Anpanman - Wake & Bake: Bluebird 7 Confirmed on New Glenn, Tera Wave FUD

[00:00:06] Speaker A: This is the AST SpaceMobile Podcast.
[00:00:09] Speaker B: We 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: Hey everyone, thanks for joining and good morning for another Wake and Bake. I actually like these formats because they're short. Oftentimes if I don't have a time limit, then I just keep rambling. But having these quick updates on a daily basis, or almost daily basis, feels like the right type of format, at least for now, um, where it seems like, um, especially as we have catalyst season for ASTS, um, it seems like having this type of format, uh, actually works quite well. But anyway, um, I did want to talk about some news that hit this morning. Um, we officially are now launching Bluebird 7 aboard New Glenn 3, uh, Blue Origin New Glenn 3, which has been confirmed, and it looks like a more firm date will be set, but it's looking like the end of February, which is great. And so I was just thinking about the timeline and how there's probably a pretty decent chance that Artemis is going to launch probably in the second half of February as well. And so we might be lucky as ASD SpaceMobile shareholders to, you know, if Artemis goes up and then Blue Origin goes up within a 2, 3, 4, day timeframe, you might be able to see both, which is pretty amazing. And so seeing our first mission to the moon, where I believe, and correct me if I'm wrong, I might be wrong on this, but I think we're sending some astronauts to go orbit the moon and come back. And then of course the mission after that will be landing on the moon, but you'll have that on board. And then you've got New Glenn, which is Blue Origin's you know, pride and joy attempting its 3rd launch, and it will be taking a special payload, which is Bluebird-7. As we all know, Bluebird-6, which is FM-1, and Bluebird-7, which is FM-2, are SDA HALO satellites. And so it makes sense that New Glenn take up this satellite in particular, just given that New Glenn is— or Blue Origin is trying to get certified for Department of Defense work, and this will be their 3rd successful launch. They need to do one more in order to meet the, the 4 launches for requirement. So this is a huge event 'cause you have a new launch vehicle. There's gonna be a lot of fanfare, and you've got our new satellite going up as well. And so the company did mention that there will be a process as previously with the Block 1 launch. There probably will be a signup, and then they'll select a few people. I'm not sure how that works, if it's a lottery or if they actually dig in and select who's coming. But for Block 1 launch, they pretty much, you know, it took several rounds, but they pretty much invited everybody who applied. I don't know of anybody who applied who didn't get an invite, but then I think for this launch, it will be a bit rationed. There's probably, my guess is that there'll probably be half the people from AST SpaceMobile there. And the reason why that is, is that For Block 1, we were aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9, and because it's a very typical event for SpaceX folks, not many people show up from SpaceX. Whereas for this event, I would expect a tremendous number of Blue Origin guests, whether that's folks from the company or Department of Defense officials, government officials. So I think it's probably My guess would be maybe a third Blue Origin folks and two-thirds Space Mob, or it could be half-half. So we'll see. But as a reminder though, you don't need to go, you know, you don't need to be part of the formal event and have a seat at the viewing area. You can go to anywhere in the Cape and you'll be able to see the rocket launch 'cause it's visible for several miles. And so I'd encourage people, if you do have the time, there's nothing quite like it to see a launch, especially something where you're so heavily invested. It's a weird mix or fun mix of excitement, joy, anxiety, and, you know, a number of other things. But yeah, this launch will be a pretty awesome event. And yeah, I'm looking forward to it. Oh, looks like All right. Sorry, I had to turn off a message that I was getting, but I do want to put a shout out to Space Mob. I think this is just another demonstration of the unparalleled due diligence that we have in the community. And so as early as, I think it was early 4th quarter last year, based off of a number of different work that people were doing, we started to speculate that FM2 was gonna go aboard Blue Origin New Glenn 3. And so, and our confidence factor went up over the next few weeks. And obviously by the end of last year, we were almost 100% confident that it was gonna be New Glenn. And so it's great to see that our due diligence paid off and that satellite is going aboard New Glenn 3. And so, you know, I would say if you're an investor in AST SpaceMobile, it's important to become part of the community and be active