Anpanman - Sifting Through the FUD and the Path to Orbit

[00:00:06] Speaker A: This is the AST SpaceMobile Podcast.
[00:00:10] Speaker B: It will just basically come to your phone and be seamless regardless of where you are. We don't want the user even to know that it's connected by satellite. Listen, the opportunity that we have is very, very, very large.
[00:00:25] Speaker A: Hey everyone, thanks for joining today. It's a beautiful day in New York City, and of course people are frustrated with stock price performance of AST, which I can fully understand because I'm a large shareholder myself. But, um, but yeah, I just wanted to fire up a space and talk about a few different things which I guess bubbled up during conversations with people online. And so I thought, eh, maybe better to just have a space and talk about some of these things. So first topic I wanted to cover is sector beta. And so I think, and I've said this multiple times, but for those that don't do this, like if you have AST SpaceMobile on your watchlist, you should also have Rocket Lab. The 2 companies trade pretty much on top of one another, you know, sometimes they, in terms of actual stock price. Sometimes AST will be higher, sometimes Rocket Lab will be higher, but they have a very high correlation. Um, actually, I haven't looked at the correlation. Let me see. But I, I would assume the correlation is probably close to— let's see— probably close to not 1, but, but high up there. Um, let me just look here, actually. Yeah, I mean, yeah, the correlation between the two, I think it's in the 96th percentile. So whenever people are upset about AST specifically, but they're not looking at Rocket Lab, some of these other companies, Firefly, Lunar, or Intuitive Machines, ticker LUNR, or BlackSky, BKSY, sometimes it's good to have context because These companies more and more are all traded as a basket, whether it's SpaceX guys who are short a basket of these names as a hedge, or for all the numerous ETFs that have recently popped up where AST, Rocket Lab, Intuitive Machines, Redwire, even Firefly, you know, that all these companies are top holdings. And so when people trade around ETFs, um, and they send them up, then they, you know, the sector typically trades higher together. And then when they're selling ETFs and, um, you know, if there's, if there's a difference between the underlying and the, and the ETF price, you know, obviously arbitrageurs will go out there to recreate the basket. But, um, uh, whether that's up or down, but, but yeah, these names are going to trade together. And so today is no different. You have Rocket Lab, Firefly that are down. for whatever reason, Intuitive Machines. But obviously off the bottoms, these names are doing better as well as AST. But it's important to have that context where, you know, the company has, after the Bluebird 7 mishap, you know, the failure to be inserted into proper orbit, the company has underperformed the sector by, I think, roughly 10%. But it, you know, the entire sector has drawn down from April highs. And so I think for day-to-day movements, it's important to have these on your watch list. And I think that will give some people a better sense of, you know, sanity, that perhaps the world is not against you, that if the sector's trading down, there's a good chance that AST is going to be down. Or if the sector's up, just like yesterday, there's a good chance that ASD is going to be up. And so that will help you get a better grip on day-to-day volatility, right? Um, and so I think, you know, that said, Bluebird 7, because it was lost, um, it— I just, I just did a stock price comparison, you know, return relative to— I think it was, uh, April 17th, which was that Friday, uh, before the launch on Sunday. And, um, you know, AST has underperformed some of the other names by, call it 10%, but all the names are down. So, so yeah, the loss of Bluebird 7 clearly, um, has had an impact. And of course, you know, it's not just the loss of satellite, but it's also the potential for Blue Origin to be offline for some period of time, which is, you know, our primary launch vehicle. And so, so that. That has put a damper on things. But, um, but I'll talk a bit more about when we could expect that vehicle to come back online, um, shortly. Um, so moving on, in terms of short interest, um, I know people like to put out there that perhaps AST is one of the highest short interest stocks, um, you know, relative to other names. And I figured I would just finally put together some of the numbers around it. And so, um, I tweeted this earlier and just breaking down the short interest, I'll just go through the calculations. But AST, if you count Class A, Class B, and Class C shares, the total shares outstanding right now is 388 million. And out of that, for Class A, there's a number of shares that are not part of the float. They're owned by strategics and those strategics, with the exception of Rakuten, which is selling down To a level of half of their previous ownership. Those strategics now pro forma that account for 42.4 million shares that are held, which includes Rakuten at 15.5 million once they've finished their selling, Alphabet 8.9 million, AT&T 6.3 million, Verizon 6.1 million, and Vodafone at 5.5 million. So that's about 42.4 million shares that are not really in the tradable float. Right? So these are shares that are owned by strategics. They're not selling it anytime soon. And then moving on to Class B, there's only 2 holders. Vodafone has 9 million shares there, and American Tower, you know, they did monetize a portion of their stake in order, similar to Rakuten, in order to deleverage. And so they still own 2.2 million shares. And then Class C, of course, which is Abel, Avalon, he owns 78.2 million shares. So If you subtract all those shares from the total shares outstanding of 388 million, that leaves you a tradable float of 256 million. And the most recent real-time short interest, which is now at its all-time high, is at 64 million. And so if you make some assumptions around the convertible bonds that are outstanding, you know, some of them are in the money, but you know, there's some associated level of delta, which is the amount of shares that you would hedge if you're a convertible arb. These guys don't have a fundamental— typically don't have a fundamental view on the stock. They are hedged against the underlying warrant or call option in the bond. And what these guys do is they will trade around the deltas or the volatility, right? So if the stock goes up, they pick up deltas, you know, the underlying warrant gains value. And so then they short more stock. And then if the stock goes down, they buy that hedge or that short interest back, um, because they're at the underlying warrant, um, loses deltas, right? And so by trading this back and forth, you're basically monetizing the value of that option. And as a result of that, um, you know, at the current stock price, I'd assume that, you know, 80% of convertible bondholders are arbitrageurs. And, um, you know, the resulting deltas is, call it, you There's probably 11 million shares short related to convertible bonds. And so if you subtract 11 million out of 64, that gets you to 53. And so 53 divided by 256, you know, the actual fundamental or basket shorts or whoever it is, you know, that's approximately 21% of the float or 20.7% of the float short. So that's a pretty high number. I mean, it's not a crazy number like 50% or 40%, but it's pretty high. And so I think the setup here is similar to what we had seen back in, and I posted about this before, but back in 2024 ahead of what was back then unknown catalyst, which was, well, AT&T was expected to enter a commercial agreement, but then Verizon was the unknown catalyst and that ignited the stock. Which, you know, saw the stock go from, what is it, $3 to a high of $39 