Anpanman - Catalyst Season

[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: Hey everyone, thanks for joining. I apologize, Kuk could not make it due to some personal obligations, so he couldn't join at 11:30, but instead I've asked Jacob to come join. And so he's unknowingly going to participate in this discussion. But I don't know, didn't really have an agenda. I was actually Planning to just talk with Kook and discuss kind of latest events and then discuss upcoming catalysts. And then of course, we had a tremendous amount of volatility in the market and there was some new information that came, that has come out, which I wanted to cover. But yeah, I didn't really have much of an agenda. Just wanted to reconnect and talk. Talk all things ASD Space Mobile. But I guess maybe just to kick it off, an important bit of news hit the tape just now. And this was actually something that was dug up by, by Sign Lars 13128, who is a Space Mob member. He tweeted this out. And so it looks like President Trump is going to sign the National Defense Authorization Act. He'll be doing that at the Oval Office this evening at 6:00 PM. And so that will, with his signature, that's going to write Golden Dome into federal law. And so that's an exciting moment, I think, for the entire space sector, especially for companies who are going to be part of Golden Dome, which I've discussed at length how I think AST SpaceMobile is going to be a a big participant in that project, but we'll see. Obviously, once that gets signed into law, then perhaps we might hear some information start coming out from companies that are participating. And, you know, timing that, who knows? But I think in regards to the holiday schedule, you know, next week, which is the week of Christmas for those that celebrate, tends to be somewhat of a slow week for PR. And so perhaps we might hear something sooner rather than later. But yeah, that's an exciting piece of news because I think, as I've discussed before, a majority of the market, especially, well, in particular institutional investors don't really know about AST SpaceMobile. And for those that even have an idea of what the company does, usually people are kind of focused on the direct-to-device applications. You know, tied to M&Os. I don't think, unless you're, you know, Space Mob and you've been an active, engaged investor for the last 12 months, you probably have no idea that the company is up for, you know, the company already has 9 military contracts and is a prime candidate to win work for Golden Dome. So yeah, that's an exciting time. And I think if the company does get an award, I think it will probably be a rerating type of event where people will look just beyond consumer broadband connectivity to devices, but all of a sudden you'll have this other area of business, which is going to be quite material. And as I've mentioned before, Scott, has discussed 2026 in, I think it was the Bank of America investor meeting. He talked about how 2026 is going to be, you know, majority of the revenues for 2026 are going to be from military. And then 2027 is when they expect the contribution from the commercial side, which is the MNOs, to kick in. And so when taking those comments into context, it would seem that We are well poised for Golden Dome. But yeah, we'll find out. This evening Trump will sign and then perhaps we might start seeing some news around recipients of Golden Dome. But I think it's important to point out that for any companies that are part of Golden Dome, those companies already know that they're going to be a big participant. And you've seen this with— A lot of companies out there that they've already ramped up hiring and filled out production space and put a decent amount of upfront investment. Because once this thing is signed off and it gets funded, it's President Trump's goal to have Golden Dome up and running before he leaves office, which is in a pretty short timeframe. I mean, you're looking at another 3 years. And so I think Golden Dome Awards are going to favor those companies that have technologies that are, you know, products that are already available or need little modification. And so again, I think that's going to position AST quite well. The other thing that came out, let's see, let me look at my tweet. The other thing that came out, I think it was yesterday, the day before, Jennifer Manor, who's the SVP of International Affairs, she does a lot of the policy work for the company. Oh, sorry, this was yesterday. Nope, let me just look here. It was the day before yesterday. She was speaking in front of one of the committees. Let me just look here. So The Spectator had actually posted this. This was 2 days ago on December 16th. She was speaking to the Subcommittee on Communications and Technology. Of the Committee on Energy and Commerce, and so in particular they were talking about public safety communications. And in that speech, as part of her or one of the questions that was posed to her about companies, company asking if AST Space Mobile was ready, she actually disclosed there a bit of a gaffe in how she disclosed it. But she said that the companies. production level is already at 6 satellites per day. And, you know, obviously that would be crazy if it was 6 satellites a day. What she actually meant probably was that the company had reached its milestone of producing 6 satellites a month. And so that was a pretty big piece of a little nugget that she had let out during that testimony. And this just kind of shows like the power of the space mob where This hearing was something that a few folks were following and then they brought this to everyone's attention that this, that data point was disclosed. And so if that is true, if the company is at 6 satellites per month production, that means that the next 2 batches of Bluebirds are probably close to ready and ready, ready meaning Whether maybe some additional testing has to happen, but those are likely ready to ship. And that would fit with the timeline of the company's timeline of saying 2 batches worth of launch, sorry, 2 batches that would fill a launch would be ready in December. And when looking at how much time it takes to integrate into a fairing, I believe SpaceX has 2 launches scheduled for February, early February. So that would fit the timing. And then, and yeah, so I think that would be a huge milestone. I'm not sure if the company will do any PR around reaching that milestone, but one thing that's interesting to note is that our friends at ISRO this morning had put out some PR on their website. I don't think it was intentional, but they were They were opening up reserve tickets for the event and they gave a date of December 24th at the equivalent— well, the equivalent day and time for here in New York would've been December 23rd at like 10:30 PM Eastern Standard Time. But they did put out a date, which then they quickly retracted, which I'm assuming that's probably the company reached out to them and said, hey, hold up, Don't put that out there because I'm guessing the company probably wants to put out some bigger PR package relating to that launch and perhaps, you know, other things associated with it. And so there's a lot of interesting things that are percolating right now. And so when talking about catalyst season, there's quite a few things that, you know, big catalysts, which I Referred to yesterday when we were down, what, 11, 12%? That something big was on the horizon, which I fully believe. Jacob, did you have a question?
[00:09:26] Speaker C: Yeah, I was just curious. I was going to ask you this the other night or Tuesday night, but for the 6 satellites a month, that's fully produced, right? That's not just the microns done. Is that— We're at a production rate of 6 satellites a month.
[00:09:44] Speaker A: Uh, yeah, so that would be— I think what she was referring to is 6 satellites a month, but that's a good point. She might be, um, she might have been referring to the microns.
[00:09:55] Speaker C: I guess, I guess I'm asking more— maybe I'm just— so we don't just stack just her exact wording, but just the, just the forecasting that's been coming from Scott and the company and stuff is that they're— they've been saying they're going to get up to 6 satellites a month, but that's not 6 microns. It's not like the production rate of the microns, right? That's the actual satellites.
[00:10:12] Speaker A: That's right. So they already are at 6 microns per month. And that's the key milestone was to get to 6 satellites with the control bus. So a fully integrated satellite to get to that level by the end of this year. And so lining up what Jennifer had said and then what Scott had said in the past, it would make sense that they They probably are at or pretty close to 6 satellites per month production.
[00:10:40] Speaker C: Awesome. Yeah, then the, I guess the follow-on to that, it was just that you were talking about the testing they have to do. I was just curious if you knew off top of your head, do they have the TVAC chambers, which is like where they do the temperature vacuum testing on site? Yeah.
