AST SpaceMobile, Inc. Q1 FY2025 Earnings Call

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the AST SpaceMobile First Quarter 2025 Business Update Call. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your host today, Scott Wisniewski, President of AST SpaceMobile. Please go ahead.

Thank you, and good afternoon, everyone. Today, I'm also joined by Chairman and CEO, Abel Avellan; and CFO and Chief Legal Officer, Andy Johnson. Let me refer you to Slide 2 of the presentation, which contains our Safe-Harbor disclaimer. During today's call, we may make certain forward-looking statements. These statements are based on current expectations and assumptions and as a result are subject to risks and uncertainties. Many factors could cause actual events to differ materially from the forward-looking statements on this call. For more information about these risks and uncertainties, please refer to the Risk Factors section of AST SpaceMobile's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year that ended, December 31, 2024, with the Securities and Exchange Commission and other documents filed by AST SpaceMobile with the SEC from time-to-time. Also, after our initial remarks, we will be starting our Q&A section with questions submitted by our shareholders. For those of you who may be new to our company and mission, there are over 5 billion mobile phones in use today around the world, but many of us still experience gaps in coverage as we live, work, and travel. Additionally, there are billions of people without cellular broadband and who remain unconnected to the global economy. The markets we are pursuing are massive, and the problem we are solving is important and touches nearly all of us. In this backdrop, AST SpaceMobile is building the first and only global cellular broadband network in space to operate directly with everyday unmodified mobile devices and supported by our extensive IP and patent portfolio. It's now my pleasure to pass over to Chairman and CEO, Abel Avellan, who will give us an update on our activity since our last public call two months ago.

Thank you, Scott. The first quarter was a strong start for us and we're currently in an incredible inflection point for the company. I will start to accelerate the launch and scaling of our network, and revenue is starting to come in. We continue executing on satellite manufacturing, commercialization, regulatory initiatives and today we are on building our orbital launch plan with five scheduled launches over the next six to nine months. I will touch on each of those key pieces in more detail. Let me start by discussing our orbital launches schedule. We expect to deploy over 60 satellites during '25 and '26, which will drive continuous coverage in key markets such as the United States, Europe, Japan, the U.S. government and other strategic markets. We anticipate five orbital launches occurring over the next six to nine months, with orbital launches occurring every one to two months on average during '25 and '26. Our campaign will begin with the achievement of our first Block 2 BlueBird satellite in Q2. We have launches scheduled during July. Simply put, speed to orbit means speed to commercial services. Building our constellation is critical to delivering on the global opportunity of providing space-based cellular connectivity to the unmodified phone in your pocket today. Satellite manufacturing remains on-track, accelerating our target of building 40 Block 2 BlueBird satellites, each the largest ever commercial communication satellites in orbit alongside contracted orbit launches for every 60 satellites as of today. We have accelerated our manufacturing efforts in order to move at the rapid speed to reach our goals. Scaling our satellite manufacturing will enable us to match or exceed the launch cadence necessary to build out our space-based cellular network for continued cellular broadband coverage, beginning with the key markets mentioned earlier. In doing so, we're also on-track to reach a manufacturing cadence of six satellites per month during the fourth quarter of this year. We also expect to reach an equivalent manufacturing cadence for our microns and phased array production during the third quarter of this year. We expect to achieve this cadence through our expanded global footprint, streamlined process, and 95% vertical integration strategy. Our content manufacturing house or through third-party using our own intellectual property helps drive speed, certainty, lower cost, flexibility, and reliability. Specifically, the production of our microns, our main building block for our satellites, are fully vertically integrated within our manufacturing ecosystem. This is an extremely important process. We have helped right-size our lines of production, enabling us to operate with complete control over the entire micron production process. Now that our satellite manufacturing cadence and accelerated production efforts support our launch schedule, we're now more confident than ever in our position to continue executing at scale as we lead the industry with cellular broadband from space. On the ASIC front, our novel ASIC chip is currently undergoing assembly and testing stages, while the validation and qualification stages are nearly complete. We expect our ASIC chip will become available for satellite integration as early as June of this year. Our custom ASIC chip will support up to 10 gigahertz in processing bandwidth per satellite or 10 times the processing compared to our current FPGAs, with peak data speed of up to 120 megabits per cell, supporting many thousands of cells per satellite. This is a key enabler of the first and only space-based broadband cellular system, together with the largest ever commercial communication satellites in low Earth orbit. On the commercial front, we continue to integrate our services with our M&O partners. Recently, our long-time partner Rakuten Mobile completed a two-way broadband video call in front of a live audience enabled by Block 1 satellites over Japan. The call was conducted using unmodified smartphones as part of our initial activation in the country, and we followed successful video calls with partners like AT&T, Verizon, and Vodafone in the United States and Europe respectively. The live activation is another example of our ability to successfully enable full cellular broadband capabilities including voice, text, data, video, and other native cellular capabilities. Japan is a country defined by its diverse geography, prone to national disasters. Being able to provide cellular broadband service directly to devices over the country's mountain regions, remote islands, and densely populated cities during routine and emergency situations are transformational applications for our groundbreaking technology. I am proud of our company's long history of strategic partnership with Rakuten and I'm excited for our continued progress in the country. Globally, we plan to activate initial cellular broadband capabilities in the United States, Europe, and Japan on premium low-band wireless spectrum, together with partners AT&T, Google, Rakuten, Verizon, and Vodafone, as well as other players in the wireless ecosystem. This is an important step for initial service activation, enabling activation across several key markets in the U.S., all with varying geographic and demographic factors providing us the opportunity to optimize our network ahead of a full commercial deployment. We also received a special temporary authority from the FCC for FirstNet direct-to-device satellite connectivity on public safety Band 14 spectrum. The SEC grants direct-to-device cellular broadband connectivity in support of mission critical capabilities, with over 7 million public safety connections. The FirstNet Network gives responders the critical connectivity they need across diverse geographies. Our groundbreaking technology stands to provide first responders with reliable and consistent space-based cellular broadband connectivity during crucial times of need. On the government business, we continue to expand our U.S. government opportunity and are ramping up activity against our $43 million contract in support of the United States Space Development Agency. Even more recently, we signed a new contract award with another government agency through a prime contractor to provide support for communications over land, sea, and air. This call will speak more to our new contract award momentarily, but this contract award highlights AST SpaceMobile’s innovative technology to support critical government missions across various use cases, both for communications and non-communications applications. In addition to advanced commercial and government efforts, we're working closely with regulators and government officials who recognize that our technology will make our country both more connected and more secure. In summary, all key elements of our business are progressing as expected or have accelerated to meet customer demand for our groundbreaking technology. The first quarter was a period of strong execution, serving as a springboard into another pivotal chapter of the company's life. We have now reached an inflection point as we scale the fundamental aspects of our business toward full-scale commercialization. With our launch plan outlined, launch capacity secure, and commercial and government partnerships coming together, we expect positive momentum to compound at record speed in the months and quarters to come. Connectivity is a human right and each step in this process reminds us of the important mission at hand. Let me now turn the call to Scott to provide more details on our progress and initiatives.