that summer. And at that time, I think we were at really high levels of short interest. And then last year, where going into May, we had a pretty high level of short interest, and then of course we had a number of catalysts that kicked off into June. And and the stock you know ramped up from there. I think if I recall, and this is something that yeah Dave posted an account that I follow who is a is a big shareholder who I I respect quite a bit. He he invested in Eastin quite a few other names, but he I reposted this tweet where he had talked about how sentiment was very low. People were complaining. I mean, it's a very similar dynamic to today where the stock price is in the twenties. They're calling for blood from management and short interest was high. And then of course, um, the stock took off. I mean, part of it back then I believe was, um, AST getting, you know, the Vodafone India or Vodafone Idea, um, contract. But also, let me just look here, got to look at my post. Um, I believe that's, that's the time when Trump also made some comments about, uh, removing some of the business from Elon Musk and SpaceX. And so that kicked off a pretty big rally. There were a few other catalysts as well. I'm just trying to go back to my tweet here. But, you know, we kind of have this interesting, I guess, seasonality, right? Where things kind of kick off, we consolidate over the course of the first quarter, and then heading into the second quarter, things get spicy, right? And similarly, we have the same type of setup happening this year. Uh, interestingly, which I think it would have started, and, um, you know, we, we were all hoping it would start with the successful deployment of Bluebird 7, but of course that did not go off as it, as planned. And as a result, um, you know, that the, the stock has underperformed, right? And so actually, let me see here. I did find, yeah, so in 2025, um, during that May-June timeframe. That's when Trump threatened Musk with, with, you know, pulling business from him. Also, uh, that's when we were added to the US large-cap Russell 1000, which, um, by the way, Rank Day happened yesterday. And so over the coming 4 weeks, there will be an update, um, on what our pro forma weighting will be in that index. And so you know, given that the market, you know, we've, we've essentially more than tripled since the last time we were added to the Russell 1000, um, there will be an additional weighting to our stock, and that will, you know, prompt indexers to have to buy additional shares, you know, ETFs, funds, um, in order to mimic and properly track the performance of the Russell 1000. So that, that's happening, um, by the end of June, Which are— sorry, by the end of May. And so over the next 4 weeks, we'll get updates on what our weighting is going to be. And I did ask a friend who has access to index arbitrage research, you know, we'll see what people are projecting. But that could, depending on how you think the weighting might change, that could drive additional demand for, call it, 10 million shares in AST, which is not a small number. I mean, we've seen how At least from the sentiment point of view, how Rakuten selling 15 million shares has set people off and also algos as well, I guess. But I think we're probably pretty close to Rakuten being done. Maybe they have, I don't know, 2 to 3 million shares depending on what the price sensitivity is. But in the grand scheme of things, that's not really a lot that's left. And so when I guess the the last update on their 13D amendment, they were selling with the stock price lower. They were selling like 250,000 shares a day, which quite candidly is not going to impact the stock price much. But once they're done, I think from a sentiment point of view, perhaps that will help because I think like people are very focused on that. And then the other thing that happened last May was when, was I believe the Legato Spectrum, that term sheet, that deal got went definitive. And so that was a pretty big catalyst. So similar to back then, I think we're setting up for what is going to be a pretty big May, which is going to be our first batch shipment. And then of course, shortly thereafter, the second batch shipment and seeing the time between those two. And then of course, the third one will tell us a lot about cadence, right? Production cadence of have they solved all the issues that Which I believe they've solved stacking issues. But then of course, once you've put a satellite together, you have to test it. And that takes quite some time and testing in an environmental chamber. I think that takes like 2 weeks or so, which, you know, there is a big upfront investment in doing that. Because then out of that testing, you might find something didn't perform and then you've got to fix it. And so that's why sometimes when you think you're done, it might actually take a little more time. In order to resolve these issues, which, you know, again, this is space. And so you don't want to launch a satellite with known issues. You want to make sure that everything is working as planned and properly. And so once you launch satellite, you know, the company has been perfect in terms of, on their side, building satellites that work and unfold and operate. Of course, Bluebird 7 was a launch failure. Um, but outside of that, they've got a spotless record, right? And so I'd like for them to keep that record. Um, but yeah, so moving on to Blue Origin New Glenn, and this is part of, this is part of the near-term catalyst, um, quite, quite frankly, but the, there, there's an article about, um, I think, uh, Blue Origin had posted a job, uh, where they were looking for an integration specialist who, or someone who was, who would help them build their second stage booster. Capacity. And so I think right now, as has been publicized, and of course, David Limp has talked about this as well, but the company is at the cadence of building 12 second stage boosters at this point. And why is that important? Well, if you build 12 second stage boosters, that means you can launch 12 rockets. These, unlike Starship, and I think this is an important distinction when people talk about Starship versus New Glenn, Starship is doing something pretty difficult, right? Like they're not only reusing the first stage booster, but they're trying to reuse the second stage, which is the top portion of the rocket. And so what they're doing is not easy, uh, 'cause you know, that second stage goes up space, it has to do multiple burns, and then they're trying to bring that second stage back to Earth and have it land on its own. after doing multiple burns and deploying cargo, um, you know, payload into space. And so that's very different than what Blue Origin is doing. Blue Origin, um, is reusing the first boost, first stage booster, but the second stage is not reusable. So that, that second stage, once it delivers cargo, it will then come back to Earth and, and, you know, it will burn up. Um, however, Blue Origin is looking at Eventually getting to a reusable second stage, but that's, you know, that's something that's further out. So, um, when looking at how much they could actually launch, um, the key thing is production cadence for the second stage booster. Because at this point, the first stage, they've got 2 of them. And if they can get to a 30-day cadence of refurbishing those things, you know, a 30-day turnaround, you're essentially able to launch 2 times a month. Right. And so that, that would be huge if, if they can get to that, that level of reuse. And then the constraint becomes, um, the second stage booster, which, um, which is not reusable. It's expendable. And so, um, I believe Blue Origin is, is, you know, obviously they're not going to just rely on 2 first stages. They're, they're working on probably bringing another stage, um, into the rotation. So that would be 3.
