Kook's Weekly - September 8

[00:00:06] Speaker A: This is the AST SpaceMobile Podcast.
[00:00:09] Speaker B: It will just basically come to your phone and be seamless regardless of where you are. We don't want the user even to know that it's connected by satellite. Listen, the opportunity that we have is very, very, very large.
[00:00:29] Speaker C: Is this, is this better?
[00:00:32] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:00:33] Speaker C: Sorry about that. I'm gonna just buy a microphone next week. So like my Spaces, the stock price last year was full of chaos, reverb, echo, and unexplained failures of technology, which is really kind of bizarre. Um, although At some level, when you've lived the AST space mobile investment, you kind of realize this weird phenomenon where people will look out into the future and, you know, I won't say dream a dream, but sort of really understand the thesis and invest behind it. But then as you come up to these near-term events, it's Unbelievable how this myopia sets in and just this panic, always panic. It's the feeling of there must be some black box event that's hitting, whereas people are happy to look out in 2026. It's like, oh my God, will FM1 ship on August 31st or September 1st? As if that really matters. And so lastly, this sort of spiraling because you have a lot of retail in there. You have institutions that I still don't really think understand the thesis. A lot of these guys may at this point know about AST SpaceMobile, but their conviction in it I think is pretty flimsy. And there's so much scar tissue with other story stocks about fail to deliver effectively. That I want to say it's understandable, but it's to be expected that people worry themselves into a tizzy, and then that allows Algo's short paper-handed people to really fall over themselves, which is unfortunate because I think as Anpanman and Tut would say, and there are a lot of other memes where it's really kind of about how to fumble the football right when you. you're about to break the plane into the end zone. But that's just not the way of the world. It is, it's hard to win. And I found that out in high school when, you know, like, say, one day I realized, like, sometimes you really have a mental block on winning. It's hard to win. It seems kind of odd. And there's a real mental transition you make when you realize, oh, winning's actually the easiest thing. When all said and done, because if you win, you just don't have to talk about it. It's like, I won. Over. Whereas if you get second place or you get third place, you got to explain why you didn't win. You got to pretend like you're so pissed off and that you'd try harder next time, but you just don't have to say much if you win. And I think a lot of investors have a hard time honestly just winning. It's hard. And there's a lot of reasons, you know, you look around people, you know, do you know a lot of people that have been successful? At investing in real money? I don't know people who made a lot of money on fees. Oh, that I definitely know. But it's interesting when I look at the people that I've known for quite a while of how they've evolved. One of my friends I worked with was a good trader for sure, ran a hedge fund. And And did well, but would get knocked out by these exact type of periods in the market where maybe you have some interest rate dislocation right in kind of the messy parts of August and September when growth stocks, especially long duration stocks, which is what ASTS is, will really get knocked around. But look at, you know, a good proxy for this risk class is really the King Tut portfolio of the AST SpaceMobiles, the Auroras, the things like that. They're all the potentially the secular winners in each of their categories, but for sure the NPV of the companies is back-ended. They're all based on the future. Those things can get rocked in these periods of time. And that's what we've really seen with AST SpaceMobile. And frankly, the other things that we know, I call the King Tut portfolio, also got spanked. Doesn't mean they're wrong. And so there was another guy on Twitter, I think it was Antonio Linares or however you say his name, and he was kind of waving the white flag on Duolingo. Well, the stock's down year to date, I must be wrong. I don't know if he's wrong or right. I use Duolingo. I understand the bear case. I understand where the limits to growth would be. I don't own it. But what I do know is that just because the stock is down 50%, that has really no bearing as to whether or not you're right over a 5-year horizon. So it's always just the hard part is to keep focused. But with AST SpaceMobile, I'll come up with some pithy statement to explain this type of phenomenon, but it's almost where when you finally acquire the target in the sights, it's, it's just scares, it just scares people. And so we literally are looking at FM-1, pictures of it right in front of you.