Thank you, Abel. This was a strong start to the year for AST SpaceMobile, and we're expecting continued progress across all aspects of our business as we charge into a pivotal year for the company. Let me expand upon our achievements over the last few months and what they mean for the commercialization of the company. Our commercial efforts are accelerating and we're making major advancements in the deployment of our global network infrastructure, beginning with bookings of our gateway equipment. Gateways serve as a precursor to the rollout of our SpaceMobile service, providing a leading indicator of the markets where you'll see the initial service revenue. In the first quarter, we saw gateway equipment bookings of $13.6 million and expect continued bookings of approximately $10 million on average per quarter during 2025. We'll begin to recognize revenue from these bookings as and when gateways are installed and milestones are met, and we expect to continue to provide updates on bookings as we build out our ground infrastructure. As a reminder, our network infrastructure was designed from inception to closely mirror terrestrial cellular architecture, prioritizing privacy and security of cellular data and information. Our ground-based gateways receive signals from our satellites, each the largest ever commercially deployed communications satellites in low Earth orbit, and seamlessly link those signals into the networks of our mobile operating partners. On the regulatory front, we were recently granted special temporary authority from the FCC for FirstNet on public safety's Band 14 Spectrum, enabling us to begin activating test services to deliver space-based cellular broadband connectivity, supporting features critical to first responders. Through initial test activation, we're now able to address the massive opportunity of extending reliable broadband services to first responder agencies and consumers in emergency situations. This can be done across areas where terrestrial networks are unavailable as well as during network outages caused by infrastructure failures or natural disasters. Our space-based cellular broadband solution provides seamless device compatibility and our satellites enable automatic handoffs as consumers move in and out of terrestrial networks. Together, this provides first responders with enhanced reliable broadband connectivity during the most critical situations, while maintaining the look and feel of the reliable terrestrial networks that they're used to. The sheer size of our satellites is another benefit in our effort to support first responder communications. Our large antennas enable precise beam forming, meaning we can focus our signals on specific targeted areas over land and water. Emergencies can happen anywhere and responders need to stay connected across both accessible and hard-to-reach areas without geographical impediments. Continuing on to our partnership with Vodafone, I am also pleased to report that our jointly owned European satellite service business called SatCo is progressing according to plan. Now to the U.S. government business. Our pipeline continues to strengthen and as anticipated, we continue to expect it to be a meaningful contributor to revenue in the years to come. Our recently announced contract award with the DIU, a government agency through a prime contractor, facilitates initial communication services across various use cases and applications, supporting communications over land, sea, and air. We believe this contract could yield low tens of millions of dollars in revenue over the next 12 to 18 months. Earlier in the year, we also signed a $43 million revenue contract with the U.S. Space Development Agency through a prime contractor for services delivered on our first five Block 1 BlueBird satellites in orbit and our first Block 2 BlueBird satellite. As a reminder, that contract is not a prepaid contract, but rather earned revenue we expect to receive and recognize under GAAP as we deliver those services. To date, our government contracts serve as important validation markers for our dual-use satellite technology, opening doors to sustained and substantial revenue streams across both communications and non-communications applications. I will now pass it over to Andy to walk you through our financial update.