[00:17:11] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:17:13] Speaker A: And so eventually, again, you know, I think they want to get to at least 2 launches a month. And then for the second stage, in this job posting, they were talking about how they wanted to go from 12 to eventually 60 second stage production, production of the second stages by, I think, Q3 of 2028. That's going to ramp up to 100 by 2029. And so That's pretty massive, right? Like if you can imagine Blue Origin New Glenn launching, you know, going from what this year is probably going to be 6 to 8, going from there to at some point over the course of 2028, a cadence of 60 a year. And then in 2029, cadence of 100. That's a lot of launch capacity. And that's not inclusive of Starship or any of these other vehicles. are going to come online. And so, um, yeah, as a key partner for AST, one key— one important thing to watch out for is the, um, is the FAA investigation. And I, I pointed this out before in a tweet, but, um, that's going to be a pretty big catalyst, right? Like, I think if the FAA investigation follows a similar path as the, the first time they investigated the New Glenn 1 launch, you know, the failure of the booster where the first stage booster, it deployed the second stage properly. And as it returned, there were some issues around, I think, some of the propellant. And then, you know, they were unable to reignite the engines and they lost that first booster. That investigation took about 71 days. And then after it was concluded, the FAA announced it, I think, 2 days later. And back then, Blue Origin, there were 7 different areas where they were applying fixes. And then of course, as we know, the second launch of New Glenn was successful. The booster landed and then of course the third one, but obviously, you know, the second stage was not successful. And so that's kind of the holdup right now where I think if we follow a similar And now, by the way, like Blue Origin has gone through an FAA investigation. They know how to, now they know how to engage with regulators and obviously they'll need to get to the root cause as quickly as they can. But if they, we follow a similar type of timeline that puts us into this investigation, perhaps closing by the end of June or July 1st or the first week of July. And so if they're able to, if it's a small problem and they implement fixes, you could probably see Blue Origin New Glenn launching its first commercial cargo sometime in August, right? And that first cargo will most likely be Amazon LEO satellites, because I don't think any commercial customer will say, hey, let's give it a shot. Let's put on a bunch of satellites coming out of this investigation. I think Blue Origin too will want to make sure that They do something, either it would be, it would likely be Amazon LEO satellites, or it could be a dummy cargo that's pretty heavy. They could do one of those 2 things. But my guess is like they'll do Amazon LEO cargo because they need to get that for flight certification from Space Force, right? And for Space Force, I believe, and someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe you have to send, you know, real cargo up in space to get that certification. And so, uh, that clock restarts. And so they need to do 4 of those in a row perfectly before they can start launching Space Force cargo. And as a result of that, by the way, because that, that count gets restarted, um, they are precluded from launching any government payloads. And so as a result, um, the manifest for Blue Origin is actually in a weird way, Even though it's been delayed and now it's delayed and there's some concern around the timeline for AST, all of those launches are now freed up. And so the manifest becomes much less crowded. And so for AST, as long as Blue Origin, as long as they can address the issue and fix it and launch a successful mission with Amazon LEO, then You know, you have a clear path to getting a lot of satellites actually launched this year. And so, so yeah, that that's something to keep an eye out for. Any any nuggets around the FAA investigation? How long that potentially could go? What they're finding? If is if it's a minor issue or if it's a bigger issue, I'm sure the company will have you know their their talk in talks with Blue Origin day to day, and they probably get they probably have a pretty ins. good insight into what happened and what, um, you know, what type of investigation is going to come out of that. But, um, but at the right time, you know, we'll probably hear a bit more about it from Blue Origin and perhaps even AST. Um, and that's, that's something that, uh, as shareholders, I would recommend people ask that question to management for the upcoming quarterly update, which by the way is only 10 days away. And so I guess one thing I'll point out in regards to communications, yesterday there were people, you know, on the back of the company, obviously, you know, the stock not trading well the day before yesterday, people were really losing it, right? And so one of the comments that people had was, you know, management needs to communicate more. And I went back and I looked and the last update we got was actually on, April 20th, right? Or actually, I take that back, April 22nd. So a little over a week ago, we got communications from the company that, you know, we got, and this is something that people forget, we got FCC approval for Constellation. Uh, and then just 3 days prior to that, which was unfortunate news, but the PR that, you know, they lost Bluebird 7, even an update on production and when the next batch is going to go out. So it's like, I don't know, sometimes I feel like some of our investors are like crypto guys. Like they need to hear from devs or something. They need PR on a minute-by-minute or hourly basis or daily basis to explain why the stock price is down or why they need like some positive news update to get the stock price up. And it's like, you know, that's not how companies, multi-billion dollar companies work. They don't put out tweets or engage with retail investors holding their hand because the stock price is down. 5 or 6% or whatever it is, 10%, 20%. Um, they, they focus on execution, right? And so, and obviously like the company is behind on that. And as we've discussed ad nauseam, like space is hard, right? And so the key question is like, as investors, for some of these people, um, do they want to hear daily updates? Like should Abel take a good hour out of his time and, and And catalog accomplishments for the day and setbacks and then tweet it out or PR it? No, that makes absolutely zero sense. Like what public company does that? Most public companies only report material information. You know, obviously, like if something big happens, then they report it at the time. But then beyond that, you're going to get a quarterly update, right? And this Trump administration, by the way, which I think this is bad. is moving to this framework where they may allow companies to just update you on a semiannual basis, just twice a year, which is insane. Which I think, you know, if you want to talk about radical opaqueness like that, that would be a terrible way for companies to go in terms of SEC reporting. But yeah, you know, it goes back to like what Tutte says, right? Since nothing drives sentiment like price, Like when, or what Yadre Dave was saying, um, you know, we, we got, we had a satellite that was not placed in proper orbit. We lost that. And the company communicated that right after it happened, uh, which, you know, they could have sat on that for a while, but they, they communicated it that, that later that day, which I applaud them for. Uh, and then we got FCC approval on April 22nd. And so these are like 2 major, one, one negative and one massively positive. And yet here we are, you know, the stock obviously is, is, has underperformed the sector, but the sector is down a lot and people are calling for the heads of management. They're like, oh, they could have did this better. They could have did that better. And it's like, well, what, what more do you want? Like the stock price is down. All the space names are down. And so what would you like from a multi-billion dollar company Do you want them to hold your hand? Do you want them to, I don't know, have like an investor call and be like, well, today I ate a ham and cheese sandwich and I got like, I gave a speech to some of the employees who are making microns. I inspected the composite rings and we feel comfortable with those and we're integrating the payloads. And this is for like second batch. The first batch, it's currently in testing. And we hope to get, you know, maybe we'll give an update at which, by the way, like we're telling people 30 days and that's what, 2, a little over 2 weeks from now as of today. Like, what do you want? I mean, what, give me an example of a public company that is doing something really hard that's executing, that's giving daily or weekly updates. Like, I want to know, like, I would be interested to see like what that's about. Like, how does that work? And so, you know, I remember back in the day in 20— gosh, 2022. I mean, every year, 2022, '23, '24, '25, where people, um, yeah, the stock price underperforms and then people are over their heads, like they're, they're losing it. They're like, the company needs to put out more PR, they need to do a better job of marketing, blah blah blah. And it's like, I've seen those companies, the companies that are focused on PR and marketing and they don't execute and Yeah, they, they, I mean, if you want a PR machine, um, there's plenty of, you know, questionable companies to go invest in. But if you're investing in a company that's doing something hard that takes time and there's, there's little to no margin for error, um, which is why this stuff is hard, then, then that's what AST is doing, right? And I don't think it's appropriate nor, nor very specifically a good use of time. For executives to go out and try to handhold, right? Like, I mean, they did as much handholding as they could in regards to the Blue Origin failure of inserting Bluebird 7 into orbit. But, you know, and it's interesting because I think there was someone online that was saying, and look, this is not like a huge population, but someone's like, well, there's rumors that the satellite failed because of AST. And it's like, what? Where, where is that coming from? Specifically, Blue Origin said that a BE-3 engine did not ignite out of the 2. One did not work. And so they couldn't get enough thrust given the, you know, they were able to do the, the initial orbit, uh, which is the elliptical one, but they didn't get a second burn, uh, in order to get to a circular orbit.
