AST SpaceMobile, Inc. (ASTS) Earnings Call Transcript

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to AST SpaceMobile Second Quarter 2026 Business Update. Please be advised that today's call is being recorded. I will now turn the conference over to Max Colbert, Investor Relations Manager of AST SpaceMobile. Thank you. You may begin.

Thank you, and good afternoon, everyone. Today, I'm also joined by Chairman and CEO, Abel Avellan; President, Scott Wisniewski; 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 ending December 31, 2025, 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'll be starting our Q&A section with questions submitted in advance by our shareholders. For those of you who may be new to our company and mission, there are nearly 6 billion mobile phones 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 in AST SpaceMobile 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 phones, supported by our extensive IP and patent portfolio. It is now my pleasure to pass this over to Chairman and CEO, Abel Avellan, who will go through our activities since our last public update.

Thank you, Max. Our execution in 2026 continues to reinforce what we have believed since we created AST SpaceMobile and invented the space-based cellular broadband market. That combining differentiated technology, deep partnership with leading mobile network operators and a scale vertical integration position us to define the future of direct-to-device cellular broadband. Our space-based direct-to-device network will be the first of its kind to leverage low-band and mid-band spectrum with broadband speeds and native cellular application, combining a feature set and technology stack that puts us in a category of one. From the beginning, we designed our network architecture alongside existing mobile network operators, not as a replacement of them. Rather than requiring operators to rebuild their infrastructure, our architecture and technology extend and complement their existing terrestrial network into space, allowing us to integrate efficiently while evolving alongside future 3GPP standards. To put this concept simply, we are building the direct-to-device network of the future today in partnership with not in competition with mobile network operators. This new layer of connectivity that we are creating is not just for addressing gaps in terrestrial network but is to create a seamless connectivity experience wherever you live, work and travel anywhere on the planet. Spectrum is another area where we believe we have significant competitive advantage. Through a combination of low-band spectrum contributed by our MNO partners and the spectrum we directly control, we are building access to the broadest spectrum portfolio in the industry with satellite technology capable of tuning approximately 1,150 megahertz for low-band and mid-band and in the future, C-band tunable spectrum globally. In the United States alone, we are on the path to approximately 100 megahertz of spectrum from a combination of MNO partner provided spectrum and our own access spectrum, which will be a lead that is difficult for others to match. In particular, we're combining our over 3,900 patents and patent pending claims intellectual property and very large phased arrays with our spectrum access. This provides greater network capacity, better coverage and significant flexibility as demands grow. We are confident that our comprehensive spectrum strategy is the winning one, giving us the tech needed to increase subscriber capacity and bring services to target market with our partner MNOs. Direct-to-device cellular broadband is establishing itself as a new additional connectivity layer. Our differentiated in-orbit technology and scaled direct-to-device cellular broadband network serves as a resilient and reliable source of an additional and new connectivity layer serving commercial MNO partners and government agencies alike. Incremental to delivering direct-to-device cellular broadband connectivity, our total addressable market is rapidly expanding. We see several growth opportunities across government communications and noncommunications opportunities, including radar, emergency response, Internet of Things, AI edge compute and other advanced connectivity solutions. We see these markets as beneficiaries of our space-based direct-to-device network. We recently received an award pending government approvals and final agreements with long-time partner, Rakuten, regarding the selection for participation in the low Earth Orbit Satellite Infrastructure Development Project or J-LEO in Japan, designing to address the Japanese and Asian markets with a total expected value of up to approximately