[00:05:42] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:05:43] Speaker C: And yet people are terrified of it because of when it may or may not leave a facility in Midland based on things that are outside of our control, as if that has any bearing whatsoever on the future value of the company. Meanwhile, we have AT&T literally tweeting us, counting down with you. Right to my right, I have an AT&T gift bag to me with the Dallas We Have a Connection, a waffle maker, A cool power bank and some other neat stuff. And I'm thinking, well, huh, that seems odd timing. And so you have AT&T literally telling us that this is about to happen, sending us merch. Is it true? I mean, this isn't rocket science what they're doing here. I play into it totally because I like them. AT&T is very important to the value of this company. And so They want to find, you know, what in their mind are influencers, which is like, I just want to vomit that that is how I'm perceived as an influencer. But, um, you know, be it what it may, I evidently am a stock influencer now, which is not what I had in my LinkedIn career plan over the years. But they're reaching out to people like us to, to get buzz, to show an organic campaign To bring awareness to Space Mobile, to bring awareness to AT&T so that people start to know what's up with AT&T, a very unlikely recipient of, never mind retail, but just human being enthusiasm. For whatever reason, people don't like the Verizon I know. But I remember a couple years ago, I was meeting with an executive team about energy, and this CEO made the point. He's like, well, when we think about the future of oil, Ask your teenager of scenario of I'll take away your car or I'll take away your phone. You gotta pick one. And he was saying most teenagers say take my car away. And I thought that was crazy. I'm a car guy. But you know, reality, that's probably what I would do too. The most valuable thing you have. And I don't even know where I'm going with that, but it's very important. AT&T. It's just not really what comes to mind as a cool company. But they're doing this cool stuff with Space Mobile. They're trying to generate buzz and play into the enthusiasm that we have for this company, which is smart because the enthusiasm is real and it's working. And so everyone should, you know, really play into that. Show them we're excited. Switch from T-Mobile for the love of God. If you own AST SpaceMobile stock, I'm just closing. People can't comment for whatever reason. If you own AST SpaceMobile stock and you're a T-Mobile subscriber, you gotta get in the program here and churn like an MF or get yourself over to AT&T. But they're counting down, they're generating buzz. They know more than anyone. When you want to talk about someone who is an insider outside of AST SpaceMobile, AT&T would be an insider. They control the lease spectrums. They're lobbying for the company with the FCC. They're coordinating on the launch of intermittent services and full services. They more likely than not have every single level of detail. So when they start sending us swag, That's the time I think you just want to shut up and stick to your game plan. Meanwhile, shorts idiotically ramp up their exposures right into that. And so as the NPMN records very methodically, we had the real-time short interest shoot up from 41.7 million shares from 33 million shares at the beginning of August. So the shorts as they often do, covered all their shorts at 60 and now totally reloaded those shorts in the low 40s. And it's even more dramatic than that because along the way, as the stock price goes down, the convertible bond hedgers would've covered their shorts. They would be on a lower delta, which means lower structure. So that increase of 8, 9 million shares is actually Net more dramatic in terms of people that are directionally shorting it, and you kind of know what these guys are thinking. And they're they think they're so smart, and I just sometimes I'll just pretend like I'm an idiot and a paper hand just to just kind of play to it a little bit. Like oh my god, I'm so scared. Stocks forty three. I don't know how I'm gonna. I just don't know how I'm gonna get on with it. And oh, management must have lost credibility. Oh my god! And it's like you guys get the f out of here. Know exactly what I'm doing. They're looking at these press releases going, what does is mean? You know, they're doing the Bill Clinton deposition of what's the meaning of is for Eddie and August. And we'll get that in a second. But the fun part is we have a long history of what Katzie kind of depicted in a cartoon of just putting fresh wood on the fire. We have some brand new dried Birch bark laden wood that we just put on the fire of ASTS-based mobile at $42, $43 that is ready to have some Boy Scout fluid poured all over it and light these guys up. Because what we got in the past 2 weeks is a flurry of very meaningful FCC filings, approvals, notices. And so very importantly on Friday, I went camping, which is kind of as an aside, I spent the weekend with the Marine Corps. And when you're kind of out with these guys and they're mid-20s, I mean, first of all, it's just like, oh God, these guys are shredded. I gotta up my game. But we're literally playing around in these ASVs, I think is what they're called, these landing vehicles.
