Tuesday, October 27, 2026

Back to today

From X

@kevin__mak

Kevin Mak on X

$ASTS So many questions about ASTS (please don't reply to unrelated threads to get my attention, just DM me). I have no position in the company. My comments from 3+ quarters ago is that I wanted to see "more metal in space". My concern from 5+ quarters ago was "how do they go from producing 1 satellite in 6 months, to 6 satellites per month, that's a really hard scaling problem". I think Starlink screwed up with their Swarm acquisition and trying to force that tech to work, it put a 18+ month delay on them. My hope was that ASTS would capitalize on that, and it generally appears that they've had scaling issues that prevented that from happening. That isn't really their fault, "space is hard" and "mass production is different from prototypes". I think money isn't a problem for them, they have so much cash (they were smart to take advantage of their high stock price). The problem is execution is hard even if you have lots of cash. Strategically they're in a good place, the MNO's definitely want/need them to work to compete w/ Starlink. But the MNO's are powerless, they're awful at execution (they're only good at increasing your monthly bill!). The BO failure was a really big problem. SpaceX (Starlink) had very little leverage on ASTS before. If they slowroll/deny F9 launches, they just push ASTS towards their competitor (BO). Two competitors (BO and ASTS) become stronger. But since BO was offline, it makes SpaceX the de facto monopolist to ASTS' launch. That gives them a ton of power in this situation and I imagine (but have no way to prove it), they would flex that competitive pressure on the company. That's not illegal anti-competitive behavior, that's just "pressure". It's a tricky set of problems that face the company and the stock price reflects that. I don't have a strong view in either direction of whether things get better or worse from here. But my initial hopes/thesis were steadily eroded by the execution issues (and valuation), hence my eventual exit from my long position. I don't think I'm saying anything thoughtful or what people don't already know/experience. But worth putting it out there because I've received _a lot_ of questions. Disclosure: No position in ASTS.

Are Neoclouds Dead?

Neoclouds face tighter debt financing as AI infrastructure capex outruns cash flow, leaving cash-burning GPU providers more exposed than…

Reddit: Deep Dive Analysis

Reddit generated $805 million in Q2 2026 revenue, 95% from ads, but slowing Google search referrals expose AI-driven traffic and…

Qualcomm Inc. (QCOM)

Qualcomm supplies chips for on-device AI agents and data center inference, with Meta and AWS agreements expanding its role across both…

The Data Center Bridge

Small- and mid-cap data center stocks trade as one despite sharply different funding bridges: 12 of 15 cover fixed costs on signed…

SBAC · long

Sba Communications CORP

SBA Communications trades at 14.9x forward AFFOPS, near a record low, despite being pitched as the market’s cleanest tower operator.

Amkor Q3 FY12/26 Earnings Review

Amkor's Q3 sales were flat at $1.991 billion as computing and automotive/industrial growth offset a 27% communications decline; Q4 sales…

Molina & Kinsale

Molina Healthcare and Kinsale Capital’s earnings are reassessed through a long-term lens, emphasizing conviction and detachment during…

Publications we follow

Every publication on this site, hand-picked.

129 publications

Newsletters 109

X accounts we follow

Every account on this site, hand-picked.

91 accounts

Investor letters we follow

190 firms

Sectors

Ordered by how often our editor reaches for them.