Mobile network operator

But once you get there, you're going to be able to slam the door behind.

And so the thing that gets compounded here is by taking first prize, you also take away the actual pathway by which anyone could ever compete again, because you're going to lock up all the MNOs.

There will be no business, there'll be no go-to-market swing available to any second follower later.

So this is different from people trying to chase NVIDIA.

I believe that there'll be other options for silicon on the market.

Take ASTS though.

So once they have their constellation up and they have all the MNOs across the world, how does someone enter this market? It's going to be very difficult.

Are they going to build a constellation on spec, have it flying around, deorbiting while they knock on AT&T's door and pray to God that they get signed up? Who's going to be willing to take that $3 to $4 billion bet with 7 to 10 years of lead time to take that chance? I just don't see it.

Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

The, um, obviously the, the MNOs constitute the bulk of your tenants, I would think at least, uh, from a revenue stream point of view.

But they're going through some changes themselves, and I'm wondering how is that affecting you or, or, uh, both good or bad, uh, in the current environment?

Yeah.

ASTS with a constellation more or less has the same thing.

And as it's wired itself into all of the other MNOs, unfortunately, there's not one global MNO, which would make this somewhat of a worse situation actually for ASTS.

But because the world has this large fragmented group of MNOs that they've put together, the vast majority of them, ASTS is going to be able to turn on global reach, which is very difficult to replicate very quickly.

This is actually an issue that I talked to Battery Commodity about.

A lot of you might know him.

He lives in Switzerland and used to be an executive at, I think it was Nokia.

Where was he? Yeah, I think he was at one of the MNOs and made this point to me just on how hard it was to actually bundle all the MNOs so that you could push through a unified global service.

And so companies that are looking to have a connectivity element to their product, they get really hung up in Stonewall because they themselves don't have the capabilities to go around the world and get a deal with every MNO.

We initiate with a buy rating and $92 price target.

ASTS has more than 60 MNO partnerships with definitive commercial agreements signed with AT&T, Verizon, Vodafone, and others globally.

Exclusivity in the U.S. and Europe, shared low-band spectrum, and carrier-funded ground infrastructure make these partnerships sticky and self-reinforcing so long as ASTS delivers, which we believe it can.

Carriers view direct-to-device as complementary coverage providing incremental high-margin revenue and the best defense against Starlink disintermediation.

A spectrum moat underpins the model.

ASTS holds usage rights to 45 MHz of legato mid-band L-band spectrum in the U.S., plus 60 MHz of licensed S-band, alongside access to its MNO partner's premium low-band.

Launch is the near-term bottleneck, but spectrum is the long-term binding constraint in direct-to-device.

The revenue share model gives ASTS premium licensed low band without buying it, which is an asset Starlink has had to acquire at great cost or chase by becoming a carrier itself.