Chris Adams

Looking at $asts stock price, you would have thought their facility got nuked or something. Let’s breakdown the space x transaction. On paper, ast lost out to space x on this grain transaction. There’s no other way of saying that and it’s a fact. Kudos to space x- they now have access to low and mid-band spectrum, so they have the ingredients to start competing directly with MNO’s now. What are the implications? Ast and space x are increasingly now approaching this connectivity problem in a completely different manner. Space x is going completely vertically integrated, direct to consumer. It is safe to assume with this transaction, MNO partnerships will be far and in between moving forward. Ast meanwhile has always been B2B, via partnerships with the MNO’s. They are becoming less and less of direct competitors via their business models. Implications for ast? As with other things, yet again this is another event that helps pull their opportunity forward. If ast were in talks with T-mobile, deutche telecom, those talks just became a much higher priority and the likelihood of a deal happening sooner just significantly went up. It was also inevitable that satellite plans would get baked into cellular plans, but now that offering is pulled forward with starlink. If you’re an MNO, you now have to offer a majority of your plans with satellite, otherwise you risk losing your customer to space x. Yet again, the intrinsic value of ast just got higher. They are now a keystone species for telecom- ast’s success will be directly correlated with customer retention for the MNO’s. Also, grain has 14mhz of low band spectrum-the MNO have 1000mhz of low& mid band spectrum combined between them. The odds are much higher now that ast will have more access to it moving foward, if mno's have any sense of self-preservation. From a fiscal standpoint, I have always trusted the company and never questioned when they raised capital. Perhaps some of the most recent raise could have been in plans for grain- instead, they are now sitting on a warchest so they can ride out the volatility until rates stabilize and macro improves. One less headache to think about. It’s always been this narrative that any news with space x causes ast to go down. Unfortunately, it still seems analyst coverage on ast still has room for improvement. It’s a Friday- if you’re an institution and you don’t really understand what the hell is going on, you have to sell first and ask questions later. You cant afford to be late or sit on sidelines- this is the Wall street way. I fully expect in the coming weeks that the market will realize that they got this wrong, much like with the echostar transaction a while ago and should result in net buying later. The risk/reward of owning ast has never been better. I’ve been an owner since 2021 so quite frankly, this is just a flesh wound-the company has been through way worse and got through the valley of death. The thesis is intact, the TAM keeps expanding, and the strategic value of ast continues to exponentially rise. If you can ride out the volatility, the stock will reward those that are able to sift out the noise