which I talked about before. Like if you're a professional money manager, it's a very different game for people to make light of it. Retail investors, I could see it being pretty annoying and grating. And yeah, he's human. Everybody's human. Like he took a shot at me and he's my friend, so do I care? No. Like if I was down, if DST Spaceball was down 20% today and he took a shot at me, then I'd be pretty pissed off. But I'm pretty happy today. Like he could say a lot of negative things. At me, and I'd be totally fine because I had like a pretty massive update today. So my tolerance for people being upset and unleashing on me is pretty high right now, and I'm totally cool with that. So that's fine. Let's see. There's a lot of just positive things here. I don't see any. I don't see too many questions. We need an invest A T S investor storybook. That is a good one. By the way, like there was a I did try to talk. There was a, the Space Weekly had hosted Ashley Vance once, the guy who wrote When the Heavens Went on Sale. And so we actually exchanged messages and he actually is originally from Midland, Texas. And so I offered to tell him the AST SpaceMobile story, like about the company and the Space Mob. And I thought, I told him like, this would be a great book. You should get ahead of this. And then for whatever reason, he ghosted me, which is fine. We exchanged a few messages and then You know, people like him get busy, which is fine. If anyone does have a good writer, I'd be more than happy to work with them. And I guess eventually I'd get doxxed, but I think this story's pretty cool. I think it'd be a great book and movie potentially for someone to write. Let's see here. I think that's probably it. I just see a lot of different comments here, but I think that's probably— I should probably go to bed. It's like midnight here in New York. Let me just check a few more. See a few more messages. But anyway, yeah, thanks everyone for attending. Yeah, this was, I didn't have an agenda. I promise next time I'll have a more structured talk. But yeah, I just wanted to hang out with you guys and talk about AST and investing and whatever other stuff. And we'll see what tomorrow brings. I think I've hinted at this before, but there's some sense that maybe Verizon is very close and it's going to happen. And so I'm keeping my fingers crossed, but At the same time, like it's okay if it doesn't happen near term, like it's inevitable, it is going to happen. And so I think that's a key takeaway is that we're at this stage of the company where we've got $1.5 million in cash. We've got, you know, the FCC, a very supportive Brendan Carr, you know, whether you like him or dislike him, he is very supportive of this company and the opportunity and, and what we're doing in competition with China. But we have an FCC that's very supportive of the company. And is moving the regulatory process very quickly. So, you know, commercial approval for commercial access is coming very soon. We also have, of course, the multi-launch campaign, which I think is kicking off this new, this basically the rewriting of the stock, right? Where we've gone from a pre-revenue company to now commercialization and cash printing machine turning on. And so we're at a very unique time. And I think while some people don't like the meme, I think it truly is the case where We're at the end zone and hold onto the football, score the points, go in, stay focused. And obviously like don't get on margin and don't go over your speeds and manage your risk appropriately. Don't risk what you're not willing to lose. But yeah, it's an exciting time. And I think we talk about catalyst season. Originally I was going to go through some of the upcoming catalysts, but I won't do that tonight. But you know, there's that tweet that I did quite a while back. That kind of summarizes the things to look forward to. But the funny thing about this company is like, it's the things that you're, it's the things that you don't expect that surprise you, right? And so whether that's like, and this is what truly cannot be priced in the market, which is like, you know, the defense use cases, Golden Dome was something that was not even like a possibility until Trump was elected. And then, you know, whether it was him or people he's working with, they decided like, hey, the US should have this protective shield. And it's gonna be a multi-billion dollar spend for the government. That was not something until probably what, December? No, sorry. Yeah, December, January of this past year. And then you've got all these other defense use cases that came up. And then of course, like out of nowhere, the company did this like super savvy creative deal to buy Legato in January, which that was something that no one had ever contemplated or thought was possible. And then of course, like, you know, Starlink then goes and buys EchoStar spectrum and it's like, I guess we're doing something right for the people who were skeptical about that. But yeah, I think it's what amazes me is like, we, in our level of due diligence, we know what we know. And we, it's like the whole Donald Rumsfeld thing. I guess like the unknown unknown, it's like there's a lot of things that this company's doing we've speculated, but there's a lot of things and a lot of applications that are going to stem from this, this new communications platform, right? In low Earth orbit that can connect to not just phones, but any 3GPP device. What new applica— like, I think Piranha Capital has talked about this before, like what new applications and use cases are going to emerge from this, from a truly fully connected world broadband connectivity. It's going to be pretty, pretty insane. And what is that? What is that worth? What's that valued? Like, how do you value that? Anyway, I will, I will close it there. Now I'm getting tired and someone joked about me having probably dry mouth by now, but fortunately I have this Dr Pepper, so I'm good. But yeah, let's see what tomorrow brings. And now that we're starting to cook again, I'm probably gonna do more of these Spaces. So yeah, buckle up and I'll let this run for a little while longer. And thanks everyone for joining and taking the time to listen. Yeah, we'll, we'll see what tomorrow brings. Have a good night.
[01:53:11] Speaker B: Thanks for listening to the AST SpaceMobile Podcast.
[01:53:16] Speaker A: 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.
[01:53:32] Speaker B: We're doing something very The need is 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 broadband 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. bring this into reality, always in partnership with the animals. Listen.
[01:54:17] Speaker A: Mmm, waffles.