[00:10:56] Speaker A: Yeah. So they actually have TVAC chambers on site at Midland. Back in the day, For those that remember, when they first launched BlueWalker 3, they didn't have a T-back. And so they actually had to put BlueWalker 3 on a truck and go drive it out to San Diego and then test it and then drive it back, which, as you can imagine, like, if you found so many, some issues, you would then have to drive it back. Or maybe perhaps like if you had some stuff on site, you would fix it and then you would test it again. But You know, having a TVAC offsite is not as convenient as having it onsite. So the company does have TVACs onsite. And one of the key questions that we've had at Space Mob is, you know, if you've tested one or 2 satellites of the same configuration, do you actually need to test the rest of them, right? Because I think you might test the initial few. And once it gets to a point where, hey, these things are sturdy and everything's working out, okay, do you actually need to test all 60 or 90, or do you spot test them? Once you get to a point where production is pretty consistent and yields for components are at a high level, do you actually need to test every single satellite? Not sure.
[00:12:16] Speaker C: I think on the— I'm just speaking broadly about the industry. I'm pretty sure the standard is always test all of them. The only other company, well, maybe not only, but I would wonder to see if Starlink's still doing that because how many they're producing, you get that serialization. But I mean, for AST, it's almost, I would be, it'd be really, they'd have to be really confident not to test them all because it's that, you know, what is it, $21, $22 million or whatever to send, to produce and set one of those up and then have to have it be not work because of something simple with the testing. I feel like it's high value enough that they're still going to test all 90 or 100 or 320 or however many they eventually make.
[00:12:55] Speaker A: Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, I think the reason why that question has come up in the past is, you know, how many TVACs do you have? And then, you know, how long does it take to test each one? And so could that become a bottleneck, which I'm assuming with $3 billion in cash, they probably buy enough TVACs to do exactly what you're saying, which is you probably want to test all of them, at least until Maybe at some point far in the future, you might not test some of them. And I think, for example, vibration testing, that could be something where if you're using the same exact vehicle, launch vehicle, and the same exact number of satellites, maybe after a certain period of time, you wouldn't vibration test them because you've figured out from the harmonics or whatever you call it, the vibrations of a particular vehicle, of so many satellites that you've done it enough where if everything is successful, perhaps you don't do that again.
[00:13:54] Speaker C: Yeah, that's a good point. Or you like drop the time or maybe some of the rigorousness of it has to be, you know, it's like, okay, we don't need to test this for, I'm making up numbers, but like we don't need to vibrate this for an hour or whatever. We only have to do it for 20 minutes or something.
[00:14:08] Speaker B: I don't know.
[00:14:09] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:14:11] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:14:11] Speaker A: So these are all good questions. Maybe someone can ask. Or maybe someone will ask for the next quarterly update from the company. But yeah, it's, I think we're pretty close. Like I know Cook talks about launch constipation. I mean, launch is, you know, the satellite has been at ISRO out of our hands. And as I've said before, integrating that into a new fairing, that takes time. If we ever want to launch on ISRO again, then it'll be much faster because they're going to basically leverage any learnings that they were able to garner from this time. But similarly, when we launch on Falcon 9 and New Glenn, it's going to take some time to integrate the satellites into the fairing, whether it's in a 3-configuration or a 4 for SpaceX Falcon 9, or if it's a 6 to 8 satellite configuration. It'll be interesting to see What kind of adapters they put in there and how they integrate them into the fairings. But yeah, it's exciting. I mean, market volatility aside, I think it's a very exciting time. The stock was down 11% yesterday, and of course, there's plenty of people with their own anxieties coming out on Twitter or Reddit. It's like clockwork and people's concerns come to the fore, like when the stock is down, because everyone's looking for a reason why the stock is down or justifying the need for the company to do something. And I think maybe we'll talk a bit about market psychology now. I think when you have a period of risk reduction in the market and people are degrossing and every name is down, unless there's something really material, like Announcing news that's positive is not really going to change things, right? Because when you have these periods where correlations are at 1, you know, everything's moving together. Like if you looked across the board at high beta names, there were plenty of stocks that were down 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12%. And I looked at some of these winners for the year and compared them to AST SpaceMobile. So if you look at like IREN or NBIS or OCLO, Or Robinhood or Palantir, any of these names, like they've all had a huge drawdown in terms of stock price. And so it's not as if any company is going to be immune to that, especially companies that have been big winners for the year that are high beta. And so I think it's important for people to recognize, like, there's, unless of course, like there's something game-changing that the company puts out, And it's new to the market, as our friend Kevin Mack would say, it's not priced in. Even then, like those things, people kind of throw it aside. Like if the market is going down and people are de-risking and margins are getting called, like it's not going to matter. And so I know I was just looking at some tweets yesterday and I didn't even check Reddit because someone said that Reddit was like, It was a full death spiral in terms of negativity, which usually is a positive sign. But yeah, there were people asking for management heads and like, why isn't ISRO launching? Which by the way, like the company sent the satellite to ISRO. It's in their hands. It's kind of out of our hands at this point. But on the flip side, you know, why isn't the company, why isn't it that they shipped FM2, which You know, it's a fair question. And I think we've talked about how FM2, it, it, FM1 and FM2 are actually what seem to be experimental military satellites. Um, and so who knows, like changing customer requirements has delayed that and it'll go when it goes, right? Um, when the government wants to send the satellite, when they're comfortable with whatever requirements they, they have. then they'll sign off and then it will get shipped. I think the more important thing to focus on are the Block, or sorry, Bluebird 8 and up. And so the next 2 batches of 3, that's going to be kind of the key satellites to look out for, which are going to signal the launch of commercial service. And so I think if I was a betting man, which I am, I think the those 2 batches will probably ship sometime before the end of December in order for them to meet the February launch plan. So, but yeah, I think it's important when we have these periods of volatility that people remember that there's not much you can do as an investor or particularly as an investor, but also for the company, like the macro backdrop is going to be what it is. Abel Avalon is not one of these guys who's staring at his phone all day looking at the stock price and then figuring out what kind of PR he can put out to triage it. I think we're all familiar with some of these companies that do that, where the CEO is actively engaged trying to manage the stock price. Abel's only focused on one thing, and that's execution on producing these satellites, which are really, you know, it's They're hard to build. They're like, you know, one, they're 6,000 kilograms, 5.5 to 6-ton satellites. And so the key thing for them is just focus on production. And I think, you know, when you have that level of volatility in the market, like the last thing you want your CEO to do is flip out and focus on putting out PR. when indeed they're not ready, right? And so I think for individual investors, if you're sweating every movement in the stock price, that probably means like you're too big, right? And so in terms of your risk tolerance and your ability to cope and deal with volatility, if an 11% drop— and for those people, just so that people know, like the entire market cap of AST SpaceMobile Yesterday the move was like 6 or 7 market caps of AST SpaceMobile in April of 2024. And so yeah, it's obviously a bit disconcerting, but then put things in perspective, like the company's market cap in April of 2024 was like $700 million. And now we're looking at a company that's, you know, what, $30 billion?
