Kook Weekly - February 15 - The $4 Billion War Chest: SpaceMobile’s Path to Global Dominance

[00:00:06] Speaker A: This is the AST SpaceMobile Podcast.
[00:00:09] Speaker B: It will just basically come to your phone and be seamless regardless of where you are. We don't want the user even to know that it's connected by satellite. Listen, the opportunity that we have is very, very, very large.
[00:00:25] Speaker C: What do you mean? I was looking at the roster thinking, I don't know if I can start if Corey's not here. Given that I gave 1 minute advance notice, I'm like, oh, maybe I'll let him go this time. And then bang, like clockwork, Corey is here. So thanks everyone for joining. I hope, uh, the connection is good. I'm on, on a dicey connection, but we'll see how it goes. And so what a week for me, for sure. What a week. Last week was— this continuing week has been an absolute horror show for health, but also a good reminder on why to invest in your health. Nothing really matters if you're not feeling good. My little chaotic journey toward fry your neurosystem has has now led to sciatica, which is truly hell on earth. But, you know, the final boss of my peptide journey, I guess, is the inflammation of my sciatic nerve, which is super fun, but hopefully I'll get over that. And that's when I was kind of staring at the ceiling this week and I just realized, you know, there's 2 ways to think about ASTS's stock price. There's to fight it, or to accept the singularity with it and just, you know, in the words of Tim and Paula, just let it happen. And certainly the way I feel, I feel like a stock that went from $130 to $80. It, there's no other way to say that. I think I've just become the stock, which is maybe what is supposed to happen. So there's no more bottom because that would be sort of, you know, trying to think of one's emotions versus a stock versus actually just now the true kook bottom is like how much my butt hurts because of my sciatic nerve. And so we've like gotten to a new level of like, do I feel bummed out or is my bum like literally causing me paralyzing agony every time I sit? So there's a new kook bottom, and I think that we can safely say that this kook bottom is freaking real. And I will not be surprised at all if, as I recover, which I have definitely made some progress according to Gemini, that the stock also bottomed. So this last week was one of those things I feel like in a prior life I would've gone berserk, but you know, the market's been kind of crappy. I don't like make macro calls, certainly I don't post that, but I'd been talking a lot to Anpanman about, you know, how worried I was about February, he of course ripped me a new one and Tut was mocking me relentlessly. But it's just like, that's what happens after the January effect is stuff needs to cool off. Things were feeling too hot. And so sure enough, things were cooling off and then, you know, bad news likes company. And so of course Scott's like, I know what I could do. I'll issue another convertible bond and just, you know, scream fire in a crowded theater. Like, why not? And so, you know, then Boom, $100 floor gone. Now we're back, frankly, where the charts were kind of saying the lower end of the channel would be. So we're still having a pretty controlled sell-off, which frankly makes it feel a little bit better to me. It seems like there's still reason. I know there's some of you that would say, you know, stock's selling off $50 and, you know, lose your mind, but that's What I think is kind of necessary, because the people on this call are 99% of us. I don't know who's on this call, but 99% of us are the rightful owners of this company. We deserve to own it. We are the heirs of this empire. We have put in the work, we've put in the pain. And so down— downturns like this cause more shares to flow to people like us away from the people who didn't really know what they were doing, saw a high momentum stock, got caught up in things, and then, you know, get their stop losses hit. Those are not the natural owners of a stock. And if it were easy, everyone would do it. And so as Antpanman said the other day, he was doing one of his 15 Spaces and he said something like, well, KUK doesn't really do well in up markets. And that's right. I get really uncomfortable when the stock is doing great. And it's a bizarre thing because I'm printing, but I get, you know, people will notice I don't really tweet. I just kind of go into turtle mode. I get very uncomfortable. with success, I guess. But I get much more comfortable in markets like this because this is when I feel like I can add more value to people by trying to, again, focus on the fundamentals, being hopefully a voice of kookiness, but at the same time, some reason. And this is where the, you know, like where warriors win, you know, in battle. And now we're back in battle and I like battle. I like war. I like, you know, not real war, but like stock war. And I'm a distressed guy by background, so I kind of like it when it's a little bit more blood and guts because it's what allows the weak to be separated from the strong. And so when you look at the fundamentals as opposed to the stock price, you can see opportunity. And so we had a big week in terms of fundamentals. FM1 was deployed. So we've been tracking this really carefully, looking at the data. Frank, I, I'm saying frankly too much, which is actually really obnoxious. But when I'm looking at the orbital data now, it, it's very evident when they did the final unfurling. And so now as you stare at this, you can see when they probably went into the bar configuration or did the, uh, payload module and then the final unfurl. So it might've been a 2-step, might've just been 1 step. We'll never know