USD 1 billion in non-dilutive, non-debt government capital. This follows continued work with FirstNet emergency, the First Responder Network in the United States with partner AT&T and recent announcement with multiple governments through partners like Vodafone and Rakuten. Our partner-first strategy positions us as the partner of choice for direct-to-device cellular broadband among mobile network operators. Our commercial ecosystem is growing with over 60 MNO partners who cover over 3 billion subscribers globally, including key partners like AT&T, Verizon, Vodafone, Rakuten, STC Group, Bell Canada and Telus. We are on the cusp of commercial deployment, and we prepare to scale our SpaceMobile service to everyday modified smartphones. With 13 spacecrafts in orbit and approximately 20,000 square feet of combined aperture hardware and approximately 50 gateways globally that are in various stages of completion, installation and planning, we prepare for beta service with key MNO partners in selected markets globally. In the United States, we have deployed over 3,000 low-band cellular cells. We expect to deploy the remaining cells this year to light up the roughly 5,600 cellular cells that cover the United States. On network deployment, BlueBird 14 to 16 are undergoing final testing as their manufacturing assembly is nearly completed. The recent launch of BlueBird 11 to 13 demonstrates our ability to rapidly and repeatedly build, launch and deploy the largest phased array in low Earth orbit using advanced composite material for lighter and even bigger satellites. Our largest, newest, fully composite BlueBird satellites are operating as expected, and we prepare them for their communication and noncommunication missions for government and MNO applications. Our ASIC chip is now in full production, and we are expecting to nearly double the peak data speed of 98.9 megabits per second achieved using our on-orbit Block 1 BlueBird satellites. As a reminder, our ASIC is designed to support up to 10 gigahertz of processing bandwidth per satellite, which is nearly 10x improvement from our in-orbit Block 1 BlueBird satellite. Over time, we expect further gains of up to additional 10x improvement in user experience through AI-enabled spectrum management. Turning to manufacturing. We're in various stages of production and assembly through BlueBird 46, which is in line with the number of spacecrafts required for continuous coverage in key markets. A detailed cadence of our deployment plan is shown in the accompanying quarterly presentation found on our IR website. We continue to leverage our 95% vertically integrated manufacturing strategy to move at the pace and precision needed to scale a constellation of the largest satellites in LEO at a scale unprecedented in low Earth orbits. We currently have over 500,000 square feet of manufacturing and operations space globally, including our dedicated macro production facility to help accelerate satellite production as we ramp up into our target cadence of 6 fully assembled satellites per month. We recently unveiled plans for an additional 400,000 square feet of manufacturing and production space in Midland, Texas, and we prepare to further scale production for United States government and our extended TAM of commercial applications. We expect our global manufacturing and operations footprint will exceed 1 million square feet of manufacturing capability with over 900,000 square feet residing in the United States once completed. We are proud to be manufacturing the largest satellites in LEO here in the United States and in Texas, where bigger is better. In summary, AST SpaceMobile is executing across every critical dimension of our business. We have expanded our commercial partner ecosystem now with over 60 MNOs partners globally who collectively cover over 3 billion subscribers. Our comprehensive spectrum strategy continues to strengthen across our satellite technology capable of tuning to approximately 1,150 megahertz of tunable spectrum with shared MNO spectrum and control MNO spectrum, totaling approximately 100-megahertz access in the U.S. and over 60-megahertz access globally. As an early indicator of success from our expanding total addressable market of opportunities, we increased our revenue backlog to approximately $1.3 billion in aggregated contracted revenue, agreement with partners and contracts award with the U.S. government. These opportunities are supported by our robust balance sheet of more than $3.7 billion, making us well positioned to lead the commercialization of space-based cellular broadband and create a significant long-term value for our shareholders. And with that, I will hand it over to Scott.

