Anpanman - Impromptu Spaces with Anpanman from June 25, 2025

[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 A: Hey, how's it going?
[00:00:30] Speaker C: Good, how you doing, man?
[00:00:33] Speaker A: I'm all right. Thanks for hosting.
[00:00:38] Speaker B: Of course.
[00:00:39] Speaker C: Are you, uh, are you feeling, um, a bit of, uh, loss of gravity with the share price this week or last week or everything? Man, it's been nuts.
[00:00:53] Speaker A: Yeah, it has been nuts. No, it's been fun, man. Just so everyone knows, I reached out to Jacob to just start up the space. I'm actually driving. I dropped off one of our little ones to sleepaway camp, but I've got 3 hours left. And so I figured what better way to kill time than just start a space and just hang out. But yeah, no, it's been fun. I've been having a trouble time, a hard time sleeping because I just have this anticipation waking up the next day or checking the price like at 4:00 AM or whatever. So yeah, what an exciting time.
[00:01:31] Speaker D: It's nuts.
[00:01:32] Speaker A: What about you?
[00:01:33] Speaker C: Yeah, man, it's been crazy watching everything just go up and up and up. I'm like waiting for the day when I'm— where it's going to all turn red, but it hasn't happened yet. Yeah. I, I, uh, I got screwed up, um, on, on ASTS, so I— my position's reduced a bunch. So I'm happy for it, but it's not as good as it could have been if I didn't touch anything. So I'm a little bit kicking myself. Uh, yeah, I sold covered calls, got underwater, sold— or, uh, bought puts to try to save it because I was like, oh, it's so overbought. And then that got— that made it worse. And then I saw I got out of everything and, and I had to reduce my position because of it, but Such is life.
[00:02:16] Speaker A: It's tough because I think you can time those things until you can't, right? And so they'll work for a while and then people get kind of complacent and they're like, oh, it worked before, I'll do it again. And then unfortunately this time around, all the ingredients were there for this massive rerating we're having, which I was talking about it with Coop I just got off talking with Cook a little while ago and I know Kevin Mack has written about this, about it seems to be short covering, which I, there's clearly some of that going on for sure. But I think to me it's so orderly, it feels like some large institutions, I don't know how many, but it seems like there are some folks out there, some institutions that are VWAPing. Into a big position. Because every day it's like at the open, it's kind of funny because like you see shorts try to pound the stock. They did a pretty good job yesterday, you know, got down to $43 and they got completely smoked. And then today you saw someone trying to get the party started again. The stock was off and then lo and behold, like whoever those institutions are that are VWAPing going long, their programs kicked in and then the stock like never looked back. It just kept grinding higher and higher and higher, which that's kind of been the routine for the last few days. So yeah, it's pretty interesting. But I hear you, like I was looking at Reddit and there's a number of people that were upset because they sold calls against their position at whatever, like in the 30s or 40s, and then they missed out. Which I think, like, if that's something that you plan on doing, it definitely makes sense from time to time, but, you know, maybe not for your entire position. But also when we are in this weird place, which I've talked about before, where volatility was like at a near low and short interest is really high and there's just all these catalysts coming up. It's like you're just kind of asking for, um, to get called away. But, um, but yeah, I'm sorry to hear that. That sucks.
[00:04:35] Speaker C: I mean, it's all right. I still— it's not like I'm completely blown out. But yeah, I, I decided to move the, the— when they, they— the calls were, the calls were taken away, I decided to move a bunch of it into Rocket Lab calls. So I'm, I'm—
[00:04:50] Speaker D: oh, okay, happy.
[00:04:51] Speaker C: So I mean, the, the premiums were so low on it at the point. Yeah, I saw like this big cup and handle forming that everybody kept saying. So I was like, you know what, fuck it, let's just go and throw it into this for a little while. I didn't expect that ASTS would still just be driving up after that. That was Friday when I moved, when I moved a bunch. So, um, so I mean, I'm still like, it's still been a great week. I'm like, my portfolio is at all-time highs, so I'm not like complaining, complaining. It's just like, I'm— my position's a lot smaller than it was in ASTS, which is still, I mean, still good. It's just, wow. Yeah, it's crazy. I mean, I, I don't know, it's, it's, uh, Like, I, I don't know. I guess honestly, if even if I hadn't done the covered calls the week before, I probably would have done them last week and would have been blown out right now. Like, there— I, I don't see myself— I couldn't have seen myself thinking the stock is up at $53, I guess. So like, maybe I didn't have the conviction is really what happened. So I mean, it's— yeah, it's my own fault.
[00:05:45] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:05:45] Speaker C: But I— yeah, so I'm not like— I don't want to— like, this is by no means me ragging on ASTS by any means. I'm really happy for it. It's just like, wow, I, I I personally was never, that would've never, was never in my range of thought would go up that fast.
[00:05:58] Speaker A: Yeah, I think, um, some, somebody, or I, I've seen like a few people make comparisons to Palantir and I was talking about it with Cook, um, just a little while ago. And, you know, I feel like Palantir is, is like this like nebulous stock that, oh, people, it's big data. They, they do some type of analysis and But no one really could wrap their arms around it or ascribe real strategic value to it. And then lo and behold, once people started figuring out that there's real military use cases and the company's getting these large awards, then it became more concrete. And then all of a sudden that stock rerated. I mean, yeah, it just went vertical. And so I kind of wonder if that's happening right now where people originally were like, this AST SpaceMobile is like, you know, commercial broadband connectivity to, you know, consumers, consumer subscribers, but then now people are re-rating it for the military use cases, which are really potentially as big as, you know, the commercial use cases. And so, and it's interesting because I think, and I'm sure people on this space have recognized or have got this too, but for people that you've talked to over the last 3, 4, or 5 years about AST SpaceMobile, and probably a majority of them have dismissed it, they're just like, oh, okay, that sounds interesting. And then you might have gotten calls or pinged on from those same people who Reach out to you when the stock was down and be like, "Hey, what happened there?" It's kind of like a told you so type of moment. But then now you're getting calls from people who are either congratulating you or they're saying, "Damn it, I missed it." Like, why didn't I? You know, I should have done something. And it's kind of like now reaching this escape velocity of awareness.
[00:08:03] Speaker C: I don't know.
[00:08:03] Speaker A: I mean, are do you? I guess I wonder if other people are getting that. But like, again, I was talking about it with Cook today and he was saying how a number of people that he had introduced to the stock were calling him, you know, complaining that they unfortunately either didn't pull the trigger or they did and then they flipped it for a small profit. They can, you know, that was good enough.
[00:08:26] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:08:29] Speaker C: I mean, so like a few people I talked to about it, like my old coworkers and stuff, like I asked them this week, I was like, hey, you guys still hold on to ASTS because I was, I was pumping them to put like to buy into that harder than I was Rocket Lab back in what, January when we, when it was down when I first started my position in it. And so like I, I was pumped that I, and a lot of them had already sold and they sold when it first, when it dropped, we got up to like 30-something and dropped back down and a lot of them sold then and I was like, you idiots. I don't know, other people I knew like, like, like, like sold it in the 20s and stuff too. So like I, like I don't, yeah. I mean, it's it's hard if they don't like didn't do the research. My and why I'm kicking myself is like I've poured into the research on it too, and so we'll see. I don't know. I'm I don't I am not like wishing for. I guess I personally selfishly I'm wishing for a pullback, but I don't want like that's just you know whatever. It doesn't matter. My wishes into the into the you know ether. But um you know I like I'm I got a position in it, and I'm happy hanging on to that. So not touching like those shares are no long is long only shares.
[00:09:35] Speaker A: So Yeah, I mean, a pullback would be healthy and natural, but the question of course is always a pullback from where? And what's the count now? Are we up like 15 out of 16 days or something?
[00:09:50] Speaker D: It's pretty crazy.
[00:09:51] Speaker C: Yeah, it's crazy. I think it is 15 out of 16 days. It's nuts. And that one day was such a little, like, and it was completely erased the next day. And it's not even like little 2% gain day. It's like 5, 10% gain days. It's just, yeah, especially the last 2 days, it's just, it's incredible to watch. It's cool. So, um, yeah, even having a seat in this is cool.
[00:10:14] Speaker A: I, I do think like, um, there's, there is an element, as I had mentioned before, like I think there are some institutions that are probably VWAPing in because that's what it definitely feels like outside of any short covering. But then I do, um, I can see scenarios where there's also, maybe things are a bit leaky. Like if the company is doing some stuff interesting around defense work, like perhaps, I mean, whenever you're doing things around the government, obviously we all know, look at like Nancy Pelosi or Tommy Tuberville, these politicians, like they all get the heads up of what's going on. And so I do wonder if there's a little bit of that kind of spilling into it. And then of course, like the other speculation too of potential strategic investments. But it is, I mean, on the one hand, like it is uncanny how strong the stock has been. And then on the other hand, if you look at a lot of high-risk, high-growth names, they've done pretty well. Not all of them, but a few have done quite well the last few days. But I think Kasey pointed it out too, like they're, It seems like the likely Golden Dome beneficiaries have done pretty well over the last, call it, 2 weeks. So maybe that's kind of what's pricing in.
[00:11:33] Speaker C: Yeah, maybe. Like, I keep waiting for like the RFPs or something to come out around that, around those projects, so I could see more of what's going to be in it. But yeah, like, you're right, somebody's got to know something. It seems like that. But like, I don't know. I mean, ASTS is like the, is is the unicorn for sure of the space stocks. So it's not— it's like they're, they're outperforming the sector, or if you want to call it the sector, by a lot. So it's more than just— I mean, it could be also the defense stuff, could be also some of the short covering. I feel like it's a combination of things, but it's cool. It's awesome. Like, I, I don't know, I'm like just blown away by it. So we'll see. Yeah, I mean, yeah, it's good. Um, I know, uh, somebody just wanted to request in to talk, but I don't know if they're gonna jump on or not. Um, did you, uh, I guess you have a drop.
[00:12:23] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:12:23] Speaker C: Oh yeah. So if anybody wants to jump on and ask questions, go for it. Um, got, you got Catseye's undivided, not Catseye's, sorry, Ant-Man's undivided attention for audience.
[00:12:33] Speaker A: Or if you wanna just come up and tell us a crazy story. Yeah, that's good too.
[00:12:36] Speaker E: That's good.
[00:12:36] Speaker A: 'Cause I, I've heard quite a few crazy stories over the last, uh, few days and people have reached out and, uh, Yeah, just share their life-changing, you know, uh, story on ASD, which I think is pretty cool. But, uh, but yeah, if anyone wants to come up— but sorry, I cut you off.
[00:12:54] Speaker B: Oh, you're good.
[00:12:57] Speaker C: Um, I'm waiting for the request to come in. I know somebody was there, somebody was there, and I didn't click it fast enough, so hopefully they can still request in. Um, I, I guess you've been driving, you didn't see it. It was great. Uh, I'm just gonna slightly Slightly changed topics, but, uh, the Rocket Labs at like 3— at 12:40 it was up at $34.24, and then in like 5 minutes it dropped down to like $33. And so I don't know, it's not that big of a— but it was like a 2% drop in, in a 5-minute like period. And it was, I was kind of weird to like erase the entire gains of the afternoon, which is kind of annoying. But I don't know, that felt like some something. Shorts covered? I don't know if that's a I don't know if that's a thing, but maybe you could, when you get a chance later, you can look at it.
[00:13:41] Speaker A: But, well, it could be related to options volume, uh, if someone put on a trade and then sometimes it like triggers algos, um, which then can cause a big jerk up or jerk down. But, um, yeah, I don't know. I've, I've been driving, so I haven't been able to look at much. Uh, the only, the only things I've been able to do today, uh, is, uh, put out professional athletes with the appropriate jersey numbers, and that's it, which has been fun. And then of course, like the last one I put away is Brian Urlacher of Chicago Bears, who's number 54. And then of course, an astute SpaceMobile investor was like, when are we doing Wayne Gretzky? Which, as some of you guys know, Wayne Gretzky, the all-time great, he's number 99. So, uh, I don't know. I, I feel like Wayne Gretzky could be in the cards, uh, at some point in the coming months, but we'll see.
[00:14:38] Speaker C: Did you see Cook? Cook put up, um, uh, the guy from, um, I don't know what the name of the character is, but it was, uh, yeah, from, from some Squid Games. Yeah, it's $250.
[00:14:48] Speaker A: Park Ji-hoon, $250.
[00:14:51] Speaker C: That's great.
[00:14:52] Speaker F: $250.
[00:14:53] Speaker A: That was, that was great. Hey, Jacob, can you hear me?
[00:14:56] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
[00:14:57] Speaker C: What's up, John? Go for it.
[00:14:58] Speaker G: Hey, uh, Anton, man, thank you so much for everything that you do. Um, you know, this is definitely big, being a big game changer. Um, I guess my—
[00:15:09] Speaker A: yeah, you're welcome.
[00:15:10] Speaker G: I, I guess my backstory is, uh, you know, I used to work in consulting, you know, before the pandemic and during the pandemic, so I could never invest in individual stocks. And when I got out, I started following you. Uh, and I first invested, I forgot the name of the healthcare company out of Florida that you had recommended.
[00:15:32] Speaker A: Oh, that was brutal.
[00:15:33] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:15:33] Speaker G: So I lost a bunch of money and I was like, man, like never trust these people on Twitter. Like even though I have the background of doing the analysis and looking at the statement, I was like, man, I was such a dumbass. And like, how did I lose so much money? And You know, etc., etc., etc. But then, you know, you start talking about, you know, um, ASTS, and then there was just like the space mob, right? Like back in 2022, I started investing, uh, I think before BlueWalker 3, so about 5 or 6 months before BlueWalker 3, went through all the ups and downs. And, uh, it's been great. Like, you know, it's It's life-changing money in the sense, you know, you're able to pay off your student loans, you're able to save up for your family. So I really appreciate everything that, you know, everyone has done. So thank you so much. So that's my backstory. I think my question for you is, so my wife and I in a bunch of different accounts have like a significantly large position in terms of commons, I would say in the tens of thousands of common shares. And in my play account, I typically dabble with options. Could you just like spend some time explaining? Because, you know, for the longest time, you know, we would see catalysts and the stock price wouldn't respond. And now it feels like, you know, catalysts are coming, but they haven't been announced and the stock price is so up. So if you could just help understand that dichotomy. And at the same time, like, you know, what would you do in a situation like this, right? Obviously, I'm not touching my commons because I absolutely hate this going to $500 a share. But then when you think about options, right? Like, you know, just like money on the side, right? How would you play options in this sort of a setting? So anything that you can share would be appreciated. And Jack, Jacob, thanks so much for setting this up.