[00:28:39] Speaker B: Right.
[00:28:39] Speaker A: And so, um, you know, it's just like one anonymous account that's saying this. And, and so sometimes it's like my frustration where.
[00:28:45] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:28:45] Speaker A: Look, I try to be helpful and talk to as many people as I can, but sometimes, I mean, I get frustrated too where people are just throwing spaghetti at the wall and trying to come up with reasons why the stock is down. It's like the stock is down because the sector's down. Like it's as simple as that. There's like sector, there's factor flows. There's, you know, obviously like right now people are piling money into semiconductors. I mean, ask like software folks, right? Like some companies that have done well in software operationally, but you have this like massive overhang of AI, it doesn't matter how your company's doing. Like the entire sector is being sold on the fear of AI. And so that's like, you can be right, but you can be wrong for a long period of time until the market corrects for that. Right. And so I think it's important for people to understand that a lot of these things are out of your hands. Right? Like the factors moving around, you know, people, maybe they're taking risk out of space and they're finding value somewhere else, right? And sometimes that happens. And that's where, when we have these periods of consolidation where AST in 2025 and 2024, you know, the stock is kind of consolidating around, before it was like $20, now it's at $70, $70, $80. People get pressure. They're like, you know, do something. I want— why isn't the stock moving up? Like, okay, I want the company to communicate more PR things. It's like, well, what are they supposed to communicate? Like, they told us that the batch is going to be ready in 30 days. We have an earnings update on May 11th. What could they possibly tell you right now, which is their quiet period, by the way? Like, what do you need to know because the stock is down and you need to feel better? Okay, I get it. Like, that's human psychology. And so Um, if you need to feel better, then maybe you should, you know, maybe go to a loved one and say, give me a hug or something. I don't know. Um, but anyway, um, I will finish this thought. I did want to talk a little bit about SpaceX Falcon 9. Sorry, I'm jumping around here. Um, so there were some questions around, you know, the Falcon 9. Is it truly, or do we truly have launches set up? Why aren't we seeing them? So in the informal websites that track launch, you will see two Falcon 9s that are scheduled for AST SpaceMobile. But you know, some people have asked, well, why hasn't the company been very specific? Or why is there official? Why isn't there official PR about it? So it is kind of funny. Like back in 2022, when the company entered into its first multi-launch agreement with SpaceX, there was a provision in there. where the company could not disclose that SpaceX was launching their satellite until an agreed, mutually agreed time, which was literally like probably a few weeks before launch. And so we're still under that framework. And, um, and so we can't unilaterally disclose that we're launching on Falcon 9. Uh, that can happen when it becomes very clear and obvious, which is, you know, a few weeks prior. Um, and so the reason why we know that is The in 2022, that multi-launch agreement was actually 8K'd, and so going through it, you'll see that there is a non-disclosure, which is binding until obviously you know both parties agree that it's time to announce it. And so with SpaceX, I wouldn't expect the company to announce anything until we're closer to launch. And so what does that mean? Someone asked, you know, when when are we expecting to go up on SpaceX? Well, if you look at the first batch, if it's being shipped down to Florida, let's call it on May 19th. And it takes a day to get there. Integration into the Falcon 9 fairing, if it follows a normal timeline, which is call it 2 to 3 weeks, then you're looking at a June launch. However, because this is a new satellite, it may take a little more time to do integration. And the bearers, by the way, will have you believe that the satellites don't fit into the fairing, which is the funniest thing. Because like any good engineer has a ruler, has the ability to measure, has specs that, I mean, by the way, like one of our Space Mob guys, uh, who I believe works at aerospace company, shared with me the SpaceX Falcon 9 manual. Um, and so there's a real manual out there. It's a PDF. It's pretty big and it's very exhaustive of, um, Yeah, it's like how to use a SpaceX Falcon 9. Like if you have a payload, these are the things that you need to do to integrate it. Here's different launch adapters. These are the stresses and strains you should expect in launch. It was pretty cool. It's like this large PDF manual. It's as if you, like, if you can imagine like the car manual that you get, the manual you get when you buy a new car, it's similar to that. But, um, but yeah, it's, I mean, the AST's engineers have flown on Falcon 9 twice with BlueWalker 3 and, um, obviously the Block 1 satellites. They know how big the fairing is. They know also the different fairing sizes and different adapters. So any suggestion that, um, and this is, I, you know, I'm kind of, I'm kind of loath to repeat this stuff, but, you know, you have some bears that are pushing this narrative that it's Somehow the satellites won't fit, and you know we're talking about three satellites, which eventually will go to four. It's just pretty funny, right? It's like guys, guys grasping for straws. But but yeah, so for Falcon Nine, I do expect that we will have three launches of three, and so that will be over the period of time, which is going to be June, July, and partially August. And so. That's 9 satellites. And then I think sometime thereafter in September, you'll probably see the first multi-satellite Blue Origin launch. And so that one is going to be 6 satellites. And so that's how I think, depending on how, when Blue Origin comes out of this FAA investigation and how quickly they launch that first commercial satellite payload, that will determine When we really start getting like the big numbers of satellites launched, right? And so that's why the company is still— this is a stretch goal— is saying they could get to— they're still targeting approximately 45 satellites by the end of the year. And we've talked about this before, like with space companies, you're going to give stretch goals because it's not just for— I mean, as investors, we should all know that these are stretch goals, but it's also for internal And external purposes. Internal meaning employees. It's like, hey, we want to get to 45 and that's what we're going to execute against. And it's for suppliers, right? It's for guys who are providing components. It's also for Blue Origin. It's like, hey, we're serious. We've made a public statement that we still want to get to approximately 45. And as a result, like we need you guys to get your ass in gear and find the root cause for the second stage booster failure, work with the FAA and fix it. So we can launch more satellites. And of course that's in, that's in Blue Origin's interest too. Um, there's like some suggestion like, oh, hey, maybe Blue Origin is trying to sabotage AST. Um, that makes like zero sense, right? Because Blue Origin, they needed 2 additional commercial flights to then become certified for Space Force in order to launch government cargoes, which is a big part of their business plan. And so losing Losing a payload on your second stage is no bueno, right? For Blue Origin, they want to fix that and it's going to, it's key to unlocking customers. It's as if like, you know, if someone were to say that Rocket Lab, you know, let's say like Neutron gets up to a cadence and they're putting up a lunar lander for, I'm just making it up, like Firefly.