Thanks, Scott, and good afternoon, everyone. During the first quarter of 2025, our global team at AST SpaceMobile worked tirelessly to accelerate satellite manufacturing efforts as we prepare to commence our launch campaign beginning this summer. The company's financial performance during Q1 reflects our intense focus on executing on our manufacturing and launch objectives while simultaneously preparing for a meaningful revenue ramp over the coming periods as we begin to monetize both commercial and government opportunities for our dual-use satellites. As Abel and Scott conveyed in their earlier remarks, our progress against corporate objectives in Q1 positions us well to begin executing an extensive launch cadence in support of offering our SpaceMobile service while continuing to facilitate critical U.S. government applications in support of national security efforts. We've established our objective of manufacturing the next 40 satellites and are thrilled to start our launch campaign featuring at least five scheduled launches between Q2 of 2025 and Q1 of 2026. Our focus today is to move quickly and responsibly to bring our stakeholders space-based broadband connectivity directly to their unmodified smartphones. From a financial perspective, this objective requires careful consideration of our spending, both in terms of operating expenses as we scale up our organization and capital expenditures as we incur the necessary costs to secure not only the materials to manufacture our Block 2 BlueBird satellites, but also contracts for sufficient launch capacity across multiple providers to successfully deploy our constellation. Inherent to our focus on prudent spending is a strategic and thoughtful approach to raising adequate capital in order to execute on our ambitious plans in the growing direct-to-device broadband market that AST created and invented. Moving now to the operating and capital metrics slide. Let's review the key operating metrics for the first quarter of 2025. On the first chart for the first quarter, we incurred non-GAAP adjusted cash operating expenses of $44.9 million versus $40.8 million in the fourth quarter of 2024. As a reminder, non-GAAP adjusted operating expenses exclude certain non-cash operating costs, including depreciation and amortization and stock-based compensation. This quarter-over-quarter increase of $4.1 million resulted from $1.8 million in increased R&D costs, a $1.7 million increase in adjusted general and administrative costs, and a slight increase of $600,000 in adjusted engineering service costs. This modest increase in adjusted OpEx for Q1 was expected and in line with the guidance I provided on our last earnings call as we continue to scale manufacturing and, importantly, add critical talent to our growing organization. Turning towards the second chart on this slide, our capital expenditures for the first quarter of 2025 were approximately $124 million versus $86 million for the fourth quarter of 2024. This figure was made up of approximately $105 million of capitalized direct materials, labor for our Block 2 BlueBird satellites, and payments made in connection with certain launch contracts, with the balance relating to facility and production equipment expenditures. This amount was slightly less than the guidance of approximately $150 million to $175 million that I provided during our last earnings call, and was primarily driven by changes in the timing of certain launch contract payments from Q1 to later quarters during 2025. In line with our adjusted operating expenses for the first quarter of 2025, we estimate that our adjusted cash operating expenses for the second quarter this year will come in at a similar level of approximately $45 million. We expect our capital expenditures to increase significantly compared to the first quarter, driven by our ramp in manufacturing, enabling us to reach our bold plan of producing six satellites per month in the fourth quarter of this year, as well as planned payments related to our multiple launch contracts for our 2025 and 2026 launch schedule. In line with our increasing CapEx needs, we currently estimate that the average capital cost, including direct materials and launch costs for our constellation of over 90 Block 2 BlueBird satellites will fall in the range of $21 million to $23 million per satellite. This increase over our previous estimate of $19 million to $21 million per satellite is primarily driven by higher launch costs from our announced near-term launch schedule as well as higher direct materials costs due to recently announced tariffs. Our revised cost per satellite estimates are subject to fluctuations based on dynamic geopolitical factors, which impact our direct materials costs. We believe that the intrinsic value of our future business opportunities far outweighs the modest increase in cost due to tariffs. We are empowered by the rising demand for space-based cellular broadband connectivity, an industry that we created and invented, and we are validated by the growing commercial and government opportunities before us and want to execute on them as quickly as possible. Despite this increase in cost per satellite, we reiterate our belief that the operation of a constellation of 25 BlueBird satellites will enable us to potentially generate cash flows from operating activities. We do expect an increase in CapEx in Q2 to a range we believe will be between $230 million to $270 million to primarily reflect the timing of payments on multiple launch contracts. The timing of the changes in our adjusted operating expenditures and capital expenditures as I have just described, could be delayed or may not be realized due to a variety of factors. While Q1 and prior recent quarters reflect the company's stage as pre-monetization with only modest revenue recognized in connection with primarily a limited government application contract, I am pleased to begin speaking to you about our expectations for revenue in the coming periods. Our revenue opportunity is intimately linked to the number of our deployed satellites. As we previously stated, we believe we can enable continuous SpaceMobile service across key markets such as the United States, Europe, Japan, and other strategic markets with the launch and operation of approximately 45 to 60 BlueBird satellites. We also plan to achieve non-continuous SpaceMobile service in selected targeted geographical markets with the launch of a total of 25 BlueBird satellites. Additionally, we will continue to support U.S. government applications currently ongoing and accelerating as we launch additional satellites. As we execute our launch and operation commencement efforts, we expect revenue to ramp towards the end of the year and into 2026. Specifically, we believe we have a revenue opportunity in 2025 in the range of $50 million to $75 million back end loaded in the second half of the year and based on several contingencies, including: One, the successful launch and deployment of Block 2 BlueBird satellites related to U.S. government applications contractual milestone achievements; Two, critical gateway equipment sales to our M&O partners in support of their anticipated commercialization efforts of space mobile service; and Three, service revenues in connection with the activation of our commercial service provided by our existing and planned deployed and operational satellites, currently six in low Earth orbit with more to come over the six months to nine months. There can be no assurances that we will achieve any or all of these objectives and our actual revenue results will vary based on a multitude of factors. Nevertheless, the AST team is proud to be commencing our revenue ramp and I look forward to updating you in subsequent quarters on our progress. Finally, on the final chart on the slide, we ended the first quarter with $874.5 million in cash, up from $567.5 million at the end of the fourth quarter of 2024. This significant increase in cash was driven primarily by approximately $403 million received from the convertible notes offering in late January that I discussed last call and approximately $55 million raised from the remaining amount available under the September 2024 at-the-market or ATM facility. Our effective use of the ATM facility over the past nine months allowed us to increase critical liquidity and supplement other strategic financing initiatives. Now that facility is fully utilized; today we are establishing an incremental 2025 at-the-market or ATM facility for up to $500 million over the next three years, available to the company to accelerate our bold operational plans to bring our SpaceMobile service to market as soon as possible. We will continue to utilize this funding source in a disciplined fashion, balancing our capital needs to align with the interest of our shareholders. We are also evaluating a path to provide for an equipment loan facility of between $50 million to $100 million in the form of non-dilutive funding to support our manufacturing expansion. We will provide additional information on that facility as we progress our conversations. And finally, we continue to make good progress on non-dilutive financing from quasi-governmental sources of capital in the United States. We recently completed initial clearances for funding, which commence an approximately six months to nine months diligence and documentation phase for over $0.5 billion in potential non-dilutive capital from multiple U.S. and international agencies. We will provide updates as appropriate and we will be working with the partner banks and our advisers to refine our alternatives. Revenue is ramping on plan and AST SpaceMobile remains well positioned to fund our near-term operational plans. We will continue to leverage our balance sheet and ATM facility with prudence while focusing on the myriad opportunities available to us in the forms of non-dilutive prepayments. As a stakeholder in AST SpaceMobile, your takeaway for the first quarter of 2025 is simple. The company is on target and continuing to execute against its accelerated operational plans for 2025 and 2026. We have a lot to accomplish this calendar year and the first quarter was a solid start to what we expect to be the most exciting year in AST's short but impressive history. Thank you all for your continued support. And with that, this completes the presentation component of our business update call, and I'll pass it back to Scott.