[00:17:29] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah.
[00:17:31] Speaker A: No, thanks for coming on. That's really cool. So the healthcare company you're talking about is Canno Health, which Seemed like a very good investment and did okay. But then the company got overleveraged and bought, did a number of acquisitions that were disastrous. And there was a last hurrah where they were almost going to be acquired by Humana, or I think it was, I forgot who the other, maybe it was UnitedHealth. But anyway, that company ended up going bankrupt. And so I think I lost You know, we talk about like high-risk, like de-SPAC names. I think I lost like $1.5 or maybe almost $2 million on that one. That was really painful. And so in investing, the old adage, if you're not losing money somewhere, you're not taking enough risk. I took too much risk on that name. So unfortunately, I'm sorry to hear you lost money on that, as did others as well. But But on AST, I think so. If you're in terms of upcoming catalysts, I mean, we are. I did I did a post like recently of all the things that are expected in the coming months, which I think are big positives. And as we talk about like our big unlocks in terms of de-risking the story, especially the initial block two leverage that will go up. That will help de-risk the story. And I think that's part of the reason why you're seeing some of the anticipation now where people are getting ahead of that. That's why the stock has performed quite well. But I think, you know, for anybody, if you have a large position in this company, depending on what your financial situation is, you know, if you're young and you're still working and you have income, then you can probably take a bit more risk than somebody who's older, who is looking close to retirement, right? And so not that I'm giving financial advice, but I think just keeping in mind, especially if you have very large gains, you know, it's always good to take some profits and at a minimum, you know, rule of thumb is like take out your cost basis, like what you've initially invested. The other thing to think about is, you know, capital gains as well, right? So if you can manage you know, your exposure where you're trying to get everything towards capital gains, or for example, you're trading in a tax-advantaged account like a retirement account, that can be helpful. But I think, you know, for people who buy and sell, you know, for quick trades versus like, I think a lot of us who've just bought positions in ASTM just held over the long term and average down, you're able to compound, as we're seeing now, you're able to compound wealth much faster because you're not, you know, if you hold something for less than a year and you're looking to pay and you pay short-term capital gains on that, that chops out a big leg of your capital. And then if you're, you know, if you're looking to, you might make 5 or 10% or whatever it is, whatever your target is of trading stuff around, and comments, but over the long run, if the stock is doing well, it's oftentimes better to just buy and hold. But yeah, I think it's important to set aside money like your initial cost basis and of course setting aside money for taxes to pay that. I've known quite a few people that, you know, out of the first SPAC bubble who who had a ton of gains and sold, that then reinvested immediately and basically lost all that money, but then had huge tax bills because of the timing of that. They had huge tax bills that they had to pay and they were upside down. So, you know, when it comes to taxes, like, don't gamble with that money. Like, make sure you set aside enough for that. On your question about options, I think it's important that people understand, like, you know, I don't trade options regularly. I do from time to time when it seems like the timing is right. I mean, in options, like, if you're going to go long, you need to know, you need to have a very good sense of like where price is going to be and the timing. I mean, those are critical. And the market from a macro perspective can fake a sucker out of anyone, right? Like, you might be right on those things, but then The macro backdrop may overwhelm whatever thing you're betting on. And so you may be wrong from that point of view, or volatility may change, right? That volatility is an important input into option pricing. So you might be long really high, expensive, high volatility premium calls, and then maybe the event happens and you were right on price and timing, but then the vol collapses. And you actually don't make money or you end up losing money. So I think it's important, like if you're playing options to be opportunistic. Like if you're doing pure long options over the long run, it's like going to Vegas. Like you're going to lose money. Like that's almost pretty much a guarantee. But if you're using them judiciously at the right times where you're looking to get some leverage and you feel really good about the situation and you're not going on margin, um, and you're using options in a smart way, perhaps to construct trades that are better risk rewards, then they can be a very useful tool, right? So like, uh, ahead of this big run that we've had, um, you know, I, I took like short-dated option position, call option positions, just because vol was really cheap and short interest was at all-time highs and borrow rates were, was at all-time high too. And then we have all these catalysts and it's like, oh, well, options are cheap and there's all these great things that are happening and the stock was chopping like in the mid-20s. And so, hey, I'll take some like calls on June calls out of the money and see what happens. And so, you know, those did well. And so I think it's important to have a plan and like if you're planning, if you're thinking about utilizing options, but, you know, size them where if they go to zero, you're not gonna, it's not gonna be a big deal to you. And also take profits like options. You can be up big one day, but because of decay or the stock price, when it does pull back and volatility comes back down, that big winning trade one day can turn into a losing trade the next day or within a few hours or a few minutes. And so the key thing though is like, if you're trading options, you need to be at a computer or on your phone, you know, have clear access to that because, and unlike owning commons where you can just kind of sit back and do whatever you're doing in your daily life, if you have options, you need to be monitoring those like a hawk, right? So if you don't have time to, Monitor position, like definitely don't start one. The other thing is when you do have profits, I think the rule of thumb still applies as well, like being able to take out your cost basis at a minimum, or, you know, having a plan. I mean, definitely having a plan, like, you know, once I get to this level, I'll take out a third or monetize a third, monetize a half, whatever it is, right? But I think that for options, One of the biggest problems that people have is when they have profits, they think that there's going to be even more and they just keep riding them. And then something happens, like tariffs happen, or the initial part of this Israeli-Iran conflict happens and the market pulls back, and then all of a sudden you're down on the options. And then maybe if they're shorter dated, they expire worthless. So yeah, I think if you— they're good tools, but you've got to be very disciplined in how you use them and know, like, definitely have a plan. Like, you have a certain timeframe of when you're going to hold them. If the thing doesn't happen by then, like, you're going to close out and, you know, you're going to risk a certain amount. And if you hit a certain profit threshold, at a minimum, these are the levels where I'm taking profits to cash out of that position. But I don't know. Does that answer your question? Is that helpful?
[00:25:58] Speaker G: No, super helpful. Thank you so much, Anfan, man. And a side question for you is, sorry, a related question is, given all the Musk influencers talking about Starlink over the last couple of days, any thoughts on what's coming? Like in my head, it's Probably like the FirstNet announcement, or I don't know, something else. Any thoughts on that? Any speculation?
[00:26:24] Speaker A: I don't, that's a good question. I mean, there's a FirstNet webinar on the 26th, but I don't know if that would be, I don't know if that would prompt, cause like there to be a definitive agreement with FirstNet or a multi-year contract. But yeah, I mean, there's definitely things that are ripe, that are very ripe to be announced, whether it's a Verizon definitive agreement or we find out that a combination of FM1 is fully built and tested and ready for shipment, or it already has shipped, or it has shipped and has already landed in India. Like that could come out. There could be any number of this, you know, government contract, the government contracts, maybe expansion of those awards could come out or something around Golden Dome. I know it's early, but, you know, I recently had talked with the company just to catch up conversation and, you know, similar to like the quarterly call, I think there's this level of confidence that they will be involved somehow within Golden Dome. I mean, obviously, like, no one knows for sure, but that timing, I mean, who knows? Like, that could drop anytime as well. So yeah, I mean, it's your speculation as good as mine, but it does feel like, just given their stock price movement, it feels like maybe There's people that know, or maybe something's coming. Because I think I'm surprised too at how strong the stock price has been over the last several days. And part of it, I think people should understand, like, you have a very large short interest and all of a sudden some of those folks decide to cover their short and the stock moves up because of it. It's not as if like that's, That's not necessarily a short squeeze. That's basically people buying back the shares that they shorted and the stock getting back to a level of where it should have been had those people not shorted the stock. So, you know, one question that I've asked myself is like, where would AST SpaceMobile be at a steady state? Like if there were no shorts in the stock, like if there was putting aside the convertible, our who have to be short stock against bonds. But let's say theoretically, if the short interest is at zero, where would the stock equilibrium be? Like, would it be at 60, 70, 80? I don't know. But yeah, I think any number of those things could drop in the next few days, weeks, but there's a lot of potential catalysts. And it's funny, when I did catch up with management, One of the things that we both kind of joked about was like, back in the day, it could be 2, 3 months before, you know, between like a PR or something interesting that was announced because, you know, the company was at a very early stage of development and executing, but there wasn't really much they could share with people. Whereas now there's so many irons in the fire, whether it's on the commercial side, government, or military. And so I think we've been spoiled, quite candidly, for the last few weeks of all the news, either directly from the company or the movements we've seen in the FCC docket. And so now, as Kruk has pointed out in his Spaces, or as we talked about in our, the Space catch-up every week, there's like, There's almost too much to talk about. Um, yeah, now's a time where there's, for the people who, um, I guess it was like a few, I guess it was in, yeah, maybe it was a month or 2 months ago where they were lamenting that the stock is sideways and there wasn't much going on. Um, those people aren't complaining anymore because there's a lot going on.
[00:30:34] Speaker D: But yeah.
[00:30:34] Speaker A: Thank you, Jacob. Back to you.
[00:30:41] Speaker C: Yeah, thanks, man. Hey, uh, Chris, I see you jumped on, man. How's it going?
[00:30:44] Speaker I: Well, I just, uh, came on to congratulate the Space Mob. I mean, y'all— so I started covering ASTS not too long ago, and I was just frankly floored by the amount of research that, um, that you guys have done.
[00:31:01] Speaker C: And I—
[00:31:02] Speaker I: and, you know, Anna Pan, man, thank you for coming on that day with— I mean, and I think really that laid the long-term bull case out for this company. And especially if you look at the business model, I think that's the key thing that really, really intrigued me because like one of the things that I do when I invest is I try to find business models that are up and to the right that have very little risk from waffle, you know, from things waffling. You know, the economy tends to go up, down, left, right, but there are certain business models that are going to be up and to the right. You look at something like waste management, That is an up and to the right business. It's very hard to find businesses like that, and especially getting in on it at such a low valuation that you can actually make a material great return over a long period of time. I know some of you guys have been in here since like the $2 and $3, and you guys deserve that 25x return, which by the way, I don't even think Warren Buffett has gotten over the last like 30 years. So, you know, it just goes to show that sometimes If you do those in-depth research, you will get rewarded significantly. So just like I said, I came on for that. And once again, the amount of research that this community does is just— I'm floored by the amount of crowdsourcing that can actually happen. While some of these other more institutional-focused people, they'll hire professionals to go and do analysis. And they don't even come up remotely with what what you guys came up with. So, like I said, I just came on to basically glaze you guys a little bit while while I'm actually enjoying because I actually bought a lot of call options on this and the last few weeks have been nice.
[00:32:48] Speaker G: Yeah.
[00:32:50] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:32:51] Speaker C: Thanks, man.
[00:32:51] Speaker A: Thanks for coming up. Yeah. I enjoyed I enjoyed that space we did with Amit, and then I really enjoyed hearing your perspective because. Quite candidly, I've been listening to myself for way too long. So it's always refreshing to hear other people's perspectives, especially folks that are newer to the story. And so that was great. But yeah, the great thing about this company and quite candidly, like a few others that are out there, when you do have a large retail following, but More importantly, I think a lot of institutions can and do look down on retail investors, but what I think people misunderstand is that oftentimes a lot of folks who are in the retail investing community come from different professions and different backgrounds, which helps when working collaboratively together, helps in developing really solid research. So I think you're right on that. But yeah, no, it's, I'm happy to hear that you have invested and are doing well. This, yeah, it wasn't always like this. You know, some of the people who did buy it too were also averaging down because they had bought it at 10, 12, or wherever it was. So that was a pretty brutal journey. But I think what's interesting is I was talking about it with Cook earlier today. Had it not been for some of those difficulties and going through that period, but, and also being forced to really dig in, in terms of research and having a level of conviction like most folks wouldn't have had, ended up with these really, quite candidly, like oversized, overexposed positions down at those levels, then had the conviction to hold on, not selling at 8, 10, 12, 20, 30, or whatever it is, um, to see where we are today, which is pretty nuts.
[00:34:52] Speaker I: Yeah, for me, um, a lot of the positions that I have right now are in options, but I plan on converting them to, uh, just plain shares and just putting them into a nice long-term portfolio. Because like I said, if you, if you find these businesses at an early stage and you make a meaningful position, you don't have to look at them for the next 10, 15, 20, even maybe half a decade away. You know, I think a lot of people, they keep repositioning their portfolios to try to navigate certain, you know, certain times in the economy. But once again, if a business model is strong and you can see it moving up and to the right, just like how American Tower was in the year 2000, you know, ask anyone in the year 2025 how they feel about their returns. And trust me, you've outperformed the market significantly. And all you really needed to know was, okay, what is this company's business model and how is it going to generate revenue and how is it going to reward shareholders for holding? And from what I can see, the path to cash flow and dividends is immense. So even though right now everyone's looking at it like, oh, this thing's run up and should I buy in now? And I usually, I just tell people very simply like, okay, this is a $15 billion market cap company and You know, just because the market cap may seem elevated, remember the share counts are always there. So as this thing cash flows, they buy back shares, they issue dividends. Your total return is what you're going to get from that. And this, this thing is going to have crazy gross margins that they're going to be able to reinvest in growing their constellation and also doing additional free cash flow towards buybacks and dividends. So like I said, as from a business model standpoint, This is one of those businesses you put in a long-term portfolio. You don't look at it every day. You just, you know, when it goes up, it's like, hey, great. When it goes down a little bit, like, ah, whatever. And like I said, you don't look at it until 2035 and, you know, it'll be a meaningful part of your wealth.
[00:36:56] Speaker A: Yeah, 100%. I agree. It's, there was an OG investor who's not with us anymore, Steve Larison, and he He lamented the days that he had sold Amazon many years ago, and he would tell us over and over again that for people who had weak knees holding ASTs, like, I went through it with Amazon where I sold it way too early. I'm not doing it again. And this company is special and I'm holding it. You know, I'm going to see it through. And so, yeah, no, I agree. I think I think when you find a unique growth company like AST SpaceMobile, the worst thing you can do is keep staring at it and be forced, force yourself to sell out too early or do something versus, like we always joke, it's probably better to put yourself in a coma and just don't look at the company and then revisit it 10 years from now and you'll be happy.
[00:37:58] Speaker I: Absolutely.