Thank you, Abel. Since our last investor update call, AST SpaceMobile has continued to make great progress in our commercialization efforts. I would like to take you through some of that progress across our MNO and government customers and put in context the business opportunity ahead of us, which only continues to increase at breathtaking speed. In the commercial ecosystem, we are viewed as the partner of choice for direct-to-device with mobile network operators, as evidenced by the ecosystem we have built with now over 60 MNO partners globally who collectively cover over 3 billion subscribers. Network deployment in key markets with strategic partners is well underway, and our challenge is how to balance deployment of our cellular broadband service into the next set of markets beyond the U.S., Canada, Europe, Japan, Saudi Arabia and the U.S. government. We are balancing this today with active engagement with more than 20 mobile network operators across over 50 country markets. We are developing these markets together with our partners with an increasingly scaled and programmatic effort with services that are designed to be turned on as BlueBirds come online. These efforts are going to manifest themselves not only in more market announcements with our partners, but also, importantly, progress in the delivery and setup of about 50 gateways across 20 markets. In fact, in Europe, you're already starting to see this infrastructure in action as we recently announced network integration and testing activities across several European countries with Vodafone, Orange, Telefonica, Vodafone Ukraine and Deutsche Telekom. Meanwhile, the regulatory backdrop also continues to support our commercialization efforts and provides a window into how we expect the business to develop. While the U.S. was an early leader on the regulatory front with full commercial service approvals delivered earlier this year, we are seeing good progress internationally in the U.K., Japan, Brazil and other countries. Meanwhile, we have seen multiple countries provide commercial authorization to use our MSS spectrum assets, specifically in the S-band outside the United States. Altogether, these are strong signs of scaling our global cellular broadband network. More spectrum lanes of traffic for our network means more subscribers and better services when paired with our unique technology. Meanwhile, the U.S. government customer has been a major focus for us, and we see great progress this quarter, both in terms of revenue capture and building the backlog. We drove revenue against several existing contracts and received 3 new contract awards. Our U.S. government partners view our in-orbit technology as unique, strategic, innovative and flexible with communications and noncommunications capabilities. We have foreshadowed the trend of small development contracts becoming larger contracts ahead of still larger operationalization of the capabilities through programs of record. Today, you can see that trend as we are announcing 3 new contract awards with funded near-term value of over $100 million in total expected during 2026 and 2027. We plan to talk more about these awards publicly soon, but they represent near-term capabilities that have been in development with the U.S. Department of War for years and leverage our unique in-orbit technology to solve large strategic needs. In general, the backdrop in size of the Golden Dome opportunity, coupled with the Arsenal of Freedom initiative remains very strong for companies that have unique capabilities that can be deployed in the near term and can move fast. Now taking a step back, I want to take a moment to discuss the large addressable markets for the company beyond direct-to-device. We see the opportunity to leverage our unique platform that we have created to dramatically expand the company's total addressable market, leveraging our differentiated technology, deep intellectual property portfolio, vertically integrated manufacturing and, of course, the comprehensive spectrum strategy. In part, this is now possible because of the maturity of the business and our fortified balance sheet, utilizing the same spacecraft design and ground-based gateways that we're already scaling today. We believe each of these new additional end markets could ultimately become multibillion-dollar annual plus revenue opportunities for AST SpaceMobile. In the government and defense market, firstly, we've seen early traction around noncommunications, including radar. Our spacecraft are uniquely positioned to provide some of these services given the size of the array aperture, the frequencies we serve and our ability to deploy quickly a global capability for an order of magnitude lower cost than historically possible. This application is a majority of our U.S. government revenue to date. Secondly, and this will sound familiar, we have the ability to provide secure communications directly to low-profile, low-power devices. This means regular 3GPP devices, but also custom-designed handsets, existing radios, headsets, wearables and drones. This will be with a technology that is already showing broadband speeds of over 100 megabits per second to extremely low profile and sized devices. These applications will be new to the war fighter and greatly simplify and improve communications for them in the years to come. Each of these capabilities can be served with the same in-orbit network of AST SpaceMobile spacecraft, a combined capability that addresses the strategic needs of the U.S. government customer for decades to come. And apart from defense, we also see a few more funded comms opportunities. First, we are seeing a trend with large countries or regional bodies looking to replicate owned in-orbit resilient communications. This is born from a desire to have increased operational control of communications over their territory. Given the AST SpaceMobile architecture of landing traffic in country, we are uniquely positioned to serve this need and to add additional layers for this demand with the Japan J-LEO preliminary award falling into this category. Second, federal emergency and backup is another market taking shape, which you can see from our announcement with Vodafone Ireland, but it has been long planned both in the U.S. with FirstNet and in Japan. The 700-megahertz band, in particular, is viewed as a federal resiliency frequency and thus is an attractive match for our network. This capability could be used broadly for first responders and also as a large-scale backup during periods of network outage with Spain and Australia offering some notable recent outages that are driving political need for action. Thirdly, IoT or Internet of Things is an attractive market for cellular and satellite operators, which positions us well to provide a unified service across both broadband and narrowband applications. With our controlled MSS frequencies, combined with extremely low-cost devices, this is another attractive use of our existing in-orbit network. One final network I wanted to highlight today is space-based AI edge compute. As companies are starting to think about how to service this market in a big way, one of the key elements is the ability to deploy and control large structures in space, which is what we do. This is significant power to orbit at meaningful scale and with competitive cost. This provides clear cost and scale advantages for supplying power and compute in space. What you will see from us in the near term is stretching from a bent pipe network and building additional edge computing capabilities valuable to those networks. In total, all of these markets represent an expansion of our incredibly strong core direct-to-device total addressable market into new large markets, primarily on a funded basis, leveraging the incredible platform we have built. Closing out with a quick discussion on Q2 revenue. We achieved over $30 million in revenue during the quarter, more than doubling our Q1 revenue. This was driven by a combination of milestone achievements under our U.S. government contracts and commercial infrastructure for our mobile network operator partners. Our commercial and government efforts to date serve as important milestones in our road map to much larger opportunities, each with potentially billions of dollars in revenue per year as we scale our business. In Q2 specifically, we delivered against 13 gateways to 7 customers across 5 continents. And we remain confident in our ability to achieve our full year 2026 revenue goals and are reiterating our guidance of $150 million to $200 million, supported by contracted programs already underway together with our existing commercial and government pipeline. Altogether, we're very pleased with the progress we've made across the business. Commercial readiness continues to advance. Government demand continues to expand. Our deployment road map remains on track, and our operational capabilities continue to scale. These milestones reinforce our confidence as we prepare for commercial service and position AST SpaceMobile for meaningful long-term growth. I'm now happy to pass the call over to Andy to walk through our financial update.