[00:20:51] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:20:52] Speaker A: And so yeah, so I think it, to put things in perspective, this is why it's important not to go on margin and be long high beta stocks. And this isn't just for AST, it's for any company. Because if you're going to go on margin and be leveraged, that's when people lose. Like you're going to win some bets, but you're going to lose because just the volatility itself, you're going to have drawdowns and you're going to get tapped down at the bottom.
[00:21:18] Speaker C: Right.
[00:21:19] Speaker A: And that's probably, I think we saw some of that selling yesterday and the day before. And for what it's worth, like oftentimes the short sellers have been, they've been wrong and they've been often wrong, but recently they've actually been covering pretty significantly. As of yesterday, the real-time short interest was $36 million, and that's down from the recent high of 42 million shares, which is December 5th. And so it seems to me like perhaps some of them have gotten smart and they see some of these catalysts that are coming up. But yeah, short interest has come down quite a bit. Even, I mean, I guess folks have been taking profits with this drawdown. So yeah, it's, I think it's important to take a step back. You know, I mentioned this, there was a chat that I'm involved in and People were screaming bloody murder and why is this happening to me and blah, blah, blah. And it's like, look, just, and I recommend this to everyone, put a number of other space companies, you know, Rocket Lab is a good one. You know, Planet Labs, Redwire, Intuitive Machines, put a lot of them up like Globalstar. I mean, Globalstar was down what, 12% yesterday? EchoStar, but put a lot of these tickers up so you can see how the company stock is trading relative to the sector, but then also follow some of these higher beta names, which are companies in smart modular nuclear reactors, quantum companies like IonQ, some of the data center companies, whether that's IREN, NBIS, some of these others. But I think it's important to track the rest of the market and especially these high beta names, because yesterday momentum and growth got completely slacked. And so those companies were all down several times the market versus some of the value income, like dividend names, low volatility names. Those actually outperformed yesterday. And so I think it's important to have perspective because when you're involved in a particular name like AST SpaceMobile and Of course, things take longer than you think and they take longer than the company thinks, which is the whole premise of space. Like, this stuff is hard. And then you see the stock down 10, 11%. If you're only following your company, then you think that something is wrong. Whereas if you zoom out to the sector, oh, every company's down pretty materially. Maybe AST's down a little more than Rocket Lab, but then it's actually down less than Globalstar. And then you zoom out even further and you look at some of these other sectors and you're like, oh, okay. So yeah, it's pretty widespread. There's nothing special about AST. And so yeah, I think it's important to make sure that you have that perspective because then it keeps you from thinking weird thoughts or thinking the most negative things. I mean, one of the One of the things that yesterday, as the stock was down, I was actually out, which was good because I was busy doing stuff in real life, which I recommend people do as well, like get off your phone. But the other thing is, you know, as the stock was down, I was like, oh, well, that's funny. Like, I'll buy some here because I know that, you know, Golden Dome is going to be getting signed into law. We've got this multi-launch campaign. We're going to be signing some additional definitive agreements. I mean, you can just go through the laundry list of all the things that are happening at the company. And so on the one hand, yeah, the stock price is down. It sucks. Like there's no getting around that. It's not fun. But at the same time, you kind of have to go back and think about re-underwriting your investment and thinking about why you're invested. And yeah, the risks are there. You know, delays, delays are the big risk, but is funding a risk?
[00:25:17] Speaker B: No.
[00:25:19] Speaker A: Is Does the technology work? Is that a risk? No. Are they signing MNOs, definitive commercial agreements? Yeah, they signed Verizon and Saudi Telecom back in October. And so you kind of have to go through this checklist of things just to make sure that your emotions are not driving what you're doing, right? And so I've seen this like several times where people get tapped out at the bottom, you know, whether by choice or not, When by choice, meaning they psych themselves out and they're like, okay, I'm done. I'm out of here because things don't seem to be going well. And they forget like the progress that's been made and how the company is positioned. Or on the flip side, they get tapped out because they have no choice. They are margined and they thought that, and look, like you can be right about, you can get every single thing right about a company that it's going to hit this milestone or this contract comes in and all these things, but then if the macro is not in your favor, then you'll get demolished, right? And so that's why having going on leverage or playing options, like you have to be acutely aware that the last thing you want is to be forced out of your position. And so just like today, like we have CPI numbers that come in that are, that were a huge surprise to the downside. And so you've seen this huge rally in risk names again. Of course, it seems like to be the pattern where we have this big rally and then things come back down. But the macro matters, and I think that's important when looking at your investment. Is the rate environment going to be good? Is defense spending going to be good? It seems like, as I mentioned before, 2026 is going to be, I think, thematically like the year for space, right? And so You got to put all these things in your head and remind yourself, as the stock is down 11%, like, okay, like I'm used to this. I mean, I think for old hands who've owned Space Mobile since, and by the way, I actually thought about this from now on. I'm going to try it. I'm going to refer to the company as Space Mobile because it's just easier to say versus AST Space Mobile. Just like people say Starlink, they don't say SpaceX Starlink. But anyway, but for people who've held SpaceX Mobile for 5 years, 4 years, like they're used to volatility, but the swings were in terms of absolute dollars were smaller, but they're no different in terms of percentages, right? And so that's what you get with a promising high-growth company that hasn't generated material revenues yet, which we are this coming year. And, you know, as a reminder, we've got $1 billion of committed contracted revenue. And so that, you know, you can put, put, hang your hat on that. But at the same time, it's like, okay, but they've got to get the constellation up and that's going to take time. And we talk about this whole notion of inevitability, right? Like it's going to happen. It's whether it happens within the timeframe you think, or it's going to take an additional week, additional month, additional quarter, additional 2 quarters. At this point is almost irrelevant, right? It would be a bigger factor if the company was short on funding, where perhaps like, oh my God, the company only has a 12-month runway, then timing really, really matters. But here, when you've got the benefit of over $3 billion in funding and you've got government contract work coming in, you've got You know, just a little reminder, Saudi Telecom is making $175 million revenue prepayment that's going to drop on the balance sheet this quarter before the end of the year. Then when you have money, you can do things right. You take your time because you don't want to screw them up, right? You don't want to send a satellite up to space and then it gets bricked. That would be bad. And by the way, like that's over the course of a campaign to launch You know, 100 satellites plus, you are going to have some mishaps, right? Like I think Starlink today just had a, one of their satellites, which is when you think about it in terms of percentages is actually not bad, but they do have satellites that fail. And so at some point in time, you might have that come up as well. But just be prepared. Like it's just normal course. It's part of doing stuff in space, which is why it's highly valuable and not everybody can do it, right? And so all these data center guys, they're going to, it's not as if they're going to develop a satellite-making program tomorrow and be able to compete. They're going to have to partner with people who know how to do this stuff. Wait, before we jump to data centers, real quick.