[00:37:58] Speaker C: Hey, um, while I, I, I got some more people jump up on stage, but I got one person asking a question if you're good. I know you probably can't read the comments right now, but I'll try to regurgitate. Um, this is from Count of Gamble and he was asking about, um, he says, uh, what did— oh wait, that's not it. Sorry. Oh, okay. It says, um, are the drops at open a short attempt to bring it down or tapping of the ATM? Seems orchestrated every morning. And then he was referring to the, uh, convertible notes from the January ATM. And he says we're at 10 of 20 days over 35, the 35 conversion price. So I don't know if you could do anything with that. Sorry, I didn't quite understand it.
[00:38:47] Speaker J: Yeah.
[00:38:48] Speaker A: That's okay. Yeah, so maybe go backwards on the convertible notes. Those should have no impact on the stock. If anything, I think we, Kevin Mack and Cook talked about it a bit. There's probably some level of covering from the converts because those guys are probably on a, what we call like a 1 delta, a full hedge on the underlying. Call option in the convertible. And so that happened, well, probably closer to the low 40s, but now there shouldn't be any impact on their hedging. If anything, there probably has been over the last few days some of the convert ARBs unwinding that trade, meaning they covered stock and sold the bonds because I think those bonds, as you move up, it starts to cheapen. And because the borrow costs on the short side is going up, it's not a good idea to hold onto that trade. And so what you're probably seeing is some of those guys actually sell the bonds to fundamental holders or fundamental long-only buyers and then covering stocks. So them covering has probably helped fuel some of this move up. But the question about ATM usage, so the company is very They're, they're, they've now become very good at this. Uh, they're, they're probably better traders than, than I am. Um, so I, I don't think the company, when they are using the ATM, they're, they're not doing it on days where they're gonna move the stock. Um, if it's a quiet day, they might look to do, you know, single-digit percentage of VWAP, uh, only if the stock is up. Uh, they certainly aren't gonna do that at the open. And as we saw, I guess, in the 13D filing recently for Abell, I think they raised like 2— if you assume that they basically were at VWAP since the previous share count, which was filed, I think it was, I think in early, no, mid-May, they probably raised about $280 million during this entire move up, which is pretty crazy. And given the most recent volumes that have happened, they've probably— probably that's closer to $300 million, low $300 million. As some of you know, the ATM that they filed was $500 million in size. And so I think especially at these stock prices, they should certainly be raising some quantum of capital, just given that we've got a number of things that do require capital, whether that's getting production ramped up, paying for materials for new Bluebird satellites, but also just having the ability to raise money at this level is great. I think it's just a prudent thing to do given the stage of where the company is. And then who knows, there might be some other interesting spectrum deals for them to do in other regions outside of just Lakota. But so no, I don't think it's the company. They're not going to be using the ATM when the stock is down. Like they'll be using it on a strong day where the stock is up. But I do think in terms of is it potential shorts or algos, I do think it is. Like the reason why I say that, and sometimes people are like, well, how would you know? That doesn't make any sense. On Monday and Tuesday, especially Monday, you saw pretty aggressive selling. I think it was pre-market, but then at the open, the stock went all the way down to like $43. And I think there's, if I was a short seller, I'd be pretty desperate and you'd be willing to trade a few thousand shares to try to dictate the price and hopefully get kind of a spiral going or some stop losses getting hit and then forcing the stock price to go lower. Because I know like for hedge funds, like oftentimes whether it's pre or post-market, you might see people buying stock, hoping to make things go up or shorting stock or selling stock to make, you know, to kind of influence sentiment, which I think for any individual investor, when you see stock price movements pre or post-market or overnight, it does have some psychological effect. And so there is a reason for that, that people would do that. So just like, I think it was like the Q3 Quarterly update in 2024. This is like after after the launch. No, maybe sorry. It was a Q2 update that morning. Like after the call was done, the stocks had sold off a little bit after the call. But then that morning, somebody tried to walk the price down, and it wasn't for that many shares. Maybe it was like ten or twenty thousand shares. Like they walked the price down. But then right at the open. the stock immediately gapped up and then it was like no looking back because clearly whoever was trying to manipulate stock, they got caught. And then of course, whether it was shorts or institutions, their programs started kicking in to buy stock because they wanted to get long. And so yeah, when you see that type of movement in the morning, pre-market, and then at the open, If it's a battleground stock like ours is, and there's there's a heavy short interest, people definitely do try to play games to try to influence the stock for the rest of the day. And it you know oftentimes it does work because like you'll see on Twitter people complaining like somebody must be manipulating stock or or the company must be using the ATM, and and then that kind of like snowballs. Like especially if the stock isn't doing well or it's trading sideways and people get impatient. I think for folks who are it is clear like you know algos do follow sentiment. Like on Bloomberg, for example, there's a function called TREM trend, and you can see what social velocity is, like what sentiment is. Whether it's positive or negative, and you know algos will they'll plug into Bloomberg APIs or Twitter APIs, and they'll definitely gauge sentiment, and that will dictate kind of how they trade things. And so all this stuff actually does matter, and it and for retail, like for you and I, like it's it's also helpful too because I think when again going back like a month to two months ago when there was a lot of people who are upset because the stock was trading sideways. I guess sometimes we joke like you can tell who's long short-dated options because it allowed us— the folks who are whining the most when things aren't going their way. But that being able to kind of read sentiment from investors, whether it's in this stock or other stocks, that can give you a good sense of like, hey, things are maybe Perhaps too euphoric, or things are at a low in terms of sentiment. You know, if you look at sentiment right now for AST, one could argue like things are quite euphoric, which it's kind of funny because like normally I try not to be too euphoric because I always have like some level of superstition of like, hey, I don't want— you don't want to like celebrate the touchdown before you actually get into the end zone or any of that stuff. But This time around, it's like you know what? It's time to celebrate because like we're we're above fifty. It's a big milestone. I think I think people there's a lot of positive things that are coming that are undeniable. Like you can't you know we have these catalysts that are that are going to like like a sledgehammer are going to slap people in the head. And so even if we do have some level of drawbacks like drawdowns from here, you know to have for example. a launch of Bluebird satellites every 30 to 60 days, like, that's going to be really tough for anybody who's short the stock or skeptical, or if you're long, like, it's just something that's something to look forward to every month or month and a half or 2 months. And so having that cadence, I think is great. And so I think we're kind of at this inflection point where everything we've been waiting for is now finally coming to fruition, and, and it's great. So, um, anyway, now I'm rambling, but I'll just pause there.
[00:47:17] Speaker C: Uh, no, you're good, man. It's, uh, it's exciting. Um, there was somebody who was, uh, asking about the— what if Blue Origin could deliver or not? And I, I already responded, but I told him, like, if, if Blue Origin can, F9 can. Like, it's— I don't know. Like, and then let's say—
[00:47:32] Speaker E: let's—
[00:47:32] Speaker C: like, this is, this is me gonna— because the launch area is the only area I feel like a comfortable I'm talking about the stocks. But if, say, Blue Origin has significant problems and this is 18 months down the line or something like that and they still can't keep up with demand, F9's going to fill in that space. I wouldn't be surprised if the company would look at another third or fourth launcher at that point either. I feel like they're going to have the capital to make the move that they need to to get the satellites up if there was some You know, long-term problem with Blue Origin. But I, you know, that's just an outside thing. I just, I don't know. I don't feel like they're, they're all their eggs are not one basket with launchers. So I was getting it.
[00:48:15] Speaker A: Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, I think Blue Origin, you know, obviously space is hard. It's, it's taking that time. They were successful in their New Glenn launch, but then they obviously didn't land it. You know, I'd heard some. some feedback that there was only a few minor things that prevented that potential first landing. But who knows, right? Like, it's, I think the key thing is that they need to get more launches up, you know, whether they land them or not. I mean, it would be great if they can, you know, if they can return the boosters, but— You know, the company seems very confident in Blue Origin and their capability. So, and yeah, I mean, they have multiple providers. So they have ISRO. I don't know if they've had any discussions about ISRO potentially expanding into more launches, but then they do have, of course, SpaceX Falcon 9. And so that's why it's nice to see the company raising some additional capital because like if you do need to backfill, Then you can pay for those. And I think, you know, there's always been this debate amongst the community. You know, is is launch capacity constrained? And I think, as some people have finally recognized over the last few months or weeks, you know, SpaceX actually has capacity, but they just choose when there's not enough customers. They just choose to fill. that capacity with more Starlink satellites. But choosing between the two, a paying customer versus launching your own internal satellites, the payback of that, obviously having cash in hand now versus having to wait for the entire constellation to pay you back for those launches over time. Like that's, I think SpaceX would prefer to have paying customers upfront. So I don't view it as a big risk. But obviously it would be great if the Origin New Glenn, if that program can mature and get on a regular cadence.
[00:50:26] Speaker C: Yeah, I agree. I mean, that's the ideal. And yeah, as soon as they can start landing those boosters, that will take their cadence up faster because then they're not having to rebuild a whole new booster every time. So as soon as they start landing those, That, that's what is going to increase their cadence quicker. Um, Crypto Luke, I see you've been waiting for a minute, man. Do you want to ask something?
[00:50:52] Speaker J: Yeah, for sure. I just wanted to share my, my story, if that's okay.
[00:50:56] Speaker A: Um, yeah, let's—
[00:50:58] Speaker J: yeah, so I was one of the SPAC guys in 2021 that Ampam Man was kind of hitting on. Like, we made a lot of money. Like, personally, I was kind of all in on Virgin Galactic, and I rode that up I did take some profits in the 30s, but then I kind of took it into other things. Thankfully, AST was one of those things. And, you know, I was on StockTwits a lot, not too much on Twitter or X too much, but I was on StockTwits a lot. So thank you so much for posting on StockTwits because that's where I was at those days. And then I think I just joined X like last summer as AST started to go crazy and beyond our wildest dreams and everything. But yeah, I was really depressed for a couple years 'cause I just rode that SPAC boom all the way down 'cause I'm super stubborn. And thankfully, you know, I shifted most of that money, pretty much all that money eventually went into AST. So did pretty well, not as well as some people, but, you know, did pretty well. I'm in the 7 figures now, so. Pretty exciting. Um, but yeah, it's just been an amazing, amazing story. I lost 500 shares last year, uh, selling calls during the summer. I had just lost my job at Amazon, so I had sold some calls to go get a haircut for interviews and whatnot. And then I lost, lost those 500 shares through the, the Verizon deal that all of us— Um, oh yeah.
[00:52:26] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:52:27] Speaker J: So learned my lesson. Don't sell too many calls. Maybe sell a little bit, but don't sell too many. Because you don't want to lose your whole position because that's just a bad day. Um, and then the taxes you get hit with on top of that. But yeah.
[00:52:40] Speaker A: Um, if you don't mind, I kind of want to chime in and agree with Crypto Luke there. Um, I was one of the—
[00:52:47] Speaker D: I started investing around like $12 share price too, and I rode through it all.
[00:52:52] Speaker A: And I was on vacation last week, I saw it go to $35, so I sold Called on my whole position for 42, and I oh yeah, I bought some of them back, but a large part of my position got called away. And today I was like waiting for the dip, but I was like fuck it, it's just a few dollars. I bought back in again at like 51. So now I have a tax bill too. My position smaller by like 20%, and it's. Feels like I kind of made a silly mistake because I helped do it all—the whole down periods, flat periods—and just when we made money, I missed out a lot. But I guess I just want to say for everyone, I kind of learned my lesson, and I'm just gonna hang on to it. And really, the best thing I can do here is nothing. So I was a little sad, but just felt like sharing. Yeah.
[00:53:42] Speaker J: So what I try to do is, yeah, I try to go and trade something else because I love to trade. I used to have like my Series Seven and stuff, so I love to trade. Um, so I try not to trade AST anymore. I try to just hold on to it, but you know, I'll go trade some other penny stocks that I want to mess around with.
[00:53:59] Speaker K: Yeah, hard, hard learned lessons.
[00:54:02] Speaker J: Yeah, then I went to the launch last September. I didn't meet everyone, there's so many people at the launch, but I got to meet a couple of, uh, cool people. Like, I think I met Awesome Beast and a couple others. Uh, but yeah, anyway, it was just, just been such a fun thing to be a part of. I appreciate everyone doing the Spaces. I like to like to join from time to time and just, uh, you know, get, get the DD. And because a lot of these guys, they're so much smarter than I am. Like, I'm not completely retarded, but they're so much smarter. Like, I would never have found like a lot of this research without a lot of you guys. So thank you, thank you, thank you.
[00:54:37] Speaker A: Yeah, that's so cool. Congratulations on, um, on, on making it back. I mean, I think we all went through That brutal period, like in 2020 and 2021, like you couldn't. It was hard not to make money, first of all. But then when 2022 hit, it was like when rates went up and you know there was there was inflation issues, of course. And then you know all the all the different SPACs like went down and and then of course ASD was no different. But yeah, it was it was a tough time, like to. Have the conviction to hold and to add, which I think a lot of people did over that difficult period. And I'm sure there were plenty of nights where you had regrets. I mean, I certainly did for sure. But then, you know, fast forward to today, which is why I think everybody is so elated for those that, whether you were holding for 4 years or you recently bought in, Um, it's just like a tremendous milestone for this company that was basically a venture investment for the public markets, um, to actually make it through the meat grinder and is now on the cusp of commercialization, which is, which is enormous, right? Um, and I think even today at whatever, $15 or $16 billion market cap, like it's still a relatively unknown company. But soon enough, when AT&T and Verizon roll out beta and then initial service, like it's gonna be a household name that people know, which is kind of scary to think about. 'Cause then if people enjoy their experience, it's like, oh, well, how do I invest in this? And then, oh, there's this company called HT Space Mobile. Maybe I'll just throw a few shekels at that. But I think the other thing is going back to what S was saying, like, when you sell calls, just like another thing is that you kind of make a decision or you take the decision-making outta your hands. 'Cause like if you have a position that you've held for 9 months, for example, and you sell calls that are, you know, maybe a few months out, but then the company, the stock trades through the calls and then your stock gets called away early, then you all of a sudden have a short-term capital gains that you didn't want, right? Now you can always go back and just buy the calls back so that doesn't happen, so you can maintain your long-term capital gains, but, or your path to long-term capital gains. But I mean, that's another thing that I think is that people should recognize is that, you know, selling calls, I mean, you're basically shorting a synthetic put, right? So you're collecting insurance And you've given away the upside in the stock. And then if something bad happens, then you wear the entire risk. So calls are not riskless. Like when you sell them against stock, you're basically, it's the same thing as selling in-the-money puts. And so just be cognizant of that. And if you've got something that you want as long-term capital gains and it's, and then it's, or if it is long-term capital gains and then it gets exercised, all of a sudden you have to restart the clock again with a new physician, which can suck, right? So, but yeah, thanks for sharing your experience. I think it's good for people to hear, you know, real-world experiences to drive from. Yeah, if we can save one person, totally worth it.