[00:11:56] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:11:58] Speaker C: You see these guys all kind of wrapped in this, looked like a fricking miserable thing to be in, you know what I mean? Thrown off a boat in this boat car, land driven only by cameras, being shot at, probably doesn't have air conditioning. I mean, what these guys do in service for our country is really unbelievable. But you look at just how integrated it all is now and the importance of the comms. And this is what just gives me so excited about the opportunity for defense with AST Space Mobile. But the reason why I missed that filing as I was spending my weekend with the Marine Corps is that we got the SSS service links accepted. So if you think about the trident of regulatory approvals, you have the backhaul, which is QV band, and that's for the. Tracking telemetry and control. I think that's what TTNC stands for. No matter. Really basically how do you talk to the bird and get data off the bird back to the ground? Then you have the FCC process for the ground stations. And so those are just think the traditional really big satellite dishes sitting on Earth that are communicating with the satellites. And then you have the SCS. Supplemental coverage from space service links, which are the approvals that allow your phone to connect to the satellite. So the FCC officially accepted the SEC SCS filing that was made by drumroll AST Space Mobile. No surprise there. AT&T. No surprise there. FirstNet should be no surprise there. And Verizon. But I thought Verizon. Abandoned this company a few times before, according to the expert consultants. But Verizon evidently is still a customer despite having said they have a contract with TwoFace Mobile and having an active lease agreement. So wherever the FUDsters get this information, once again disproven. But comments for this are due October 6th, 2025, and then the final back and forth comments are due October 20th. Third, so this is coming at us, and this is for all 248 satellites are approved for review. It locks in the satellite, the low-band satellite, sorry, low-band spectrum from AT&T and Verizon and FirstNet, and they're requesting the waivers. So I think, you know, I saw some back and forth where some true clowns were challenging Kevin Chen on like, oh, they can't get waivers. Katniss pointed out in the SES legislation that was passed specifically about the process for waivers, this was contemplated, uh, the integration with public safety. So that's great. And this is the big kahuna of the regulatory process. So it's going to be very exciting. It's going to be, it's going to be lit at the Congress. And so just brace yourself for some drama. There's almost certainly going to be some SpaceX lawfare and things like that. But you can just look back to what happened in the past couple months when we had our QZ ban comments open and the FCC has shut down SpaceX, you know, literally just saying their objections are moot. So I have the Kevin Chen tweet linked out as well. If you just want to see the timeline of Really, the FUDsters saying you know this stuff wouldn't wouldn't happen didn't happen, and then really just showing what happened where the FCC is accepting filings. So the acceptance of a filing means that it's considered a full thorough application. It could be accepted, and now they're just doing the public comment process. We also got our gateway feeder links approved. So that's the next link. That kind of was the quiet little approval, but the FCC just granted blanket STA approval to operate FM1 plus the next 25, including the Block 1 satellites we have, but basically full 25 satellite fleet. And that's great. That was approved. And then the big thing came from You know, our little proverbial toaster in Midland popped and our waffles came out. So ASTS came out frankly in a tweet that looked a little defensive of them basically going like, WTF guys, like, why are you selling our stock? Don't you understand that AT&T is sending you care packages because everything's going great and you idiots are gapping our stock down 10% every day for reasons unknown to us. And so they put out another tweet that said, Bluebird is fully assembled. Final tests are being completed imminently. This caused an immense amount of confusion with people of, again, what is the word is mean? You know, I could just see Bill Clinton blushing in some of these tweets. But then they gave us some more pictures, which show these big satellites, big tin cans, which we believe to be some of these. vibration testing apparatus that are happening. But Katzi, of course, digs in and we see that FM2 is right there. The structure looks ready and, you know, they're just going to be doing some integration. And Tanner brings some good comments, which make a lot of sense about, again, the word is. And so we had believed, we had been of the belief that FM-1 had completed what's called TVAC, so thermal chamber, basically the big oven that tries to fry our waffle and burn it. And then if the waffle comes out, I'm trying to figure out how far I wanna go with these waffle analogies, but if the waffle comes out to the satisfaction of your picky child, then you're good. Satellite is ready to ship. However, it's not like you just say, all right, ready to ship, and then you throw the satellite into the closet and wait for your launch vehicle to be ready. This is a complex spacecraft. You are and you will be testing this spacecraft until the very last second possible. But also, as Tanner was saying, I think it was Tanner or Kevin was saying, well, you