Thanks, Scott, and good afternoon, everyone. During the second quarter of 2026, we maintained focus by further fortifying our capital position, executing on our commercial objectives, accelerating our manufacturing cadence, leveraging our growing footprint in Texas and beyond, and expanding our total addressable market or TAM for additional applications, including U.S. government secure communications and noncommunications, radar, emergency response, Internet of Things, AI edge compute and other advanced connectivity applications. Revenue in Q2 came in consistent with our internal plans. As I've previously noted, we expect revenue to build sequentially each quarter during 2026 with contributions from both commercial revenues, primarily gateway sales revenue and U.S. government contracts. I am pleased to confirm that we remain on track to meet our full year 2026 revenue guidance of $150 million to $200 million. With respect to manufacturing, BlueBirds 14 to 16 are ready to ship shortly, while BlueBird 17 through BlueBird 46 are in various stages of production and assembly as we continue scaling our production capabilities, building the largest phased arrays in low earth orbit. Our manufacturing progress positions us well to support our current network deployment plan, targeting approximately 45 BlueBird satellites in orbit by early 2027. The strength of our balance sheet, further bolstered with last month's convertible debt offering, positions us not only to complete the full build-out and launch of a constellation of over 100 BlueBird satellites to provide worldwide SpaceMobile service and deploy our controlled spectrum bands on a global basis, but also to pursue an expanding universe of growth initiatives and secure additional access to orbit for our space-based cellular broadband network, including partnerships and/or acquisitions to further vertically integrate our business and mitigate risks associated with third-party launch providers. Our intentional focus on investing in the growth of our operations led to higher adjusted operating expenses in Q2 2026 as compared to Q1, consistent with our expectations as previously communicated during our first quarter of 2026 earnings call in May. Now moving to the operating and capital metrics slide. Let's review the key metrics for the second quarter in a bit more detail. On the first chart, for the second quarter of 2026, we incurred non-GAAP adjusted operating expenses of $119.1 million versus $91.2 million in the first quarter. Non-GAAP adjusted operating expenses exclude noncash operating costs and insurance proceeds in connection with our BlueBird 7 loss. The quarter-over-quarter increase of $27.9 million resulted primarily from an $11.9 million increase in adjusted cost of revenues due to higher revenue in the quarter, together with a $12.3 million increase in adjusted engineering service costs, a $3.1 million increase in adjusted general and administrative costs and a $600,000 increase in R&D costs. Our Q2 2026 adjusted operating expenses, excluding adjusted cost of revenues, were $95.9 million compared to $79.8 million in Q1 of 2026. This amount was near the high end of the $85 million to $95 million guidance for Q2 adjusted operating expenses that I previously provided. The primary drivers of the increase versus the prior quarter were growth in our workforce, including contractors and consultants, our expanded production facilities, other professional fees and critical investments relating to artificial intelligence. Turning towards the second chart on this slide. Our capital expenditure for the second quarter of 2026 was approximately $610 million versus approximately $257 million for the first quarter. This figure was made up primarily of payments made in connection with multiple launch contracts, capitalized direct materials and labor for our BlueBird satellites with the balance relating to facility and production equipment expenditures. This amount for the quarter was just below the midpoint of the guidance of $575 million to $650 million that I provided during our last earnings call, which assumed a significant launch payment in Q2 that was originally scheduled to be paid in the first quarter. For the third quarter of 2026, we estimate that our adjusted operating expenses, excluding adjusted cost of revenues will increase to the range of approximately $105 million to $115 million as we continue to absorb the full quarter of cost of our expanded workforce and continue growing talent across our organization to scale our efforts to address our expanding TAM as well as pursue the monetization of our L- and S-band spectrum usage rights. For the full year of 2026, we expect adjusted OpEx, excluding adjusted cost of revenues to average approximately $100 million per quarter or $400 million total for the year. Consistent with average quarterly CapEx spend during the first half of 2026, we