ASTS-02 — Can They Really Compete with STARLINK? Q3 Update + Comms Satellite Moat Comparison: GSAT / STARLINK / PL / BKSY

Date: 2025-12-15 Tickers: ASTS, GSAT, IRDM, PL, BKSY (vs Starlink) Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWVleAPJ3bg

Summary

• ASTS Q3 update: $32B... actually $3.2B cash on hand (after ATM raises and convertible debt), market cap $28.8B (up sharply since the March $7.7B level). Q3 2025 revenue $14.7M, but management reaffirmed $50-75M for H2 2025 — implying Q4 alone needs to be 2-4x Q3. 45-60 satellites planned for 2026, only 5+2 test launched so far. 2026 = make-or-break execution year. Speaker says 2026 will be volatile but very high upside if you can stomach it.
• Stock review: Speaker first covered ASTS at $33.80 in March 2025; now ~$70 (2x+, was 3x at the $102 peak before recent correction). GSAT covered at $22, now $73 (3.5x in 9 months — basically the strongest performer of all his picks). Lesson: it's normal to drop 50-66% on the way up — the question is whether you can hold.
• Four moats for satellite plays (the lens for evaluating them): (1) Orbital real estate — first-movers grab orbital positions, late entrants lose; (2) Spectrum — FCC allocates 10-15 year frequency licenses; once locked, that's a hard moat (GSAT and ASTS both have spectrum advantages — ASTS uses partner telcos' existing spectrum, e.g., Vodafone, AT&T); (3) Ground stations & customer agreements — global telco partnerships; (4) Image/data archives for PL & BKSY (years of accumulated time-series imagery that can't be replicated retroactively, like Google Earth's history).
• ASTS vs Starlink: ASTS uses large phased-array satellites (~65 m²) to enable direct phone-to-satellite with no antenna/dish needed (target 2027). Starlink uses 12,000+ small satellites (going to 15,000) requiring a dish receiver. Different architectures, complementary not directly competing. Speaker thinks ASTS's technical concept is actually superior to Starlink's. Coverage: North/South America fully signed, most of Europe/Middle East/India/Africa/Australia/Pacific — only Russia and China excluded.

Translation

Hello everyone, this is X. Today is Monday, December 15, 2025.

Today's content is mainly about space stocks. I've been organizing my notes recently. The detailed comparison of PL vs BKSY went into the paid channel previously. Now I'm working on ASTS and GSAT (Globalstar). Today I'll update everyone on ASTS publicly, and the deeper comparison stays in the paid channel.

Stocks discussed today: ASTS, GSAT, IRDM (Iridium), PL (Planet Labs), BKSY (BlackSky), Starlink (SpaceX-bundled).

Stock review — what happened since I covered them

ASTS: I first analyzed it on March 4, 2025 at $33.80. Market cap was $7.7B, 178M shares outstanding. Now at ~$70, recently dipped to $55 (above the $38 lower bottom from earlier in the year), peaked at $102. So at peak it was 3x; current is ~2x to 2.5x my analysis price. Peak was 3x.

GSAT (Globalstar): I first covered at $22.xx. After the March-April tariff-trade-war dip (no actual relevance — they launch satellites, what does it matter to them?) it took 3 months to recover. Now at $73 — 3.5x my analysis price in 9 months. Among the strongest performers of anything I've covered. Comparable to LEU which is 2.7x.

A note on this: when I share a stock, I'm not predicting where it goes from here — I have no idea. I share the ones with strong fundamentals. Drops of 50-66% on the way up are NORMAL for high-beta stocks. ASTS dropped from $102 to $51 during recent liquidity crunch — exactly half. The question isn't whether the drop happens, it's whether you can hold.

A friend recently messaged that mining stocks I covered have "lost a fortune." I'm not annoyed — I sympathize. But selling the bottom on high-beta names is extremely dangerous. If you're not concentrated in just one company, you're diversified. Selling everything at the low usually means you don't catch the recovery. Even the dot-com 2000 crash — good companies dropped to 20-30% of their highs, and those who held came back stronger. If you don't know what to do, do nothing. Have faith — tomorrow isn't the apocalypse, the US economy continues, you adjust over time.

Why ASTS dropped while GSAT didn't

ASTS underperformed GSAT in the recent stretch (now 2x vs GSAT 3.5x). Why? GSAT hasn't diluted shares. Their gains are clean. ASTS, on the other hand, runs ATM (at-the-market) and convertible debt offerings to fund its 2026 satellite-deployment push.

ASTS share count: went from 178M (March) to ~230M now — ~25% more shares outstanding. Dilution adds volatility. People worry about future dilution and whether the build-out completes.

That said, ASTS has now raised enough capital for the 2026 buildout. And in 2026, if you have the patience and the stomach, ASTS could be a massive winner. Strap in for volatility — 2026 is execution risk year.

GSAT has ~60 satellites already deployed, infrastructure complete, now collecting subscription revenue. Stable, predictable. Less leveraged story but smoother ride.

The four moats for satellite plays

These four stocks (BKSY, PL, ASTS, GSAT) are all extending different aspects of moat. I think all four have meaningful upside still, with high probability — though I don't run any of them, so anything can happen.

Moat 1: Orbital real estate. Low-Earth-orbit satellites at ~500 km altitude. There's only so much space. Whoever launches first holds priority. Each satellite has a temporary-avoidance system (auto-maneuver), but contractual / regulatory orbital priority goes to first deployment. Late entrants get squeezed out of the best positions.