[00:58:10] Speaker J: Yeah, absolutely. No problem. Thanks, guys.
[00:58:12] Speaker G: Thanks for going up.
[00:58:16] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:58:18] Speaker C: So at least, I mean, I feel this make me feel better anyways. I don't, I'm not the only one it did. Uh, you know, so, uh, there was a couple other questions on here. Um, some people were asking, sorry, I lost it.
[00:58:34] Speaker A: That's all right. I did want to mention that, uh, StockTwits is a crazy place. Like, I, uh, I do go on there from time to time, but it's just too crazy.
[00:58:49] Speaker C: Uh, um, wow, is it just me or did anybody else not hear? It's just me, I'll shut up. Yeah, I think he's cutting out. MP man, you're cutting out. Maybe you're losing service. A little better. Keep trying.
[00:59:29] Speaker A: Okay, let me. No, it's enjoying.
[00:59:31] Speaker C: Yeah, I got. No, I hear you now. Wait, wait, don't leave. You're good. Well, I hear you now.
[00:59:36] Speaker D: Everything's fine.
[00:59:37] Speaker A: Okay. No, I was just saying, like, I was just saying that StockTwits is a funny place because, like, it's a bunch of noise and I don't get how people can be on there. Um, 'cause it's, it's like, uh, it's like a zoo unless I guess you filter stuff by popular posts. But funny enough, like, um, just to evangelize about the company I did, I used to be a bit active there as well. And then That's actually how I met Kook, because that's where he was. He lived on StockTwits, and then we randomly kind of chatted with each other, and then, uh, that's how we kicked off our friendship. So, and I know Capsy, uh, spends a lot of time there as well. But yeah, are there any other questions?
[01:00:20] Speaker D: Yeah, I got one. Somebody asked—
[01:00:22] Speaker A: Do you want to come up?
[01:00:23] Speaker C: All right. Yeah, yeah. By the way, if anybody's just joined or joined late, if you guys want to jump on stage, tell a story about, you know, what's like elation for what, anything else like that, or just wanna ask MPMN something, uh, feel free to request it. Um, and while we're waiting for the next person, I see somebody asked, it says, uh, can you please talk about tools that you use for trading or gathering inputs? I know you talked about Bloomberg sometimes.
[01:00:47] Speaker A: Yeah. Uh, Bloomberg, I, I use Bloomberg, but, uh, it's probably not for everybody. I, I, I pay for it. 'Cause I'm just so used to it and it's very powerful, but it's expensive. It's like $40,000 a year. So, however, if you do want tools that are similar and are very powerful, one platform I recommend is Koifin, K-O-Y-F-I-N. Koifin's pretty good. at analyzing, you know, pulling up financial information for companies, also providing you with like estimates, like Wall Street estimates for, um, projections, things like that. But, um, and, and also news too. But, um, but yeah, Bloomberg is like, it's a, it's got an arcane interface, but it's, it's really powerful. So that's, that's probably the, the biggest tool that I use. Then of course, you know, Excel or Google Sheets to do to, you know, lay out financials and financial analysis. But, um, but yeah, I would recommend people using Koyfin. Um, if you want to do screens and analyze companies, uh, that's a really great tool and it's pretty reasonable. It's probably, I actually haven't looked at it in a long time, but maybe it's like $60 or $70 a month.
[01:02:07] Speaker C: Sweet. Um, NKIC jumped on stage. You want to ask something? Or talk about something?
[01:02:13] Speaker F: Yeah, I just had— so I'm on the— I'm a small fry. I'm on the exact opposite side of Crypto Luke. I, uh, just got into it about 15 days ago, so I bought about 12 options contracts and I have 350 shares. So I'm definitely on the small side. Um, but I have been, you know, going down the rabbit hole of reading so much about it, and, uh, more so on Reddit than on Twitter. But my question is more so about Where this company in five to ten years, I've been reading online that it could potentially be the main connection space connection for all you know kind of interconnection as far as like telecommunications and and and your connection through your cell phone service is. But wouldn't that make it more of a disruptor to like T-Mobile and Verizon instead of partnering with them? Like, do you what what do what is the vision if it gets to like? These kind of meteoric $1,000 a share kind of, I guess, just a quick synopsis of what is the goal with it.
[01:03:17] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah.
[01:03:17] Speaker A: No. So the company is not in competition with the MNOs. They partner with MNOs. And so in the US, that's AT&T and Verizon. And then in Europe, that's Vodafone. In Japan, Rakuten. And, you know, there's like, There's almost 40, or sorry, 50 other global MNOs that they work with. And so the business model is that they actually, uh, the MNO controls customer. They're, they're basically like a wholesaler, right? So they, they provide the constellation that can utilize the MNO's spectrum and the MNO keeps control of their customer. So imagine like if you are a Verizon customer and you want satellite broadband connectivity, anywhere, then you might end up, Verizon will say, hey, you can pay an extra, I don't know, $10 a month or $15 a month to have this service. And then Verizon puts you on the service. And then when you're out of coverage, Verizon's network, then AST SpaceMobile satellite will beam connectivity to you in those dead spots. And that that $10 to $15 will get split 50/50 between Verizon and AST SpaceMobile. So they're not in competition. What's interesting though is that they, in the US, AST SpaceMobile will be providing additional or will have access to additional spectrum. Spectrum are the airways that all your data transports from whether it's a cell tower or it's a satellite to your mobile phone. But they will have access to additional spectrum in this deal that they did with Gato, which they will still do through a partnership with AT&T and Verizon. They will allow you to have broadband data, even let's say, for example, you're at a New York Jets game, right? And the cell towers are completely inundated because there's too many users there. In the future with AST SpaceMobile and Locado, you'll be able to actually connect to that broadband network with the satellite in order to get coverage even when the cell towers are completely inundated with users. Or additionally, like if there's a disaster or in your area, if cell towers go out or there's power outage or something, then you'll still be able to have connectivity with their satellite. with your phone. And so AST SpaceMobile is not a replacement of terrestrial coverage for your cell phone, but it's in the areas where either coverage is spotty, like for example, if you go out to LA, there's a lot of canyons in different areas where people don't want cell towers built where you'll be able to get coverage in those areas. But then also, If you're traveling, you know, like in a national park and there's no coverage, well, in the future when this service is launched, you actually will have coverage in all those areas.
[01:06:18] Speaker F: Right. And I was reading that it would be more like the same connection as in my home. So if I'm, you know, up in a canyon, I can still receive pictures, calls, videos, which with Starlink, my understanding is you can't.
[01:06:34] Speaker A: Yeah, with Starlink right now, it's sporadic texting. Whereas this is going to be full-fledged voice, data, video. Obviously, if there's a bunch of users in a given location that are all hitting the same satellite, then you might get throttled down to a degree. But I think for the most part, when people use their phones, they want to check news information, they might be listening to music. They're not staring at Netflix while they're hiking in a canyon. So they might send pictures to loved ones. And so this service is a complement to the carriers and it'll be something that they can charge basically as like an additional feature on a monthly basis. And if you can imagine, like, let's say if you're, if you have a family and you have small kids, you always wanna be connected to them, right? And so this is also for peace of mind. Like if your kids are out on a field trip and they're in a dead zone, you're gonna be I think any parent, including myself, would pay the additional $10 a month to make sure you're fully connected with them if they have an Apple Watch or maybe you put an AirTag in their backpack or something. So yeah, this is going to be game-changing. I mean, besides just cell phones, like Internet of Things, cars, connected cars, autonomous trucks, autonomous robotaxis, whatever it is, having full coverage all the time in broadband data is gonna be critical. And so this is the solution that, or the problem that the company's gonna solve.
[01:08:09] Speaker F: Thank you so much. I'm gonna drop off and I really appreciate all the insight and the community, really, really do.
[01:08:17] Speaker A: Yeah, thanks for coming out.
[01:08:21] Speaker C: Somebody wanted to plug that there's new merch and new ASTS merch or something. So there, go check it out. Oh, on the website still there, right? Maybe. Yeah, I don't— that's what he said. Oh, to plug that there's a mention there's new merch drop from ASTS.
[01:08:38] Speaker A: Oh, oh, oh, from the company. Oh cool, I'll have to check that out.
[01:08:49] Speaker C: Um, I—
[01:08:49] Speaker D: on the last person that was up here, NK, I just did like—
[01:08:52] Speaker C: I don't know how much you're— I know you said you were new and you're dive into stuff. And so just in case you weren't aware, I'm not saying you weren't, but the Starlink fixed terminal versus Starlink direct-to-cell are 2 different services. So I don't want people to get confused with thinking that the first time that they use— but this service comes online, it's going to be comparable to the fixed wireless dish service. It's not going to be at the same speeds initially or potentially ever because it's not— it's the difference between being on Wi-Fi versus being on a cell phone, right?
[01:09:25] Speaker E: Yeah.
[01:09:26] Speaker C: I mean, correct me if I'm wrong here.
[01:09:27] Speaker A: Yeah, no, that's right. Yeah, I mean, I, you will get peak speeds that could be like at 100 or 120 once the full service is up. But, um, you know, it's probably going to be more like 20, 30 megabits per second, which is still pretty fast. Uh, but then that's also going to depend on how many users are in the cell as well. But then going forward, as the company iterates satellites and gets more up, and densifies the network, that capacity will go up. I think Bell has talked about once massive MIMO gets incorporated into the constellation, you know, each cell could have a capacity of 750 megabits per second, which is really fast. Yeah. I see another person has come up. Oh, sorry. Did you want to ask another question?
[01:10:18] Speaker F: It was one other question. Like in West Virginia, for instance, I have T-Mobile and I was out in West Virginia and they were saying, oh, it's AT&T country out there. So I had very infrequent ability to, while I was out in West Virginia, to connect and speak to people without having Wi-Fi. So this would basically, if I had like a T-Mobile account or if I have Verizon or something like that, it would connect to all of West Virginia. I no longer have those issues where It's a dominant, like, AT&T in West Virginia. New Jersey is T-Mobile, you know what I mean?
[01:10:53] Speaker A: Yeah, it— well, so the company's not working with T-Mobile. They are working with Verizon and AT&T. So, uh, but yeah, if in, in the future, like, if you're out in Long Island on the beach, you will have full coverage. Or if you're even on a boat a few miles off the coast, you will have cellular coverage. And then in the future, depending on how they decide to plan to cover perhaps parts of the open water, like oceans, like you will have coverage. But even, for example, like on an airplane, you know, even though you're supposed to turn off your, and maybe the FCC will change this, but you will be able to use your mobile phone, not on Wi-Fi, but on the cellular network via satellite while you're flying. on an airplane, for example.
[01:11:42] Speaker F: Wow. Wow. Thank you. Thanks so much.
[01:11:44] Speaker A: Yeah, you're welcome.
[01:11:51] Speaker C: Hey, I see Gino had his hand raised and then Scott.
[01:11:56] Speaker H: Yeah. Hi. Yeah. Hi. I had a small question for Anupam, which is like, just rewind back some time. how did he find this opportunity and, uh, uh, like, like, how did he come across this opportunity and how did he evaluate it to, to build up this conviction? And secondly, like, I know, uh, which is the next, uh, you know, next company like ASTS that he thinks so can be like, you know, this world-changing, uh, so just want to have his thoughts on 3 things, which is A, how did he find across this opportunity? How did he evaluate it back then when, you know, a lot of people didn't have the conviction? And 3, does he have any other opportunities in his back pocket?
[01:12:40] Speaker A: Yeah, so I've shared this before. It was actually by luck. So I bought stock and warrants, primarily warrants, in a company called New Providence Acquisition Corp, which was a SPAC that had yet to do a deal I started buying this, you know, shares and warrants on speculation of that the sponsors, given their backgrounds, that they would do a good deal. So I started buying in September of 2020, and then of course they announced a deal with AST SpaceMobile in December. And so the reason why I had been buying New Providence is that given that the sponsors had some background in consumer products, and then telecom. And so back then, some of us were speculating in a Discord that I used to be part of for SPACs, like, oh, perhaps New Providence will take Beyond Meat or one of the alternative meat companies public, or perhaps a cool consumer products company public. But then when they announced the deal in December, it was like, oh, what is this? And interestingly, my background working in the hedge fund industry as a portfolio manager, I did quite a bit of TMT investing. So I knew about the telecom landscape and I'd actually invested in a number of spectrum situations as well. And so when I looked at the deck, the concept made a lot of sense to me, obviously back then, as did many people, like, you know, I did have some level of skepticism that they'd be able to do it. You know, connecting an unmodified phone to this really large satellite, you know, could they actually make that connection? And then could they actually deliver broadband speeds? But then what got me over the initial hump, and that day, like, after the deal was announced, I started buying more warrants. But what got me over the hump was just seeing the fact that the company had strategic investments from American Tower, Rakuten, Vodafone, Bell Canada. And so to me, that was a big validation point. And I remember going on Twitter and seeing some of these, I think it was Johan Weiberg, who was the former, now former CTO of Vodafone, but back then he was the current CTO. And, you know, Johan Weiberg is now actually a board member at AST SpaceMobile, but there was a video of him. I think this was like back in 2019 or '18, but I had found it where he had talked about working with AST SpaceMobile as early as 2018 on developing this technology. And so for me, that was like a huge validation point where you had this, you know, Vodafone, very large MNO. The biggest owner of wireless spectrum in the world. You know, they provide service and either directly to partner company, AT&T talks about industry or partner with company. I, you know, I remember reading some of the articles about how AT&T was helping develop this technology with AST and then There's a note. Verizon, uh, with the FCC started complaining. And one of the things, like, whenever you invest in, uh, the telecom sector, uh, if, if competitors aren't complaining about something you're doing, then what you're doing is probably not actually worth anything or, um, or a threat. But to see, like, at that time, T-Mobile and Verizon complain about what AST SpaceMobile was doing with AT&T, I was like, oh, that's, that's another big validation point. Like, they feel pretty threatened by it. And so it was that initial, you know, that initial work is what got me hooked on the company that all these strategic partners, some of who had investments, but also others that were helping develop the technology. Because, you know, at the time, I think the company had announced too that they were working with Nokia on the eNodeB integration with the carrier's backend. But yeah, there was just like, all these strategic partners that made sense. And so for me, that was, that gave me enough confidence to, you know, take basically a speculative bet on the company. But then fast forward to, I think it was like, I think it was January or February, I had my first conversation with Abel. And so we talked for about, I think it was like an hour, an hour and a half. And that initial conversation, I think it's still up on Reddit. 'Cause I posted it. But after speaking with him and getting to know him more, and that's what gave me more conviction to then just keep going down the rabbit hole. And so it's not as if like I put on a full-size position immediately and that was the end of it. This was something that kind of happened over the course of years where with the help of like Katzi, Cook, Steve Larison, many others, some people who were in the community but then left because they sold, or new people. I mean, it's just, it's been a never-ending kind of learning process where over time, I, you know, whether I was confident, I was adding to my position back then, or there were times, of course, like when the stock was at $2 and the warrants were at $0.35, where out of disgust and defiance. Like, I just kept buying. But yeah, that's kind of the backstory of like how I learned about the company and how I got, I guess, my initial conviction. But it was really over the course of time in terms of just following the company, continue to talk with management, but also just seeing them execute, you know, also make mistakes too, or timeline slipped. which is quite common for any startup, but especially startups that are trying to do something as disruptive as this, that is also space-based, it's going to be tough. But let's see, are there any other names that I think are transformative, that I'm looking at that are transformative? Not currently. I mean, this is really my key investment. I do have some smaller things that I speculate on from time to time, but I don't, I mean, not that there isn't, there aren't other names out there. There's, I'm sure there's plenty, but I just haven't had the time to really go out there and kind of drum up new ideas. So hopefully that answers your question.