expect our capital expenditures in Q3 of 2026 to be in the range of approximately $350 million to $425 million primarily driven by the timing of launch payments, which, as I previously explained and evidenced by the first half of this year do vary from quarter-to-quarter. Importantly, our continued spend on growth-related CapEx reflects our increasing satellite production and our active orbital launch plans. We continue to estimate that the average capital costs, including direct materials and launch costs for our constellation of over 90 BlueBird satellites will fall in the range of approximately $21 million to $23 million per satellite, excluding certain initial satellites that are used to validate performance and operations. Our cost-per-satellite estimates are subject to fluctuations based on dynamic geopolitical factors that could impact our costs. And as a reminder, changes in our adjusted operating expenses and capital expenditure, as I've just described, could be delayed or may not be realized due to a variety of factors. Turning to revenue. In the second quarter, we recognized revenue of $31.5 million, primarily driven by commercial gateway deliveries and various U.S. government service milestone achievements. Our revenue increased sequentially and year-over-year in the second quarter as we expected due to the timing of gateway deployment to our commercial customers and the timing of completion of certain government contract milestones. With respect to commercial revenue generation, 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 and additional strategic worldwide markets with the launch and operation of approximately 9 BlueBird satellites. Further, as we continue to launch and deploy our constellation, we will continue to support U.S. government applications currently ongoing and accelerating as our constellation grows. As we reiterated in our Q1 2026 earnings call, we expect to generate full year 2026 revenue in the range of $150 million to $200 million. We manage the top line with a focus on full-year performance given the quarterly variability inherent to our business, including the timing of contract signings, equipment sales and milestone achievements. As a way to be helpful and for the avoidance of doubt, we expect revenue in each quarter to continue to grow sequentially but will likely be weighted towards the fourth quarter. As a result, we believe our revenue performance is best evaluated on a full year basis. We expect revenue to continue to be driven by gateway deliveries, achievement of contracted milestones for the U.S. government, MNO consulting services and with potential upside related to the recognition of initial commercial service revenue. The achievement of our revenue plan remains subject to several contingencies, including the successful launch and deployment of our BlueBird satellites related to U.S. government applications and those contractual milestone achievements. Critical gateway equipment sales to our MNO partners in support of their anticipated commercialization efforts of SpaceMobile service and service revenues in connection with the activation of our commercial service provided by our existing and planned deployed and operational satellites. Now turning to the balance sheet. With this backdrop, in July, we executed a convertible debt transaction for $1.15 billion aggregate principal amount of 1.625% convertible senior notes due in 2034. As part of the transaction, we purchased a capped call hedge to increase the effective conversion price to $149.20 per share, a price well above our all-time high trading price. This financing allows us to pursue an expanding universe of growth opportunities, further continue vertical integration efforts and secure additional access to orbit for our space-based cellular network. The notes have our lowest coupon ever at 1.625%, providing cost-efficient capital with effective dilution of less than 2%. Finally, on the final chart on this slide, on a pro forma basis, inclusive of that $1.15 billion in gross proceeds from the convertible notes offering, our cash, cash equivalents and restricted cash as of June 30, 2026, was over $3.7 billion. In closing, we are making progress on all fronts in accomplishing our near-term objectives. The hard work across the organization continues with revenue building on plan for 2026 satellite manufacturing increasing to support our orbital launch campaign and increasing applications within our rapidly expanding TAM. We look forward to sharing additional achievements with you during Q3 and throughout the second half of 2026. Thank you for your continued support as we continue the hard work of connecting the unconnected at AST SpaceMobile. 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, I would like to address a few of the questions submitted by our investors. Operator, could you please start us off with the first question?