[00:30:07] Speaker C: Sorry, I was like, I did something you brought up earlier. So on, it's kind of to do with the launch portion. So after these satellites are up, And they launched them, right? I was just thinking about like they had, you know, the entire team focused on the 5 Bluebirds that launched and then they did the, you know, unfolding everything else. It's going to be, I mean, the rate at like the ops side, the operation side of this, when they, you know, when they're starting to launch these at like, if they're building them 6 satellites a month, at some point you say that the parity is roughly going to be, you know, launching 6 satellites a month.
[00:30:40] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:30:40] Speaker C: Plus or minus a little bit. But if they're getting at that rate of putting them up there, there's a huge— I guess I'm wondering, have you heard anything? This is just something I hadn't looked into before around the operations side. I mean, they're hiring a ton of extra. I don't know if this is actually any concern of a bottleneck at that, but let's say they get to the point where they're popping them up there constantly. 'Cause, sorry, the reason I'm asking this question is like, I'm like, I don't care if one launch moves plus or minus a month or two. It's more about like the, when do they get the minimum viable product up there for commercial service? And so if things move around beforehand, it doesn't really matter whether the satellite was up there, as long as all of 'em are up there by close to whatever their end date was, right?
[00:31:27] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:31:28] Speaker C: So I was just curious if you had thought about or heard about or know anything about the operations side of like, Is there a capacity limit to how many they can, I guess, spin up or unfold at the same time up there? I don't know what I'm trying to say. Does that make sense a little bit?
[00:31:45] Speaker A: Yeah, no, that makes sense. I don't think, I mean, I haven't, I guess it's a good question, but at the same time, like they're, so they have 6 satellites in orbit that they've been They learned how to unfold them and then to fly them, right? Because they're essentially spacecraft. And so as they continue to put these up there, they're going to leverage previous knowledge, but obviously this new satellite is a different form factor. And so there'll be a learning curve there. But yeah, I mean, they've hired additional people. They've basically more than tripled their workforce. And so Are they going to run into bottlenecks in terms of managing these things? That's a good question. I'm not sure. I don't, I guess I would say like, I don't think that's going to be a bottleneck just given, you know, it's not 1960 when you needed like a few people to manage each satellite. Now with the prevalence of AI and software, they probably can manage the fleet pretty well, is my guess. But yeah, that's a good question. I mean, it's something that we could ask management on the next earnings call.
[00:32:59] Speaker C: It's probably low priority. It was just a thought I had when you were talking about, we were talking about like, you know, like let you, the launch is out of their hands, the production's in their hands, and then the actual ops of, you know, the initial, I'm sure they'll iron it out and have it down like, you know, Like, it'll be down, it'll be really smooth by the time we get to the last launch for the minimum viable product kind of thing. But I was just curious if you thought about it at all. Yeah.
[00:33:28] Speaker A: Also, I will say this, their constellation will be easier. A few hundred, 1,200 satellites will be easier to manage than a constellation of 30,000 to 40,000 satellites. I'll just, yeah. And I guess the other thing I would add there is that Starlink's V3, That thing is a honking monster. Like, it's going to be— it's funny, like, they complained to the FCC that Bluebird satellites are big, but the wingspan is going to be 60 meters on that satellite. And so it'll be interesting to see what orbital debris-like analysis they do for V3 and then how they plan on mitigating potential collisions and all that stuff. Not that I spend every waking minute thinking about this, but I have thought about how a lot of Starlink and SpaceX arguments that they put forth at the FCC is really going to come back and bite them in the ass because it's like, okay, well, let's talk about your satellites. Like, let's talk about V3. If you have these concerns, then what does that mean for your next generation? But I digress.
[00:34:36] Speaker C: Yeah, I feel like some— I'm reading back and forth all those FCC filings and the complaints and the comments from other companies. It feels very schoolboy or playground bullying a little bit. I don't know. It's hilarious. Or Katseye's interpretation of them is probably where I'm really getting it from. Yeah.
[00:34:56] Speaker A: Yeah, Katseye's an unbiased source to analyze those, but no, his commentary is That is quite funny. And actually, I mean, as we all know, like lawfare is an angle. It is a business, you know, it's something that businesses use and in particular for space and providers of these constellations going to the FCC and engaging in lawfare, trying to slow down your competitor. It's par for the course. One thing that I learned as an event-driven investor focused on telecom, media telecom, and having some experience in looking at matters at the FCC, one thing you, and this was true back in 2018, 2019, when in 2020, when the company first started putting forward filings at the FCC about the plans to develop this new constellation that was going to focus on Putting up a large phased array that was going to deliver broadband connectivity to unmodified cellular devices. That initial filing, it set off like a complete war, like Verizon and T-Mobile and even AT&T did. AT&T put in a little, a small response saying like they had to dig in further and learn about what the company was doing, which of course then they ended up partnering. But Verizon, AT&T threw their arms up and they were at, you know, they complained and said like, technology's not feasible. And so it's dangerous. It's going to have like all this interference. And then of course, over the course of the years, Verizon ended up partnering with AST and T-Mobile ended up partnering with Starlink. And all of a sudden no one has complaints, at least for the amount. And so one, the reason why I bring that up is that when When someone files at the FCC, the last, the thing that you don't want to see is no one complaining, no one caring, because that means that no one's taking you seriously and, and, or perhaps what you're putting forward doesn't make sense. And so the fact that Starlink is so active and T-Mobile is so active in trying to slow down AST SpaceMobile, that speaks volumes. Like, that's what you want to see. You want to see your competitors throwing spaghetti against the wall, basically saying like, um, oh, this company is a meme stock and, and you've got all these like foreign entities that are, that are messing with the US and, um, and you know, their, this, their technology could cause interference. And, and by the way, like all these things that they're bringing up, actually they don't apply to AST, but they actually do apply to Star Languages. And that's, That's the whole satirical side that Katzi brings up, which is like, you're complaining about interference, but you actually interfere. Your architecture bleeds noise and causes interference. Ours doesn't. You talk about foreign investors, but Starlink and SpaceX has like, I mean, it's been well documented in the Wall Street Journal, but there's like Chinese investors, Chinese nationals. There's like Saudi Arabia invested, which I don't have a problem with, but You know, it is what it is. Just putting out there. There's like, and of course, like that argument really falls when when considering the fact that T-Mobile is controlled and owned by Deutsche Telekom, which is a foreign entity, right? Like there's been you haven't seen any politicians in the U.S. bringing up yet, but you know if we were ever into get ever to get in a boil with European Union, that's probably one of the first things that comes before, which is like. does it make sense that Deutsche Telekom owns all this terrestrial spectrum in the United States, a strategic asset? And the answer, if you really wanted to get nasty about it, is no, it doesn't make any sense. So hold on one second, actually. I'm going to—
[00:38:59] Speaker C: Oh, that's cool. I'll cover. So side note, personal note, I now finally reinvested in ASTS. I was, uh, I got my calls shared, pulled— I got my shares pulled away in May, and I've been kicking myself and watching with a, you know, sad face on the outside of the windows for months now. So yesterday I finally pulled the trigger. Um, not that anybody cares about that, but, uh, I don't know, I'll probably let Ant Panda cover that, cover more stuff.