[01:19:28] Speaker H: Got it. Got it. Thank you so much. One last question, pretty stupid question, but do you know the story behind the A in everyone's, uh, you know, every ASD, you know, diamond hand there. What's the backstory behind it? I'm— I never could understood that.
[01:19:49] Speaker A: Here's— okay, here's the real backstory. So once upon a time, it was like 2 years ago or 3 years ago, uh, on FinTwit, there— this was like, uh, uh, Gert Gavin and a few others who were pretty involved in SPACs. I don't know who started it, but they all put like a P, the letter, the blue circle P in their name. And it was like some type of inside joke. I forget exactly what it's for, but I saw that and I was like, oh, that's pretty interesting. Like, I wonder, it'd be kind of cool if like we used the red A as our kind of design. But then I didn't do anything about it because I was like, maybe that would seem too cultish. But then there was another account, a current Space Mob ASTS Moon, who then came up independently with the idea like, hey, I'm gonna start this. I'm gonna put a red A in my name. It'd be cool if like everyone else does it too. And then because he, he started, I was like, okay, now I can adopt it because it's— because then it wouldn't look like I started this cult. It was somebody else, but I, I'll go along with it because I think it's really cool. And so I, I put in my name and then other people put it in their name as well, and it just kind of took off. Of course, like at periods of time, it was a symbol of being— it's been a symbol of being too early in something or being dumb. You know, when the stock was down, it's like, ah, you guys are all chumps. But now, of course, like, it's a symbol of pride that we went through this crazy journey over the years. And so far it's been great. So, but yeah, it's, I guess it's just a symbol of solidarity that This is a cool common interest that we all have. And whenever you see it, yeah, it's just like, hey, they're shareholders too. And so it's just something that you can bond over, I guess. So that's the background.
[01:21:46] Speaker H: It's a fascinating story. You're probably like one of the first few people to start like a cult or start a culture. And in that way, it's But yeah, it's nice to know. Thank you so much for sharing that.
[01:21:58] Speaker A: Yeah, you're welcome. Thanks for coming on.
[01:22:01] Speaker C: Hey, I know Scott wanted to ask something next, and then I see Hayden on the deck, but just to check in with you, Anthony, are you still good?
[01:22:10] Speaker A: Yeah, I've got an hour and a half to drive still. But you know what? This is great because I'm at this age now where when I drive, I get really sleepy in the first hour, hour and a half, and then I have to get over that hump. But this is great. Like, time's going by fast. So I've, I'm on a 4-hour drive and I've already 2 and a half hours after talking with Cook. And then now with this space, like, it's really gone by quickly. So this is great. Thank you guys for everything. I was just kind of curious, I've been investing for a few years now. Technical question, if I'm an AT&T subscriber and I'm out in the middle of the ocean and there's no gateways, How does that signal get back to AT&T? Does it get transferred between satellites and then back down to Earth? Yeah, so I don't think I don't think they figured out exactly what they're going to do over over water, which Katzy, I see him in the in the crowd. He might be better to answer this, but I'm not sure. 'Cause you need some understanding from how spectrum, what spectrum rights countries have or companies have over water and where does like your company's spectrum rights end. But let's say theoretically that they are able to, AT&T is able to offer their service, say, over the Atlantic. Yeah. These satellites have a very wide field of view, and so they should be able to talk to a ground station. So you will be able to have, you know, you will be able to talk to satellite and then the satellite will beam down back to the ground station. But the other alternative, if there isn't a ground station, say, that's within the field of view for the satellite, then you could A recent thing that the company has been contemplating or testing is optical inter-satellite links. And so similar to like an Iridium or Starlink, you could have a satellite communicating or satellites communicating with one another. So if one satellite does not have access to a ground station, then it will relay your call to another satellite that's over a ground station, which then will connect it. to the MNOs network. Awesome, thank you.
[01:24:40] Speaker C: And I was also throwing there too that once the, like, Ligado and then other MSS spectrum gets usage, then it becomes like global spectrum rights and that becomes a bit easier and you're not trying to piecemeal it with all the different MNOs from different countries, right?
[01:24:59] Speaker A: Well, Ligado is specifically for the US and Canada. But then if they, for example, if AST works out a deal with some of these other spectrum holders that have global coverage, like say Omnispace where they have more regions, then yeah, then you wouldn't have issues connecting calls over water. But that, I mean, that's a very specific use case, whether it's maritime or if you're flying internationally, which I'm sure there'll be agreements between MNOs to figure out how to split that by if they are using AST SpaceMobile. But I think more importantly, you know, if you're just off the coast, maybe it's maybe a few miles out, then you should be able to have service if you have ATT or Verizon. Which for most people, like if you're boating or fishing, That will be, I think, a great future.
[01:25:56] Speaker C: Awesome. Hayden, I think you were up next, and then Tyler's after that. What's up, man? How you doing?
[01:26:04] Speaker E: Hey, can you hear me?
[01:26:07] Speaker A: Yeah, we can hear you.
[01:26:10] Speaker E: Okay, great. Yeah, I just wanted to give a shout out to Ampamin and everybody who does a great DD for this company. Just to give you my backstory, I started researching it, bought it at like four in the summer last year. Then it went to like seven or eight, and I flipped it and thinking I was a genius, you know. And and it and it kept running. And so then I'm like, what is so interesting about the stock? I started researching the company, started finding new guys and everything. And and once I figured out the business model, you know, the wholesaler to the MNOs. seemed great. Then I found out about the DOD, you know, uh, dual use cases that are out there. Everything just kept getting better and better.
[01:26:56] Speaker F: Yeah.
[01:26:56] Speaker E: And, uh, I started telling people at work about it. And, uh, now we've got probably almost about $1 million collectively with us, uh, my company, uh, all invested in it. And I've got people calling me today saying, hey, is it too late? Should I put in more? I don't know. And anyway, Um, so, uh, I just wanted to say thank y'all. You know, if, uh, if it weren't for you guys, uh, I probably would have been flooded out of my shares a long time ago. And, uh, because— yeah, and all—
[01:27:28] Speaker A: congratulations. Yeah, anyway, uh, keep on keeping on. Yeah, that's, that's a great story. Yeah, it's, uh, as we say, like, you do 5 minutes of due diligence and you'll want to short the stock. If you do an hour, you'll want to mortgage your house.
[01:27:46] Speaker C: That's exactly right.
[01:27:47] Speaker A: Um, it's, uh, yeah, because it's, it's, I, I think it's a pretty, it's a, a big hump initially to get over, but once you do, then it's like you reach enlightenment. There's all these, uh, whether it's the commercial use case, but then like, as you mentioned before, like the, the military or the defense use case wasn't even a part of the thesis in 2022, 2023, even though the company had been working on it and smart people like Katzi had caught on very early. And I think Katzi, I remember the post Katzi would have these tweet threads of like dual use case and military, whether it's like backup GPS or radar or any number of enhancing communications for the warfighter, tracking assets. And he used to post tweets, and then people would reply like, "You're crazy," or "That doesn't make any sense," or "You're just speculating," which then of course fast forward today, it's like, "Hey, it's all there. It's all happening." Like there's six government contracts with the SDA, DOD, DIU, and we're going to get something with Golden Dome. Like everything that Katzi was uncovering back then. that we speculated, but we, you know, we as like non-technical people, it's like, okay, this could make some sense, but I'm not sure like if it's how realistic it is. But then Katya would be like, well, actually that does make sense. This is why. And also you're missing like these 10 other reasons, these 10 other use cases, which is, it's great to see. But yeah, I love your story. Like there's, I think I've heard from a number of people where other They've done other coworkers or friends and family invest in the stock, and then of course during different periods of this investment cycle, it's led to awkward moments. Like I remember when the stock was when it was just rallying again. Well, especially after oh my god! After Verizon and the stock took off, I remember I was joking with some of the space mob that oh some of you can actually go back to. Thanksgiving and look at your family straight in the face versus other times where perhaps you were ostracized for getting them into this stock that then whether they bought it 6 or 7 went straight to 2. And then I remember joking in a tweet when Verizon went up, it's like some marriages were saved from this and then, or alternatively, some marriages were ended because I guess maybe perhaps like people who were invested decided to leave their significant other because now they could move on. But anyway, that was a joke, kind of a dark joke. But yeah, thanks for coming up and sharing. That's really cool that you bought it for— I think a lot of people, that's pretty amazing that you flipped it, but then you got back in. So yeah, thanks for being here.
[01:30:46] Speaker E: Yeah. And just to touch back on something y'all Touched on earlier. Yeah, you know, I flipped my shares back and forth and doing the math over and over again, you know, I'm kicking myself. You know, I'm still happy that I'm in it where I'm at, but you know, trying to trade it was a terrible mistake. Buying and holding seems to be the best strategy at this point, and you know, don't make the same mistakes I made.
[01:31:17] Speaker A: Yeah, it's less stressful. You just like buy it and then don't look at it and you can go about your day. It's funny because like, I think Cook was telling me like the best days are when he goes surfing or he has no access to a phone. So he doesn't have to really think about it. Or I guess the other thing you can do is just put it in a separate account. Just open a brokerage account specifically for what you own and just put it there and And then don't have an online app. So, um, that might be a better approach. Yep. I might have to do that.
[01:31:54] Speaker E: Anyway, um, yeah, thanks a lot. Uh, it's been an interesting ride and pretty much all those, uh, all those things happened to me. At one point I was afraid to look at my wife in the eyes and then, uh, at another point I'm, you know, running to her and I'm like, guess what happened today?
[01:32:11] Speaker A: But yeah, no, I think we can all, I think we all empathize. Yeah. Yeah. We've all been through, you know, $17 and $2.
[01:32:22] Speaker E: I didn't have to experience that drawdown, but, you know, buying back in at $25 and watching it go to $17 wasn't too great.
[01:32:29] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. But, but I think like, it's, it's those periods where if you've done the due diligence and you know what you own, like we say, the volatility is just all noise. Like it's just chop, right? And I think just focusing on the long term, like I guess I'll share this example. Like when, so I had at peak in terms of warrants, I think I had 950,000 warrants. And so when September rolled around last year, obviously they were, there was a warrant redemption, so I had to exercise make a decision to sell some and exercise some. And so I sold enough warrants where I could exercise a pretty close to maximum amount, but then putting aside some money, of course, for taxes. But then having exercised the warrants, just like a call option, it resets your clock. And so you basically have to hold the stock for at least a year for capital gains from that time of exercise of warrant. And so You know, these warrants on average, I think my cost basis was around a dollar and they, I think at the peak they traded, at the peak I think they traded for like $28 or something. It was pretty nuts. But I did sell some and then I was able to exercise into the position that, you know, stock position that I hold today. But the good thing about being able to exercise the warrants is that it made me take some amount of money off the table to set aside for taxes. And then I actually took a little more money off just to say that I did, because I think from a mental standpoint, it was just good to do that. And so, you know, I still have a really large position, but then when we had the drawdown from the 30s all the way to, I guess it was like 17 or 18, it didn't really impact me because I was not long warrants anymore. So there was no Clock, running clock, and then I was just long comments. And so I was able to just ride that volatility all the way down, and it didn't really faze me because I knew what I held, and I was confident that you know clearly we had a we had a big run up to thirty nine, and then it was a pullback, which is pretty natural. Like those things happen, and I was able to buy back with some of the money I had set aside. I was able to buy back some shares relatively cheap, which is you know when I tweet like. The little character dancing like I bought the dip. Like, yeah, that's what I did and it was good. Like I was able to increase my position. And as some of you guys know, like I also have shares in a tax-advantaged account, so I do trade those around from time to time. But I think just having a core position that you just don't touch, You know, it's good. And having, like, if you're fully invested in this company in particular, like, I definitely recommend selling some, especially like at these levels, like selling some, putting, selling, taking some profit and setting aside money for taxes and just putting capital aside. Because it, there's kind of this like therapeutic effect where you've accomplished something like I've taken profits. I've made some money. Maybe if you can, like, take your cost basis out, like, do something, because it gives you peace of mind that you did something. And so when there is a pullback, you can look back and say, oh, well, you know, I actually took profits at $54 or $53, and I have money set aside. And if I want to, I can buy some of those shares back lower. Or if the stock runs to $60, Because like, it takes some money out. And when you do that, it actually provides this, like, moment of clarity for you where you don't really care about volatility because you took some profits, whether it's, I don't know, 10, 20% of your position, whatever percentage you want to pick. But you've accomplished something and that's kind of done and you can move on. And B, when we do have bugs in stock, I just, I cannot get off because it's like, oh, why? I guess for it to become about profits and capital to decide. I can buy, I can do whatever. I think for people who are invested, and by the way, like, I have a tremendous amount of exposure to the company. It's now the largest piece of my net worth. But at the same time, like, I think for anybody who is, we joke about this, like an ASTS maxi, I do think it is healthy to take some level of profits and have that ability to mentally kind of ride the volatility and not worry about it. But when you're like fully invested and you haven't really done anything, It's really painful. And I think everybody has experienced this, like when the stock is at an all-time high and you're euphoric and maybe you do that thing where you buy more, but then it draws down and you're kicking yourself for not only maybe buying a little more, but then having not sold anything, like basically done anything. That kind of eats away at you mentally. And so I think it's important for people to have discipline and set some goals and taking profits never hurts. And yeah, you might miss out on even higher stock prices, but that's okay. It's like, that's just part of investing. And I think not always maximizing things. And this is where people get in trouble where they want to be fully invested and fully exposed, and then they go beyond. They enter into margin and they buy stock on leverage, which I recommend, I have nothing against doing that, especially with a high volatility stock like AST. 'Cause you can, when you're invested in something that has high level volatility, you will have periods of drawdown. And those are the times when you don't want to have margin. You basically get tapped out and you have a margin call. Like the only times when you might utilize margin is like if you think the odds are really in your favor, And let's say like there's a big pullback and it's for reasons that don't make any sense. And maybe there's like all these great things that are coming up and you're like, I'm gonna, you know what, I'm gonna dabble in margin. I'm gonna have a slightly outsized position for the next, and you define it like next 4 or 5 days. And this, these are the levels, like if the stock drops another 10%, then I'll just completely close out and call it a day. Or if the things happen and all goes well, Then I will sell, you know, I make some profits, I will sell enough to get back off of margin. Um, so anyway, kind of went off on a tangent there, but, uh, hopefully that's helpful.