unless they clarify it. But it is clear as daylight now on the orbital data. Exactly. You know, something happened right before they did that PR. And what an event. You know, this, I, this event, I, I, I don't say I was worried about it, but the thought had crossed my mind that there was a mechanical risk to unfolding. I said unfolding, but that's just like me defeated. You know, the sciatica is speaking frankly. Uh, when I'm healthy, I'm gonna go back and be like, it's fucking unfurling, Scott. But now in my weakened state, I will say unfold and I will I will surrender. But this thing unfolding is a really important accomplishment, and the stock price took it for granted in terms of we had a $100 stock price or roundabout. So the market assumed this would all work, and it did. So the market got it right despite all the experts saying this stuff would never work. That's the good news is the market is efficient. If there was real concern around The deployment of the satellite, it wouldn't have been hanging out at a $40 billion market cap. Tell you that much. But it needed to work and work it did. And so this is one of the seminal tech milestones for us to hit because it shows that they can deploy the scaled next-gen satellite. So we've now really gotten all the systems Really validated. And to go 7 for 7 is pretty cool. Like, we're— I'm sure we're going to have an anomaly at some point, and hopefully that, that's kind of in somewhere in like satellite 50 to 243 where it really won't matter. But the fact that they had a hit rate like this is pretty remarkable and shows you the different type of approach they're taking, more of a Blue Origin approach of step by step ferociously versus the let's blow stuff up for data, which is what SpaceX does. This company is not capitalized to do that historically, and I'm glad that they don't blow stuff up in orbit for data. I don't know if I have the constitution to handle that, but showing that this can unfold is a big deal. It really de-risks a lot of things and You know, they now have the data. They're getting flight data as we speak. And so whether they were holding back batch 1 or not is anyone's guess. It's a reasonable conclusion to think that they might have kept those satellites in the bay just in case if they had to fix anything. But now those birds should be ready to fly the coop. And sure enough, we're starting to get some updates on the next shipments and what they might look like. So we're seeing that potentially 4 satellites are going in a Falcon launch. So that's a change from the 3. So maybe they got the weight down dramatically.
[00:09:20] Speaker B: Good news.
[00:09:23] Speaker C: That decreases the cost because the cost of a launch is largely fixed. So dividing That cost by 4 versus 3 helps them get to that longer-term, call it $22 million per satellite cost, which they've got some room. If I'm even halfway right on my economics, they could spend a lot more on satellites and this is still a fantastic model. But Wall Street is going to be really happy to see them hit these cost estimates, you know, largely, and it's going to be more expensive up front and average down in the back half, which is always convenient for a company to be like, no, no, we'll make it up in the back half. But here you really will, especially as you start getting more scaled launching. So FM1 deployed, big milestone, something that made me just very relieved in that moment as I was basked in pain, just thinking, okay, I can really sleep easy, easier on this investment knowing that we've really started to isolate the if and unless statements to kind of an unless they can produce. And I have a lot of confidence that they will be able to produce. And so, because we're getting kind of proof of that, so it's no longer if they can deploy this new next-gen satellite, it doesn't really seem like it's an issue of if they can produce 6 satellites at scale. It's really, unless something that's not visible today changes, it seems like we're really positioned for greatness. And that's how our partners see it as well. So it's not lost on me that to have continued interviews by the CEO of AT&T talking about their partnership with ASTS SpaceMobile, it's a reminder of where we stack. In the importance to our partners, and then partners are one thing, but nations and continents are another. And so our European analyst Peter Lindmark—we'll call him our European correspondent—kindly shared with me, as he always does, some updates from Europe. So the EU Council had a meeting yesterday addressing the current challenges in Europe, of which there seem to be many, and what's to be done. including a move from fragmented market in several sectors to have a true single market in the EU. Fast forward, this really seems again why SATCO is positioned so well. It just does not make sense economically to have a Balkanized Europe as it relates to economies of scale platform infrastructure. Makes no sense. And it makes no sense for generally non-evil countries to have their own systems. And so thinking about countries that are not invited to participate, you know, you have such places like Iran, Russia, China, whether they're evil or not, whatever, but like definitely not shared infrastructure partners, but kind of the rest of the world, it makes no sense for them to have their own infrastructure. They should share it. It's super expensive and it is kind of a perishable good as it flies over Europe each day or every 90 minutes. That's data capacity that is either being used or not. Its incremental cost is basically zero. So it makes sense to use it. And that's where I think SATCO is in a really great position. And so where you have incremental cost of zero and then you have a lot of