got to make sure you're maintaining the batteries and testing those. Uh, there's some questions around when you load the propellant, things like that. So The definition of is, I think, is a flexible interpretation, which the company admittedly just needs to avoid and be some of these very fine point emails, like, you know, the week over week series, because I think it can confuse some people. But it just goes to the point of like zoom out and probably try to not pay as much attention as we are paying, because it's really kind of counterproductive as far as I can tell. And people tend to be pretty scared of the dark. And so a way to always shed some light on the monsters beneath your bed, I suggest you listen to the company. And so Red Room has been doing a great job categorizing all the kind of audible space mobile content. So this space is included, but more importantly than listening to me is to listen to Scott. And so Scott did a fireside chat this week with Bank of America, and we had some great notes from there. And so talking about just how much revenue Block.one is going to be generating, tens of millions of dollars, reaffirmed that they think they can get to cash flow breakeven with satellites, reaffirmed the 45 to 60 fleet that could get to 24/7 coverage. Lots of just confirmation of what's going on. But to me, what is really important is this notion that we have this 10-year head start. I know that's a controversial comment because people look at SpaceX, but what he says is, look, we have got this technological lead, but we're not going to sleep on it. That would be my worst fear. And there's just no chance. That would ever be the case with this company. He talks about how they're reinforcing their moat with the L-band spectrum, just gives them capabilities that allow them to push more differentiation and more traffic with the MNOs, which is very important. And we'll get Legato hopefully this month. I gotta just check the docket and see if the confirmation hearing was finally scheduled. But once we get that confirmation done, then It's just subject to SEC approval, which I would hope is straightforward, but famous last words with Gato. They talk about the launch happening soon. He said that FM1 was ready to ship in August. They've had no major issues in the final testing and shipping. And I think we can see that everything that we've heard about the story over the past couple of years is being reaffirmed real time. In a really credible setting with Bank of America. And so that's what you want to hear. And I highly suggest everyone listens to this webcast. It's just a good reminder when you have a stock price that can zip around. Hold on, I gotta tell my kids to be quiet. One sec.
[00:21:34] Speaker A: Hold on.
[00:21:35] Speaker C: Let me just put this on mute real fast. Okay, I'm on my phone. Yeah, I gave up on this desktop thing. Can I get some thumbs up if the sound is working?
[00:21:54] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:21:55] Speaker C: Yeah, we're good. Really needs more than 5 engineers is really what's happening. All right, so let's get back at it. So I think where we left off was this King Tut ring, which Was really useful for a guy. Well, I don't give too much about his background, but for for for this level of wisdom to be present in individual is uncommon, and it's great to always take a step back and learn from him. He did a good job of showing just the timelines that were involved with SpaceX and Starlink, comparing it to AT Space Mobile. But really, again, this weird phenomenon of eagerness gets. Concentrated into capitulation, which is normal human emotion, but it's what is ultimately very self-destructive for the individual investor because then the price collapsing makes you think you're missing something. And then people get stop losses hit, which raises the conversation, should you use stop losses? It really is antithetical to the idea of knowing what you own. And, you know, you can see next week, certainly the clarification around the regulation. I think getting pretty close to when Bill Bowman's supposed to be coming out. And all of a sudden you get a fine in what is somewhat of a recurring pattern. Pattern. And this is what is actually pretty interesting about the charts is all of a sudden you have these technical formations and people then debate if they have meaning or not. Well, when everyone's looking at it, they, they do have meaning because people start to trade on it, but they really are capturing all of human psychology all at once of And volumes. And then, as Reformed Trader will point out the most loudly, despite pointing out also very loudly, the— will say that these are the most often to get validated. And then everyone else draws their own lines, which my lines go up, other people's lines don't. But it kicks with you so quickly. And that's where I go when I think about the people that have made the most money. It's the people that really just focus on the fundamentals for a multi-horizon. I was talking to an individual that owns SpaceX stock, a lot of it, last week, and obviously private, so you don't have to get, you know, all preoccupied by head and shoulders pattern. You don't even have to be preoccupied whether a Starship explodes in the Gulf of Mexico. America anymore because you can just be convinced it will work eventually. Whereas if you're public, you just get mutilated all day. The SpaceX investor, he's just, yeah, this is going to be the world's most valuable company. I don't know why this isn't more valuable than Nvidia. Well, why not?