[00:36:45] Speaker B: Right.
[00:36:45] Speaker A: And then, and, but then they intentionally destroy their own rocket in order to keep Firefly from going to the moon. Cause, uh, you know, Rocket Lab still has like Mars and lunar missions. Like, why would they do that? It doesn't make any sense. It would shut down the rocket program for how many, however long. And then in terms of commercial cargo, it would give people second thoughts, right? It just doesn't make sense. But, but, you know, I get it. Like people, when something bad happens, There's this coping mechanism of humans. Like the initial reaction is to think of all the bad things that could possibly happen and, you know, woe is me and why, why is this happening to me? And, and so you're going to go to a pretty dark place, which, but then of course, when you get back to a normal sense, you know, more even, you know, mental state, then you can get over that. I guess that coping mechanism and get to a point where it's like, oh, how do you think about it constructively? So, um, but yeah, so going back to SpaceX, um, Falcon 9 will be the next 3 launches. Uh, I believe there are additional Falcon 9 launches booked as well, but we don't know the total number of those. I, I, there's bears out there speculating that all we have is 3 and then there's no more, uh, which I knew was wrong. But, you know, whatever sentiment they can put or whatever narrative they can push, you know, so be it. Right. Um, which leads me to like the final thing I want to talk about, which is bears and panikins. Um, And so, as I mentioned before, you know, nothing drives sentiment more than price. And so I think when you have a pretty big drawdown and people really lose their shit, that in and of itself is a good signal, which, you know, we joke about like the kook bottom where when you get to these extreme levels of bearishness and some people, you know, they can hold it together, but then at some point they enter this period of capitulation. You know mentally, then that can be a really valuable signal. And and so for people who you know are emotionally in a bad place, and look for me by the way, like you know to have a 40% drawdown, you know most of my public portfolios in AST, it's not fun. Like it's not something that I revel in or I'm not happy about it. I mean who who who wants to lose money? But for me, you know, I'm mentally in the right state where it's like, okay, you know, I've had a multimillion-dollar drawdown, but have I sold shares?
[00:39:12] Speaker B: No.
[00:39:13] Speaker A: Am I prepared for volatility like this? Yeah, this is part of it. Like, you know, the volatile swings when the stock was at $2 and it was, you know, up 30, 40 cents, down 20, 30 cents like that, those are big swings, right? Not in terms of absolute dollars, but they were big. And then it was no different when we went to 39, or let's say, you know, when we went to 8, 9, 10 and we drew, we came back down, went to 15, came back down, 39, went back down, was at like 17. I mean, people were just absolutely losing it at that point. And there was a ton of regret. People were like, I wish I'd sold there. And I wish, you know, everybody wants to be like the perfect trader where I sold at the top and I bought at the bottom. And that's, that's impossible, right? Like, um, not to, not to mention, you know, there's tax implications in doing, you know, being actively an active trader for perhaps your entire position. But, um, but I think it's important to note, like, um, understanding yourself. Like, are you someone who's emotional? Are you able to look at things clinically? Have you— how much risk do you have on? Are you able to tolerate volatility? Are you set up to ride this volatility out? And so I think it's important for people to reflect on that because yeah, investing's hard. It's not for everybody, especially for individual names. And then if you're going to have a concentrated position, it takes a certain kind of— I'll just say it takes a certain kind of crazy, right? And crazy meaning you understand what you've underwritten in terms of due diligence and you're willing to accept the volatility and You know, if obviously, like, if it's a bad, if it's not a good company or a bad investment, there's no amount of due diligence you can do. Like, it's going to fail, right? Whereas here, you know, I believe, me personally, that I've picked a one-of-one investment that, you know, has tremendous white space and value creation potential, and I'm willing to ride it out, right? And so it, that kind of crazy is someone who rides it from, I don't know, what was it, the high of '14, '15 to $2, and then to where we are, $72. But then also, you know, the stop to $130. Now, out of my core position, you know, I haven't touched those. But then on the periphery, like, you know, some portion of my position have I traded around. Yeah, I— and that's, that's, that's like who I am. Like, I, I do trade a little bit of my position, but for the core position, that obviously, like, you there's tax implications if I were to sell, just given the capital gains that are built in, which I'm trying to avoid. I don't want to pay capital gains. But for the trading part of the position, yeah, I'll trade some of my AST around. But for the core position, I'm not touching it. And I didn't sell any of that core position at $130, and I'm not selling it here because I think there's more upside, right? And if you look at the— if you look at Abel, he's like the, the penultimate, like, owner, founder, and operator, right? Like, he hasn't sold any of his position. You know, you have like these bears come out and say, um, whatever they, whatever they want about the company, but the proof is in the pudding. Like, the CEO who's founded this company, he hasn't sold anything. You know, he has— he didn't sell anything at $10, he didn't sell anything at $2, and he didn't sell anything at $1.30. Um, In the face of you know the company's financing, he didn't sell anything, and and he's not selling anything now, right? And so, and I think that's a bit extreme. Like I think for Abel, it's it's a very unique thing because I I would expect executives to sell some portion, like take some money down, and and but but I think he's a unique individual, right? And so, for example, Scott Wisniewski and and. Andrew Johnson and some of the other executives, they've sold some shares. They haven't sold a majority, they've sold a portion, which I think makes sense because you can't, you know, you can't, this company does not pay much in terms of salaries. Like you're looking at the key executives getting paid, call it $250,000 a year and some benefits. And it's, many of you know, if you have a large family and you live in a more expensive metropolitan area, $250,000 doesn't go very far. Especially if you're working 24/7 and your wife or your partner is there doing everything on their own and you've got like 3 small kids, you might need to hire help and throw money at the problem. Like get babysitters, get nannies, things like that. It's expensive. And so people selling some shares to cover their taxes importantly, but it'll also giving themselves some breathing room operationally, because the last thing you want is executives sweating over their finances when they should be sweating over the business, right? And so by selling some stock and taking, giving them some financial cushion, they're not worried about things that are going on at home. They're worrying about things that are going on at the factory, right? And so I think it's important to make that distinction where when execs do sell, like they've earned it and it's for AST, it's a big part of their compensation. It's shares. It's not cash compensation because the company doesn't really pay people cash. And so going back to the Abel reference, I think he is very unique in that he hasn't sold anything and I wouldn't be surprised and I would expect him to sell something at some point. In his previous company EMC, he did make some money, but this is his magnum opus. Like this is his his passion and dream, right? And so, um, he hasn't— and I think Cook has mentioned this too— maybe he feels that there's this shareholder pact with, with individual investors who pretty much saved the company back in the day. Like, he's gonna try to stick it out and hold on as long as he can. And at some point, you know, some, some rationality, like an estate planner or somebody's going to come to him and say, hey, I, I get it, but come on. Like set aside 5, 10, 20% of your holdings and, um, monetize that. And the rest, like, you're gonna have plenty of skin in the game, which, yeah, Abel's like very unique in that regard. Like, he hasn't— if you look at like Palantir or some of these other companies where, um, insiders have sold hand over fist and the company's done well, like, that's kind of the other side of the coin where it's like the company has a massive opportunity, it's done well, and executives have sold, and as they should. Like, they're they're being rewarded, right? Um, whereas in the case with AST, um, yeah, it's a very unique situation. But, um, but going back to, you know, the panic-ins, I think, I think it's important to know what you own, right? Like, if you're sweating over— I mean, I've said this many times, but if you're sweating over day-to-day stock price movements and you feel this urge to lash out at— on Twitter, I guess, and do like, um, public therapy or go go after executives that they should be communicating more, or that the executives have dropped the ball and they haven't