because there's a tremendous amount of information and wealth of knowledge, whether that comes from Katzi or Cook or Tut or Kevin Chen, Tanner, Redrum. I mean, there's a whole host of people. Actually, I was thinking maybe I'll put out a list of, you know, accounts to follow, which is not going to do it justice, but I think for new investors, it probably helps to have a list of various people to follow if you want to stay plugged in. But the reason why I mentioned this is that even as of yesterday, we had, which I think was partially AI slop driven, but you had this scare around Blue Origin Terrawave where maybe some headlines got got picked up and then the stock started selling off. I mean, obviously the space sector was off, but then the stock started becoming very, very heavy on concerns that somehow this Blue Origin Terrawave was going to be competitive with AST, which it clearly isn't. For those that don't know, Blue Origin announced that they are going to put up a constellation called Terrawave, and it's going to be focused on high-end enterprise and data center and government customers. And so this is, you know, high, really high throughput satellites that are gonna be in low Earth orbit and medium Earth orbit. And we're talking about symmetrical download and upload speed. So symmetrical meaning exactly the same. For their RF, which, you know, radio frequency, which they're using Q and V-band, that's gonna be 144 gigabits per second. And then for their optical links, that will be 6 terabits, which is pretty crazy. So this product is actually positioned at the very high end. It's not utilizing QV band spectrum or optical. That certainly cannot communicate to mobile phones, nor will it ever, 'cause QV bands, you need exact direct line of sight and high power to make that connection. And so it's not anywhere close to cellular spectrum or MSS spectrum. And then of course, optical, I don't foresee anyone using optical links from your phone to a satellite. That would be pretty crazy too. I think Mega Constellations wrote about this announcement yesterday saying that the way that these satellites are going to be architected and what they're claiming, at most, you're gonna only, each satellite will only serve maybe a handful of customers at a time, 'cause that's a huge, a tremendous amount of throughput. And so what I think this, and Katzi started coming onto this pretty early because Katzi's Katzi, Given that there will only be a handful of customers that connect to these satellites at any time, and that the satellite can communicate to a customer via QV band, which happens to be the exact bands we're using on our satellites, and our antenna can actually— that stick out from the satellite that communicate with the ground stations, they can actually point back up into space. And so There is some speculation that as part of Golden Dome, maybe perhaps TerraWave, it will become kind of the backbone data layer. And then our satellites, whether it's the dual source, dual use case, either composite satellites or perhaps more specialized government satellites, they will interface with TerraWave and then obviously do their job on the defense application. So Whether that's radar sensing to pick up missile launches or detection, or also following those missiles, but also doing PNT, position, navigation, timing. And then of course, the ability to do electronic warfare, whether that's spoofing, jamming, all those things. And then of course, providing communications to warfighters on the ground, drones, and other assets. So that speculation, Cathie kind of put out there yesterday. And as I've mentioned before, never fade Cathie's due diligence because he's oftentimes right in drawing lines between the dots and putting the puzzle pieces together. And so I thought that was a very interesting call-out by him. And I encourage people to read his post about it. But yeah, I think To me, when that news came out and they were talking about using optical links and QV band for feeder and— sorry, not for feeder, but for uplink and downlink, that really stood out to me 'cause that doesn't— you're looking at customers on the ground needing a very strong antenna, one that can move to track the satellite for QV band. And so that seemed like a pretty odd—