revenue, you're gonna have a really good business model as it scales. And on that note, ASTS did revenue. And so really, what have they done? Now, if anyone watched the show Billions, you remember you don't want to have revenue as a startup because then they're gonna want more revenue and more and more and more. So game's up, guys. Our days as a pre-revenue specky story stock are over. We are now a real company. And with that comes real obligations and responsibilities. And so of course, ASTS being true to form, they missed the high end of their, of their target. That's how you know that everyone there is still alive. So they overguided, which is what they're famous for, but that's why we love 'em because they're setting ambitious targets. They're probably driving that team to make sure everyone in the room has sciatica as well. I'm sure it's a room full of people that Screaming agony every time they get up because they're so stressed out and they're doing it because they're driving hard toward a really big goal. And so for the fiscal year 2025, the company's revenues were approximately $63 million to $71 million. I'm really happy by that. I was just praying to God they wouldn't flood it and come below the low end of the range, which was $50 million. Because I can only imagine how excited Scott was to have a, you know, really big hit. And, you know, he did it. And, you know, a lot of this was gonna be gateway sales and things like that. And so the main event is yet to come, but it's a good start. And I was just watching on the internet, not only Tim Ferriss get just totally mogged by Elon Musk, which is karma, as this guy's name just gets put into the dirt because he is seemingly not a very honest guy, but then he was mocking people for posting the sell-side estimates on ASTS revenue, which of course show this thing going to like a billion dollars of revenue in short order, saying that these are, you know, the lies and frauds of, uh, the space fob. But I— this is where I think he's going to be sorely, sorely wrong. Point you back to what Scott has said in the next tweet, which is Scott saying, quote, we see a good runway to tens of billions of dollars in the end state of revenue being created. That's what I hang my hat on, and I think that's right because this is something that should be Really like a very short gradual period and then sudden, because I do think this is one of these globalist things where everyone's going to kind of want it to have the same thing at the same time. People are going to see that their satellite phone can just be activated and they're probably going to do it within a pretty short period of time. And then the future growth is going to come from other markets opening up, whether that's IoT, Or frankly, I said frankly again, if I could do pushups, I would do a pushup every time I said that. And I'd ask Corey just to count it so he could hold me to my promises. But I think that as ASTS platform co happens, and you start opening up this platform for uses that the company might not even know, but people could see, you know, for example, maybe some people want to have some buoys out in the middle of the ocean to spot submarines or dolphins or track sharks to keep them away from me. Oh, you're going to want to have those lit up for communications. I don't know that Scott is thinking like, oh, someone, some guy named Cook wants to create an early warning system for sharks around the surf spots he uses, and he's willing to invest money to do that. That's certainly not going to be on the commercial radar of ASTS. But if they had an API, and I'm sure they will, you could start to have developers dial this in. And that's what I think is going to happen. And that's where this really cool kind of UGC, user-generated content platform opens up. Think of ASTS as Roblox for telecom. That's a big idea because you want to harness the creativity of creators. And I'm not thinking of like Instagram creators, but, you know, founders and people that are looking to solve unique problems because of a familiarity with unique problem statements and then leverage this connectivity and this technology for those purposes. And then for ASTS to get paid for it, that's where things start to get pretty spicy in terms of revenue that people couldn't have possibly predicted. But then we also have Dr. Mike, probably should call Dr. Mike and be like, yo, fix my back. But in the meantime, he's fixing my brain by teaching me about the end state of ASE SpaceMobile. So this tweet from Dr. Mike was pretty good. He says, well, the end state for ASTS is a non-terrestrial network mirrored as all the MNOs set up terrestrial networks that is dynamically allocated by AI at the base station. And so he goes on to point that this really should just be a secondary redundant network that gets toggled on, toggled off as economically merited. So what I think of this is a little bit like the grid. And so if I'm sitting there with a coal plant, a nuke, some wind farms, some oil gen, and some gas gen, I'm sitting there playing an optimization game of what do I dispatch and when. I think that the telecoms are going to have that same thing. They, for example, could turn off towers to save OpEx and things like that when they could otherwise just serve the demand. Curve with ASTS at that moment. There's lots of interesting things, and that's where this just becomes the ubiquitous global overlay, which is what I think will happen. It's seemingly very consistent with what the AT&T guys have said in various interviews about utilizing the guard bands. So that's a big idea. How it exactly transformed to our revenue estimates and ARPU and things like that are all too hard for someone like me to. estimate with any precision.