[01:39:28] Speaker C: You got, you got some hate now for even suggesting the sell word. No, I'm just, it's a healthy, healthy, yeah, rounded investor mindset.
[01:39:36] Speaker A: Voice of reason. The voice of reason. Uh, yeah, I think, I mean, look, Even the company, like, I know there were some zealots out there who are like, if anyone in the company sells like one share, then, you know, they whine about it. It's like, come on. Like, I'll take Scott Wazniewski as an example. The guy was a former banker. He probably made $400,000 or $500,000, $600,000 in salary when he was in banking. And then he probably had a He probably had, I would say, in terms of a bonus, a billion, two million, maybe four, tiny. But then he decided to leave his cushy job, albeit required a lot of work, a job at Barclays to join this startup company. And he's got a small family. I believe he has a few very young children. And he has a family that lives Not in Miami, but somewhere up north. And so he's sacrificing a lot of time of his personal time to strike these strategic deals, get these financings happening to happen. And he's only making $250,000 of salary, which is a lot of money, but for a young family where you're commuting and you've got a mom who I'm assuming his wife is probably taking care of the kids and Up to her eyeballs and trying to manage everything. It's like, come on, the guy deserves to sell some shares to live a little more comfortably, whether that's like getting some help with the children or you know buying something nice for his wife or whatever it is. Like people have all kinds of reasons as to why they, from their own personal financial situation, you know they need to sell shares. Maybe get some type of financial cushion, which I'd add, like, you know, he sold, I think it was like less than 5% of his holdings. And the other thing is like, you know, these executives outside of Abel, because Abel doesn't take salary, nor does he get additional stock grants, but these executives, they do get re-upped some level amount of shares every year. And I did tweet about this before, like our key executives at the company, they actually don't make that much salary. Like, all of their, all the, the, the bread is getting buttered is their stock compensation. Because like their salaries of $250,000, like that's pretty much peanuts for these level executives. Like if you look at, I remember I was looking at like Intuitive Machines, I think the CEO, CFO, um, those executives get paid like $700,000 or $800,000 of salary. And then they get stock grants on top of that. Whereas At AST, like they're really managing the cash burn because obviously, do I take more salary or do I build another satellite? So that's kind of like how they're thinking about the business. So I think I think just taking a clue from the executives too, like if you unless you have the mental fortitude and you're financially okay to not take profits, I think it's okay to like. You know, you can have conviction in the stock, um, but you have a, you have a lot of profit. It's perhaps like maybe, you know, long-term gains. Um, it's okay to— it can be good mentally to take some level of profits because then it gives you a bit more clarity in terms of thought and how you're thinking about a situation. Whereas I've seen people, especially whether you're, you're definitely in short-term options and you're on margin, Then you know people can go to pretty dark places, like if a if a stock isn't working for you or um or if it's going to get you. So anyway, I'll I'll stop there.
[01:43:24] Speaker C: Um, I see Tyler was I think was next up. What man? How you doing?
[01:43:28] Speaker D: Hey everyone, how's it going? Um, hey guys. So first of all, I just want to say and Penman, we you know I think everybody in the space mob.
[01:43:38] Speaker C: you know, absolutely loves you and appreciates everything that you're doing.
[01:43:41] Speaker D: And, uh, that goes to Katzie as well. And, uh, so many other people that actually, you know, in a lot of ways, uh, you know, changed my life. I think, I think in a kind of a cool, cool thing is back in 2021, uh, this is before obviously Blue Ochre 3 was, you know, launched. I kind of learned about, I told my wife, I said, Gorgeous. I need to go find a 100x stock. Like, that's what I need to go do. I need to go find a stock that I'm— that's just gonna 100x. And so I started looking around on Twitter and, and on, on StockTwits, and the next thing you know, I'm like seeing this, you know, stuff about ASTS, and like, I'm gonna, I'm gonna check this one out. And one thing that was interesting, I gotta just say, the thing that like always impressed me about AST was the way that Abel decided to send a mobile device. He decided to launch a mobile device and keep the satellite on the ground and do all the tweaks on the ground while the mobile device was basically orbiting the Earth. And I just thought, man, that is so fucking genius. Like, that is That is amazing. And so, and I will say, Katzy was a big, big reason why he would go in there and FinTwits and he would always answer these questions for us. And, you know, we're all, you know, kind of noobs and all that kind of stuff. We're sitting here just trying to learn a little bit about, you know, engineering, have no idea what the hell we're talking about. But one thing that I just, you know, just truly appreciated was how How much Katzy understood about the engineering, about the actual tech, about the science of it all, and it gave me the confidence to say, "You know what? This is actually a company that is that's going to do it." Like this is, and if if y'all remember Mark, there's a guy named Marshall. I'll never forget this video that was out. Guy named Marshall who was I think he was a consultant for Dave Harshack.
[01:45:47] Speaker A: Yeah, Dave Marshak, RKF Consulting. Yeah. Yes, that date.
[01:45:53] Speaker D: Oh my gosh, that video. I probably watched that video 20 times, man. It was just one of those videos that I felt really, you know, discussed the magic of AST. And so, you know, naturally I started telling everybody about it. I got in around 7. I watched it go to 14. Then I watched it drop down, you know, back to 7. And I thought, oh, I I have another opportunity. And then sure enough, you know, we all experienced the, uh, you know, the, the drop into what, you know, I remember go hitting $197. I thought to myself, fuck, man, is this going to go bankrupt? Like, this legitimately is, you know, going into the floor. But, um, thankfully, thankfully my wife was, you know, always encouraging, and I end up actually picking up more shares at You know, $3, and I picked up some more at $6. Um, I don't have anything like, you know, Katzy's, you know, 77,000 shares or whatever, or your, you know, whatever it is, couple hundred thousand or whatever it is shares. But I will say, uh, oh, another interesting fact. I found out that I was going to be a father on the day that Blue Walker 3, uh, was launching. So that was a momentous day for me in a lot of ways.
[01:47:05] Speaker A: Oh wow, that's so cool.
[01:47:08] Speaker D: Yeah, yeah, so, uh, I love it.
[01:47:11] Speaker C: I, I was, uh—
[01:47:12] Speaker A: Did you, did you, did you have a boy? Did you have a boy or a girl? Oh, did I drop out?
[01:47:22] Speaker C: No, I can hear you. Uh, Tyler seemed to have dropped out.
[01:47:26] Speaker A: Oh, I asked him if he, if he had a boy or girl, and then my next question was, uh, Did you name them Blue Locker Three?
[01:47:36] Speaker C: Oh, that was a good one. I think he's request now. Somebody else is requesting him. Yeah, I would have been. Yeah, I don't know. Maybe if he if he gets gets back on, he can answer. But sorry, Tyler. Jump in and jump or like jump off the stage and then come back in and I'll I'll let you back on. You can hear me. Sorry, what were you gonna say, Antman?
[01:48:02] Speaker A: Oh yeah, no, I agree with what he said. Like, I think Katzi talked about this too. Like, it was a genius that the company put the cell phone out in space to develop, you know, develop the technology, and then they kept the satellite on the ground. So that was a really smart way to iterate and, you know, develop the technology in a very cost-effective way.
[01:48:26] Speaker F: Yeah.
[01:48:26] Speaker A: manner. And so just by that alone, it just gave you insight into basically the engineering genius of Abel and Dr. Yuan and others.
[01:48:41] Speaker C: Hey, man, hold on a minute. There's a few people in front of you. So if you just want to stay on mute for a little bit and we'll get to you when we get— when a couple other people ask questions. I think Fling, or sorry, you were still going. Yeah, I agree. When I heard about the cell phone in space and the satellite on the ground thing, I was like, that is so smart. I mean, it's, I don't know, it was one of those cool stories, like when you're first reading about the company and you hear about something like that, it's like, wow, that's genius. But yeah, I agree.
[01:49:14] Speaker A: Yeah, I will add one more thing. So that Dave Barschak video, Just for background, so funny enough, when the company went public via SPAC, they had a call with research analysts. This was for sell-side analysts who were contemplating, who were either part of the deal, their banks were part of the deal, or who were contemplating initiating coverage. And so that was basically like a teach-in. And that video they also shared, I think, with some of the investors at the PIPE. And so I forgot who I got it through, but I remember through various connections, I was able to get the entire video. And so then that specific part with Dave Marshak, who some of you guys know works at a— he is actually one of the few respected consultants In the satellite industry, won't name the other one, but he used to be an engineer at TerraStar. And so that that specific segment I thought oh you know like for people out for retail investors I think this will be very helpful to actually hear. It seems network is not too good that way. It seems its network is not too good. Anyway, so I think like. I think having, um, having that video out there was really helpful for people. So I, I cut that video out of the entire video and I put it on YouTube and then, you know, shared it with everyone. So that, that's the background of that. You can still see it today, uh, for those people who are interested.
[01:50:53] Speaker C: Yeah, I need to find that video. I have not, that's one I haven't seen. So somebody like knows or has a link to that and throws it in the comments, that'd be cool. Um, and then, uh, Fling. I can't read your full name, but Fling, you were up next, I think, and then Mitch was after you.
[01:51:09] Speaker A: Yeah, it's a play on a, on a name in Lord of the Rings. It's like Fingolfin. He's some High King elf thing. It's really nerdy. But, uh, anyway, yeah, appreciate everything, uh, everyone here does. I guess my story is kind of interesting or not, but, uh, I, I played a lot of World of Warcraft back in the day, and I had a buddy who was messaging me about this ASTS stock in March of 2022 and said, oh, there's some SpaceX agreement or something. I'm buying some calls on this company.
[01:51:40] Speaker C: And I was like, who the hell is ASTS?
[01:51:42] Speaker A: What's going on? And I started looking into the company. I bought my first 1,000 shares, I think at like $12 or $13, and then just immediately watched it go down since from that time. Kept averaging Down for a while until it got to like four, I think was my last buy, and I was like, God, I'm down like eighty or ninety percent on this. My wife's going to kill me if she finds out, and I'm going to go buy some other stuff. But I held it, and mainly because of you and other people like Cook and Katzy. Anyway, when we started the run-up last summer, I kept buying and and got to about three thousand share position that I've held the whole way.
[01:52:27] Speaker C: So I'm at I don't know what like one point five.
[01:52:29] Speaker A: Million now, which is, you know, some pretty life-changing money, you know. So I just wanted to say, uh, thanks so much, man. Really appreciate, uh, everything you do. Yeah, thanks for coming up. Uh, that's so funny, like you, you found out about the stock on a World of Warcraft chat. Yeah, pretty funny. Unfortunately, my buddy didn't stay in the stock, so now I, now I message him about it and he's like, son of a bitch, you know. But Yeah, random whisper on a video game made me a multimillionaire.
[01:52:59] Speaker E: Pretty cool.
[01:53:00] Speaker A: Yeah, well, like we say, if you like the stock at $12, you're going to love it at $4. So that's good you stuck with it. There's some pretty bad stories out there too. And this is why, for example, I saw Tut on here a little while ago, but that's why he and I, I try to stay above the fray and I try not to engage with consultant who shall not be named, but every now and then I kind of get fed up and then I'll just like unleash on the guy. But the reason why Tut and I will do that and Cook and Katzy, and I guess quite frankly the entire community, is that there are, for every story where people are like, they had conviction, they held on, and perhaps they added, there's quite a few stories where people actually sold at the bottom. which was quite painful. And there's like one particular person on Reddit, for example, who I think he's probably in his mid or late 20s, but he actually had conviction and had been investing and kept averaging into his position. And then I think the FUD just got to him. And this is like back, I think literally he sold Near the bottom, not at the bottom, but like at low 2s and locked in, I think, a few hundred thousand dollars of loss, which was, you know, he was down like 90, 95% or something. And he had LEAPS too. But then I think he, you know, he kind of became famous on the Reddit because when the stock started coming back, you know, he clearly, you know, was upset and kicking himself. Then I think he just posted recently, maybe it was like middle of last week, where he was like, had I just held onto my position, just the calls alone would've been, I think, worth $3.5 million. But then fortunately, I believe there is still a, there is a positive end to the story because I think he did buy back in and he's now doing well. I, at least I, believe he covered his previous loss and now it's up. But, uh, but yeah, it's— I mean, back then it wasn't easy. And, um, I— there, there were quite a few people who were really, you know, had high-level conviction and rode it all the way down and were buying it. Then they just kind of had this breaking point. Um, and this was like, I think, for a lot of people, when the company announced a deal with Google, the, the strategic investment for Vodafone, AT&T, Google But then they had to raise $100 million of equity to basically get that deal done. That was kind of the last straw for some folks because they were like, how can you guys raise equity? You just got this strategic investment and then you're doing this equity raise, which, you know, it was a marketed deal, which, you know, given the company, you know, the interest level from institutions, which back then wasn't much institutional investors. So they had to price that deal down. I think it was like 20, almost 30%, 30% discount, which was really bad. And this is why we talk about like how the company has now, now they don't really do marketed offerings. They just like use the ATM from time to time. But like that was a breaking point for a lot of people, which now we know the company had to do that to tie over would eventually get the company through what would eventually be Verizon coming on board just a few months later, which of course completely changed the story in terms of validating what the company was doing, but also bringing in more attention on the corporate and government side. But yeah, that was unfortunately just a painful, necessary capital raise that had happened, which I think as we all learned with any growth company that's doing something that's never been done for raising capital, especially if you're a public market, you trade on the public markets versus some of these private companies that don't have to report financials or progress or any of that stuff. It's a very different beast, right? And so, but yeah, I'm glad to hear that you held through and you've got this life-changing position, which is great. But congrats. Thanks for coming and sharing.