[00:10:58] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:11:01] Speaker C: odd spectrum to use. However, if it's providing backbone connectivity to other satellites, that makes actually a ton of sense. So yeah, I encourage people to take a look and read Cathie's speculation on that. The other thing I will say, I was looking at the charts that I had laid out, I think it was in December, about how AST had been following— I'm not a chart person, but AST had been following this like 1-2-3 impulse pattern where it would spike up, it would come back a little bit, and then it would spike even higher, then come back a little bit, spike back up at a little lower level, and then it would cool off. And so we had seen this like maybe 4 times before, which is pretty interesting that it was following this pattern. However, this current pattern has completely obliterated that. And so just taking a look here, if you look at the chart, we've already hit like 3 impulse, I guess, impulse moves up, but we keep moving higher. And so each one is bigger than the previous one. And so I'd mentioned this before, but I think because we're in this interesting period where one, We now are tasked with pursuing business for Golden Dome. So that changes the, actually the entire story of the company, especially for people that are unfamiliar with it. And then on top of that, you've got now what previously was, you know, one launch and then you'd kind of have to wait for a few months or a year for the next launch. Now we're in this sweet spot where we're having launches every month, month and a half. And so I think that pattern that we had seen before is pretty much going to be, or is broken. And I talked about this yesterday where I think the setup is pretty bullish for the rest of the next few months because we are now heading into this period where, as some of you saw, Elon Musk is now targeting for SpaceX to go public by July of this year. And so as people, as institutional investors do their work and get smart around space ahead of that IPO, because no one's going to— no one is going to participate in that IPO without having some level of research and understanding sector and competitive dynamics and who the players are, that's going to bring a whole swath of new investors and interest into space. And of course, you're going to have speculators too, who the playbook is like you own the sector when the marquee company goes public, right? Because everything kind of appreciates just given that there's more interest and more investment dollars going into the sector. And so we've got this interesting mix where for AST SpaceMobile, we're on this path of commercial launch. We've got— There's some people who've asked, what does this mean that batch 1 and batch 2, There's 3 Bluebirds that will go up on a Falcon 9 launch, and then shortly after that, another batch. I think there's actually a good chance that we might see one of those batches get shipped down to the Cape and get launched maybe simultaneously or pretty close to Blue Origin New Glenn, but we'll see. But at least I think In this, I guess, in this coming week, or perhaps next, as late as next week, we'll probably see one of those batches of 3 shipped down to the Cape. And I'd mentioned this before, there, you know, SpaceX has a bit of a backup, 'cause I think there's only like one pad that's running right now. And so there's been a bit of a traffic jam to integrate new payloads into fairings. And so there is a little bit of a delay there.
[00:14:54] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:14:55] Speaker C: But after New Glenn launches, I would expect that the first batch of 3 on SpaceX Falcon 9 will probably go up shortly after, maybe a week or 2 after. And then after that, you'll have another one, right? Where I think we're probably gonna be cutting it close for the company's target of 5 orbital launches by the end of March. Now we're with this Blue Origin New Glenn, that's 2. And then you probably have another batch of 2 coming shortly thereafter. And so will they be able to get that 5th one in just prior to March end or sometime shortly after? We'll see. But as we've always talked about, a few weeks here and there, a few months here and there, it's not a big deal because it's inevitable, right? When we talk about ASD SpaceMobile and service rollout, it's all a matter of time, but— and it's inevitable. And so thinking about the dynamics of trading in the stock and the catalysts that are coming up heading into SpaceX's $1.5 trillion IPO in July, I think it's setting up very well. You might have this perfect storm of ingredients where the company is going to be catapulting these satellites up into space. And so if you're short, that's bad. 'Cause you've got ongoing catalysts, whether the company starts getting some Golden Dome awards through SHIELD, or as we speculated, and again, don't fade Space Mob, but we speculated that they will get an award via NOBL as well, which is part of Golden Dome. And so you've got a number of different catalysts that are happening on top of the fact that interest in space is heating up. And so I do think there is this chance, and I put on some risk yesterday to express this with a pullback in the stock, but I think there's a good chance that the stock price performs heading into July much better than any of us expected or could imagine. I talked about the end of the year possibly being, I think it was like $200 or $300. That could happen sooner than we expect, right? Because of, again, those ingredients that go into the company's catalyst. And then you've got that IPO for SpaceX coming up, right? And