executed, which is all fair criticism, right? Like, then yeah, then if that really bothers you when the stock rises down, like maybe you're too big, maybe you own too much, right? Maybe you should de-risk to the point where it's not mentally taxing on you every day, right? And I think that's where that's where, you know, someone— if you have experience in markets and you, you have some level of risk tolerance, um, but then you're okay with it, right? Um, but, but also if you have something that's just so large of your net worth and, um, those movements are— they give you mental anguish, like, it's not worth it. Like, I, I, I truly believe, like, you should carry risk that you're comfortable with, where it's not going to damage you mentally, because your health is more important than money. And so, um, for those people who, who kind of go into that category where, um, you know, going again, the company gave us updates on 4/20, they gave us— or 4/19, they gave us an update on 4/22, and people are screaming for more communications because the stock price is down, um, but nothing else has changed. And, you know, we've got earnings on May 11th, and we've got You know, batch shipment coming up on approximately May 19th. Like, what more do you want? And so, yeah, just reflect on that because I think it's important. Mental health is important. Not getting over your skis. Like, I think, you know, if you have an oversized investment and you're at margin, like, that's the quickest way to financial ruin. Like, don't do that to yourself. And yeah, just reflect on that because I think, again, coupling this together with like the fact that I think people should follow the space sector. And so before you lose it, look at the rest of the sector. Like, is it down as well? Or proxies that we are associated with, are those down or are they up? It all matters, right? And so for people who need an explanation of why a stock is up or down on a given day, I'll tell you, as someone who's been investing for well over 20 years and been in finance for 30 years, oftentimes no one knows. No one knows why something is up or down. And that's— if people knew exactly why things were up and down, up or down, and could predict that, then they would be extremely rich, right? And they'd be running, or they wouldn't be running a hedge fund. They would have their own family office running multiple billions of dollars, right? if they were that good. But no one's that good. And look, I understand the grief around losing the satellite. And then of course, things getting delayed and people are like, well, I need to know why they're delayed. Well, the company told us there were stacking issues. And then coming out of that, once you fix the stacking issues, which we've talked about where They've strengthened the existing rings that we have, and then we got a new design that came on. And by the way, like, the company acknowledges too, like, uh, we, we had a, a delivery of additional satellite, um, you know, composite rings on the Antonov. Um, like, they're giving us as much, you know, information as they can. And so when you, you know, when, when you're getting that information and yet you need more, Like what, what more can you, what more can the company disclose to you? And I think part of, uh, the other thing I wanted to point out is like, um, someone had asked like they want more detail, they want more into like intimate details of what's going on. It's like, well, no company's going to do that. Like there's, I think it's important to take a step back and, and understand like who are the company's competitors? Well, one, we have an adversary called China, and China is, they've pretty much, um, created copies of Starlink, the fixed wireless business. They've also created copies of Bluebird satellites, right? And so they're going to stand up their own service, which will perhaps provide direct-to-device service for these countries that are not as open but more closed. Call it North Korea, Russia, Iran, all the wonderful places you'd like to visit. And so We, you know, there was a point where, um, some folks in Space Mob had put out some pretty decent, like, designs or their ideas of what a Block 2 design looks like. And then, you know, I think they thought twice about it and pulled those off the internet because I think, you know, what's the advantage of telling your adversaries, like, where you are in production, what issues you've, you've come across or, or ways that you fix them. Additionally, you know, there's also not just a country, which is China, and also I'll throw Russia into there and Iran, who are adversaries who would love to learn more about the Block 2 Bluebird program and Block 3 program. But then you also have Starlink, right? Who is your direct competitor. They don't have a competitive product relative to what you're doing, but they eventually want to get there. Like, why would you, why would any company give daily updates or all the minutia of what's going on? No company does that, right? And so I think folks need to, maybe some people haven't invested, you know, or followed a company this closely, but you know, there's parameters of reasonableness for a public company and there's things called trade secrets and things like that where you don't want to show all of your cards, right? And so you're going to give the public as much disclosure as possible to help them underwrite an investment, but then you're also going to keep certain things close to the vest because those are competitively sensitive, right? And so I think that's important to understand. Um, I guess the last topic I'll cover are the bears. So with Panikins, um, they, they have their favorite people who they embrace dearly, which are the bears, right? And so you have a number of bears who are wonderful bottom signals where the stock underperforms and then they come out and do victory laps and they talk about, you know, they're— and this is where they prey on people, right? Where it's like, look, I told you so, this isn't going to work. The stock price is telling you it's not going to work. And so for anybody who bought it like $130 or $120 and they're They're now looking at a stock price of 72. There's going to be this like regret and remorse and doubt, right? And so then you've got bears, like whether it's these industry consultants who in the face of like being wrong, like they said, like the FCC approval would never come. Then because the stock price is down, they're like, well, but see, I told you like all these other things, right? Which is the whole moving goalpost strategy, right? But yeah, it's interesting because then you We've seen, I mean, on the X timeline, which by the way, like, this is when I say go out and touch grass because when things get so toxic and not only are panikins complaining, but then you've got the bears saying, I told you so, and doing their touchdown dances. And for me, it's just like, oh, this is just, I don't want to read all this stuff. It's, I mean, on one hand, it's a useful signal, which is why I added to my position in the most recent days. But then The other part is like, oh, I have desire to preserve my mental health. Like, why do I need to read all this negativity of like, there was this short report that was funny enough published by this college student, which gathered like all the old tired tropes around, you know, bear arguments around AST. And I read it and I was like, really? Like these guys are coming out and they're essentially celebrating or saying, you know, you like, there was an account yesterday saying that they shorted more, I guess, at 68, 69. And so yeah, when you see that type of stuff, it's actually pretty useful. Like there was this one guy, Pivotal Capital, which by the way, even though he's gone quiet, he used to post like negative stuff on AST until he got blown up. And then he shifted towards posting more about HIMS, the, the online health company, which then he got blown up on that. And then now he's just focused on posting. And this is a guy who works at a hedge fund. He's probably like some junior analyst, but now he's posting more about college football. But from time to time, he will stick out his head and, and do a touchdown dance when the— when AST is down, and he'll make some comments, which he did, I think, on the day the stock went down to like $67. And of course, you know, the stock rebounded. And so it's kind of funny because like these guys are contraindicators, at least of near-term bottoms and sometimes medium-term. In Pivotal's case, he's been like the ultimate signal, right? Which is why he blocks me. I remember Cook told me that once he— this guy messaged Cook directly and was like, hey, what's the deal with this Anpin guy? He's like, he's too mean. Which I will say, for those people who've met me in person, I'm a pretty nice guy and I'm very easygoing and I have a very positive disposition and outlook on life. But when it comes to bears who, um, who try to prey on retail investors and, um, really take advantage of them, and, and that includes people like who use their, their position as a, I don't know, as a, they use that in to, to create FUD, you know, whether it's like Tim Ferriss or this new guy, Stuart Taylor, whatever his name is. Um, I hate those people. Because they, yeah, their whole, you know, whether some of these folks are short and they're looking to make a buck or, you know, short-term trades or in Tim Ferriss's case, like looking to get more consulting engagement assignments from hedge funds or I guess other people. Yeah, I just, I can't stand them.
