AST SpaceMobile (ASTS) currently has six satellites in orbit right now for both commercial and government applications - five that are fully operational and one that is a test satellite.
But the space-based broadband company now has an extremely ambitious plan to ramp up its supply of satellites in orbit over the next year.
Abel Avellan, Founder, founder and CEO of AST SpaceMobile, said in the company’s second-quarter earnings release on Monday that the company has a “fully-funded plan to deploy 45 to 60 satellites into orbit by 2026” that will support continuous service in the U.S., Europe, Japan and “other strategic markets.”
AST will also continue to service the U.S. government as part of its deployment strategy over the next year.
The company announced a $43 million contract to support the U.S. Space Development Agency (SDA) with its Block 2 BlueBird satellites earlier this year.
Avellan said the company is planning orbital launches every one to two months on average during 2025 and 2026.
“We have completed the assembly of microns for phased arrays of eight Block 2 BlueBird satellites, and we are on target to complete 40 satellites equivalent of microns by early 2026 to support full voice, data, and video space-based cellular broadband services,” he said in a statement.
AST’s shares surged 8.4% on Tuesday.
Key acquisition leads to a price target bump
The company is building the first space-based cellular broadband network accessible directly by smartphones, designed both for commercial and government uses.
AST announced last week that it had reached an agreement to acquire global S-Band spectrum priority rights held under the International Telecommunication Union (ITU).
This gives the company “certain S-Band ITU priority rights to MSS (Mobile Satellite Services) frequencies in the range of 1980-2010 MHz and 2170-2200 MHz, for use in low Earth orbit.”
These spectrum priority rights will allow AST to offer services in these spectrum bands around the world, subject to country-level regulatory approvals.
The S-band spectrum will supplement AST’s core global 3GPP cellular spectrum strategy.
Avellan said in a statement that the acquisition will make the company “capable of expanding subscriber capacity by offering the vast majority of countries around the world the full AST SpaceMobile network capabilities.”
By partnering with its mobile network operator partners, AST can enable “a true broadband experience directly from space to everyday smartphones and with a goal of peak data transmission speeds of up to 120 Mbps.”
Roth Capital raised its price target for AST’s shares to $56 in a client note, pointing to how the S-band brings a "unique multi-frequency enhanced spectrum model with broadband service capabilities," while also noting that AST “is effectively fully funded."
The company’s shares were priced at $49.76 at the end of trading on Tuesday.
AST said in its earnings release that it is aiming to deploy nationwide intermittent service in the United States by the end of 2025, followed by the United Kingdom, Japan, and Canada in the first quarter of 2026
It is anticipating revenue of $50 million to $75 million in the second half 2025, which will be coming from both government and commercial customers.
AST had about $939.4 million in balance sheet cash, cash equivalents, and restricted cash as of June 30.
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