so I think there's going to be a lot of interest and a ton of articles written. I've hinted at this before, but one of the largest Financial Publications is currently writing a story about Space Mob in particular and AST SpaceMobile. And so this type of stuff is gonna, you know, this news is going to draw more attention and increase awareness. And I have a fun story. I bought a bit of real estate here in New York recently, and I had closing Um, I guess it was 2 days ago, and the buying attorney, who I've known for a really long time, um, you know, but I haven't seen him in years, um, he showed up. And then of course the, the seller attorney showed up. The seller didn't show up because, um, they had their attorney do, um, execute the deal via power of attorney. But anyway, I was wearing my Space Mob jacket, and then, um, these 2 gentlemen who are older, um, than me, uh, asked about it. And then, you know, I spent about 5 minutes talking about AST SpaceMobile, and it was weird. Like, they immediately understood it. They totally got it. And one of them actually had T-Mobile and said, hey, that we've had this satellite service, but it's terrible. And so when I explained to him what AST SpaceMobile is and how it's working with AT&T and Verizon, how it'll be seamless and it's broadband, this gentleman spends quite a bit of time out in Long Island, and he's actually moving to Austin. And so yeah, they both were asking me what the ticker was, and I'm pretty sure they probably ended up buying shares this week. So yeah, it's just kind of funny. You tell people about the— and I didn't discuss the defense use case at all. I just talked about the commercial side and immediately they understood and were interested in buying shares. And so yeah, I think that dynamic is going to be there for this, what we'll call the endless rally for the months leading into summer. And so I'm pretty excited about that. And I think yesterday, I rarely do this, but I shared the fact that I bought 5,000 shares when the stock dipped to $198 or so. I think I bought some shares at $101 and then I bought the rest at $98. And then I put on 250 of these July. I mean, this is highly speculative and whenever you do Options, just assume that you've written them off to zero. But I bought 150/180 call spreads. And so those were, I think I paid like $3.80 to as high as $4.20, but that's for a spread that's $30. And so if by expiry the stock goes above 180 or so, you have the maximum profit potential of $30 X, and then you got to take out what you paid. which is $3 to $4. But yeah, over the next few months, I'm probably going to look to add risk as we pull back. Obviously, the company is very volatile. And if you have AI headlines or people pushing whatever narratives, the stock, or the stock just trades with the sector, you'll have opportunities to— For me, I have a core holding that I never touch, but then there is a certain amount of capital that I set aside and I do more speculative trading because just given how volatile AST is and to keep myself entertained, I do some of these trades. So anyway, but yeah, that's what I did yesterday. But I do think, as I said before, I do think we're setting up for a really great summer and the months leading into that are going to be tremendous. And so the key thing of course is for the company to execute It was disclosed recently in FCC filing that the company is now at a production cadence of 6 satellites per month. And so yeah, this, we are going to have a, actually, let me take a look here when it's expected that we'll have a Q4 call. So we are gonna have a Q4 call, probably at least Bloomberg's predicting early March. So March 3rd. Let me just see what it was last year. Yeah. So last year it was March 3rd as well. And so that will be a great earnings update because obviously by then we probably will have 1 or 2 batches of 3 satellites shipped down to the Cape for launch. And then by that time as well, we'll have had Blue Origin take up BB-7. And so that Earnings call will be jam-packed with information. You know, probably discuss things around Golden Dome and any and and also probably by that time my guess is we'll probably have another definitive agreement with a customer. So so yeah, definitely looking forward to that. Anyway, I'm going to wrap up that part of this morning, which is AST Space Mobile. I've asked Redrum to if he can to put these in the podcast. So that first section is done. That's AST and. We'll catch up again soon. I'm going to move over very quickly to T1 Energy, and so if you're not interested, you can drop off now.
[00:22:50] Speaker A: 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.
[00:23:15] Speaker B: We're doing something very, very big, and I think with this technology we can really affect a 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 their phone and be 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 NMOs. Listen.
[00:23:56] Speaker C: Mmm, waffles.