[00:25:05] Speaker A: Who's to say?
[00:25:06] Speaker C: I mean, SpaceX is really cool. I did tell him, I said, hey, could you guys just like leave this DTC mark alone? That would be cool. And he laughed. But if you actually take time to, you can play through the course. And that's what people get down in my experience the most often. And then we had another good tweet from Dr. Ali 1979. And he did a good job, this fellow Capital. He did a good job saying, you know, well, bears will glom onto, we discussed about deliveries and then this sort of the first hint of delay, they assume that everything went to hell. And you knock it out of bed. But they went back and pointed to this early video, this David Marshak video, which I stumbled upon and probably should not have shared as widely as I did. I know you had access to those and you gave me the link and then it was promptly removed. But this video is really what was key to my own investment decision in this stuff because you were hearing directly from A third-party qualified engineering firm that this company was real, and he pointed out that you know what will happen is this stuff will be delayed. They will have to iron it out, but you don't want to rush. You want to get it right, and then they have to you know work out the the launch vehicle availability, but they'll work out everything. Frankly, kind of. Happened to what David Marsh kind of laid out 4 or 5 years ago. And the reason why he was able to lay that out accurately is because this is what happens when you pioneer in aerospace engineering. And that's what happened to AST SpaceMobile. It doesn't mean that there's no very important value creation process going on. Again, look at SpaceX, for example. And I think we're going to look at Blue Origin, SpaceX, AST SpaceMobile. I'm just going to throw Rocket Lab in there just so I don't get canceled on the internet. But maybe there's some other companies that are also going to be really bona fide players. But it's very obvious to me that there is a step function change in the so-called space economy, and we're at the front and center of it. And so to get to heaven, unfortunately, in space investing, you have to go through hell. And by all accounts, AST SpaceMobile really is crushing it. They are delivering goods, some would say on a delayed basis, fine, but perfectly integrated. So I think I have mentioned this in the past, but they're not only getting through the prototypes of their units and now getting to the mass production of these big satellites, but they're literally building the production line At the same time, it's pretty impressive. Like Porsche rolling off a brand new Porsche Turbo variant. Well, they already have the production line; they're just rebuilding some things. But they already had built a well-shaken-down production line, then just run a new model through it. We're building a production facility as we're shaking down the design of the first unit. A lot going on. The fact that the SC Space Mobiles accomplish this is.
[00:28:21] Speaker B: Simply remarkable.