[00:19:16] Speaker A: But—
[00:19:16] Speaker C: and sorry, my wife's just calling in. I just text her and said that unless there's a catastrophe, doing my spaces with my mop. Okay. And she'll understand that. So then we have signs of a ramping TAM. And this goes back to kind of what I was just saying, the issues of people not really being able to understand what's possible. And so Kasey just sees more and more hiring happening for defense and radar. And this is pretty interesting. So ASTS Investors found this job posting for a senior FPGA engineer. A side note, I think a lot of us originally thought that the FPGA was sort of a temporary bridge to the ASIC. I'm less convinced now. I think that there might be a parallel block with FPGA, which are more adaptable. So they're more power hungry and they're heavier. That's why they're not as good when you know exactly what you're doing. You'd rather just have an ASIC. But where you have a lot of dynamic things happening, such as with the military, FPGA can be very interesting. So they're hiring for this, and very specifically talking about radar use cases. So there's a dead giveaway. You will directly influence the performance and resilience of next-generation radar and communication systems supporting the warfighter. Well, there you go. So that's telling you that this is much more of an ongoing business priority versus a bridge to the ASIC. What that means is there's more TAM than we otherwise, all else equal, would have thought about. And so what do you do if you're a Class A founder with an expanding market opportunity that you're rushing to serve? What do you do? Well, unfortunately for us, you raise money. And so these guys, decided that if $2.7 billion wasn't enough for y'all, maybe you'll be happy with $4 billion. And so they did a big convert, another drive-by, knocked a lot of us out of bed in terms of like, oh God, seriously? Like not the kind of, oh, seriously, do you do a convert? I'm happy that we have the capital. It's teeny dilution. You don't even feel it. It's just sort of like, okay, now I got like another week and a half or 2 weeks for the stock price to like absorb You know, this new supply, just kind of annoying, but life goes on. I wasn't planning to sell anytime soon, so it really doesn't matter other than just general annoyance. But it does help if you're a long-term investor, and I hope many of you are. It means that we have just an incomprehensible change in capacity over the past 2 years. I mean, we almost had no cash. And now this company has $4 billion of cash. It might have more cash than SpaceX at this point, which is a real possibility. And so with that type of balance sheet, you think about it from Scott and Abel's perspective, 100% of their economics, 99.9999% of their economics are in stock. So they're not doing anything that doesn't increase the terminal value of their stock. They're very rational people. So when they're raising money like this, it's for one reason. They see an opportunity to invest and they view that as NPV-positive growth. Again, very highly rational people. They can see, you know, we see these things, you know, the first 20 minutes I've been talking, we've just been talking about expanded TAM, revenue ramp, new opportunities, Things we hadn't necessarily known to be totally true that are turning out to be true in terms of revenue opportunities, things that might require different shells of satellites. So it's not like we're questioning, could these things be possible? We're seeing them. So then, you know, us as the Space Mob Board of Advisors, we would've also likely greenlighted this if presented with the opportunity. And that's how I think about it is Put myself in the position of a board member, an executive, and just going, what is what is the right thing to do? And do it. So the right thing to do was not to repeatedly downgrade ASTS stock, as Scotiabank found out. And so Abel slipped this guy a good old lime and protein shake, and now Scotiabank has. Some static nerve damage too, because they were kicked off the books of now what is a prolific multi-issuer monster, which is a fee machine. And looky here who was added— my favorites, JP Morgan and Morgan Stanley, the truest names in finance. And so now we've wet the whistle of the big dogs. So when they put out research, which they should at some point, expect some exciting things that will yet further broaden our shareholder base. We're no longer at the point where having a research report is going to like double the stock price, presumably because, you know, we're already a pretty big company, but it just starts to provide just more flow going our way. And I particularly love Morgan Stanley. I really enjoy reading Adam Jonas's work. He's truly a creator. He's a very interesting individual with lots of great out-there ideas, which have tended to be right. And so I really hope he picks this up and sees this broader opportunity that we all see and shares that with the world. And that's the type of