B. Riley Upgrades $ASTS to Buy from Neutral, PT $85 Analyst comments: "We upgrade AST SpaceMobile to Buy following the pricing of $1 billion of 1.625% convertible senior notes due 2034, before a potential $150 million overallotment, combined with capped-call transactions that increase the effective conversion price from $79.57 to $149.20. The latter price would represent a $60 billion valuation for the company. ASTS shares have declined 44%, versus a 13% gain for the Russell 2000, in the six months since we downgraded the stock to Neutral on January 13. We believe this tilts the risk/reward favorably for the company, which exited the second quarter of 2026 with more than $2.7 billion in cash—more than enough capital to launch its global SpaceMobile direct-to-device constellation. We model the latest overnight offering as taking deployable cash to more than $3.4 billion at the end of the third quarter of 2026, when we expect the company to exit the period with $824 million of net debt. Meanwhile, ASTS successfully deployed the 2,400-square-foot array of its BlueBird 10 satellite, with the BlueBird 8 and 9 arrays expected to follow shortly. The next batch of BlueBird 11, 12, and 13 satellites is scheduled to launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 in early August. The company is progressing through production and assembly of satellites through BlueBird 37, and we continue to see ASTS as fully funded to deploy its global network. We are also pleased to see ASTS reaffirming its ability to build and launch its first 45 BlueBirds by early 2027, assumptions that mirror our unchanged revenue model, although New Glenn’s return to flight around year-end is embedded in those assumptions. While we would prefer to see actual mobile network operator subscriber uptake data before upgrading from Neutral to Buy, we believe that is just around the corner, with ASTS and its partners expected to launch beta commercial service in North America with as few as 20 operating BlueBird satellites. Finally, we also like the capital-allocation optionality gained through this latest low-cost, low-dilution financing, which increases ASTS’s ability to gain control of additional spectrum, as we have seen in Japan and Brazil." Analyst: Mike Crawford

Some LC-36 updates. Now that we’ve had access to the pad and integration facility we can share a bit of good news. The propellant farm, oxygen, liquid hydrogen and LNG tanks are all in good shape. This is good luck because these are very long lead items. The water tower is also good. The big support tower is damaged, but it can be repaired in place rather than torn down and replaced. The booster “Never Tell Me The Odds” and the three GS-2s that were onsite in the integration facility also look good. I’ve seen some speculation that we might move directly to the 9x4 configuration, but we won’t do that. Rate manufacturing of 7x2 is going well, and we’re going to continue that at pace as planned and store the stages for use. In addition, we had already been working for some time on eliminating our transporter-erector in favor of an alternative vertical conop, and we’ll now go directly to that; so we don’t need a new transporter-erector. We will fly again before the end of this year. Gradatim Ferociter.