[00:28:25] Speaker C: And they're going other places too. And so we have Cyrus, what was his handle? Cyrus the Great. I forgot. So Cyrus the Great is great. He put out the tweet that just showed all these engineering jobs hiring. And then when I was just looking through it, I went, they're all in Tyson's Corner. So I used to have some relative out Because it worked in the defense industry in particular, um, in the satellite defense industry to be more particular. So know a little bit about this stuff and would drive by Tyson's Corner. And to me, I just thought, oh, it must be a bunch of frozen chicken because Tyson's. Well, nope. Tyson's Corner is DOD land. It is not chicken land. And so why is AEC Space Mobile hiring for all these jobs in Tyson's Corner? That's a little bit far away from Midland. And so, here to stand up a government defense hub in the hub of defense. So it's very exciting. Just more telltales like we needed it, that we're having a significant ramp up in our military presence. And then we had a lot of other interesting things pop up this week too. So the first one we had is from Buckeye State. And Just showing some more job postings. And so one of the requirements is expertise in military systems and waveforms. So there's more specificity about what's going on. And we've had cats here tweeting this wild in CBO. And it is more job descriptions that are very heavy in Defense, because it is a Fairwinds technology, next generation network account manager role. And though role, the responsibility is to militarize the AFD broadband device with AFD tactical hub systems all across all branches of military, so on and so forth. As if We didn't know this, but it's just happening increasingly and all at once. And we even have David Pollack, who's our head of our kind of government initiative, retweeting some of these roles as well. So it's really starting to gear up. We have Siddharth Patel, who is director of events programs at ASTIS Mobile, saying just flat out, Quote, we are growing our DOD team here in DC. Come apply. Well, he has the typo because it is now DOW, Department of War, but long ago they are gearing up. And so button dome notwithstanding, we are very clearly getting a lot more military work coming to us. That is big business. And that was always from day one, the intent of the company. So I think we're going to be finding out more about this in the coming weeks. At least, you know, based on the schedules that have been kind of telegraphed to everyone on planet Earth. Find it hard to believe Trump is going to let that schedule go by. I hope we get a marquee role in Golden Dawn. I have no reason to believe that we won't, but I I don't know that we will, but we're obviously going to have a major role with the defense industry. And that is really important to having a really highly valued stock because we're going to get a lot of very nice government revenues from things like FirstNet, first responders, things like that. But then to also have a big DOD element, for one, it's a lot of money, but for two, it's also going to really nicely fit To a model that a lot of older people know, for example, SpaceX. People know how much revenues is getting from the government and understand that this can scale to billions of dollars. And so people will know that we will also get those types of numbers. They're going to be very sticky, so they should trade like a bond. You know, very high multiple cash flows, and then we'll have the consumer business on top of that. It sets up for a really good.
[00:32:49] Speaker B: Awful.
[00:32:50] Speaker C: We also had Barron's come out. So Barron's is really kind of usually thought of as kind of like smart strategy analysts, maybe definitely not on the cutting edge of growth stocks, although they try. But they had an article come out this week, the title Elon Musk has a, quote, natural monopoly. Huh. You've heard that before. So I think AST SpaceMobile has an even more natural monopoly for a couple of reasons. Let's first talk about what is said about SpaceX. So, quote, the low Earth orbit satellite broadband business has the makings of a natural monopoly, and a global one at that. A natural monopoly can arise when one firm can serve the entire market at a lower cost than multiple firms can compete. It is characterized by high fixed costs and economies of scale. And then they start to convert to utilities. So yeah, that's fine. That's the multi-client business model. But what AST SpaceMobile has that SpaceX does not have is the commercial mode. So when you do line by line, so what does SpaceX have? They certainly have vertical integration. So they, when they need to launch something, they got a guy who they know how to call. They just literally have their left pocket, their right pocket. So that's nice. But they had to spend all that capital to have a launch company. Now, is that a good business? I don't know. I haven't seen their numbers, but I'm inclined to think that launch is probably not a great business because it is something that should be subject to commoditization. Now, low-cost guy can also have a good business, and Elon Musk is by all accounts right now the low-cost guy. So that might be good. Is it durable?
[00:34:35] Speaker A: Not clear.