[00:56:11] Speaker B: Right.
[00:56:12] Speaker A: And so that said, like there are people, there are bears out there that are right about stocks. certain stocks. And, um, you know, there are helpful industry consultants that are actually honest in what they're doing. Um, there are a few people out there, by the way, who, who, um, industry-wise, who do consulting work, um, are positive on AST, but you'll never hear about them, right? Like, they're not the ones who are quoted in articles like Tim Farrar. But, um, but yeah, it's— I think it's important, like, these bears who, um, when you see them coming out of the woodwork You know, they were quiet like when the stock was at 130 or 100, and then they come out of the woodwork and say, "I told you so," and you know whether it's at 80 or 70, and they they tell like this this one Stuart Taylor guy is like his whole shtick, which by the way, like I truly believe this guy is is a consultant for Biosat because he posts nothing nonstop. Positive things about Viasat. And when AST, when Viasat had, I guess, sued AST, I think it was in New York last fall, because they clearly, you know, they want to get Legato because it's very valuable. They wanted to get out of the agreement. They wanted to go back on that deal, which by the way, when AST did enter into an agreement to acquire the 80-year spectrum rights from Legato and paid them $420 million. That went to ViaSat because Legato was on the hook for paying ViaSat that money, which they did. And that's what caused ViaSat to re-rate, by the way. Like, believe it or not, ViaSat management, they owe the fact that their stock trades well to AST because L-band became valuable all of a sudden. And people are like, oh, direct-to-device, it's like a, it's a real market and it's a real use case for this spectrum. And then ViaSat turned around and was like, oh, Yeah, actually, instead of fighting against these, or instead of poo-pooing this market, we're going to go try to tell the market that we are going to go do this too, which interestingly, and I've talked about this before, the most recent FCC rolling around L and S-band spectrum, that actually hurts Viasat quite a bit because Viasat in the negotiations with AST, AST did not give it the rights to go pursue L-band globally. And, uh, but they do have to coordinate, uh, interference with ViaSat. And then interestingly, the FCC came out the other day and said, whoever owns the rights to use S and L band spectrum in the U.S., that is who we view as holding the rights globally. Um, now does the FCC have, does the FCC lord over the EU or some of these other jurisdictions? No. But if you have a constellation that's flagged in the U.S., And operates here in the US, then you have basically the first right of refusal to use that spectrum globally, right? Like you will get approval from the FCC. And so that's important in the sense that AST, per its agreement with Viasat, has the ability to go pursue L-band globally. They can't interfere with Viasat, but then the FCC has said, well, you, AST, will have the ability to, from our perspective, use that spectrum globally. Now, the way that BioSat can get around that is they can create a new constellation that is not flagged here in the US, but is flagged in, I don't know, in Europe or Africa. And then they can pursue L-band spectrum outside of the US or leverage the L-band spectrum that they're already authorized to use. Obviously, they will have to, with AST, coordinate interference. Where I think that I didn't mean to go down this hole, but what that means, I think, over the long term is that at some point it just makes economic sense for AST and Viasat to work together because we own the most important and the most profitable part of the L-band market, which is the US and Canada. And so it's going to be really hard for any constellation to operate economically without the most profitable market. And so Starlink, for example, because it has a grip on the specific portions of S-band here in the US, they're going to be the natural home to go light up that S-band elsewhere in the world. But they don't have the right to all of it, right? There's 20 by 20 megahertz that are still up for grabs, and that's what AST is pursuing as well. And so I think taking a step back, if you're a foreign regulator and Starlink, who you may either be friendly with or maybe not, you will say, okay, you can use the 20 by 20 in our country, but that other 20 by 20, we're going to give to somebody else. And so I think that's where AST gets, by working with a local MNO who knows the regulators, who has subscribers and customers who will benefit. Um, I think that's where AST gets their solid position for S-band. Um, but yeah, I think, um, going back to what I was saying before about About bears. I think, um, yeah, when you see these guys coming out and doing, you know, cartwheels and, and I told you so, it was like, that's usually a good sign of the bottom as well. And conversely, um, when, when people like me and you are, are elated and we're jumping up and down and the stock's at $130, that's probably— if you're ever thinking about, uh, monetizing a portion of your position, or maybe you trade around some, maybe that's time to lighten up a little bit. Now, is that the top? Could that be the near-term top? Yeah. Or could it be 150, or could it be 170, 160, 180, 200? Who knows, right? But I think when Tut talks about nothing drives sentiment quite like price, that is a truism. Like, that if you're looking for signals now, given the negative sentiment and You know, the bears celebrating and short interest is at, you know, an all-time high. Let me just look at implied volatility here. And implied volatility— oh, I looked this up— implied volatility is close to an all-time low. Realized volatility, that is. That's usually a very good setup, right? Like, you want to buy when volatility is low, Short interest is high, sentiment is low. That's like the perfect ingredients when you do have positive catalysts for the stock to like explode higher. And so, so yeah, those are the things to look out for. Anyway, I'm going to pause there. Maybe I'll take a quick look and see if people have questions or comments. But yeah, that was a good reminder. I'm going to pause. I'm going to post implied and realized volatility, which has come down quite a bit. There's some pretty funny comments here. Telus is another strategic investor, but we don't have a public filing yet of their holdings. That's right. Yeah. Telus, they, my speculation is that they were probably going to buy shares in the open market. I don't know what entity they would do that under and how many shares they're looking to buy, but I would assume they probably already are a shareholder and yeah. I'm not sure. Let's see. Abel mentioned in Q&A last earnings call, the next batch is 6 satellites. I assume this was hope that the next could be a 6-bong launch. Now that we know the next few launches are F9, could we get a double batch, back-to-back F9 launches with these next 6? I think you're going to see the first batch of 3 go out and another batch go out shortly after. I don't think they're going to send all 6 at once because the other thing to keep in mind, At the integration