Thank you, Andy. Before we go to the queue of analyst questions, we'd like to address a few of the questions submitted by our investors. Operator, could you please start us off with the first question?

Scott from Indiana asks, any further details to share on the Ligado transaction?

Yeah. This is Andy. I'll be happy to take that question and appreciate the question, Scott. The transaction that Scott asked about is for AST to acquire usage rights for 45 megahertz of mid-band spectrum in the United States. So we view this as huge fuel to our business here in the U.S. as we look to actually access spectrum ourselves that can augment our service. We announced the definitive agreements signed toward the end of the quarter in late March and we're happy to say that we believe the approval process is on schedule and that we'll have more to say about this in the coming weeks. Importantly, we are looking at a structure in which we are financing our usage rights with collateral that is restricted to the actual spectrum we're acquiring. So there will be a modest impact in G&A in subsequent quarters, but we are putting in place a separate financing package related to this strategic L-band acquisition. So thanks for the question.

Rick from the Netherlands asked, looks like the defense use case is growing. What is the outlook there?

Hey, Rick. How are you? We've been discussing the increasing importance of government use cases over the past year or so. Generally, it's clear that the demand from the government for space-based solutions, including ours, has been on the rise. This surge is fueled by a heightened focus on defending our nation in space, and we are in a strong position because of our highly innovative technology and the largest phased arrays available for commercial launch. We've already begun generating revenue from some of our government contracts, with six awarded so far that validate this technology. These contracts offer clear opportunities for various applications. In late 2024, we were awarded a $43 million contract by the Space Development Agency for a non-communications use case. Today, we are also announcing a DIU contract, which pertains to communications use cases across multiple government agencies. We've observed excellent progress across several different use cases that our unique technology can support, and we're excited about the potential for continued growth as early as the second half of the year, as Andy mentioned.

Matt from Massachusetts asks, do you plan to submit any proposals for the announced $25 billion Golden Dome project?

Thank you, Matt, for the question. We really think that we are very well positioned with our technology to be an important contributor to the actual goals outlined in the Golden Dome. We think the size and power of our satellites are unique and completely differentiated from what can be done by industry or by our adversaries. Our technology will enable applications for national security that are going to be important for this particular program. Scott, you may want to talk a little bit about the size of the program and where it's approved.

Yeah. For those not as familiar with this, the $25 billion is a reference to what left the House Armed Services Committee recently and will go for a vote with the whole house as part of the budget reconciliation process. Importantly, this is not part of the new budget for fiscal year 2026. This is part of the budget reconciliation package that is only subject to a 50 vote in the Senate. So this is a way that the House Armed Services Committee is looking to pre-fund Golden Dome and support this really significant national security goal.

Scott from Indiana asks, are shareholders expected to be invited to future launches this fall?