voice I'd like to be telling the story for our company. And I really hope that happens. He's just a an incredibly gifted analyst who no longer seems to really give a crap what other people think. So he's going to just do what's, what's interesting and what's right. And I think ASTS is both interesting and right. So hopefully he'll come at that same conclusion. Well, the convert wasn't all we got. These guys also hit the ATM. So that was the other bridge for cash. And so they've really just been raising what they can when they can. at levels that are frankly not very dilutive, which is great for us. And so we own, you know, I don't have the exact math in front of me, but, you know, I'll own, you know, effectively 90% of my economic interest that I had before, you know, the recent couple dilution events. But now I have the benefit of $4 billion of capital to go out and conquer the world. And ultimately the math that will prevail is, you know, what multiple of book value does ASTS trade? And so for a company like this, it's high IP-driven, high defensible moats. It can be some stupid ratio of like 30-to-1 price-to-book. This is not a bank which trades at 1 times book. And so there can be some crazy accretion for properly invested capital to the extent it provides and cements strong competitive moats and scaling. So that's how you'd really want to think about these. Again, think like an owner. It's the most, potentially the most powerful change of mindset you can have to improving your investment results, because you really start to think like a board member, and that can help you calm down so you don't do the wrong things at the wrong time. And now let's look at what's happened with previous capital raises. So the Stoic Capital did a little recap down memory lane of prior prices they quote unquote diluted us at. $3.10. I remember that vividly. Definitely in that moment gave Scott a piece of my opinions on that one. Don't know if he'll ever forgive me. And then we, the company raised at $4.75, $5.50, $5.75, and then Boom, $72.07. I think he missed one because I think there was a convert done at $60, although he might be doing the capped call in that math. But the company, as the market readjusts, just keeps going up after each capital raise. And why is that? Because the company's delivering into this profitable NPV of future growth. So think of like an Indy 500 race. We're zipping along at 200 miles an hour and things are good. And then we go in the pit, the pit stop, and everyone's like, oh my God, now we're going 0 miles an hour. This sucks. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Well, yeah, we got new tires and some gas. Vroom, we're back out, back out again. And so these pit stops, think of it as like a high-performance car. Like, yeah, sure, you're, you're taking the speed down because you are doing a pit stop, but this allows you to go the distance. And don't lose perspective of that. When you are in a growth capital raising cannonball that we're in. If you're in distress and you're raising money, but it's sort of a long goodbye, that's a different type of pattern. That's not the pattern we're in right now. We are no longer funding to mitigate downside risks. We are funding to capture upside opportunities. And so this is where Katsy was kind of going in his nice tweet on the financing news is we turned the largest remaining technological risk, which is the unfolding of FM1, and the company then turned around and did the convertible bond offering. From the perspective of a convert holder, they're just like, okay, yeah, let's wave this thing in. They just de-risked this thing even more. Let's give 'em money. This is a great convertible bond. It's super volatile stock, good credit because there's so much cash. IP and all these contracts and things like that. And they are just building the war chest now. But I think the key thing is to think we're no longer funding to de-risk. We are funding to chase opportunities. And that's a big paradigm shift. And then of course, if you like the audible version of that, And Panman Data Spaces, which is also linked here. So there was some interesting new language here, but first, one of the things that seemed to pop out was potential M&A talk. And it's a little murky here because M&A can just relate to the Logado deal. But I've thought for a while, and I've said this, is I thought Iridium could end up being a pretty interesting target. And I don't know if there will be a deal. I don't have. position in Iridium presently, but I thought that it kind of set up to be a logical acquisition target since Iridium, I think, is on a path to obsolescence. I think it seems like a cigar butt trade to me. I don't think their current constellation has any value in the long term, but their current book of business does, and their spectrum seems to also have value. And then they have a big global infrastructure. So I don't know, but their satellite operational control centers and things like that, for all I know, could