[00:34:36] Speaker C: There's no network effect in that. Once you start having Competition, which is, which is happening, you can just start dropping the price. And when someone launches something for you one day, no lock-in or loyalty to have that person launch for you the next day. That's why fundamentally launches, maybe I'm missing it, but doesn't seem like a great business. But constellations are pretty interesting. And so that's where you end up having these multi-client business models. They can go terribly wrong because they are high fixed cost businesses. And so if there are too many constellations and people compete on price, then that could be ugly pretty fast. And the traditional MSS-based fixed broadband, think of like the VSATs and things like that and the Eutelsats and the satellite TV. That's kind of what happened. There really wasn't that much specialness to any one service. Where AST SpaceMobile gets very interesting is its use of terrestrial and the way in which it's able to aggregate customers through its super wholesale model. So by tying itself to all the MNOs, it starts to create these very deep and powerful commercial moats where other companies simply cannot compete. So AST SpaceMobile does call this out, for example, on that Fireside chat. Scott was being reasonable and says, look, we expect there to be competition. But he said, like most telecom services providers, there's usually only 2. Maybe there'll be a distant 3rd. That's generally been the structure of the market. Maybe you think of like the Nokia and the Siemens. You think of the tower guys with EMC and Castle. Then there's SBA, but they're just usually pretty consolidated markets. So then the question is, in a consolidated market, then do you have a way to hold up your pricing versus have, you know, basically just unfair competition? And this is where I think that the multiple modes, say, as the space mobile is really going to separate it. So analogy lead for one, it's going to be very hard to keep up with them. The MNO contracts make it almost impossible for someone else to compete because right now you have 3 of the 3 main MNOs in the US spoken for. So anyone else that wanted to build a constellation wouldn't be able to go through the MNOs. And so maybe Charlie Ergen can get a deal with Apple where Apple then is going around the MNOs itself, maybe. But that creates its own complications. And instead, they're stuck with building a constellation, which is just going to have crappy economics. So I think that the more people look at SpaceX and think of it as a natural monopoly, great. I'm not going to disavow them of that because then I want that thinking to already be pretty well ingrained so that it's more easily extendable to ASD Space Mobile. And once that takes hold, that's when you get to trading multiples that can be Palantir-esque. That's really what my action is, is that all the sort of math I've put in my DD doc, I think that they're very good off by a multiple because this company gets valued in a way that surprises even people like me. Actually, I had suspected that this was going on, then I saw it elsewhere on the internet with EchoStar. EchoStar, you have this event-driven trade that just worked great. And so all these distressed guys own EchoStar a lot. It quit paying. It's bad. The other day, just since I had made a spelling mistake on the title of this piece, is Cook Weekly Continued as opposed to Continued. But as the EchoStar trade happens, as the stock goes up, people are increasingly exposed to the stub value of The DDD constellation that Charlie is looking to build, and that's this Aurora constellation that's made by MDA. So as that goes up, people increasingly have quote unquote pay for that. A lot of these hedge fund guys will go, "Well, I know." So implied value, and I haven't done math on SATs, but implied value of Charlie's. You know, satellite thing is a billion dollars. AST SpaceMobile is trading for $20 billion, and Charlie Ergen's the man, and he'll definitely do it. Well, I'm going to just buy SAS for its implied value of a billion and short AST SpaceMobile for its value of $16 billion. No-brainer. And so you're starting to see some people set up that trade, and that could also help explain some of the short interest because a lot of these people with big EchoStar positions are going to be looking to hedge it, and there's really nothing they can Use. What are they going to do? Or them via that short meridian. Those aren't really that big, the companies. And so, A.S.C. Space Mobile ends up being probably the vehicle people are going to use for hedging purposes, quite ironically. And maybe that explains some of the dry wood we've put on the fire. Maybe people go after the definition of the word is. We'll find out.
[00:40:00] Speaker B: But.