[00:39:28] Speaker A: Um, but actually, Jacob, you keep going. I gotta step away for a minute. I'll be right back.
[00:39:32] Speaker C: Oh, sweet. I'm not good at solos, so sorry for anybody who's forced to listen to this. Well, I guess we were about to touch on AI data centers and space, so I guess I can comment on that a little bit more, just industry-wide stuff. I don't want to have to cover AST-specific stuff. But last week, there was a— they call it a bank rate bake-off. So for SpaceX's IPO coming up, that's supposed to happen next year. Again, it wasn't wasn't aware, there's rumors going around that they're going to try to IPO at about $1.5 trillion, which is just an insane valuation. But I'm, for one, personally really excited about that. I think it'll drive more and more revenue, funding, catalyst sentiment, everything into the sector. And when we get ETFs involved that have SpaceX, AST, Rocket Lab, some of the other names and stuff like that, I feel like that's going to drive more institutional ownership and more more money into the stock. So that'll be good to see. Yeah, so I mean, that's, I mean, the reason why, well, kind of multiple-fold, but one of the big things that Elon's pushing for, the reason why they're IPOing is to pursue this whole data centers, AI data centers in space angle. So that'll be interesting. And in fact, I'll do another plug while we're on here. Space Investor, if anybody wasn't familiar, It's @SpaceInvestor_D. He's doing an interview with Redwire's Chief Technology Officer tomorrow. He's doing Spaces on that at 2 PM Eastern time. So that'll be another interesting— people curious about the technology behind, you know, have some more interesting questions around like the viability of the technology around it. That'll be interesting.
[00:41:22] Speaker A: Yeah, he actually did a great Space— I'm sorry, I'm back. Um, my wife was asking me if I wanted anything for lunch.
[00:41:29] Speaker C: Oh, that's—
[00:41:31] Speaker A: But I think, um, I think the, what you were saying before, um, yeah, Space Investor, he's actually had a great, um, a great number of guests. I think it was like a week ago he did one with Voyager, which was great. Um, so definitely recommend people listening to that one. Uh, I think the Voyager CEO did a great job of answering questions, but also he gave some pretty great insights on data centers in space and a few other topics. So definitely worth listening to that one. I don't know if you, maybe I'll try to find it.
[00:42:07] Speaker C: Oh, I did link it now, but I can't, or I'll add it to the comments if you don't find it.
[00:42:12] Speaker A: Yeah. But yeah, it's, I think, I think SpaceX going public, going back to the theme of 2026 being the year of space, I think that's going to be true. And I guess echoing what you said, there was a friend, I got to look at, someone texted me this yesterday. There was a friend that gave me some insights. And so, you know, like normal, there's a bunch of SPVs that are floating around. Special purpose vehicles that allow people to indirectly invest in SpaceX. And so currently they're raising money at, these SPVs are raising money at $800 billion. And the expectation is that, let's see, that the company is going to go public next year at $1.5 trillion. The story has, at least this next leg of growth has shifted. So the focus will be, you know, the whole, push to go public and to raise the $30 billion is this focus on data centers and in LEO and powering those by solar energy. And so, yeah, I mean, I guess from an AST SpaceMobile perspective, it is kind of good that they're getting into data centers as well, because then maybe perhaps their focus, they won't be, they'll lose focus or might, you know, off the ball a little bit in terms of direct-to-cell, which, I mean, I don't expect that. I expect SpaceX to continue to be very competitive in that arena. But I do think for all space companies, including AST, it opens up another path of growth where the biggest criticism of space is that there haven't been really large TAM market opportunities. One, of course, is launch. The second is communications. And then beyond that, it's been a lot more kind of bespoke, smaller niche markets, whereas data centers, you know, once, and there's plenty of debate, which, you know, I think obviously there's a lot of problems that you have to overcome, but eventually when you look at resource constraints here on Earth and, you know, are we going to provide resources to humans or are we going to provide resources to data centers? I think that trade-off becomes abundantly clear that you can't forever allocate land, water, energy to these data centers. Like at some point it probably makes sense to put these off the Earth and into space on the moon, you pick. But I do think eventually it will happen. And there's, again, there's problems and there's going to be skeptics, but it's akin to people talking about launch not being something that would be Like a taxi service or putting up a constellation that could connect directly with an unmodified phone. That was what, 7, 8 years ago, people thought that that was an impossibility. And now people just accept it as something that's happening and will happen. And Starlink, to their credit, they've helped seed the market as well. And AST is going to have its service in 2026. And so So I think like, especially as retail investors, we have this luxury of being early. We always say like, hey, we're early. And sometimes being early is not good, at least for your mental health and your money. But you do have the ability to be early and having that flexibility and not having to go to investment committee, being, you know, managing risk parameters. I mean, obviously you need to manage risk, relative to your partner, your spouse, whether they know or don't know what's in your portfolio and how volatile it is. But one of the things that as a retail investor, you have the, as long as you're positioned properly, you have the staying power, right? And so making sure that you invest prudently in terms of what you're willing to lose and the volatility, what you can stomach and your financial outlays for the coming years, you can probably relative to other other entities, especially public investors, you can stomach some of these bets. And that's why, for example, for years, and this probably applies to Rocket Lab and other companies too, but for SpaceMobile, like in the early years, no institution would touch this, right? And it was really like 2 or 3, a handful of crazy institutions that were long-term focused, like Hennessy, and then a bunch of retail investors who had the stomach to go through the volatility, stick with a company that was pre-revenue, which I've talked about it before, but the company arguably probably shouldn't have been a public company. It should have been still private for a number of years and then gone public. It would've been a story just like SpaceX, like, oh, this company is changing the world and it's going to go public at a $100 billion valuation next year. When you have a You have a level of revenue and financial demonstrated financial performance where traditional investment banks would be comfortable taking you public. But that's the luxury that retail investors have, which is that you can take these bets, you can stomach the volatility, and if you pick the right ones, you'll be highly rewarded. If you pick the wrong ones, unfortunately, as we've seen from the 2021, 2020 through 2022 SPAC classes, like a lot of those companies failed and then went belly up. And so, so yeah, I mean, I think, I think as we are, we, in this instance, we are early. AST SpaceMobile is a company that probably many investors, even to now, to this day, like institutions probably can't touch. But once the revenues start coming in, like once a Golden Dome award comes and people are like, oh, what's this? What's this company? What are they doing? Like I've read about some of these other new space companies that were likely going to be involved in Golden Dome, but like, why are these guys involved and what makes them special? You're going to have this groundswell of institutional investors who, as a result of SpaceX kind of validating market, they're going to come in and start researching all the different players and potentially allocating dollars. And that's what you want to see. Like, that's a sector maturing. And, you know, I think there when you go from institutional ownership, let me just see. I know AST is always low. AST's institutional ownership is at Let's see, 37%, a whopping 37% of shares or 47% of the float, which is more accurate because float, as we know, Abel has voting control of Class C shares and you've got a number of strategics that own shares. So the actual float is 47%, which is not very high if you compare that to more widely held institutional names. you know, that tends to be for a well-held name, that would be more in the 70s and up, right? So I mean, I'll just use Google as an example. Google is held 83% by institutions. And so yeah, if you have a shift of institutions coming in to own the stock, that would drive the valuation and re-rate the name higher. So that's something to look forward to. Let me just see here. It's going to, oh, and I guess our friend Rocket Lab, just to give you an idea, is at 59% institutional ownership of the float. So Rocket Lab, of course, is more mature in terms of their financial performance. You know, they, I guess Rocket Lab this year is projecting to do $600 million of revenue, the next year, $880 million. And so, yeah, you would, as AST SpaceMobile ramps up in, or SpaceMobile ramps up commercial service, and you have these institutions who are able to then go to their, whether it's like a long-only fund, they go to investment committee and they're like, this is why I want to own this company. You know, they can make that pitch versus something that was pre-revenue previously, or at a hedge fund. having an analyst pitch it to their PM, it probably was a much harder pitch at $2 versus where it is now. And then if you layer on the military applications, it's like, oh, this company has a tremendous TAM. I agree with you. And we're on the cusp, we're right at the beginning of commercial service. Like, yeah, this makes sense. I want to own it.
