Newsletter · · Ashutosh Agarwal

SpaceX's First Public Print Rattles the Whole Space Comms Sector - The Satellite & Space-Comms Race - Week of August 7, 2026

How SpaceX's first public quarter, Rocket Lab's $8B bid for Iridium, and AST SpaceMobile's BlueBird launch reset the satellite and space-comms sector, for the week of August 7, 2026.

The Satellite & Space-Comms Race

Week of August 7, 2026: SpaceX's First Public Print Rattles the Whole Space Comms Sector

The whole sector got its first real gut-check this week, and it came from the biggest name in the room. SpaceX reported earnings as a public company for the very first time, and instead of a victory lap, the tape delivered a battered stock, a $101 billion share unlock landing right on top of the print, and a fresh argument about whether satellites can actually take your phone bill away from Verizon. Meanwhile, in a quieter corner, Rocket Lab tried to buy its way a decade into the future.

TL;DR (15 seconds)

  • SpaceX's debut earnings beat on revenue ($7.8B, +92% YoY) but the stock still fell ~8–12%: the market is choking on $18.4B of quarterly capex pointed at AI data centers, and a ~$101B insider lockup unlocked this week. Starlink is the profitable engine (12M subs, ~$66/month); everything else is a promise.
  • Rocket Lab bid ~$8B for Iridium: founder Peter Beck's "buy vs. build" shortcut to a satellite constellation. Combined it's ~$1.6B revenue, ~$250M pro-forma EBITDA, and roughly 200x EV/EBITDA. Not cheap. It flips Rocket Lab from net cash to net debt.
  • AST SpaceMobile launched BlueBird 11–13 and its bulls think T-Mobile is next: production is through satellite 42, ship-to-launch time is compressing, and the whole D2D (direct-to-device) bull case now hinges on whether the physics skeptics or the spectrum optimists are right.

What's new

Ranked by what actually matters for a book.

1. SpaceX's first public quarter: a beat that felt like a miss

This was the single biggest event in the sector all week, and it drew a genuinely enormous amount of podcast coverage. The numbers themselves were fine, good, even. It was everything around the numbers that spooked people.

On Bloomberg Intelligence's Earnings Special (Aug 5), analysts Ed Ludlow and Mandeep Singh walked through the print: revenue of $7.8 billion, ahead of Wall Street, with an operating loss of $1.26 billion from the AI business that was actually better than feared. The number Singh kept circling back to was the backlog:

"They reported a backlog number of $47.5 billion. That tells you most of the backlog is likely coming from AI… Anthropic will be paying SpaceX about $1.25 billion a month… another probably $2 billion-plus from Google. So a $6 billion bump just from these two deals next quarter."

Mandeep Singh, Bloomberg Intelligence (ANALYST)

The segment split, laid out on The Compound and Friends' Midsummer's Melt-Up episode (Aug 4): the Starlink connectivity segment did $4.29 billion in revenue (vs. ~$3.83B expected) with $1.66 billion of operating income and ~12 million subscribers at $66 average revenue per user; the AI segment did $2.56 billion (vs. ~$2.18B); and the legacy space/launch business did $962 million. SpaceX has ~$90 billion of cash. The stock still fell ~8% after hours to ~$116.

Why did a beat get sold? Two reasons, and every podcast landed on the same two.

  • The capex. $18.4 billion in a single quarter, ~$15.8B of it on AI data centers and models. On CNBC's Fast Money and across the CNBC shows, the read was that SpaceX is spending like a hyperscaler but doesn't yet have the hyperscaler cash flows to be forgiven for it. Bloomberg's George Ferguson did the back-of-envelope on the Earnings Special: roughly $3.5B of operating cash flow in the first half against ~$29B of capex, call it ~$25B of negative free cash flow for H1 alone.
  • The lockup. More on that below, it's a story unto itself.

The bulls' counter is that this is an inflection setup. As Singh put it, this is "a company that will likely have accelerating top-line growth at least for the next three or four quarters with margin improvement… that is the type of story that investors typically like."

2. The $101 billion unlock: the overhang nobody can price

Bloomberg Intelligence devoted a whole segment to it: SpaceX's $101 Billion Unlock Heaps Pressure on Battered Shares (Aug 5). Nearly a billion insider shares came unlocked this week, right as the stock sits below its $135 IPO price. Reuters World News' SpaceX lockup episode (Aug 6) reported brokers "expecting a rush to realize profits."