Yes, absolutely. We love hosting our shareholders at the September launch event at the Cape, and we were really excited to host over a 1000 people in the middle of the night in the rain. Many of you enjoyed that, and we certainly did. For the upcoming launch in July, for reasons beyond our control, we won't be able to invite folks to our launch in India. But as Abel outlined, our launch schedule is in order to launch every one to two months on average going forward. We expect a lot of exciting events to come at the Cape, and we'll be sure to keep everybody updated as these come together and hope to see many of you there.

Marillio from Portugal asks on Monday April 28, there was a power outage that led to most of Spain and Portugal being at a standstill grounding planes halting public transport and forcing hospitals to suspend routine operations and mainly cutting all types of communications, landlines, mobile phones, or Internet access. In my case, it was 10 hours without access to any type of communications except radio. I don't know if you are aware of it, but I would be happy to know AST's short-term plans for Europe.

Thank you, Marillio. And we saw this event on the news, of course, and watched it with interest. In emergencies, whether caused by infrastructure failures or natural disasters, these cause immediate and lingering need, which is only compounded when communication is inaccessible. So our service stands to provide cellular broadband connectivity directly to the phone in your pocket. This means consumers can feel safer in emergency situations, knowing they'll still have this connectivity despite what's happening on the ground. As this applies to Europe specifically, our joint venture with Vodafone will exclusively distribute our service across Europe. This means that we'll be sharing ground-based infrastructure to manage geographic boundaries and drive turnkey solutions to increase uptake, both for connectivity for citizens across the continent as well as during very important emergency periods of need like the one you described. Of course, outside of Europe, we recently received special temporary authority from the FCC to do FirstNet testing activation on public safety spectrum. That's really important to us as a priority here in the United States. In Japan, of course, our long-time partner Rakuten Mobile successfully did a video call in front of a live audience. These are places where this capability, both emergency backup, disaster recovery, and consumer emergency support that we can really support quite nicely. With that, I'd like to thank our shareholders for submitting those questions. Operator, let's open the call to analyst questions now.

Thank you. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. Our first question comes from Colin Canfield with Cantor Fitzgerald. Please go ahead with your question.

Thank you. Could you explain the reasons behind the increased launch costs? Is this due to more satellite configurations, or are there other pricing factors involved? Additionally, how does AST plan to address these costs with other launch suppliers, possibly through liquidated damages? Thank you.

Hey, Colin. I'll kick off and Andy can add anything additional. Basically, the demand signals we're receiving are to get service to market as fast as possible. So the way we've organized the whole program over the last year, year and a half is against that goal. What you're seeing is essentially a little bit of pull forward on launch in a time when launch was harder to get. So we spent a little bit more than anticipated just to keep the timeline moving fast, as Andy said. And on the tariff side, there's a little bit in there. More than half of our CapEx is launch at this point, but the portion that's materials, there's some particularly raw materials that we source from abroad. So when you look at the totality of the move there in unit price, those two elements are what's driving it.

Scott, this is Andy. I completely agree. I would just add, and I think I mentioned this, that this is a dynamic situation. We're looking at a tariff impact that many companies are evaluating right now, but we all know that's somewhat volatile and ebbs and flows with geopolitical news. So we'll continue to work to optimize. We continue to look at our own ability to optimize things like payload to look at future launch optionality. But as Scott said, the name of the game is getting our satellites built and launched quickly. In exchange for doing that in an environment in which tariffs are a reality, we have a slight increase from, call it, the $20 million midpoint to the $22 million midpoint. We'll continue to press on that. The good news is, as we started the notes, we're about to kick off a launch cadence that starts in July with every one to two months as we head out of '25 into '26. So that's our priority right now. We reiterate our belief that even an increase like that is mitigated considerably by the opportunity of bringing our service to market as quickly as possible.

Okay. I appreciate the color. And then maybe talking a little bit about spectrum portfolios and spectrum sharing. One is maybe talk about how you think about EchoStar's spectrum portfolio and maybe where you could unlock the most amount of value across RF bands? And then also maybe some commentary on the FCC spectrum sharing commentary and maybe just communicating kind of how customers are talking about any potential interference in pricing recovery or damages recovery from other players? Thank you.

Hey, Colin. That's a great question. Well, for those that are not familiar with this business, the spectrum is like fuel for our business. We are on a strategy that actually maximizes access to existing funds in the availability of spectrum. We have basically split the program in two phases, one that we call low-band, which we started with AT&T and Verizon, Vodafone, Rakuten, and others. We're sharing the spectrum of the operator and reusing that spectrum that was originally allocated exclusively for terrestrial. We're sharing for a space application. We believe that's the faster go-to-market and also the best service possible that we can offer to the customers, given the premium nature of that spectrum in terms of penetration, ability to go through walls, the frame of an airplane, and the fuselage of a car that we have been demonstrated with our current operating satellites. But as you probably are aware, we also have signed a definitive agreement to complement our low-band spectrum coming from our partner operators with our own spectrum in the mid-band in the neighborhood of 45 megahertz, which together with the size of our satellites will enable 120 megabits per second per individual cell and support thousands of cells per satellite. Our spectrum strategy is the combination of the low-band and mid-band, low-band partner with the operators to get access to the premium band that is available in every phone that works today without requiring any modification to the phone, or any new change to the phone, and keep fueling the network with the spectrum. In this case, when we conclude the current transaction to own the 45 megahertz, fueling that with probably one of the largest blocks of spectrum that exist below the 6 gigahertz in the United States.