[01:57:26] Speaker C: Thanks, man. Appreciate it. Take care. So we got Mitch. Mitch up next. You've been waiting for a minute, man.
[01:57:35] Speaker L: I appreciate it. Thank you. And Panman, I just want to say every time I wake up in the morning and you're at the top of my X speed and you have in all caps something mega bullish or at least feeling like it. Makes my damn day.
[01:57:49] Speaker D: So thank you very much. It's been a really fun last couple.
[01:57:53] Speaker L: Well, almost here now. Yeah. But yeah, I'll just because people have been doing it, I'll share a little bit. So I found out about ASTS by accident. I used to go onto a bunch of Reddit threads like value investing. You know, of course, I would just see who's making a funny post on Wall Street. Wall Street bets, and then there's some other one I would look for. I think it was like penny stocks or something. And someone, I bet you it was Kevin, defiant client Kevin, made a post saying that pretty much summarized Verizon's on board, or no, AT&T's on board something. DA's coming in. They're basically going to get money by now, and. I did like the 5 minutes of DD. And back then, you know, I know you say 5 minutes DD, you'll, if you won't buy it, you'll short it. I was like, oh no, this makes sense. So I put like—
[01:58:50] Speaker A: Well, you're a smart guy, so you don't need the 60 minutes.
[01:58:54] Speaker L: Well, you know, smart enough to have bought it. And the thing is, I kind of got scared because that same year I had gotten messed up upside down on a biotech that I had been misled about, which I won't go into. But basically, so I originally put in 50 grand upfront on, I think it was around $5 a share. And I got nervous and I sold half of it the next day before it even really moved, I think. And, or at least like right before the market had opened. And next thing I know, that position obviously goes crazy. It, you know, it goes up to the 38s. And at that point I have like a financial advisor on my right saying, hey, you gotta sell. it's pre-rev. This isn't, you know, you can't trust it against Starlink, all that stuff. And I've got a buddy over here that works at a wealth management firm saying the same thing, like, look, man, no one ever went broke locking in profits. And I'm like, okay, well, I don't, I guess, know enough. It's only been a month. So I did sell. And ever since then, I've just, I mean, I bought back in eventually later, but ever since then, I've just been frustrated knowing that I sold half up right before the run-up, and then I sold at all. Because now that I've been reading every day for hours, yours, Kat C's, uh, Defiant Client, um, Kook's, uh, fun little, uh, weekly report that summarizes all the things that have happened, I kick myself every day thinking, man, you are such a bitch for having listened to anyone but yourself when you bought it in the first place, right? So, but that's kind of been the lesson. It's made me realize that I've got to start being more trusting of my conviction and not think that other people, you know, that are throwing FUD around necessarily know anything. They might have agendas. They might, they might just not know. They might just be biased and have a, you know, a negative lens just because they do. And that's not to name names, but, you know, we all know who we're talking about here. So, So I guess where I'm going with that is, thank you. Now, here's my question for you, and it's not really one that I think anyone can perfectly answer. I don't expect it, but I do have a question regarding— so Palantir had a pretty crazy re-rate and it's still technically going up. And if I remember correctly from all the different posts I've seen on X and et cetera, it really didn't have a noticeable revenue jump. That made any of its market capitalization make sense. So, in my opinion, I I can't help but feel that if a defense company, if ASTS becomes branded in the short term before it can give commercial service as a defense layer for our government, then I can't help but feel that this is just potentially another. I'm not going to say it goes to $300 billion, but I can't help but feel it doesn't really have a reason to drop without major mess-ups in space. Space is hard. I get that. So that has been something that for me, I wanted to make sure I'm not crazy here. I mean, did even the big behemoth Palantir need major revenue and contracts being signed every week to jump as much as it did? I mean, do you know?
[02:02:08] Speaker A: I don't know Palantir closely, so I can't say, but in regards to AST, I think now people are beginning to understand the dual use case and that what was already a massive TAM on the commercial side, if you look at the defense side, that could be a TAM almost as big. And so I think the contracts that we have so far, we only have a $20 million contract and a $43 million contract. But if you talk to the company, they'll tell you these are kind of the initial proof of concept stages where the government agencies will see what the capabilities are, how does it fit, and then Those contracts can then start growing into hundreds of millions of dollars in terms of potential revenue. And that's outside of what we all speculate is Golden Dome, those types of applications. But I think that's where the street is primarily pricing in the commercial opportunity, which is a bit more straightforward, although shorts would tell you it's not straightforward because shorts will say, how many people are going to actually adopt this service and how much are they actually going to pay? Like, paying the same price as 2 cups of coffee is like too much. Like, you'll get into these or you'll hear these arguments which make zero sense. But I think on the government side, like, it's kind of the known unknown. Like, yeah, we know that the technology would be really great for these various use cases, but it's unclear how much the government is going to pay for them. And then outside of that, it's like, it's not just the US government. We just saw like Singapore, which is a small country, but has a big budget. You know, they're evaluating HDCP-SIMO for defense use cases. And I think the establishment of SATCO JV with Vodafone in Europe, I think you'll probably start to see some European defense interest as well. Because I mean, we already know that AST is like doing some stuff with NATO. So it would be a natural extension for them to evaluate it for European defense applications. But yeah, you don't, and that's the fun thing about investing. I mean, you don't need to see, like the arguments that a bear will make is that this company is pre-revenue, which by the way, it won't be. in the next 6 months, but they'll try to do like at a valuation multiple of whatever de minimis revenues we've had over the last 12 months. Like it's well overvalued. But as we all know, like investing is not backwards looking, it's forward looking. And so what is the opportunity? It's just like, I mean, you sound like you have experience with biotech. There's plenty of pre-revenue companies there, but it's a matter of like, how big is the opportunity of the population of the drug that you're developing and what is going to be the take rate? And then, is this a drug that people take once and then they're done, or is it something that they're going to be on for the rest of their lives? But that's how people— you have pre-revenue biotechs that are worth billions of dollars because what they have is promising and it's on the come, it's about to happen. And so I think for AST, As I'd mentioned before, like the military use case was not even part of the company's lexicon, nor were investors talking about it up until basically last year, last year, and then this year in a big way. And so I think that's a big part of the re-rate because now you've got a business that is diversified. It's got commercial, it's got government, government meaning, you know, like FirstNet, First responder stuff, and then you've got defense. So being able to leverage the same constellation for these different applications is huge. And and so I think just like for Nvidia, we I think Katsev was the one who started using Nvidia as an example, and I think Veronica as well. You know those those semiconductors were first thought to be only graphics accelerators, but yet now. Various applications because they are the best in terms of computing. Now they're being used for AI and other applications, which is why the company trades at this astronomical valuation, which I think you've got to look at the future potential of what AST can do. You've got this global constellation. It's basically a communications platform that can leverage low-band spectrum, and then the next constellation will leverage mid-band spectrum. But You're offering broadband connectivity platform, which then you can build applications on, whether that's connectivity to consumers, it could be Internet of Things, tracking devices, robots, any number of those types of applications. But then you've got also military connecting warfighters or backup GPS or doing electronic warfare like jamming, spoofing. I mean, there's any number of things. But yeah, what is that worth, right? And that's only the stuff that we're speculating as, you know, quote unquote retail investors, but it doesn't include all the things that the company's working on, which, or they haven't even conceived, which it's funny, like if you talk with management about military, like they would tell you that 2 or 3 years ago, they were being used or they had conversations for a few applications, but then recently, especially like post-Verizon, we learned like the phone's ringing off the hook. Like they're now included in a lot of other meetings and evaluations for other use cases. One obviously is Golden Dome. And so, So yeah, I think that's the potential, like as Cook would say, the white space here is enormous. And so how do you value that? And is it, are people looking at EBITDA multiples based off of 2027, 2028? What are those? What is that EBITDA projection based on? Is it based on just commercial? Does it include a little bit of government? Does it include some defense? And then there's probably other applications that we're not even thinking about. Like, I remember having a conversation with Scott back in 2021, and he was telling me, hey, you know these phased arrays, like, it's not just for listening for signals, like, down on the Earth, but you can also listen to things out in space. And that got me thinking, it's like, oh, I didn't think, I didn't know that you could actually go the other way. Yeah, there's a lot of different cool applications that I'm sure I haven't thought about, and probably Katzi has, but he probably hasn't shared all of them. But yeah, how do you value that? And so that's the fun part where it's like, how do you value that and what can it become? Which is great. It's not like you're investing in a restaurant chain and it's a matter of how many stores can they open. This thing is transformative in so many different ways.
[02:09:38] Speaker L: No, absolutely. And One of the use cases that has kind of come up to me just from light reading about another company called Gorilla Technology Group is the concept of smart cities. I mean, that to me just sounds like a direct use case. If it's going to be a smart city, it's a literal city built on IoT. And reading Cathie's long, 18-sometimes-page posts on X, It sounds like this is the sort of thing that you would need, you know, that kind of coverage for at all times from these satellites because the handovers, you know, every 4 or 5 seconds from Starlink would just decimate any ability to have continuity. But I guess with ours, or when I say ours, ASTs, it sounds like that's not even really a thing that could pop up because it's still a side case or—
[02:10:32] Speaker B: Yeah.
[02:10:33] Speaker L: What's the word? It's supplemental, I should say. Supplemental coverage.
[02:10:35] Speaker A: Right. Yeah. I mean, what's cool though is like Legato, I mean, and this is like, this is the elegance and the, and sorry, I'm in a car right now and there's an ambulance going by. Um, so sorry for the noise, but what's cool about the company is like, as I was mentioning before, the defense use case was not really in, in lexicon before. And then Legato too, but Legato was something that came out of the blue in January. And it's something that, you know, me as an event-driven investor and also a kook, like we knew about Ligado as an asset, but never really contemplated the company buying Ligado, the spectrum usage rights for 80 years for L-band, which basically transforms the company, right? So yeah, we provide supplemental coverage for cellular devices, but then with Ligado, you're actually going to provide not supplemental, but primary coverage across the entire country, whether the US or Canada. And so it means that you can blanket connectivity even in cities, in dead zones, hot zones, whatever it is, right? And so when talking about what you were saying before about connectivity in smart cities, yeah, it's not just if there's cell towers that are providing Terrestrial service, Legato can also be used to augment that, right? And and that's the cool thing about this about this investment is like the company. This is not something that anyone was even thinking about, but the company, like if you speak with management, like they had been watching Legato for a number of years, and it was kind of in their plan to eventually you know make a make a play for it, which once they had the capital to do it, they did. And now, you know, there's a lot of really cool things, whether that's just providing even fixed wireless service, but then also around government use cases for defense and Golden Dome and any number of things where Ligado is going to come in quite handy.
[02:12:38] Speaker L: So another question for you, Kuiper. Is Kuiper currently able to, or just operating with fixed wireless? Is that part of their offering and function?
[02:12:51] Speaker A: Yeah, Kuiper is the equivalent of Starlink fixed wireless for home, right? Like McDishey, Flatface, or whatever. That's what Kuiper's gonna do. Like when they build out the entire constellation, that's gonna be for fixed wireless. You know, if you want an alternative to cable or Fiber, then you would you could subscribe to Kuiper. So that's that's really competing with the core business of what Starlink does. It's not direct to device, which you know when you see the the picture of Abel and Jeff Bezos at Hadrianus Isneros together, that could you know the speculation can run wild in terms of like oh I wonder if Kuiper and AST could work together or. Maybe, you know, maybe Bezos or Forgen or Amazon might make an investment in AST, or maybe it's more for Amazon to work with AST because the other thing is like, for some of this government work, uh, you're going to need backend infrastructure. And so whether that's, you know, Amazon Web Services or AWS or Microsoft Azure, um, you know, there's a whole host of parties that it would make sense for AST to work with. But yeah, Kuiper is different than what we're doing.
[02:14:09] Speaker L: So I guess, yeah, I can see why everyone is speculating because it would almost make you think it's like another Waymo, right? Where Uber and Google invest together for a competitor to FSD Teslas, robo taxis. So I guess I can see why the speculation's been so rampant. I was trying to figure out what that was about for a while and now I get it.
[02:14:32] Speaker A: I don't think anybody knows, by the way. Right, it's still speculative. Yeah, but it's kind of funny because the bears would say, you know, AST is an inconsequential company, but then it's like, oh, well, Bill's meeting at Blue Origin headquarters in Kent, Washington, so I wonder what that's about. I mean, obviously, we're the biggest commercial customer outside of Kuiper and the Department of Defense for Blue Origin. But yeah, there's a whole host of ways that we could work with any number of Bezos's companies or him personally.
[02:15:10] Speaker L: So, and I'll let you go off this last question. Something that was kind of eating at me was trying to figure out why AST was able to purchase the Gato or be in the position to win You know, this spectrum through per— you know, lease, purchase, whatever, if there are other players like SpaceX Starlink? Like, how does, how does that even happen?
[02:15:33] Speaker C: I, you would almost assume that the higher bidder, if, if they were higher, would probably win that.