The mechanics matter here, and The Wall Street Skinny's Revisiting the IPO episode (Aug 5), hosted by two ex-bankers, explained them better than anyone. The June 12 IPO was, in their words, a rule-breaker: Musk essentially dictated a take-it-or-leave-it $135 price (no book-building), sold an all-primary $75 billion with only a 3–5% float, saw demand oversubscribed ~4x, and got a "textbook-perfect" 20% pop to ~$174. Musk's own lockup runs a full year (366 days); other insiders have shorter 180-day windows but with SPAC-like performance hurdles (shares have to trade ~30% above the IPO price for a stretch). That structure is why this unlock is a slow drip, not a cliff, but it's an overhang that, as Piper Sandler's Alex Potter put it, "we're going to continue talking about until next summer."

For context on valuation: NYU's Aswath Damodaran ran a full DCF and landed around $1.2–1.3 trillion, against an IPO that priced at ~$1.75T and briefly traded north of $2T. Even the friendly math says the stock came public rich.

3. Rocket Lab's ~$8B bid for Iridium: buying the keys to space

The week's real M&A story. On the Chip Stock Investor Podcast's Rocket Lab's 8 Billion Dollar Bid for Iridium (Aug 7), Nicholas and Kasey Rossolillo broke down the logic and the price. Rocket Lab has long wanted its own satellite constellation; rather than build one, it's buying Iridium's ~66-satellite low-Earth-orbit fleet and, crucially, the technical team that can offer direct-to-device service off existing L-band satellites this year with software updates.

The founder's framing, relayed on the New Zealand finance podcast The Curve (episode, Aug 2): Peter Beck calls it "buy versus build," says it fast-tracks Rocket Lab by 10 to 20 years, and, the quote that's making the rounds:

"Whoever has the rocket has the keys to space."

Peter Beck, founder, Rocket Lab (OPERATOR/INSIDER, as relayed by The Curve)

The financials, per Chip Stock Investor: combined trailing-twelve-month revenue of ~$1.6 billion (Iridium is actually the bigger piece at $884M), pro-forma EBITDA of ~$250 million, and the deal flips Rocket Lab from net cash to net debt (it's an $8B mix of new stock and cash). At a combined ~$45B market cap / ~$50B enterprise value, that's under 30x sales and ~200x EV/EBITDA. Their reverse-DCF: you'd need 35% average EBITDA growth for a decade just to justify today's price. Their verdict: they like the strategic move, they don't love the multiple. Neutron, the mid-size rocket that puts Rocket Lab head-to-head with Falcon 9, is still targeted for end of 2026.

4. AST SpaceMobile launches BlueBird 11–13, and the manufacturing story quietly gets real

While SpaceX dominated the headlines, ASTS had its own catalyst. On the AST SpaceMobile Podcast's Bluebird 11-13 Launch This Week (Aug 4), a space held by a long-time retail shareholder ahead of the launch, the operational detail is what matters:

  • BlueBird 11, 12, and 13 (the larger Block 2 satellites) launched Wednesday early morning, ~3:42 a.m.
  • Production cadence is running ~3–4 satellites/month (behind the 6/month target, partly because a Blue Origin launch mishap removed the urgency to rush), with satellites 14, 15, 16 shipping soon and production already through satellite 42 toward a ~45-by-year-end goal.
  • Ship-to-launch time is compressing: BB-8 through BB-10 took ~27 days; BB-11 through 13 came down to ~22 days. Small number, big signal: this is the "can they actually manufacture at scale" question starting to answer itself.

The same host is unabashedly bullish on the carrier prize:

"I think that's fait accompli. It's going to happen… If you liked the Verizon reaction, you're going to love T-Mobile."

AST SpaceMobile Podcast host (INVESTOR / retail bull)

Treat that as sentiment, not fact, it's a shareholder's read, not a signed deal. But it dovetails with the week's most useful deep-dive (below).

The debate: can satellites really steal your phone bill? (The D2D-TAM question)

This is the debate for the whole group, and this week it got argued out loud by serious people. The prize Gwynne Shotwell put on the table is enormous; the pushback is pure physics.

The bull case, steel-manned. On SpaceX's earnings call (quoted on Bloomberg Tech's SpaceX, Uber and the Future of Mobility, Aug 5), SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell was blunt:

"The big three in the United States, AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile, roughly between them $600 billion a year. And I anticipate us to be able to acquire quite a few of their customers because I think our service will be better. We will eliminate dead zones."

Gwynne Shotwell, President, SpaceX (OPERATOR/INSIDER)

Early SpaceX investor Peter Diamandis, on Squawk on the Street's 10AM Hour (Aug 5), sized the whole thing as civilization-scale infrastructure and pegged the direct-to-cell opportunity at ~$600 billion of revenue potential, part of why he thinks SpaceX could be "the first $10 trillion company." (Tag him INVESTOR, he's talking his book, and says so.)