be valuable. Their ground stations could be valuable. I don't know. This is the type of thing that a diligence team from ASTS would know, and that if some of those things flip to positive, buying an Iridium could really accelerate our path. And that's something that I would certainly be open to as if I had a a vote. I don't, but spiritually I'd be excited if they saw that an acquisition of Iridium was an accelerant to great things. So for the thing that gets me thinking is just buying that book of business and then you kind of run off the Iridium business on the current constellation until you have your own up and you transition all those contracts to your satellites if that's technologically feasible. And then you can upsell people too, because all of a sudden, instead of a narrowband service, it's full broadband. In the meantime, you get $500 million a year of EBITDA, which is pretty exciting, and the global spectrum, which could really pave the way for global L-band and S-band. So there seemed like the 15-second elevator pitch makes a lot of sense. If I were a banker, I feel like I could kind of fake it till I make it on that, but we'll see. But the language is what really caught a lot of people's attention. So AST SpaceMobile intends to use the net proceeds for general purposes, blah, blah, blah, including monetizing the capabilities of our proprietary technology to capture evolving commercial opportunities related to artificial intelligence. Hmm. And then pursuing opportunistic investments to accelerate SpaceMobile servicing capabilities. So that's where the Iridium part comes into me. And so they could very easily be engaging in a spectrum lease deal with Iridium. That's kind of the most logical thing, but then actually kind of putting it out there on the AI data centers in space. So monetizing our capabilities, what does that mean? So does that mean they're going to do it? That doesn't seem like how I'd write that sentence. Where my head went was partnering with Blue Origin. to either build the satellites for them or lease the royalty rights for the mechanism that allows you to put such large solar on-orbit power for that. That's what I read that to be, but we'll find out. But something's happening, that much is clear, and the timing of it is unclear. Unclear also why they'd need capital for it, but you could say that perhaps to fulfill that line of business, they're investing in additional plants that would be dedicated to that type of use case. And that's exciting. You certainly don't need a billion dollars for that, but it, they're giving you telltales that there's a lot going on here. And importantly, to have anything go on, you need the regulatory path to be cleared. And, uh, well, sir, Bloomberg put out an all-caps tweet, kind of keeping us surprised at what's going on in the world, and went, Senate Commerce Committee approves bill to speed approvals of new satellite launches. So the FCC is humming. Just make sure you're following Justin, uh, @JustBar, 'cause he's, he's really our FCC guy now. Uh, does a great job keeping us all updated. on recent filings. And so he'll be the one that's going to tell you when we get our full SES approval, which I think should be forthcoming within a month or two. We got the STAs, and so that seems like a bridge to the final thing. The indices are increasingly including us, which is kind of the same as getting like big broad research coverage from new banks. It just is going to increase the amount of float that gets sucked up So as an index includes our stock, that just means more passive guys are just going to buy it. That's effectively just float reduction. Those shares get gobbled up, they sit there, and net-net, the stock price moves because someone actively decides to buy or sell. If shares are just kind of locked up in an index, you know, less dramatic. And so as we have, you know, more and more indexing, that's just more shares that are gobbled up. And at the end of the day, this is largely supply and demand, provided that there's something of value, which I believe there to be. So nice to see that happening. Meanwhile, SpaceX lowers its sights to just the moon. And so what does that mean? Not a whole lot. I never really understood how Mars was an investable concept, but SpaceX is seemingly kind of retooling its pitch and position ahead of its ultimate prospectus. And so their story now seems to be Starlink, which is a great story. Although, as Tim Ferriss pointed out, the growth curve went from convex to slightly concave in the past 3 months, but I don't think I'd be quick to write Starlink's obituary. They seemingly have kind of abandoned the D2C hype, because I think they're realizing that they don't have a great story. TBD what they end up doing with the spectrum. It'll be very interesting to see if they do, if they close. And then with the xAI deal, clearly they're going all in on this mega TAM story. Whether economically is feasible or not is a bazillion-dollar question, but exciting it is, you