David from New Jersey asks, how should investors think about the expected timing of meaningful government revenue? And could you expand some more on the radar capabilities of the constellation?

Thank you, David. As we said in our remarks, we're making good progress on these contracts, including over $100 million of contract awards in the last couple of months. So consistent with how we've always talked about it, these are kind of initial phases as we scale up the opportunity, and the government wants to see you perform against that. And of course, we're really uniquely able to perform given the size of our satellite, our technology, the fact that we're in orbit, the fact that we're vertically integrated. And what we're seeing is that this opportunity is going to start scaling up into a recurring multibillion dollar a year opportunity starting in 2027.

Lydon from New Zealand asked, how does ASTS' ownership of spectrum assets affect the company?

Thank you, Lydon, for the question. Well, spectrum is like fuel for our business. But of course, also how efficient is the machine to utilize that fuel is super important. So it's the combination of the very large phased array supported by over 3,600 patent and patent pending claims, a very large phased array, the power of that phased array and access to MNO partner spectrum and our own spectrum, is what makes that fuel really be very efficient, the power in terms of creating additional lines of revenue to our government. As Scott presented in our brief today, I mean, this is allowing us to actually scale up into a multitude of new applications that create a multiplication of our TAM, our current TAM from D2D to 7 more new applications that really multiply the addressable TAM that we have today. So ownership of spectrum is super strategic for us. We were the first company in direct-to-device that started this trend of direct-to-device operators to own spectrum. But we had the largest combined spectrum access when you combine our MNO partners spectrum plus our own spectrum in addition to a very large phased array with a lot of power that creates that fuel that creates multiple lines of capabilities for our company.

Kevin from Vancouver asked, what kind of demand drivers are you seeing to trigger the massive 400,000 square feet of manufacturing expansion in Texas? How many BlueBirds per month are you aiming to produce?

Well, we're currently getting to 6 per month. We want to expand that in order to be able to supply enough capacity for our government and nongovernment applications. So with the additional 400,000 square feet of manufacturing, we would be close to 1 million square feet of manufacturing facility. We want to continue expanding our capability of producing them to even larger satellites that allow us to support communications, radar, GPS, AI, cloud computing, IoT and other very strategic applications that we have. And that's why we are investing very efficiently in extending our capability of manufacturing in Texas to close to 1 million square feet of manufacturing.

Lydon from New Zealand asks, does ASTS believe other countries will come forward with their own FirstNet or J-LEO programs that ASTS can support?

Thank you, Lydon. Yes, we see the J-LEO project as a real proof point for how countries, large countries are thinking about their own infrastructure. This is infrastructure they can control and get access to. And we think that -- and we see others thinking about it. So this is a trend that's going to play out, we think, multiple times in the coming years. And this is really a new layer of communication that gives governments and nations access to capabilities that they access and can control. And in particular, the 700-megahertz band is one that we've put on the satellite in order to be able to address opportunities like this, both in the U.S. and Europe and in other places like Latin America as well. And with that, I'd like to thank our shareholders for submitting those questions. Operator let's open up the call to analyst questions now.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Greg Pendy with Clear Street.

Can you kind of share with us on the Rakuten JV? I know it's in advanced discussions. But what stood out to get you guys to this stage, given it was pretty competitive with some other bidders out there. What do you think you offer to the table that really kind of moved you guys along in that process?

Thank you, Greg, for the question. Well, we are the only platform that has demonstrated and is delivering today broadband capability. That is one key factor. The other one is the architecture that we offer allow nations and regulatory bodies to basically keep all the data and all the management of the infrastructure on the ground. And third, the partnership with Rakuten over many years that we have with them as a leading Japanese company that have been partnered with us for many years. So -- but fundamentally, we have the only platform that can deliver broadband that is in operation and that has demonstrated the ability to basically deliver seamless connectivity between terrestrial and space on a scalable basis.

Great. That's very helpful. And is there any way you can kind of give us an idea -- I know you don't break it out, so if you don't want to do that. But the backlog growing nicely to $1.3 billion, how much of that might be government?

I would say it's -- a minority of it is government. The adds were primarily government, but the overall backlog, a minority of it is government. But I would say that we expect that one to scale in the near term most significantly.

Our next question comes from the line of Mike Crawford with B. Riley Securities.

Of these first 46 BlueBirds that you have under partial stage of construction now, how many of these are already have or are targeted to have L-band or S-band connectivity installed on the Microns? And then how should we think of the spectrum mix of a full 90 satellite constellation?