And the strongest version of the bull case actually belongs to AST SpaceMobile, laid out at feature length on the Wall Street Wildlife Investing Podcast's AST Space Mobile Deep Dive (Aug 2) by hosts Luke Hallard and "Christophe," both shareholders. Their argument: ASTS doesn't fight the spectrum wars or acquire customers directly. It borrows spectrum from the carriers (it can address ~1,150 MHz of low/mid-band via AT&T and Verizon partnerships), flies the "cell towers in space," and splits the monthly fee ~50/50 with the carrier. That means near-zero cost to serve each new subscriber across 60+ mobile-network partners and 3 billion-plus reachable subscribers, which is how they get to ~90% gross margins, if it works. Founder Abel Avellan sold his prior company for $550M and put $50M of his own money into the bet in 2016; the company now holds ~3,900 patents, has 10 satellites up, and just showed BlueBirds 8–10 hitting peak data rates approaching ~200 Mbps to an unmodified phone. They also make the geopolitics argument: ASTS's "bent-pipe" design keeps each country's data inside its own network, which is why, they argue, Japan (via Rakuten) and Europe are leaning ASTS's way over Starlink.

The bear case, steel-manned. Enter Craig Moffett of MoffettNathanson on CNBC's Power Lunch (SpaceX Stock Slumps, Aug 5), who thinks the near-term threat to the carriers is wildly overstated, and it comes down to physics:

"Signal loss degrades with the square of the distance. So if you're talking about connecting to a satellite that's 220 miles away compared to a rural tower that's a mile away, it's a 50,000-fold decrease in the power level… your phone is going to run out of battery by breakfast time trying to maintain a signal."

Craig Moffett, MoffettNathanson (ANALYST)

His deeper point: the "peanut-butter spread of coverage" satellites offer doesn't work in the airport, the train station, the hotel, the concert hall, the dense, hardened, real-world places that took carriers 30 years and $600 billion of capex to build out, and where each carrier holds ~50x more spectrum than SpaceX. The femtocell-mesh workaround Shotwell described? "We've heard about femtocell mesh networks now for 20 years… they've never quite worked all that well." Bloomberg's George Ferguson agreed the carriers won't "roll over," predicting "a good old-fashioned price fight."

Where it nets out. Nobody serious thinks direct-to-device is zero. The honest debate is timing and category: satellites clearly win the coverage gaps (oceans, mountains, dead zones, the ~3B under-served), that's the "$10/month insurance you use twice a year" market. Whether they take core urban/suburban phone subscribers from Verizon and T-Mobile is a decade-plus, capex-soaked, physics-constrained fight. The bull owns the map; the bear owns the battery.

Stocks in play

Every name discussed by podcast this week, with the bull, the bear, and what to watch.

SpaceX / Starlink (private, ticker in the market)

  • Bull: Starlink is a genuine cash engine (~$4.3B/quarter, $1.66B operating income, ~12M subs roughly doubling YoY) funding option value across AI, launch, and direct-to-cell. Cloud is inflecting fast: CFO Brett Johnson said on the call (via Bloomberg Tech) they'd already contracted an extra $6.7B of cloud revenue in early Q3 and are targeting $100B ARR by year-end; Deutsche Bank's Edison Yu thinks the cloud alone could be a $40B+ run-rate by December. Musk pulled his $1 trillion revenue target forward from 2031 to 2030 (with a "non-zero chance" of 2029). Deutsche Bank's Yu keeps a Buy, but cut his target to $235 from $255.
  • Bear: No guidance, huge losses, and free cash flow that's deeply negative for as far as the eye can see. George Ferguson's line on Bloomberg captured the skeptics: "At some point, you've got to give me profit." ~$93B cash sounds like a lot until you stack ~$60B of planned spend and ~$15B/quarter of AI capex against it, and the investment-grade rating (which keeps the debt window open) hinges on that cash pile. Plus the lockup drip through next summer.
  • Next catalyst: The pace of insider selling into the lockup; next quarter's print (does the $6B Anthropic/Google bump and cloud ramp show up?); Starship flight 14 and whether launch cadence tracks the 15–20/year model.

AST SpaceMobile (ASTS)

  • Bull: Asset-light, spectrum-borrowing, ~90%-gross-margin model with 60+ carrier partners; manufacturing cadence and deployment times improving; ~$4B+ on the balance sheet after a recent raise turns this into (per the Wall Street Wildlife hosts) "an execution story" rather than a survival story. Optionality in defense: the deep-dive quoted ASTS's Scott Wisniewski on the earnings call: "We are present from FirstNet to the classified all the way to the Golden Dome," framing up to 10 potential programs of record. Guidance is ~$150–250M revenue for 2026 (government + carrier prepayments), with a "whisper" of ~$1B for 2027 if the constellation switches on.
  • Bear: Still pre-revenue on the core model, a "sea of assumptions," in the hosts' own words. High-beta and violently volatile (the stock swung to the low-$50s and back this quarter). The ~$1B capital raise surprised the market and diluted holders even after management said it was fully funded. And the T-Mobile "fait accompli" is, for now, hope, not a contract.
  • Next catalyst: BlueBird 11–13 in-orbit deployment confirmation; a T-Mobile decision (watch the expiring Starlink/T-Mobile arrangement); the Legato L-band spectrum litigation; production hitting the ~45-satellite year-end mark.

