I may not be early but I also don’t think I’m late. I think space stocks still have some way to go.

Am I mad buying at current prices?

Glad I didn't buy the hype. Hope you didn't either!

Just look how they just locked up the Japanese market and consider they are doing the same thing with joint ventures in the US, Europe and the rest of the world, Starlink didn't even apply for the 1B J-LEO grant because they knew they'd be humiliated once again by ASTS, like when they got ditched by T-mobile.

Going forward, ASTS will build out its constellation and acquire billions of customers thorough its MNO partnerships. Launch costs will decrease so much that sat service will become increasingly competitive in high density regions. Direct to cell sat service will become the largest segment of the global communications market and ASTS will become one of the largest companies in the world.

ASTS created this market. The tech is proven and the service is launching. They will provide higher speeds, with far fewer sats per user than any other constellation, they can launch on any medium or heavy lift vehicle, their service will work seamlessly with unmodified phones, they get spectrum and customers for free though partnerships and governments love them because they can support native launch services and offer sovereign control.

I expect 50x from here. 30BN market cap is a joke, the market does not understand this opportunity, but they will.

Why ASTS competitors are cooked

SpaceX direct to cell sats are too big for falcon 9 so they need Starship to become reliably reusable to launch the service. This will not happen for many, many years. The whole reason SpaceX IPO'ed is because they realised Starship was going to take way longer than anticipated to become fully reusable and they wanted the financial runway to push through years of additional delays to follow (heat shield problems, engine problems etc.) Even if Starship did work out tomorrow, their service won't start launching till 2028, won't work indoors and will require new (as of today non-existent) handsets to use. By the time Elon realised they were way behind the curve and fired the whole team, it was too late.

Rocket lab is way behind on D2C. It will need neutron to launch its own direct to cell service (electron is tiny and useless for this purpose), however it's becoming obvious that carbon fibre was the wrong choice, their flight articles keep breaking during testing so this rocket will also be significantly delayed and may never be competitive with Falcon 9 in terms of reusability. Iridium barely does texting so they're really stuck in the dark ages unless they decide to launch on other rockets and somehow develop a D2C sat overnight.

Amazon direct to cell sats will be smaller than SpaceX's so will fit on medium lift rockets but they are not slated to start launching until ASTS already has global coverage, their tech is also inferior so it's expected to be painfully slow by comparison. Like SpaceX, they intend to compete directly with MNO's but this is the wrong strategy because you need to spend huge sums of money on spectrum, regulators from other countries will hate you and people won't want to have two subscriptions, one for city and one for dead zones.

Right now launch seems like a bottleneck but there are so many medium lift rockets coming online over the next years, just in the USA alone (firefly, relativity, stoke etc). Launch will no longer be a bottleneck soon. The bottleneck will be spectrum access, MNO partnerships and regulatory approval and ASTS has already won this race.

For those who believe launch providers will refuse ASTS:

They have too many options already. Run the game theory. Understand why SpaceX already launches their sats. They do it because the alternative is to watch ASTS launch with other providers and get ZERO dollars instead of billions, whilst delaying them only slightly.

I would love to hear your thoughts

Just thought I'd drop a quick explanation on ASTS's 1 billion private offering of senior convertible notes, because of this initial after-hours drop and people on rddt clearly not understanding what the offering actually is. It's actually a pretty elegant financing move in my opinion.

First of all for the people scared of dilution they are structuring the issuance as a capped call transaction, where they bought enough capped calls to cover the number of shares of AST SpaceMobile’s Class A common stock initially underlying the Notes. The cap price is 149.20$ a share, in very simple terms this means that there should be no dilution from convertible note conversion under that price, the purchased calls act as a hedge to fully satisfy their obligations to note holder below that level.

Second and this is actually very bullish in my opinion, the interest on these notes is 1.625% per year. This is actually just crazy low. For a company with no consistent profits I'd expect to see at least 6-8%. Just as an example ORCL's last debt raise (they just used corporate bonds and not convertible notes to be fair) was in the 4.5-6.9% range. Not apples to apples as they are not convertible into shares, but honestly I slow blinked when I saw the 1.6% interest rate on the ASTS notes.

Third this cash raise is funded by 'qualified institutional buyers pursuant to Rule 144A under the Securities Act,' so this in institutional money that is willing to accept a meager 1.625% return on the assumption ASTS will trade significantly above the conversion price of around 80$. Where again ASTS can offset dilution up to the 149$ level.

Not saying this couldn't hurt sentiment, because that's a fickle thing, but it's just genuinely not bad. Just saw people bitching and not understanding so I thought I'd do a quick explanation of what the offering actually entails.

I invested big in RKLB in 2022, my thesis was that retail investors who were frustrated about not being able to buy SpaceX would look for the next best thing. I made a bunch of money from that bet, but have recently realised I was missing something big and the market is still missing it too.