[00:51:05] Speaker C: So anyway. Quick question earlier. So You brought up, I knew the Class C shares were like a 10x voting rights, right? Are the Class A and B shares all one share, one vote?
[00:51:17] Speaker A: Yeah, that's right.
[00:51:19] Speaker C: Okay. I was just, the America Tower thing, I was like, oh, there's Class Bs too. I just wasn't certain.
[00:51:24] Speaker A: Yeah. So that was like some FUD out there. I think Sat News. I have no idea. Yeah.
[00:51:30] Speaker C: Sat News. I had to go and I went and like, 'cause somebody reposted it who I know knows, would know better if they Like, if they had the information in front of them. So I, I went and commented on that too. And yeah, that, that, man, they, they are, they sometimes I like them because they're broad and they cover a lot of things, but I never like, it's always like I offered to double-check what they, what they put out.
[00:51:52] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:51:52] Speaker C: Or like, is, I'm like, that's the whole story or is this new kind of thing?
[00:51:55] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:51:57] Speaker A: And to be fair, like, it's not, it's obviously not something fully, uh, like it's not as if they're bad actors, right? Like it's not, something that as an outsider looking in who's not eating, living, breathing this stuff, it's probably hard to, or it'd be easy to make a mistake. Although if you looked at the filing, you should know that beneficially they still own shares, right? But for those that don't know, you know, there's currently 279 Class A shares, which are the shares that are publicly traded that all of us own. There are 11.2 million Class B shares, which are a vestige of venture investments back in the day. The only owners of Class B shares are Vodafone and American Tower. And so American Tower still owns, just look here, just looking at the old Bloomberg, American Tower of Class B shares still owns 2.2 million shares, and they're essentially the equivalent of Class A shares. Vodafone has 9 million shares of Class B. And so they've got 80% of Class B and American Tower's, you know, 20% of Class B shares. And then of course you've got Abel who owns 78 million of the Class C shares, which have super voting. And some people may ask, you know, why does Abel get super voting shares? Why does he get to effectively control the company? For those that don't know, back in the day, Before the company went public, and I believe that, you know, this was from one of the discussions with the bankers back before they went public, I had asked like, oh, why did they put in the high vote, low vote structure? And the whole idea behind that was to make sure Abel wanted to have control of the company to make sure that his vision could, he could see his vision out to the end. Because what happens is if you had a public company that did not have high vote, low vote, And did not have what we call takeover defenses, meaning, and so takeover defenses, if it's like, if you're talking about that in the context of a bad management team doing bad things, then takeover defenses are bad because it allows them to be entrenched. It allows the board to be entrenched and stick around. And so as a former banker, I would tell you like takeover defenses, like having a staggered board, not having the ability, shareholders acting by written consent and having a poison pill. You know, these are all different mechanisms. And then having a high vote, low vote stock is another one. Last thing you want if you are an early stage company with a big vision is to have, be vulnerable to takeovers or influence, right? And so let's say going back to 2024, I'll paint a bad picture. Let's say that there was no Abell did not have high vote, low vote, and the stock was trading at $2. Well, you could have like some activists come in and buy a big stake in the company and then threaten a proxy fight. Say, you know, hey, you guys have not executed, or market has voted, you know, the stock is not worth much. So we want you to put yourself up for sale and, you know, there's tremendous value in the patents and we want you to sell to the highest bidder. And so that would be a nightmare scenario where as a holder you're like, okay, I'm down money and we're at 2, but I still believe in the company. But I'm basically, somebody else is making the decision to sell the company, right? And they're putting pressure on the company and the board. And if Abel didn't have the vote of confidence on the board and they crumbled under the pressure, then that would be bad, right? And so then we would be sitting in a different place right now versus a company, you know, back then that Bell had full voting control. And so yeah, the company was down on hard times and the stock got to $2 and things were not, they were looking dicey, but the company knew and they were working on the fact that, you know, they raised money from Google, Vodafone, AT&T, but they also knew that Verizon was coming. You know, Verizon is Verizon. It took them time, but they were coming with A partnership, $100 million investment and contribution to Spectrum, but it was going to take a few additional months, you know, months meaning from January all the way, you know, an additional 4 months to May. And so they needed more time, right? And so since Abel controls the company from a voting perspective, it's not as if, I'll just make some names up. It's not as if Iridium could come in and buy a 20% stake in the company and then Try to force the company, you know, do a hostile tender offer and try to force a company into a sale because Abel controls the company. You couldn't, you know, you pick like SpaceX, they couldn't come in and buy stock on the open market and then force Abel to sell because he controls the company. I mean, it's his choice, right? So he could, he could at the right price say, okay, I will sell the company and then do that, but it's going to be under his terms. And that's why his voting control is important, especially for a company like AST SpaceMobile where, and this comes back to you and I, where shareholders may not know what's best for the long term. And I think retail investors on the one hand have been great supporters and in terms of due diligence and believing in the company, but then also retail investors can be their own worst enemy. Where if you obviously don't have material non-public information, but you see the stock price and the stock price, as we all know, writes the news. If the stock price got to $2 or you had a drawdown of 60%, it's like, oh, I don't feel good about this. Maybe something must be wrong. Like, you know, having this copium of coming up with reasons why the stock is doing what it's doing when in fact it's just macro or whatever, right? maybe the company does have some issues, but having that type of structure in place is important for a company that has a long-term vision, that's doing something very big, that is risky, because then they are afforded the time to actually deliver on that, which you'll see in previous instances where companies don't have that structure. And perhaps, you know, they're in a, situation where it's a bit more dicey, then you'll have an activist come in and force the company to put themselves up for sale, or you'll have a hostile takeover offer, which in the near term, like I'll tell you, like there's probably a lot in SpaceBob, a lot of people in SpaceBob who, if someone, if an interloper came in and bought, you know, 10% of the stock when the stock was at $2 and offered a hostile takeover at $5, I bet there were a ton of people who would have been like, yeah, yeah, yeah, let's sell. Let's sell. That's great. They would've missed out on, you know, a recent all-time high of $100 and we're now at $65. And I candidly think we're going to go well beyond $100 in the near term. But yeah, that's why you have dual-class structures because you want to, you want the company to have time. I don't know, Jacob, if you had anything to add there.