Rocket Lab (RKLB)

  • Bull: The Iridium deal builds a truly vertically integrated business (launch + components + satellites + a services/connectivity layer) and buys immediate direct-to-device capability plus Iridium's ~$288M of trailing free cash flow, flipping the combined entity to roughly EBITDA-positive. Revenue growth accelerated to +63% YoY in Q1 2026. Neutron on track for end-2026.
  • Bear: Expensive: ~30x sales, ~200x EV/EBITDA, needs a decade of 35% EBITDA growth to justify today's price; the deal adds debt and integration risk. Chip Stock Investor, who like the strategy, are still waiting to "nibble," not backing up the truck.
  • Next catalyst: Iridium deal close and financing terms; Neutron's first flight; whether Iridium's software-based D2D actually ships this year.

Iridium (IRDM)

  • Bull: From "legacy satellite name left for dead" to acquisition target at $8B, a mature, cash-generative L-band franchise (maritime, aviation, IoT, government, air-traffic via Aireon) with a credible near-term D2D angle.
  • Bear: Low-growth on its own; the whole story now rides on Rocket Lab's stock/deal terms. If the deal wobbles, so does the re-rating.
  • Next catalyst: Definitive deal terms and regulatory sign-off.

Read-throughs

  • Carrier partners (VZ, T, TMUS): Telecom stocks dipped only ~2–2.5% on Shotwell's "we'll acquire your customers" comments (Power Lunch): the market is not pricing an imminent satellite raid on the carriers, siding (for now) with Moffett's physics. The subtler read-through: whatever T-Mobile does with its expiring Starlink direct-to-cell arrangement is a swing factor for both ASTS and SpaceX sentiment. Watch it.
  • EchoStar / Hughes (SATS): Quiet week, no dedicated coverage. The only mentions were incidental and pointed the wrong way: the AST podcast host referenced Charlie Ergen having "put Hughes into bankruptcy" and SpaceX's earlier EchoStar spectrum purchase. Treat as unconfirmed podcast chatter, not verified fact, but the direction of travel (spectrum consolidation into the new D2D players) is the theme to track.
  • Globalstar (GSAT) / Apple SOS: Quiet on dedicated coverage, no GSAT-focused episode this week. The read-through that did surface, on the Wall Street Wildlife deep-dive: Amazon is described as having acquired Globalstar for ~$11.5 billion (referenced as an April deal), reframing Globalstar/Amazon as a third D2D camp alongside SpaceX/T-Mobile and the ASTS carrier alliance. If accurate, that's a meaningful read-through for the Apple emergency-SOS relationship that runs on Globalstar, but it was a passing reference on an ASTS episode, so flag it as podcast-sourced and unverified here.
  • Launch & component suppliers: Beyond Rocket Lab (Neutron vs. Falcon 9) and a nod to MDA Space, the clearest supplier read-through was semis: on Squawk on the Street, Musk's declaration that SpaceX will build "exclusively on NVIDIA" (a reversal from May, when he said he'd buy both NVIDIA and AMD) helped NVIDIA and weighed on AMD, a reminder that the AI-in-space buildout is, first and foremost, a GPU order.
  • SpaceX private-market valuation as sentiment anchor: With SpaceX now public and trading below its $135 IPO price (~$109–116, down ~30% from the first-day open and >50% from the highs), the "private-market chatter" anchor has become a live public tape, and it's pulling sector sentiment down, not up. Baillie Gifford's Luke Ward, on Short Briefings on Long Term Thinking (SpaceX: past, present, future, Aug 4), reframed it as the long-game bull: Starlink at ~$11.5B of annual revenue, a relentless cost-per-kilogram-to-orbit collapse, and direct-to-cell as the next leg.

What changed vs. last week

Two genuinely new catalysts reset the board this week:

  1. SpaceX went from "IPO story" to "quarterly-reporting company" overnight, and the market's verdict is that the AI capex and the lockup outweigh a clean revenue beat. The stock is now the sector's sentiment anchor, and it's anchoring down.
  2. Rocket Lab's ~$8B Iridium bid turned a sleepy incumbent into an acquisition target and gave the "buy vs. build" debate a concrete price tag.

On the quieter names, it was a genuinely quiet week for Globalstar (GSAT) and EchoStar/Hughes (SATS), no dedicated podcast coverage of either, only incidental read-throughs. AST SpaceMobile's story advanced operationally (a launch, faster cadence) but the big prize (a T-Mobile deal) remains speculation, not news.