#MeetTheTeam SpaceX had entered the mobile phone race and I heard questions about whether they'd go recruit all of $ASTS's employees. First of all, if you are an ambitious engineer, do you want to work at a $125bn valuation company or a $2bn company? Starting point matters...
Quick aside, the other day I saw a sky blue Porsche Taycan Turbo S with the plates "MARSHIP" that had a SpaceX plate holder. To say SpaceX has been a place of wealth generation is an understatement. As well it should be. They should all be canonized for their achievement
But there is a reason that there has always been talent flow out of winners like Apple, Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Goldman Sachs, etc...talent wants to ring the bell for themselves if they were late comers. If they were early, they want to do it again. "LFG!"
So worriers wonder whether SpaceX is going to just poach all of $ASTS's talent.
Spoiler alert - at least according to the tools I have, there has been zero switching sides from the #SpaceMob to #OccupyMars.
Even if there had been, who cares. But there has been zero
Oh wait...what if the opposite is happening? What if (gasp), employees are LEAVING SPACEX TO GO TO $ASTS!!!
Turns out that some people at SpaceX have wanted to #MeetTheTeam. Is this a crisis for SpaceX?
No - Grow up.
But, it does show that talent sees opportunity to do something big at an exciting company.
I've blurred some details out for PII, but you'll get the point.
The recruits have tenure of 3-5 years at SpaceX - people with real experience. The recruits are electronic systems engineers, systems engineers, and an environmental test technicians (who apparently did her job well). All are senior hires - VP level, Principal Engineer
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"It always seems impossible until it is done." I wanted to share some experience as it relates to technical story stocks. I've been drawn to them in my career. Anyone who follows me knows that for the last 2 years, I've been really focused on $ASTS
These stocks fall to the event-driven crowd, at least at first. They are not yet mature enough or have large enough market caps for long-only's. These become the fodder for idea dinners and analysts relentlessly pitch each other their book until something happens.
However, in the lead-up, analysts do a lot of expert calls and DD. We saw @KerrisdaleCap do the same. Standard operating procedure. They generally use the same expert networks I use. Companies go recruit "experts" on my behalf and you pay $1k/hr to talk to them. It's useful
Dear #Spacemob, this is the $ASTS bear case. The benefit of this is that now, in theory a lot of funds will look into the stock. Knee-jerks will pass. More eyes and more money engaged in a battle ground stock gives investors their day in court. Ignored no more.
As we start this evaluation of their piece, let's first start with a character assault. I mean, we have to soften up the witness on the stand, right? Sahm Adrangi would not get NASA clearance to launch anything, ever. But I digress... cnbc.com/2016/08/15/hed…
The first part of their thesis is that the satellite are destined to fail because of management's "uninspiring" backgrounds. An immigrant from an oppressive socialist wasteland moves to the U.S. and becomes a self-made rich person...uninspiring???
File this to read on a less tumultuous day - I realize there is little appetite for any high beta stocks like $ASTS, but critical thinking should never stop. Here is an interesting $MS piece today on SpaceX. Having just seen a SpaceX launch, it's humbling and inspiring
It's clear that satellite connectivity is quickly moving from the dust-bin of history when Iridium & GlobalStar, etc were promising technologies that failed to get product-market fit. There are a LOT of examples of loose analogues
Now there is a flurry of activity around CONSUMERIZED services that take incredible technology, but make it low-cost and low-friction for consumers. This is where a previously niche technology can go mass market. This creates TAM
I'll keep office hours open a bit more to answer this question since it's interesting and explains a bit about the incestuous relationship between the buyside and the sell side
Again, let's start with the extreme example to drive home the point. $MS recently got in trouble over its block trades. Funds were tipped off they were coming so would depress the price to get a deal. Syndicate desks were just given money bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
In fact, the problem was so pervasive there is literally a rule against covering a short into an offering
Ok, last tweet today, but thought I'd share something interesting about how options work. $ASTS has an astounding 171,000 open call option contracts, representing 17MM shares or like 40% of the float. Launch was a huge jump-risk volatility event, at least-ex-ante
Investors generally own the calls, sold to them by hedged dealers. Dealers are short delta or basically fractional shares of stock, and short gamma, which means if the stock goes up, they are way shorter than they intended to be. To hedge, they owned more stock ahead of events
After successful launch of BW-3 on Saturday, we woke up today to a massive volatility crunch because this "risky" event had passed. The chart below shows the relationship of delta vs. implied volatility
$ASTS has caused some consternation about its prospective dilution because of its cash demands and to-date choice around how to fund growth, namely, its filing of At-The-Market ("ATM") facilities with B. Riley and Evercore
Some shareholders rightly wonder about the risk of dilution and whether there is an overhang. This is a valid concern and one I care about a lot. Let's just put this out into open air and have a little discussion
For background, ATM's have an insidious reputation for anyone with experience on Wall Street. When I hear ATM, I think of sleazebags like George Economou. Greek shipping companies adopted ATMs to fleece retail shareholders and enrich themselves with related-party transactions