facilities down there, SpaceX is like processing a ton of payloads, right? And so you don't want to send stuff early before it's ready or before they can take it. So I do think that you'll see 3 and then you'll see 3 sometime shortly after. I don't think you'll see like 6 sent and then put on 2 different Falcon 9s back to back. But I could be wrong. We'll see. Okay. If New Glenn isn't clear until August. When do you think we would be clear to use them? Hard to imagine anything before late September, October. Uh, I think, I think realistically the earliest we could use them is September. Um, and then from that point, if they are comfortable with refurbishing the New Glenn booster, um, you could get a launch every month, right? So September, October, November, December. So that's 4 times 6, that's like 24, right? And then we've got— well, let's do the math here. And I don't— I, by the way, like, I don't know when they move from 6 to 8, but let's say August or September, October, November, December. So that's 4 times 6, that's 24. We've got 9 on Falcon 9 coming up, so that's like 33. And then we've got 6 already in orbit. So that's 39. So I think maybe you sprinkle in another Falcon 9 or another Blue Origin launch, and that gets you to 43, 45 approximately. So yeah, Blue Origin would have to— And Falcon 9. Either we put in 1 or 2 more Falcon 9 launches or Blue Origin doing 4, maybe we get up to 5 in order to get to the the stretch goal of 45. But that would be, I think the key thing is, as I mentioned before, like it's not, 45 is a goal that we should pursue, but the key, I guess running count is more important.
[01:05:43] Speaker B: Right.
[01:05:43] Speaker A: So it's like if we can get to 6 satellites production per month and the satellites are able to launch within 30 to 40 days of being shipped, the key, right? Because then This 45 arbitrary number, it really doesn't matter at that point because then if you're able to do 6 a month and launch shortly thereafter, then that's where the market's gonna, like, at one point, I think part of the rerating process will be getting the first batch shipment, second and the third, and then people are like, okay, they're getting it and getting up to a point of 6 a month per month and then having those launched. Like, that's gonna be the key. So if you get to 45 in December or January or February, But as long as like that, that production cadence keeps going, and then, then the next thing people will look for is like, are they going from 6 to 8 and then from 8 to 10 per month and then 10 to 12? Like if you get to 12 a month, then it's lights out, right? Because at that point you can get the full commercial constellation up. You can get mid-band constellation up. Let's just say, I don't know, like you 45, If you want to get like 40, 45, you know, mid-band Bluebirds up, or let's say 60, right? Let's just round number 60 to get a wholesome mid-band constellation up and running. That's only 5 months of production. And so that's where like, I think this initial pain of investment and standing up production is tough and you have to have patience, but then if they can get to 6 satellites a month and then eventually 12, Then 12 gets you to a point where you can put up a fully working comprehensive constellation of 60 satellites in 5 months, which is kind of crazy if you think about it, right? And that's why they're acquiring additional floor space and they moved Micron production to another facility. At that point, it's like they might have to call their friend over at, this is a joke, but call their friend over at public storage and get space to store the satellites if they're building that many that quickly. Um, but yeah, let me see. Let me just look and see if there's any other questions. Someone posted a— Omni America Aeronautica posted a picture of touching grass, which I can appreciate. Um, why is ASIC still not ready? Are they shipping new sats with FPGAs? We have built FPGAs to up to 30 microns. And I think beyond that, the ASICs are being put into satellites, right? And so why are they not ready? I don't know. I can't tell you. I think the, my assumption is that the ASICs are going to take a bit of time because there's going to be a different integration in the microns. Maybe the microns are all, it's not, I don't think it's like a, This is my guess, by the way. Like, I don't think it's like a CPU, like your computer tower where you pop off a chip and you put on a new chip. I think the requirements are going to be a bit different when you're putting in ASICs, just given that they're much higher performance and lower power requirements. Like in a Micron or the satellite, if you're running ASICs, then maybe you don't have to put as many batteries, right? And so when it comes to weight savings, there's a number of things that I think, for example, that would take you from 3 Bluebirds to 4 Bluebirds on a Falcon 9, or, you know, 6 Bluebirds to 8 Bluebirds on a New Glenn, where some of the weight savings by using the ASIC is probably going to be less batteries, right? And so there's going to be some architectural things that you're going to do that's going to be different. But I can't, I don't know the answer. I don't know why, I don't know when it will be ready, but I believe, and that's another question, like, hey, we've got an opportunity to ask management in 10 days, like, let's see where we are on the ASICs. Like, is that going to be something that gets done in Q2? Because it seems like they finished out tape, the tape out and validation, and at this point it's really about production. So anyway, I think that's it. So I'll wrap it up there. But yeah, I think Look, it's tough time. Sentiment's low, and short interest is high. Implied volatility and realized volatility is low. And so these are like the ingredients you want ahead of what are going to be some pretty tremendous catalysts in May and June. And so these are the times when it's hard to deal with the chop and negative sentiment. But for me, the way I deal with it is. I see what's on the come and I just view this as an opportunity to bolster my investment because I know that, you know, it's going to pay off handsomely in the next few weeks. But anyway, I'll end it there. Thanks everyone for joining and we'll do another space perhaps like in a few days, few hours, few weeks. But thanks everyone for joining. Take care. Thanks for listening to the AST SpaceMobile Podcast. If you enjoyed this episode and you'd like to help support the podcast, please share it with others, post about it on social media, or leave a rating and review. To catch all the latest news about AST SpaceMobile, make sure to subscribe. Thanks again, and I'll see you next time.
[01:11:12] Speaker B: We're doing something very, very big, and I with this technology, we can really affect a billion lives. AST SpaceMobile is the only company that has proven technology to deliver cellular mobile connectivity directly from space to the everyday smartphone. People will just basically turn on their phone and be seamless. Regardless of where you are, we don't want the user even to know that it's connected by satellite. Our role is to bring this into reality. Always in partnership with the MMOs. Listen. Mmm, waffles.