Got it. Thank you.

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Mike Crawford with B. Riley Securities. Please proceed with your question.

Thank you. Just continuing on that theme where you have this bifurcated strategy of sharing low-band spectrum with your MNO partners, but now getting the cell band spectrum from Ligado, does that change the way you're thinking about future or current MNO agreements where they might become more bespoke versus kind of a very standard template that you initially have been working towards?

Well, not really. I mean, our focus is the user experience for the consumer that buys the service from the MNO. We think to enter into the market with the low-band spectrum gives us access to billions of funds. I mean, $5 billion funds that have access to the low-band spectrum. But this is simply a way to enhance and permit more simultaneous users with higher data rates, when we combine both spectrums as part of one network, which is our network. So we see it as a technical capability to give the user access to both spectrums. One is penetration and availability on phones and the other one is density with a large block of capacity in this case, 45 megahertz.

Okay. Thank you. And then just one final question from me. On the custom ASIC, what batch of satellites out of the four you're launching after this Indian launch? Would you expect to be the first ones with the custom ASIC included?

Yeah. It will be in approximately two launches after the next launch. It will be very soon. This is the final integration to the actual satellite build-out and that is planned not in this next imminent launch, but one or two launches after that. As we said, yeah, we're trying to get into a cadence that will be launching very constantly during the next six months to nine months.

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Chris Schoell with UBS. Please proceed with your question.

Great. Thank you. Last quarter, you indicated you were preparing to run beta tests with your carrier partners. Can you update us on the status of those tests and any early learnings you're willing to share at this stage? And you talked about being able to manufacture six satellites per month by 4Q, which is later than the timeline you mentioned last quarter. Can you just walk us through the cause and what still needs to be done to achieve that milestone? Thank you.

Yeah. We had already started activation in the U.S., Europe, and Japan. As a matter of fact, Rakuten, Vodafone, AT&T, and Verizon, they all announced the initial usage of video capabilities, which is basically the most difficult application to run when you're running a broadband capability. This means that we support streaming, we support voice, we support text, we support email, we support FaceTime. If you can run a video call, which is a live-streaming capability, you can support basically any native application that is on your phone. We are at that phase. We will also be starting to activate all the 5,600 cells in the United States. We're starting that process starting in June, July until we complete that into the beta service. We will start offering a service that on our beta plan will resemble as much as possible the final service with full constellation, but intermittent as we build out more satellites. So we are on target for Ligado's services this year to offer broadband that includes voice, text, data, email, Internet, FaceTime, and video calls. The launch for the next generation, which is the largest generation, is 3.5 times bigger than the Block 1 and is scheduled for July. We've maintained our plan to maintain a capacity of six per month arrays, which will start in June, July again, also this year. We're referring to the six satellites per month, fully integrated satellites closer towards the end of the year.

Thank you. And if I can just fit in one more. I appreciate there's a number of moving pieces. But as you look to 2026 and the ability to fund the launch of the 60 satellites, any help sizing the amount of capital you would need to raise and how you evaluate the different sources, whether it be the ATM or the quasi-government progress you mentioned?

Yeah. I will let Scott and Andy answer that in more detail, but we are focusing on non-dilutive capital. For the first time, we're giving initial indications of revenue for the second half of this year between $50 million and $75 million. We have advanced significantly our non-dilutive financing from sources like the IFC and the EXIM bank, and more importantly, contracts—either government contracts, MNO contracts, and infrastructure payments from operators. Our focus is on financing by non-dilutive sources.

Right. About this—Andy here, Chris as well. Just to kind of piggyback on that, I mean ATM gives us great flexibility and we've proven to be very disciplined how we use it. It's an instrument that we like to have as we look at all optionality. It's not the priority for sure. Last quarter, we did mention that our convertible raise put us in a position to fund through the 25 satellites, which is our threshold for non-continuous service in major markets and beyond. As you look at a constellation for over 60 for the U.S. in similar geographies and over 90, you can do the math and sort of look at what the average cost with materials and launch costs are, and you get a sense for what we need. The reality is we feel very fortunate that we have a lot of opportunities both on the equity side as well as debt programs like the EXIM Bank financing for different manufacturing equipment, which we're quite mature in our exploration to do. Put all that together and also layer on top of it the priority to move quickly. Last quarter, we did say six satellites per month; we had a reference to during the second half of 2025. Our message this quarter is consistent with that. We're just more precise in Q4. When you're trying to move as quickly as we are in your manufacturing at an unprecedented pace, you're looking at your financing needs as a package of opportunity, weighing when to access the capital markets versus other alternatives, while always prioritizing the prepayments from our partners, which has proven to be a great structure. That kind of gives you a flavor. We're in a great position with the balance sheet, but if we want to move quickly and expedite manufacturing like we talked about today, we want to make sure that balance sheet stays incredibly strong in a very volatile macro climate for the markets right now. So that's how we look at it and hopefully that's responsive to your question.

Hi. Thanks, guys. A couple of questions. One on the Ligado spectrum and kind of how that would be implemented. Am I right in thinking that will require some sort of modification to the satellite like a hosted payload or something? And if so, how does AST plan to kind of go forward with that kind of introducing that new spectrum?