[02:15:39] Speaker A: Yeah, that, no, that's a great question. So part of it is technology and part of it is business, right? So on the technology side, as, as Katzi has laid out elegantly over the years, Our satellites are really large. We have a very large phased array, right? This large aperture that can efficiently beam down signal and do it in such a way that does not cause interference, right? Because it's very precise versus like Starlink where you have a very small phased array. It beams down a very wide signal and it can't be very precise. And so it's subject to a lot of interference. Causing interference, and so so what's the issue with Legato? Legato, Legato spectrum is next to the same spectrum that GPS uses. The GPS you know GPS system also some defense applications as well, and so the concern for Legato when they tried to utilize that spectrum not for MSS use you know satellite use but they tried to get it they did well they got it. Approved for terrestrial use is that concern with GPS and defense, the Department of Defense, is that it would cause interference with those applications. And in particular, GPS, obviously nowadays, like every device, everybody relies on GPS, you know, whether that's on your phone or your car. It's a it's a critical service that if there if there's any interference to that could be catastrophic. Right? And so enter Starlink. If they wanted to, you know, get the spectrum usage rights with Picado, the way that their satellites are architected and the system are architected, I think you would probably have the same, if not worse, interference concerns. But then step in, you know, steps into the picture AST SpaceMobile, which has these very large satellites, which are architected from first principles to beam down clean signals that don't cause interference. And so it just happens to be at the right place at the right time. Legato had tried to launch a terrestrial fixed wireless service for, I don't know, a second or third time iteration and was basically financially in trouble. And then we came in and said, hey, why don't we work together? Because we've got these great satellites that can utilize your spectrum and we can monetize them. We will pay you this, which is candidly a very cheap fee upfront in terms of the penny warrants and then the payments to Inmarsat, then the annual $80 million payments, but then, which is relative to the value of the spectrum, those are basically like peanuts. But then we actually, proposed to give them, I forget the exact number, I think it's like 12.5% of all North American revenues from the businesses that we built. And so for them, that upside was tremendous, right? Because they saw the ability of our satellites to properly use that spectrum in a way that doesn't cause interference. And so technology-wise, we were the right fit outside of Starlink and AC, you know, there's a bunch of legacy players, but I don't think that anybody else has the technology to properly use the L-band spectrum. But then the business model too. So I think as we've seen with Elon Musk, like he's a pretty, he could be a difficult business partner to work with. And so I think there's a certain level of trust That Bell is able to garner with with other business partners, whether I mean clearly there's like over fifty global MNOs that have decided to work with us. You know, like for example, Verizon chose AST over Starlink. Part of that, a big part of that is technology, but a big part of it also is business model because Starlink is competitive with you know Verizon's fiber and and home. Internet service, but then also just, you know, you've got Elon Musk who has ambitions to potentially get into the, basically to compete with, you know, MNOs. That's hard to go into partnership with them. So what T-Mobile did, I think, was very short-sighted. And so, you know, they've, I've tweeted about it before, so I won't go through it all here, but there's huge conflicts there over the long run. Like they might, Play nice together today, but I don't know how T-Mobile is going to work with Starlink, you know, two or three years from now. I think that relationship is going to be pretty untenable. But from a business business model perspective, I think AST is just a more natural partner to work with than than Starlink because I think what was quite telling whether that was the Twitter buyout where you know Elon. offered or agreed to a definitive— he signed a definitive agreement to buy Twitter, but then he tried to back out of it, and then he tried to cut the price. People remember those things, right? And so I think for anyone who is contemplating going into business with Elon, like we saw it recently with the fallout with Trump, things can quickly change. And so I think for a party like Cerberus and Fortress, The technology made sense, but also from a business perspective, you know, why do I want to go with Starlink, who's going to be working with T-Mobile? I don't know if I'm going to even be able to negotiate some cut of those revenues, but then I'm going to be able to get to be part of the business that's going to sell through Verizon, AT&T, and I get a cut of that. Like, that's way more attractive. But then also like, this is a business partner that I can trust. Like they're, they're, they stick by their word. Um, and you know, for Legato, they were, they were entering into bankruptcy and they needed an exit plan and this, this plan made the most sense. Um, and, uh, you know, I, I think quite candidly, there was probably an element of it was a good fit for, a good fit for all the parties, but also from our side of the table, I think it was, there was a lot of luck and timing. Right? Because they hit this financial wall and then they needed help and we were able to get in and basically get the rights to use the spectrum for SOM. I mean, just super cheap. Like whether you believe Legato, they, in a terrestrial use case for fixed wireless, they think the spectrum's worth $39 billion, which I think where we are looking to use the spectrum, it's probably going to be worth Maybe half that, but then who knows? Maybe as we expand applications utilizing the data spectrum, you could realize the full value of $39 billion. And so maybe you know that's part of the market re-rating our stock today that everyone's now seeing. Oh hey, this is significant upside that's not being priced in. Like if I do a sum of the parts valuation, you're telling me that I can buy ASD Space Mobile. And the value of AST is Legato, which they just got, you know, the bankruptcy court approved the disclosure schedule and that deal, the plan's going to be confirmed in August. But I'm basically buying the stock today for that spectrum value, and then I get the commercial defense and government business for free. Ah, that sounds pretty good. I'll buy some stock today. So that's, you know, that's like a classic sum of the parts hedge fund optionality. valuation case that someone would make. But yeah, I mean, that's one way you could look at it.
[02:23:35] Speaker C: So I got— sorry, did I cut you off, Mitch?
[02:23:41] Speaker L: No, you didn't. I appreciate it. I just want to say thank you.
[02:23:46] Speaker C: Yeah, thanks for coming up. Yeah, thanks for coming up. So I Just time check on you. It's been two and a half hours. I got two more people that wanted to speak, but I was going to stop accepting new speakers. Things probably close down. All right, cool. And then as an intermission break, King Tut had an important question. He wanted to hear your thoughts on Tim Ferrar. He wanted to know Eight Man's thoughts on those.
[02:24:13] Speaker A: Eight Man. Yeah, I remember Chris who joined earlier when I did that YouTube with Amit. He called me Eight Man. Or someone call me A-Man. Uh, my thoughts on Tim Ferriss? Like, is that a serious question?
[02:24:25] Speaker C: No, it's— Skip Tut's probably just trolling. I was just using— If you want to know his thoughts, look at his replies, everyone. You'll see his thoughts. Um, all right, so I had 400 kg. You were next, and then Farm, uh, you're after him. Warner KG, still on there, man? You've been waiting for a long time. Give you a second.
[02:24:50] Speaker A: He probably passed out.
[02:24:52] Speaker C: Mitch to London? No? Uh, all right, Farm, Farm, go ahead, man.
[02:24:58] Speaker K: Hey, Jacob, thanks for hosting the Spaces. And, uh, Amp Man, uh, just thank you for your contagious conviction on the stock. Uh, a buddy and I that I used to swap biotech ideas with put AST on my radar and I like to get off of social media and do my research, you know, the old-fashioned way. And I kept coming back to Twitter, obviously, because I'm addicted to Twitter. And I kept seeing your posts, Kooks, Toss, everybody's posts. And I'm like, I don't believe, but I believe that these guys believe because of everything that they're saying about the stock, you know? So it's like, I didn't have the conviction, but I believed you believed, you know? And so, um, I remember my first purchase was the day it skyrocketed. I think I got it just under $36. And I was like, I just need exposure to this stock. I just need to get in because I'm afraid it's going to go to the moon. And I've been lucky because as my conviction rose, the stock price was inversely going downward and I was able to add and get my average way, way down, which was awesome. So just a huge thanks to you for everything that you guys have done and put out there for free, this time and stuff. I'm working OT right now at home, and just to have the Spaces on makes the time go by so much quicker. So that's kind of my background. Amp, what do you think about the Vodafone Idea deal? I looked it up and there were some bankruptcy issues. There were some money issues with the company. Can you speak to that?
[02:26:21] Speaker A: Do you know what's going on with that? I did read a little bit about that. I don't know much about Vodafone Idea, but it is a joint venture between Vodafone and Idea, so hence the name. But then, uh, also the Indian government owns like 49% of it. So, um, but yeah, I think, I think that company has hit like some financial issues. And so I think part of this deal is to help differentiate Vodafone and Idea and perhaps give it another avenue of growth, um, so it can go get more subscribers because it's It's the 3rd largest carrier in India, but it's 3rd. I mean, 3rd largest is still big. It's 212 million subscribers, but compared to the 2 larger ones, Jio and Bharti Airtel, I think it is smaller. And so I think, yeah, I mean, it's, I don't really have much to add beyond that. I mean, it's a very large market and I think for Vodafone idea, it's going to be a good differentiator. And more importantly, I think, uh, versus like supplemental coverage, which I think is helpful in India, uh, for India, it's, it's really, uh, going out to the, I think it's like 450 million, uh, folks who don't have any internet, uh, access whatsoever. And so it's almost like pursuing business in Africa, right? Where there's parts of India that just aren't, that don't have any internet connectivity. And so I don't think it's like your typical M&O deal. This one is really gonna be about expanding coverage and bringing new subscribers, I think. But yeah, beyond that, I don't really have much to add. I probably should like read up a bit more, but candidly, for me, outside of like the handful of like key profitable markets that AST now kind of has a lock on, these other markets are additional growth drivers and then it's going to expand the TAM. But these markets are going to be ones that the company gets to perhaps 2, 1, 2, 3 years from now, uh, because there's so many, uh, markets that they're gonna have to roll out and execute that these are all going to be in phased approaches. So, so for example, like when you see Starlink, they'll say, hey, we just added connectivity to Nigeria, or we, we like to welcome this country. It's because like this stuff takes time, like not just regulatory standpoint, but putting everything, infrastructure in place, and then Turning on the service, making sure they have enough capacity. So for AST, like, it's almost like an insurmountable wall of opportunity. Like, there's that, like, on one hand, people will all want them to move as fast as they can, but there's also like some level of limitations to scale, like, you know, rolling out a service in X amount of countries over a certain period of time, like you can only do so much, right? So I think it's good that they continue to have this cadence of adding MNOs. And once I think we get closer to this service having initial launch, I think you're going to see them more definitive agreements, like these partnerships turn into more commercial definitive agreements once, because I, you know, for the company, it benefits them to wait. to ink these deals because the economics go more into your favor once the service is up and running. But yeah, it's, those are my initial thoughts. I don't know that much about the company, but yeah, there's actually quite a few people, I guess, from India tweeting about it, so I should probably go read some of those threads.
[02:30:17] Speaker C: Thanks, Sam.
[02:30:18] Speaker K: I appreciate it. Just one more thing. If you guys are new here, this is a wonderful, wonderful investment community. I've been doing this for about 25 years. I've never met a group of people that are as Kind and generous with their time. I've met guys in real life here in Arizona, in Phoenix. Corey and I are both pharmacists, so we connected that way and became fast friends. We play Call of Duty online. It's just a fun community. If you're new, hang around and stick around. I think you'll if anything, you'll learn something new, and and that could be the best part of it.
[02:30:47] Speaker A: So thanks, guys. Hey man, thanks for coming up. Yeah, I when I learned you guys are both pharmacists, then it all made sense as to like why you're crazy.
[02:30:55] Speaker K: Appreciate it, dude. See you guys later.
[02:30:59] Speaker A: Take care.
[02:31:00] Speaker C: All right, man. Um, there's nobody else requested either, so I appreciate you, uh, spending your drive home with us. I think you've got to be close to home, right?
[02:31:12] Speaker A: Yeah. No, thank you. I'm actually crossing the Brooklyn Bridge right now. Um, no, thank you, Jacob, for hosting, because, uh, for everyone, uh, I reached out to Jacob and I was like, hey, are you free to Do you mind hosting this? Because, uh, I have 4 hours to kill, or now, or at the time, 3 hours to kill. And, um, I can't obviously manage people while I'm driving. That would be bad. But, uh, thanks, Jacob, for taking the time. I hope, uh, this is fun. And for me, this is great because I— that, that it, it went by like in a blink of an eye. So what was going to be a very painful drive back by myself, um, ended up being very enjoyable.
[02:31:49] Speaker C: Yeah, it was. I mean, it's fun, man. It's I like some of the stuff, like hearing like some of the like the like where the A started from. Some of that stuff, I just you know it's kind of like legend stuff. You don't like you know everybody's just doing it. So I I like that. I love hearing people's stories about where they're coming in investing and just come back to us with that too. And there's a couple guys that kind of got you really like like some some interesting questions that I like oh all right yeah where where is that next idea of like well you know why doesn't the gateway why why maybe would the gateway not work over water initially? stuff like that. So I enjoy it. I learn a lot from these too. So I appreciate it, man. Yeah, I'm personally burnt out after 2 and a half hours, so I'm going to call it here too, unless you still want to go.
[02:32:30] Speaker A: No, no, let's call it. But yeah, thanks everyone for coming and killing time with us because that's what we did, which is good. But I agree with you. I will say after just following this company for 5 years, it is helpful to listen to these Spaces or do reading or just talk with people. Because whether it's Katzi, I'm always learning something new from him, or Kook Spaces, or even having new people just come up and ask questions, I learn a lot myself. And I think, I'll just say this in closing, when people say, thank you for sharing, It's actually like, we're so happy, like Cook and I and Katzi and others, because we were like, in the beginning we were like, wow, this is an amazing company, but no one knows about it and kind of felt alone. And so I think now that the community has grown and obviously the awareness has spread and people really understand the story, it's just really great to see. And I don't think any of us would've had the conviction to invest and hold throughout this entire journey without the support of others and whether that's confirmatory due diligence or just even having a laugh with someone like on a shitty day when the stock is down and just, you know, someone's about to like jump off of a cliff. It's like, hey, just laugh a little. Like we've done the work. There's no, there's like, you know, the market is down or the company is down for whatever reason. Like just having people remind you that this is why you own the company. These are the reasons. Yeah, these are the concerns. And yeah, it's like what we talk about, like short thesis, the short thesis selling points are actually milestones. It's like, yeah, if you think about it a different way, yeah, there's all these potential issues, but those are milestones that the company is actively working on and knocking them down one by one. And so you've just got to change. Like sometimes it's helpful to have a friend to help you get over that hump and change the way that you're thinking. And so, so yeah, that's why, that's why having an investing community, investing cult can be helpful. But, but yeah, thanks everyone for joining. This has been great and we'll do it again soon sometime. I'll just let this run for a while because I know it cuts off early, but thanks again, Jacob, and we'll talk again.
[02:34:54] Speaker B: Thanks for listening to the AST Space Rover Podcast.
[02:34:58] Speaker A: If you enjoyed this episode and you'd like to help support the podcast, please share it with others, post about it on social media, or leave a rating and review.
[02:35:07] Speaker B: To catch all the latest news about AST SpaceMobile, make sure to subscribe. Thanks again, and I'll see you next time. We're doing something very, very big, and I think with this technology we can really affect billion lives. AST SpaceMobile. OneWeb Mobile 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. Listen.
[02:35:54] Speaker A: Mmm, waffles.