Mike, I mean, we are producing roughly at a rate of 6 per month in terms of Microns. We are on Micron 46. We're starting the production of the mid-band capability later this year for start launching very early in '27, the urban capability. So the current Microns are low-band systems.

And then my second question is, how does this potential U.S. MNO joint venture affect your discrete agreements with AT&T and Verizon and as well as with T-Mobile that you don't have an agreement with?

Thanks, Mike. Well, our existing agreements are not affected. And frankly, as we said when this was announced, the joint venture, frankly, frees up a third and fourth customer for us in the United States. So we were happy and supportive of it. Ultimately, we are carrier agnostic, right? Our network is good for all operators. We have strong partners, and those partners are important to us. But as markets grow and mature, we expect to be available to all operators. So this is really consistent with the strategy we put forward 2 years ago when Verizon joined with AT&T to support us. And going forward with the joint venture, we look forward to partnering with them as well. But existing agreements and the lead we have in the market for delivering cellular broadband, that's unaffected.

Our next question comes from the line of Colin Canfield with Cantor Fitzgerald.

As we put into the building blocks on revenue for '27, just rough numbers here. It seems like there's probably $100 million to $200 million of gateway support, $100 million to $200 million of government -- U.S. government support and maybe $100 million of international government support. As we think about the upside to that framework, can you just maybe refresh investors on how to think about rev rec for commercial service? And essentially, what are you hearing from commercial operators about pushing revenue or allowing AST to recognize revenue with a partial deployment of Constellation?

Colin, so I mean, first of all, what we're hearing from operators that they want the service now. And so we are pushing extremely hard. You've seen our comments on beta, getting that out the door to demonstrate scaled capabilities and then start rolling out commercial service with as little as 45 satellites in orbit. So we're racing towards that with our strategic partners, really as many partners as we can simultaneously race towards that with. And yes, rev rec will begin. I don't want to commit to anything, but generally speaking, revenue recognition should begin for commercial service when commercial service begins, right? So when that happens next year, that will start being recognized. And the other components of revenue, I would say you're generally accurate. That gateway is in excess of $100 million as we continue to grow that. Government revenue, we hope, will greatly exceed your number, but that's still being played out now, and we'll have more announcements in the near term on that. And commercial services revenue, of course, is what we're all playing for, and we're very excited and expect that to ramp quickly once we get going.

Got it. Got it. And then for the international government opportunities, if you can just maybe talk about the market structure that you expect in Germany as well as the rest of Europe. Maybe how do you think about kind of customer appetite to multisource supply chains? And if they're not multi-sourcing, what sort of milestones do you think it takes for them to kind of secure their supply chain? And specifically, we're talking about IRIS.

Well, I think Colin, there is a lot there, of course, because there's a lot of different markets. But what we can do in the defense market, which is comms and noncommunication services with a very unique technology in orbit is attractive to a lot of parties. And we see the trend playing out in other sectors that are perhaps less strategic capabilities where international governments are placing bets around services. And we think over time, those governments will turn their attention to larger scaled services like what we can do because having that capability is a very powerful thing. And you see that, obviously, with the J-LEO preliminary award. So I would say this is a trend to watch for us over time. I won't speak to individual markets, but certainly, Europe and NATO and you can see how it's playing out through the MSS process in Europe with them prioritizing certain types of providers who have European operations, et cetera. So those are all trends we're positioning ourselves around. And it starts with our tech, but also, it's very important, as Abel said, that we have good partners like with Rakuten in Japan and Vodafone in Europe, and that really facilitates our access to the opportunities in a way you don't see elsewhere.

Our next question comes from the line of Michael Funk with Bank of America.

So first, ex Blue Origin, how many launches do you have contracted for the remainder of 2026 and 2027? And what is the stack ability on those vehicles?

We have 10 launches booked with 2 different providers, and we're targeting a cadence of every month or 2 on average. Beyond that, we've been providing disclosure about 2 months in advance as we get launch down-selected. I think with Blue Origin, I think we're all watching that. We were sad to see what happened in May, but they've made tremendous progress to date in both turning around the pad and getting resolution recently on the root cause for the anomaly. And so they're targeting this year. We're not betting on that necessarily. We'll be happy if they do it, but we're not betting on that in our numbers. And with a mix of launches, we think we can get to early 2027 for our initial 45 satellites.

That was great. And then on build cost per satellite, can you tell me where you are today and where you see that trending over the next 12 months?