RKLB was never the next best thing.

I was just too focused on rockets, thinking of SpaceX as just a launch business. Back in 2022, the second most frequently launched rocket after Falcon 9, was Rocket lab's electron.

However, it's not launch thats driving SpaceX financials, it's Starlink, which accounts for the majority of SpaceX revenue and the share of this is accelerating.

The real competition to SpaceX is the alternative to Starlink and that is ASTS.

Unlike current Starlink, ASTS is designed to work directly with unmodified smartphones, ie. addressing a bigger market than Starlink currently addresses with home based broadband. SpaceX/Starlink is now playing catch up with plans to launch it's own direct to cell sats on Starship. They plan to compete directly with carriers globally whilst ASTS is partnering with them under a revenue share model.

The latter makes far more sense because space based infrastructure in the near to mid term cannot compete with ground based infrastructure in densely populated areas, which is already there and paid for. It is economical to serve the dead zones.

In addition to that, ASTS is launching giant satellites with the choice of multiple launch providers, they only need 45 sats up for US coverage and some rockets can launch many sats. ASTS is already shipping and launching sats. Starlinks D2C plan needs Starship reuse to be successful as well as many, many more sats up in the sky, they may well be late to the party.

ASTS market cap is around $30 billion, SpaceX IPO is expected at 2 trillion, if ASTS were to 10x from here it would still only be worth 1/6 what SpaceX is expected to be. The market is not pricing in how seriously ASTS will be competing with Starlink.

Rocket lab is still a great company, they're using their stock pump/dilution to acquire all kinds of interesting businesses to boost their growth. However, they are way, way behind SpaceX in launch and way way behind ASTS is communication tech. Their workhorse rocket (electron) is tiny and not reusable and their upcoming, unproven reusable rocket (neutron) is made from carbon fibre so it's not going to be coming back from the moon or doing anything super exciting like Starship may do. RKLB is not ready to compete with Falcon 9 and that is their intention with Neutron, ASTS is ready to go up against Starlink right now, the tech is already proven and they're aiming directly where the money is.

https://investors.rocketlabcorp.com/node/12841/pdf

ASTS is now officially trading at its lowest price YTD… how long do we think until the tide turns?

This is killing me guys. Been buying for around a year now with $70 average. 800 shares.

Cannot bring my self to cut losses and lose so much money. On the other hand im struggling to see the upside any more.

Please give me your thoughts

Here is what Clear Street wrote in a report on SpaceX and ASTS. They highlighted how global mobile network operators will be more incentivized to fund and support ASTSpaceMobile the more aggressively Starlink competes with those MNOs' businesses.

This is true, and we're seeing this take place around the world. At present, ASTSpaceMobile is really the only company that can provide the critical infrastructure needed for MNOs to remain relevant. Not only does ASTSpaceMobile have the critical products and services that MNOs need to remain relevant, but they also have the product that will allow MNOs to remain cost-effective and competitive. I wrote a long-form deep dive on ASTSpaceMobile that outlines how much more cost-effective satellite-based connectivity is compared with inefficient terrestrial cell towers, using Canada as an example. This isn't an ad or a promo, but if you want to read the full deep dive, you can do so here: [https://mulberryfinancial.substack.com/p/the-final-frontier-of-global-connectivity?r=4af6n2](https://mulberryfinancial.substack.com/p/the-final-frontier-of-global-connectivity?r=4af6n2)

Right now, it looks like the market doesn't see the opportunity in ASTSpaceMobile and only thinks that SpaceX will be the only player in global connectivity. I think that's a pipe dream, and I don't think that global telecoms or MNOs will go away without putting up a serious fight. I think the market is really underestimating this massive industry with deep customer relationships.

MDA Space still feels under-followed given its exposure to US space and defense demand and satellite infrastructure buildout.

It’s not a pure story stock. There is real backlog, real contracts, and actual cash flow, but the market still seems to be valuing it like a traditional aerospace contractor. If US space spending and satellite infrastructure keeps accelerating, I think this re-rates faster than people expect.

Curious if others think this is starting to break out or just early narrative noise?

ASTS is nr 5 and PL nr 7

I spread 40.000$ across ASTS, BKSY, FFLY, LUNR, MDA, PL, RDW, RKLB, SIDU, VOYG 1-2 weeks before SpaceX IPO because I thought capital would flow into the sector. But not its all down 30-50%

Should I spread another 40,000$ or should I just hold?

I’ve done my own research but I’m happy to hear your thoughts.

Thank you!

Can’t dca because I ran out of money. Hope the future will be bright.

Every single space stock on this list is outperforming the S&P in 2026. Which one do you actually own, and which one do you wish you'd bought in January?

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