Yeah. When we are at pace, which is six per month, there's 72 satellites per year. Our basic design is 96 satellites in low-band, 96 satellites in mid-band. We already have in our ASICs and our core technology the support of this band and all the mid-band spectrum of our partner operators. So the MSS, LS and 3GPP spectrums in mid-band are already part of our design.

Okay. Great. And then a clarification just on the Barcelona facility. I read that it was for manufacturing space, but it wasn't quite clear to me what it would be building. Is that the secondary factory for manufacturing satellites? Is that gateways, ASICs? Can you provide some clarity on what that will be used for?

Yeah. Our focus is manufacturing here in the United States. We're 95% vertically integrated, all the parts, final integration testing happen here in Texas. We are approaching 0.5 million square feet of manufacturing facility when we add the new Barcelona facility and the new Florida facilities. In Spain, we do build certain high-reliability parts that are using the central unit, but all of them get integrated here finally in Texas, where we integrate the complete spacecraft.

Okay. And then my last question was just on gateways mentioned looking at those rolling out, and I think it was $10 million expected a year. Do you have a sense of how many gateways AST will have up by the end of the year and kind of how that plots alongside the ramp-up of the constellation? I don't know if there's a need of X number of gateways per satellite or something to that effect.

Hey, Caleb. Just a few reminders for the audience. Because our satellites are large, the largest ever in low Earth orbit as we say, they have a large field of view. What that means practically is fewer gateways than is typical in a constellation. In the U.S., we'll have four or more gateways; we've applied for in other countries. It will be one or two. So it's a much smaller lift on the ground infrastructure side, and we've designed it to be shared with the operators because when the operators roll out a new wireless service, they are accustomed to the deployment of base stations. Those base stations are integrated into our centralized gateway. When you look at all of it, when we go country by country, there's one or two in a country; bigger countries will have more in Europe. We've got more of a continental solution that manages the smaller size of the countries individually. So what all that means is you're going to see gateways deployed in low single-digit millions per gateway, and you roll that up and we're building it out and taking orders now. In terms of how many we have at the end of the year, we won't give a firm target on that, but you've heard us say repeatedly that the U.S., Europe, and Japan are our priority. So those are certainly places you'll start seeing more gateways installed faster.

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Tim Horan with Oppenheimer Company. Please proceed with your question.

Thank you. Can you provide an update on when we might see a commercial launch in the United States? Additionally, have you reached a wholesale agreement with the carriers in the U.S. regarding the economics? To clarify, will the commercial launch include the full suite of services you mentioned? Thank you.

Yeah. The answer is yes. We did announce a definitive agreement with AT&T and we're working on the details for the commercial agreement with Verizon. The idea is to have a beta service sometime by the end of this year, and a commercial service fully open for consumers sometime during early 2026. It will be—on our plan, it is for this service to be a text, Internet, data, and access to applications like video conferencing.

Great. And just out of curiosity, why do you think you need the Ligado spectrum when you're doing spectrum sharing? I'm assuming you're doing spectrum sharing in areas primarily where they're not using the spectrum. So I guess can you just maybe elaborate on how much spectrum you expect to get from your partners? And why would you need Ligado if you're getting enough from them?

Yeah. One thing that is important to recognize is that we don't only serve where there is absolutely nothing. When you're in a camping location, when you're in a remote location, we have the ability to serve the consumer whatever their service is not good enough or is not supporting a full 5G experience for the end user. To support that, you need a lot of capacity in order to fill up what we call the imperfections of the network. You need to be able to overlap terrestrial and satellite over the same footprint. You also need to have a lot of traffic that make that possible. With the low-band spectrum we get access to, we call it premium spectrum with great penetration. It goes through trees and walls and it is unavailable in every phone. But there's typically limitations on how much spectrum you can allocate in low-band. Historically, operators have deployed spectrum; they always start with the lowest spectrum because that's the one that provides the most coverage, better penetration, and a better user experience. Then they keep adding new spectrum to create more density. In the case of our 45 megahertz band, it will allow us to continue adding subscribers for our network partners.

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Scott Searle with ROTH Capital. Please proceed with your question.

Good afternoon. Thanks for taking my questions. Maybe just a follow-up on the Ligado front. In terms of L-band support within existing cell phones in North America, how is that progressing? From day one, provided you're able to close the transaction, how long does it take before you have a large supply of users within the United States that support the L-Band spectrum? And then I had a follow-up.

Yes. The L-band is already in the Android ecosystem; actually, you have that band enabled as part of the 3GPP standard. We anticipate with the support of AT&T, Verizon, Vodafone, and over 50 operators around the globe that will benefit from this band. We anticipate one or two interactions on the new phones for the phone to be available with the full band in every phone. That's the reason why we always had a hybrid approach where we start with low-band, where we get the advantage of it being in every phone, with better RF performance that maximizes coverage, and then we add the L-band in the tail-end of our deployment.

Great. Thank you. Very helpful. And if I could, just on the U.S. government and budget front, defense space has done actually very well in terms of support for defense spending, whether it's continuing resolution or the projected discretionary budget, I guess for fiscal '26. So—but there are some gives and takes there too because FEMA has been a little bit on the ropes. I'm wondering as you look at some of the opportunities and programs, whether that's PLEO or otherwise, I'd even throw FirstNet into the mix there, huge opportunity to be able to support Band-14. How do you see the gives and takes between what's getting funded and what's not getting funded? And do you feel very comfortable about the position with U.S. government opportunities? Thanks.