Moat 2: Spectrum. Low-band (L), mid-band (M), short-wave (S), super-high (Ku/Ka). Starlink primarily uses Ku/Ka. Mid- and long-bands are scarcer — FCC issues 10-15 year exclusive allocations. GSAT just signed a 15-year extension on its spectrum — that's an iron moat for 15 years. ASTS's spectrum trick: it directly uses partner telco spectrum (Vodafone, AT&T, country-by-country agreements). Hard for anyone to displace — you'd need to displace the telco's existing spectrum holding.

Moat 3: Customer agreements (ASTS, GSAT, IRDM). ASTS now has agreements covering North America, South America, most of Europe, Middle East, India, Africa, Australia, and the Pacific. Russia and China are excluded — those markets are domestically locked. ASTS's coverage map = essentially "the West" plus most of the global south. You can read this as ASTS being a future Western-bloc telecom alliance.

Moat 4: Time-series imagery archives (PL & BKSY). PL/BKSY have accumulated years of overhead imagery. Like Google Earth's history layer — you can't catalog 15 years of imagery retroactively. New satellite operators can match capability, but they can't match the archive. This is a time-distilled moat (like aged whisky — value sediments over time).

I'm not bullish on IRDM (Iridium). Its market is being squeezed by GSAT, not by ASTS.

Starlink (SpaceX-bundled) is also a strong play, but regular investors can't buy it directly — it's inside SpaceX. SpaceX has the vertical integration advantage of launching its own satellites at lower cost.

I've also dropped LUNR and RDW from my watchlist. They're mission-based companies (LUNR does lunar missions; RDW provides ancillary services). Mission-based = one failed launch = stock down. Satellite operators are more like planting crops — once a satellite is up, recurring subscription revenue. Different risk profile, more stable.

So I'm narrowing focus on ~2 of the satellite names.

ASTS technology architecture

This is what makes ASTS special compared to Starlink:

• ASTS satellite: ~693 sq ft (~65 m²) phased-array antenna per satellite. Massive. Phased-array = many radio elements firing in coordinated pattern (military-grade tech).
• Starlink: 12,000+ small satellites (planned 15,000+). Each small, lower transmit power. Requires a dish on the ground to receive.

The ASTS bet: direct phone-to-satellite communication. Your existing smartphone, no dish, anywhere on Earth (target 2027). Architecturally, ASTS doesn't need 10,000+ satellites — just 45-60 globally to cover the world.

Speaker's view: ASTS's technical architecture is actually better than Starlink's. Starlink came first; ASTS came later and learned from Starlink's design. Starlink can't threaten ASTS because they require dish-based receivers — fundamentally different user experience.

(Historical note: Starlink itself was inspired by Planet Labs' Cubesat dove satellites. PL pioneered the small-satellite approach years earlier.)

ASTS Q3 2025 deep dive

From the November 10, 2025 (Q3) presentation:

• Cash on hand: $3.2B (up from $0.9B in June 2025) — raised through ATM and convertible debt
• Market cap: $28.8B
• PS ratio: 700+ (extreme — but it's the natural shape of pre-revenue tech)
• Q3 2025 revenue: $14.7M
• H2 2025 revenue guidance: $50-75M (so Q4 has to be ~$35-60M, i.e., 2-4x Q3)

The Q3 → Q4 jump implies the recently-launched first 5 satellites are now generating revenue at a rapidly scaling rate.

Satellites deployed: 5 production + 2 test (7 total). Bluebird-6 launched first half of December (out of India).

Plan: 45-60 satellites total by end of 2026. Each satellite costs roughly $20M to manufacture and launch — so total program cost is roughly $1B. They have $3.2B cash. Fully funded for the entire 2026 deployment plus all team/payroll overhead.

The ASTS team is several hundred people, paying scientists' salaries. They're "FOR FUNDS" — fully funded.

Customer agreements expanding: Verizon and STC Group both signed final commercial agreements. Vodafone, AT&T already locked. This is the customer end of the business — they get a revenue split with terrestrial carriers.

Closely-held shares & PS

About half of ASTS shares are still closely held (not freely floating). When those release, that's the existing holders' liquidity event. PS at 700+ sounds extreme but PS was equally high in 2024.

Revenue trajectory

Quarterly revenue chart shows nothing meaningful before Q3 2025, then a step-jump. Earlier "red dots" were execution delays — but they haven't broken the upward trend. 2026 should see explosive revenue growth as more satellites come online; 2027 is when the bigger commercial revenue ramps.

The technical scope is genuinely hard. Like SpaceX rockets exploding before getting it right — ASTS will face delays, manufacturing issues, launch slips. But 5 satellites are now collecting revenue. That's no longer a question.

Forget worrying about earnings reports — earnings won't matter until 2027. What matters is: launch cadence keeps accelerating, revenue keeps stepping up each quarter.

GSAT note

When I first covered GSAT, the previous quarter had been when chairman Munro (who bought out the bankrupt company in the early 2000s) had been buying massive amounts of stock — he held >50% of company shares (now 60%, was 58% then). That's "burn the boats" conviction. He didn't expect the stock to crater right after his big purchase, but he held — and 20+ years later that bet is now triple. A long-term holder's reward arc.

GSAT was relatively quiet from 2021 until H2 2025. Long, low-vol stretch — investors needed patience. Once a story matures, deeper understanding helps you position closer to the inflection.

Bottom line

ASTS update: funded for 2026 deployment, 5 satellites already revenue-generating, customer base expanding globally (excluding Russia/China). 2026 = volatile execution year, but massive upside if execution holds. Strap in.

Satellite moats: orbital real estate + spectrum + customer agreements + (for imagery cos) time-series archives. ASTS and GSAT both have spectrum and customer moats; PL and BKSY have archive moats.

Removed from coverage: IRDM, LUNR, RDW. Focusing on ~2 of these names going forward.

OK that's it for today. Thanks. Wishing everyone financial freedom soon. Bye-bye.