know, a million satellites, AI from space, screw Sam Altman because he doesn't have a space company. I know Elon gets a lot of fun from that fact, but we're going to kind of see the evolution of the SpaceX IPO in real time, which should be powerful for our stock as more people get up to speed on space, understand why it's exciting, and ultimately then figure out what stocks are relevant to this. this ecosystem. And I think we're going to be front and center. So that's all I have for this week's, I guess, show, if you will. And I'm not that people should ever ask me or take action on any predictions I have, because I'm really not a good trader, but I would just take a little bit of perspective and again, just say they did a big convert. It does take a little bit of time for the market to absorb these shares. Have we seen the stock price low? I'm a pretty jumpy guy, so I kind of took the bet yes, because patience is not my middle name when it comes to my anxiety about not having the bite to buy ASTS when it goes down. So I added on Friday a little bit, but it would be a reasonable thing to say that this week could be some chops and some churns. as those shares kind of find their natural holders. Just remember, when you issue a bunch of converts, shorts get to locate, so they borrow shares from, you know, people like us. They sell those shares as a hedge. Someone has to buy those shares when they go put on their short. And so whoever buys that, it's usually not Fidelity sitting there and locking those shares up forever. It's going God knows where and ricocheting around the market until it ultimately gets, you know, landed in you know, Tuck's account, you know, or, you know, some guy that's going to hold it with iron death grip forever. And that's why these things can have some volatility and some chop for a little bit. But generally the convert price is sort of observed. So the issue price, which I think was $96, that tends to sort of be absorbed within 5 to 10 days. That's historically what's happened. And so that would put, you know, week after next as like a statistician's bet on when we might have absorbed that and be back on our march higher. It also is conveniently timed toward when we're going to be within spitting distance potentially of FM-2 getting launched. Tracking that really carefully. I am really excited for that. I just really hope I can go and see a New Glenn rocket. is going to be really inspirational for all of us and just super cool. And then we should also be getting very close to batch 1 getting shipped. That should— I would really imagine that will be sometime in early March. And those are the type of events that get people back, back on track. They start to see the rapid operational execution that's going to lead to the inevitable commercial execution. This is still very much a 2026 story. That's very important for the company to hit and maintain. So we're not pushed back on like, well, I don't really have to do anything until 2027. It's just, that's the worst when you flip the calendar relevancy of a stock. This is still, knock on wood, very much a 2026 story where people can research the stock and expect to get paid on the stock this year. And that all holds true. So I would just, you know, reflect a little bit if the stock doesn't necessarily go straight up next week. Or this week. Maybe it will, but just keep in mind it does. There is some technical stuff that just has to be absorbed with these converts. Don't freak out. Look at your diligence and just remember that sometimes in the short term with supply and demand, if the stock, if the company issues a lot of stock, it's not like you're wrong. It's not like the stock doesn't love you. It's not like management's out to kill you. It's just they increase supply and that has to be absorbed. And price is the mechanism by which stock is absorbed, and then it gets absorbed, and then we go back and things are good. So thank you everyone for joining. I hope everyone has a, a really nice President's Day, and I look forward to talking to everyone next week. Bye.
[00:40:57] Speaker A: Thanks for listening to the AST SpaceMobile Podcast. If you enjoyed this episode and you'd like to Support the podcast. Please share it with others, post about it on social media, or leave a rating and review. To catch all the latest news about AST SpaceMobile, make sure to subscribe. Thanks again, and I'll see you next time.
[00:41:22] Speaker B: We're doing something very, very big, and I think with this technology we can really affect billion lives. AST SpaceMobile is the only company that has proven technology to deliver cellular broadband connectivity directly from space to the everyday smartphone. People will just basically turn on their phone and be seamless. Regardless of where you are, we don't want the user even to know that it's connected by satellite.
[00:41:48] Speaker A: Our role is to bring this into reality, always in partnership with the MNOs. Listen.
[00:41:59] Speaker C: Mmm, waffles.