Yeah. I mean, what I would say is, the U.S. government is using our satellites now, and what is the capability that they get from our technology? It is actually very, very clear for them at this point that has been resulted in six programs that we have ongoing with them. We see the Golden Dome opportunity as one where we feel very strong in participating as the government is already using our satellites for applications that are supporting the needs of that program. A portion of that program was prioritized by the government, and we believe that there is a good opportunity for us to be part of that.

I would also add that you've seen us building small contracts over the last couple of quarters with them. It's been pretty broad based dialogue, broad-based early contracts, and in terms of where money is flowing and where it's not. One good example is the DIU, which is the contract we just announced today. That's one area that just received another incremental large increase in funding. We think the puts and takes is much more puts than takes, and we're a novel technology that's being used. As Abel said today, we're on the short list as we have conversations and we see a lot of positive momentum, broad-based, but also in places that are receiving more funding and incremental funding even recently.

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Bryan Kraft with Deutsche Bank. Please proceed with your question.

Hi. Good afternoon. I had two if I could. First question, how many satellites will the first five launches this year actually include roughly? Is that a mix of launch providers or is it one particular launch provider that's doing all those or most of them? I guess just a high-level strategic question. I was wondering if you could just talk about what you think your competitive moat looks like at this point. I mean, obviously, the market, while encouraged by the great progress that you guys have made over the last few years, there's always this concern about another company or companies effectively competing with you, maybe with a much larger fleet of smaller satellites. I was wondering if you could just talk about that. Would love to hear your perspective on it. Thank you.

Yeah. I would say in terms of competitive landscape, what had been proven possible by any other system is simply text messaging. We have a capability that is way beyond that and that basically goes from text to voice, data, Internet and video. There is a limitation of what you can do with smaller satellites. That's basically physics. There are also a lot of inherent problems when you have thousands of satellites. The revisit time, the handovers, and practically the practicality of the phone being able to connect to a smaller satellite. I think at this point, which has been improved, but around what the industry has been historically capable of doing, our capability is supported by the vast majority of the operators, and we believe it is a capability for broadband. We think our capability is very differentiated and it's a capability that is also dual-use. That means our technology will be used by governments, particularly by our government and the vast majority of the network operators around the globe. We have access through the agreements that we have with operators today. We had access to billions of subscribers, provided that we build enough capacity for them. We continue to build our portfolio spectrum starting in the United States.

Yeah. Our strategy has been multi-operator all along, launch vehicle agnostic all along. These early launches we expect will be consistent with that strategy. We do have some flexibility. These things are a little dynamic, so we can't make firm commitments on all of it. But in aggregate, we feel that the timeline we laid out makes a lot of sense. So five launches in the next six months to nine months. Our first one, of course, will only have one satellite. Some of the earlier launches will have fewer than full capacity, but we'd really like to be in a position to have 20 satellites up as soon as we can thereabouts. But we're doing everything we can to keep moving to the left on time. We're overproducing with our factory for sure to make sure that we're not the long pole, and we've been very proactive on this multi-operator, multi-launch provider strategy. That's kind of how we're thinking about it, Bryan, and we're going to play it out month by month and quarter by quarter and give you better updates, but we're pushing hard on this because we know that we'll have the satellites to launch when we have the vehicles to go to orbit.

As a guidance, depending on the vehicle, you're talking about three to four vehicles per satellite or eight vehicles per satellite. As a reminder, these are very large satellites—the largest ever satellite launched for communication. So typically, we try to—the first launch, it will be a single launch given the vehicle that we're using, but our launch contracts support three to four on the smaller vehicles and eight in the bulk of the launch agreement that we have.

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Chris Quilty with Quilty Space. Please proceed with your question.

Hi, guys. Didn't expect to get a second bite at the Apple, but just want to follow up on the Block 2 BlueBird launch. Should we view that? Is that a fully operational off the production line, or is it still being viewed as more of a pathfinder in terms of testing the unfurling mechanism and other aspects that will be bled into the production? Is it more formal than the latter?

No, no. It's a full-blown operational satellite. It does use the same microns, which is the building block of the phased array, exact same models that we use on the Block 1 satellites, which we have now in operation. However, it's larger; it's 3.5 times larger than the Block 1 satellites but it’s coming out of the production line. By the way, we're producing—we're launching FM1, but we are producing 40 satellites this year. We think we will get closer to 53 satellites worth of phase arrays by the end of the year. It's coming out of the production line. It's an operational satellite. It will be part of the constellation.

But to be clear, I think you said by the fourth launch that production line will shift from FPGAs to ASICs, correct?

Yes. The first batches are FPGAs.

This quarter-over-quarter increase of $4.1 million resulted from $1.8 million in increased R&D costs, a $1.7 million increase in adjusted general and administrative costs, and a slight increase of $600,000 in adjusted engineering service costs. This modest increase in adjusted OpEx for Q1 was expected. This keeps us really focused on our ability to scale and grow. We're positioned for meaningful commercial activation and progress against corporate objectives during a pivotal year for our company.