[00:40:01] Speaker C: I would say that anyone putting on the XCOR versus STS trade has an incredible amount of idiosyncratic risk they're being exposed to. And my strong suspicion is they hadn't fully thought through the implications of using a third-party prime contractor to build a system and expecting the type of flexibility, agility, and sensibility that you really need in this day and age to win. And I think to win, you have to be vertically integrated in your core business, like ASTS Space Mobulus. It's fun to hear. Sorry about the tech issues. I'll figure out a better solution to this next week. It's super annoying. I apologize for wasting people's time as I have to go back and forth on mute. And maybe I'll just keep doing it on my phone because that's a preferred way to do it. Even though last week that failed me. So have a great week, everyone. And I'm feeling, I don't want to say I'm feeling bullish because I'm short the stats of the counter indicator, but that notwithstanding, I do feel like the fundamentals right now are about to accelerate up, right, as a pretty traditional Retail capitulation has occurred along with the crappy seasonals of September, just always really sucks. And there's a lot of chop in the broader macroeconomic markets. And so it does really seem kind of like a perfect storm that probably unfortunately knocked a lot of well-meaning people out of their investment. And all you can do is try to educate people on your own point of view. None of us know the future, but I am feeling like we're getting to a point where people look past the FM1, FM2s and see the light at the end of the tunnel and all the exciting momentum that the company's gonna carry through. And another last point is I saw some people going, oh, now they're, they're really pushing off the schedule to say maybe we're only gonna launch 6 in 2025 and it'll be 200 birds. In early 2026, and that was kind of caused panic for a day. When you think about that, all of a sudden it's like, wow, well, 6 is definitely lower than 20. That seems bad. But what I think people are lacking is as we're all paper bagging it, huffing and puffing and trying not to hyperventilate, funny thing happens. Time passes. It's already September 7th. You know, I kind of come up here this week and started doing the weekly. It's already going to be September 12th. And if people really want to know the development of IntellAct, if you then double that and say 2 weeks from here, it will— you just wait for it— it will be September 19th. Time literally flies. And so the point in time when people are looking at us having 6 satellites up at the end of 2025, guess what?
[00:43:06] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:43:07] Speaker C: They are going to get me on the precipice of then seeing the fuselage of 14 more with then many more behind that in 2026. And so you just really cannot get too negative on some of these timing slips because after you've digested the timing slip, time has passed. And then it turns out to be sure, a delay against the original thing. But you've already eaten the delay with the passing of time. And then now just don't get the short thesis because originally you could have said that, you know, we've been over this before, but a delay could really stymie the company from having been able to fund itself. Now that's off the table. And so anything that slips by a couple weeks here or there, and we still don't know where FM1 is going, although we are hopeful that they might get an accelerated slot. Sometime in October, and maybe not, we don't know, but pretty soon you're just going to see these satellites coming off and you will know that the launch capacity will loosen up. That's not going to hold this company back. And then people are going to be looking through, and my strong belief in seeing the, well, you know, I think it could be hundreds of billions of dollar market cap opportunity for this company. And I do think that there will be a moment when the stock just looks through and doesn't look back. And in hindsight, that will be obvious, but I think Tesla provides a really interesting analog. The market would go, sure, Tesla Roadster, whatever, limited, limited town. You need something more mass market. Then they blew it away with Model S. Great. More proof of concept. That, you know, created a lot of market cap, but are you really going to get into that belly of the curve, the great big consumer market? And then when they got that Model 3 off the line, that was a monstrous expansion market cap from there. And then the other unlocks were having a factory in Shanghai and in Germany to then go global with that TAM. And now of course there's TAM unlock because of Optimus and things like that. I think ASTS is going to follow the same type of unlocks in terms of these big buckets of That will really be a luxury that shareholders get to enjoy, and we're close to the first step as pilots. Stay tuned. I will mute it so it doesn't cut everyone off, and again apologize for the technical difficulties.
[00:45:35] Speaker B: Bye.
[00:45:39] Speaker A: Thanks for listening to the AST Space Mobility Podcast. If you enjoyed this episode and you'd like to help support the podcast, please share it with others, post about it on social media, or leave a rating and review. To catch all the latest news about AST SpaceMobile, make sure to subscribe. Thanks again, and I'll see you next time.
[00:45:59] Speaker B: We're doing something very, very big, and I think with this technology we can really affect 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. Our role is to bring this into reality, always in partnership with the MNOs.
[00:46:39] Speaker A: Listen.
[00:46:39] Speaker C: Mmm, waffles.