[00:59:01] Speaker C: Yeah, I mean, it's, Well, I mean, for my background, I'm not like, I have like, I came into investing basically looking like Rocket Lab is like the only thing I invested in mainly. So I've learned so many of these different like style, like how shares are set up, the ownership structures and stuff like that. And so it's like every time I inevitably compare, I'm like, well, okay, well Rocket Lab did it this way, so why is AST different? And I mean, I don't know, I'm looking at it going like, wow, that's a fucking great position to be in. You got the founder who has control of the company, and so he has the most stake in it and wants to come to you the best. And so I always think about, I'm like, huh, I wonder what it would've been like to have Peter Thiel at the same position where the voting control, he hasn't needed to, but he only owns like 10%. Rocket Lab. So it's kind of, it, yeah, it's, I don't know, in my mind it's better for AST that, that, that AbbVie has a larger position and then obviously the voting control as well. Yeah.
[01:00:08] Speaker A: And I think also this is a good point to bring up, I guess, as we talk about Rocket Lab a little bit. You know, recently Peter Beck has sold some shares and I think it's part of a 10 plan. I could be wrong there, but For those that don't know, that 10—
[01:00:24] Speaker C: ahead of time?
[01:00:24] Speaker A: Well, a 10 plan is something that you put in place and you tell your financial advisor, you give them some parameters which aren't publicly disclosed. It could be like, if you get the price gets to here, or based, you know, in 6 months I want to sell this and then another 12 months I want to sell this. But you do something well in advance and it's telegraphed, meaning, oh, I'm putting this 10 one plan in place, but I'm going to have no control over it, right? And so you basically like program this thing and then you let it go do its thing regardless of what the news is. Because at that point, it's really for like estate planning purposes where it's almost like keeping you from your own devices. Because obviously if you are, and we all know this, like it's hard to buy, it's hard to buy and hard to sell. And you know, like for a company insider, it's imagine like it's way harder, right? Because they're in whole, they actually have material non-public information. And so if something big and positive was coming, they might wait to sell and sell on that day. Or if something negative was coming and they sold before, it would look really bad. And so oftentimes company insiders will have a 10b5-1 plan in place, which then is programmatic based off of whatever parameters they had set before. And so when companies do that, like there's not really much to read into it. But for companies, or sorry, for employees who choose to sell stock at any given time, like you can read into that to a degree, but like if it's 5, 10, 15, 20% of their stake, you know, it's not, that's just like, that's just ongoing needs. Like people, Especially for these companies where people are not earning large salaries, like a majority of their compensation is going to be stock. And you've got like these ding-dongs who will be out on Twitter, retail people who have no idea. I don't say retail in a bad way, but it's just like, I guess people who just aren't used to kind of wheeling and dealing in this area. But it's like you'll see people say, well, why don't they just take a big margin loan against their stock? If they're so bullish on their stock, they should just hold it. And it's like, well, Just like you as a public investor, if you have a high beta stock and you take a margin loan, bad things can happen. And when I was an investment banker, I covered a lot of tech companies in Silicon Valley back during the first internet bubble, and people got shellacked, right? Taking out margin loans, not paying their taxes upfront, like getting huge stock grants when companies were during the heyday of the bubble. And then they got huge stock grants in 2000, and then when the bubble collapsed in 2001, they didn't have money to pay for it, right? They didn't have money because they didn't pay— they did sell stock at that time to pay for their tax. And then fast forward to 2021, or sorry, 2001, they owed this massive, huge tax bill, and then the stock that they owned was worthless. And so similarly, like You don't take margin loans out on your stock holdings. I mean, you might for some small percentage, but we have to remember like these people, these executives are human too and they have needs and they, you know, if you're going to, and imagine like the people at the AST SpaceMobile, like these executives are sleeping on the factory floor, they're flying around trying to do deals. They basically probably see their family like rarely. And that's a sacrifice you make. you know, when I was an investment banker, that was part of the sacrifice I made. I sacrificed my personal life for long-term rewards, right? Financially positioned myself when I was out of college. But that's the trade-off they're making, right? And so with that trade-off comes some, you know, when the stock was at 2 or 3 or 4, that was brutal because they're like, oh, what did I do with my life? The stock's not working and I'm working my ass off. But then now they have the rewards. It's like, okay, my wife who's taking care of 2 or 3 kids, or my husband who's taking care of Our two or three kids. I'm going to sell some stock and get some help because we as a family have endured this. Everybody contributed, and as part of that financial success, I owe it to my family to sell some stock and you know hire a nanny, do whatever it is to make our lives a bit easier because I've been working my ass off. And so for anybody who like criticizes that, like you're just full of shit. Like there, I think some of these people who are on Twitter or anonymous who who criticize executives for selling, it's like, they're probably some 18-year-old or 20-year-old single person who can work and is, is obviously has the ability to take more risk. And the, you know, your ability to take risks, um, you know, at, at 18 or 19, 20 is very different than your ability to take risk at 40, 45, when you've got kids who are just about to go to college. And it's like, oh shit, how much do I, like, back when I was in college, uh, going to A full boat for university was like $30,000, which at the time was nuts. And now it's like $100,000 or $110,000 to send a kid to school. And then by the time like, you know, your kids get to college, it's going to be $150,000 or $200,000 a year, which is insane. And so I think it's important to take a deep breath and just recognize that people have to live and these executives are not like, NFL players who got into a $120 million, 5-year contract, like full cash. Like their compensation is stock and they're in terms of diversification, like they work at this company, they're getting a salary, they sleep and eat and live and breathe at this company and they're receiving stock for the company. Like one of the things that I learned when I One of the senior partners at the investment bank I worked at, when I got my first stock grant, he was like, you need to go out there and sell it immediately. And I was like, well, why? Like, why should I sell it? And he's like, well, you are 100% exposed to this firm. And so you should go sell that stock and go invest in other stuff because you're, for investment bankers, you make a pretty high amount of cash compensation. So you, you know, your salary, you might make multiples of that in your year-end bonus. But if the investment bank doesn't do well, then you can some years get zero, right? And sometimes that's out of your hands. Like, as someone who advises M&A, corporate finance, the investment banking side of the house might be doing well, but then on the trading side, if some idiot loses like several billion dollars on a fixed income trade in some emerging market, then everybody suffers. And so the point of what this this partner was telling me is like, you're already exposed to this firm.
[01:07:06] Speaker C: Oh, at the risk of interrupting you, can anybody else not hear him?
[01:07:10] Speaker A: Oh, am I out?
[01:07:13] Speaker C: I can hear you now. Maybe it was just me.
[01:07:14] Speaker A: I don't know.
[01:07:16] Speaker C: Okay. You said at the risk of, of, you were basically saying at the risk of the investment side doing well or something like that, but the trading side wasn't doing well.
[01:07:25] Speaker A: That was the last thing I heard. Yeah. Yeah. So, sorry, I might've been away from the mic, but yeah, Like in those, there were certain instances, especially when I was working in investment banking where the trading side would lose money. Like you would have fixed income lose like a few billion dollars on some stupid emerging markets trade. And then all of a sudden everybody had to suffer. Like the trading, like, you know, the investment banking side, you generated billions of dollars in revenue, but it was wiped out by the trading side. Then no one got paid. And so that's where I think making, you know, when a company in terms of like mentality, right? When people are fully exposed to one company, which are what, you know, anybody working at SpaceMobile, they're exposed to this particular company. They get stock compensation primarily and they get a salary, they get benefits. When people sell, they obviously still see upside in the company, which is why they've got additional stock that's vesting and, you know, they get additional grants. on an ongoing basis, but you also need some level of diversification. On one hand, like you want insiders to be zealots, right? Like they're, they fully believe in the company and they're all in. On the other hand, you don't want them doing stupid stuff, right? Like you want them to be somewhat comfortable. They're taking care of their mental, physical health. And so by selling some amount of stock to take care of their families and to make sure that they're living a sustainable life, which For the people who, God bless them, who are in Midland, who are producing these satellites, they're working day and night. Yeah, you can't work people to the bone and not expect them to enjoy something, right? And so I think it's important. It's one of the things that AST SpaceMobile, we're all used to Abel owning this massive amount of stock and not selling any. He has entered into one small collar transaction, But at some point in the future, there will be a time when he'll need to sell something. And whether that's at $50 billion market cap, $100 billion, $150 billion, $200 billion, I don't know. But he'll probably start a family office. He'll allocate some money there and he'll start thinking about the future for his sons and his wife and maybe some of the causes that he cares about, right? In addition to obviously changing the world. in the company that he's already built and is building. But there will come a time where he'll need to take some amount of money off the table and start thinking about the long term. But anyway, I've been rambling for quite some time now and kind of went on a few different tangents, but I think maybe just to bring it all back and maybe we can close the space, but this evening, As I mentioned before, it looks like, and these schedules can change, but it looks like Trump is going to be signing the NDAA, which will federally write into law Golden Dome. And I know there's been some questions about whether the Golden Dome can be repealed. The answer is no. You would actually need an act of Congress in order to repeal it. But given that the NDAA was passed overwhelmingly by both the House and the Senate, by both parties. I don't really see it at risk. And so once Trump signs it into law, I think we will see some news from various space companies start trickling out, whether it's formally from the companies themselves or there might be some leaks. But yeah, that I think is going to be another huge tailwind for the sector because A lot of the expertise and forward thinking that's required and expediency is going to be needed from these, whether it's SpaceMobile, Rocket Lab, some of these other companies versus the old school primes who are used to moving slowly, charging additional margins, charging for work order changes, all this other crap. I mean, to get Golden Dome up in 3 years, you're going to need a different way of thinking. So Um, but yeah, that's going to be signed. And then, um, I think—
[01:11:28] Speaker C: Real quick on that too, um, just this is something I didn't know when I first posted about it all, but just for me who's not aware, the NDAA is like the instructions for how, how to spend the money, but it's not actually the authorization of the money, if that makes sense. Those happen in appropriation bills. Um, but the good news is the, uh, Department of Defense, NASA, all those other ones, um, already got through the House and it already, or I believe. And then the Senate Republican side has already done all their changes. So we just need— and the Democratic side should, hopefully before the recess, have all their changes done. So we should get that actual appropriations, which releases the money, hopefully in January. Right.
[01:12:11] Speaker A: Yeah. So that's something in terms of catalysts, that's something big to look forward to. And then of course we've got Isra launching and then As I mentioned before, I'm not exactly sure when BB-7 will be ready to launch, but then I think the other thing, the key thing to look out for is BB-8, 9, 10, and then of course 11, 12, 13. And I think we'll have a nice celebration of BB-8, just given the significance. It is kind of weird and funny how BB-8 will be the first commercial Bluebird Block 2 satellite. I'm sure there'll be some memes for that. But the other thing I would say is, what was I going to say? Oh, the other, I did buy yesterday, I did go out and buy a Dr Pepper ready to celebrate because I think pieces of news are going to come out in the near term. And as some of you guys know, Dr Pepper was one of my favorite drinks growing up, but it was the drink of choice for Steve Larsen. And so whenever positive things happen, I always tuck away a Dr Pepper and get ready to open it to celebrate. So with that nice note, I will close the space. Thanks, Jacob, for acting as a replacement for Cook. Oh no, let's lower the bar there. A lot lower.
[01:13:33] Speaker C: I'll call it comedic relief. I don't know.
[01:13:37] Speaker A: No, no, no. I think you did a great job. So I do think in the future though, we will, We'll try to reschedule the space with Cook, but thanks again everyone for joining, and we'll we'll we'll catch up again as I'm sure we will as some additional news. Oh my gosh! Is this serious? So there's a there's a red headline of Bloomberg that says the Kennedy Center it will be renamed the Trump Kennedy Center. Just came up.
[01:14:05] Speaker C: Oh my God! What a weird. He loves to put his name on everything, doesn't he?
[01:14:10] Speaker A: Yeah, well, he he he has the opportunity to say that the U.S. is making the biggest and most beautiful satellites in Leo. So so maybe we can put that on Cal sheet like a bet. Is he going to talk about Bluebird satellites tonight? But anyway, thanks everyone for joining, and we'll catch up again soon.
[01:14:28] Speaker C: Thanks, Adam, man.
[01:14:30] Speaker A: Thanks, Jacob. Thanks for listening to the A. AST SpaceMobile Podcast. If you enjoyed this episode and you'd like to help support the podcast, please share it with others, post about it on social media, or leave a rating and review. To catch all the latest news about AST SpaceMobile, make sure to subscribe. Thanks again, and I'll see you next time.
[01:14:56] Speaker B: We're doing something very, very big. Connecting with this technology, we can really 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 end users.
[01:15:32] Speaker C: Listen.
[01:15:33] Speaker B: Mmm, waffles.