$AST SpaceMobile, Inc.(ASTS)$ shares have fallen more than 35% over the past 90 days, sliding from a May all-time high of $133.86 to the high-$50s to mid-$60s range where the stock trades now.
That's a dramatic round-trip for a company that just launched its largest satellites yet and reaffirmed full-year revenue guidance. Before SPR's technical coverage on ASTS updates next week, here's the fundamental picture: what's actually happening with the satellite build-out, where analysts have landed after a messy earnings quarter, and the fresh legal overhang that's now part of the story.
The News Behind the Move
Picture a company trying to build a cellular network in space, launching satellites three times larger than anything it's flown before, while simultaneously fighting a battle on two fronts — one against the physics of scaling a constellation, and another against a much better-funded rival that just went public. That's where AST SpaceMobile sits heading into next week. On August 5, the company successfully launched BlueBird satellites 11, 12, and 13 aboard a Falcon 9 rocket — the largest communications arrays ever deployed in low Earth orbit, more than three times the size of its original Block 1 units, designed to support peak data rates approaching 200 Mbps directly to ordinary smartphones. Production is now advancing through satellite 42, and the company has expanded its partnership network across Europe, with Vodafone, Orange, Telefónica, Deutsche Telekom, and Vodafone Ukraine now running network integration testing across eight countries.
The second-quarter earnings print that landed in early August was more mixed. Revenue came in at $31.5 million, below the $35.2 million analysts expected, and adjusted losses of $0.77 per share missed a projected $0.26 loss by a wide margin. But look past the headline miss and the sequential trend tells a different story — revenue more than doubled from $15.8 million in the first quarter, and management reaffirmed its full-year guidance of $150 million to $200 million, weighted heavily toward the fourth quarter as the network scales toward commercial service. The company also closed a $1.15 billion convertible notes offering in July, pushing pro forma liquidity above $3.7 billion against a $1.3 billion revenue backlog — capital it's burning quickly, with quarterly capital expenditures jumping from $257 million in the first quarter to $610 million in the second as satellite production accelerates.
What Wall Street Analysts Are Saying
The range of opinion on this stock is about as wide as it gets in large-cap coverage, and it's widened further since earnings.
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Cantor Fitzgerald — reiterated Overweight, raised its target to $90 following the Q2 print
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Berenberg — initiated coverage with a Buy rating and $92 target, citing falling launch costs across the space industry as a long-term tailwind
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Street consensus — 14 analysts covering the stock, with an average target near $80 and a blended figure that's actually been nudged higher in recent weeks (from roughly $71.51 to $78.48) even as individual targets get trimmed, reflecting refreshed models built around government demand and the reaffirmed guidance
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Full range — estimates span from a low of $42.50 to highs between $108 and $115 depending on the data source, implying upside north of 30% from current levels at the midpoint
That's an unusually wide spread even for a pre-commercial-scale growth story, and it says something important: analysts broadly agree the long-term opportunity is real, but they're nowhere close to agreeing on how much execution risk to price in along the way.
Is ASTS Overvalued or Undervalued?
Traditional valuation metrics don't do much work here — a company generating $31.5 million in quarterly revenue against losses of roughly $0.77 per share isn't one you value on a P/E multiple. The more useful lens is the gap between today's business and the one management is promising: $150–200 million in revenue this year, weighted almost entirely toward the back half, against a stated ambition of $1 billion in the company's first full year of commercial service. That's the entire investment case in one sentence — the stock is priced on a 2027-and-beyond narrative, not on 2026's actual numbers.
The balance sheet gives that narrative some runway. With over $3.7 billion in pro forma liquidity and a $1.3 billion contracted backlog, AST SpaceMobile isn't at near-term risk of running out of capital to finish the build-out. But the trajectory of spending — capex roughly doubling quarter-over-quarter — means the company will likely keep returning to capital markets, and each of those raises is a reminder of how much distance remains between today's revenue and the guidance analysts are underwriting their targets with.
The Risk Variables Investors Should Watch
Three threads worth following past next week:
A securities class action just entered the picture. In mid-September, shareholders filed suit alleging the company's disclosures around competitive pressure from Starlink and its pattern of capital raises misled investors — with at least one law firm publicly investigating additional claims on behalf of long-term shareholders. Litigation risk doesn't change the satellite math, but it adds a layer of overhang that wasn't part of the story even a month ago.
The competitive landscape just got a lot more well-capitalized. SpaceX's own direct-to-cell ambitions come from a company that recently completed its IPO at a valuation between $1.75 trillion and $2 trillion — a scale of resources that dwarfs AST SpaceMobile's balance sheet, even with billions in liquidity on hand. How the two companies' direct-to-device technologies compare on coverage and speed as both scale is likely to be a recurring theme in coverage from here.
Capital raises are a recurring, not one-time, event. Between the July convertible notes offering and a separate lawsuit over roughly $15 million in disputed finder's fees tied to earlier capital-raising activity, the pattern of returning to markets to fund an aggressive satellite production schedule is well-established — and analysts' own commentary suggests they expect it to continue.
If the Story Shifts From Here
Suppose the European carrier integration testing translates into signed commercial agreements before year-end, or fourth-quarter revenue comes in at the high end of the $150–200 million guidance range — that's the scenario where the $90–92 targets from Cantor Fitzgerald and Berenberg start to look conservative rather than aggressive. Now suppose instead the securities litigation expands, or satellite production hits delays the way earlier BlueBird launches sometimes have — that's the scenario where the $42.50 low-end target, and the stock's already-sharp pullback from its May highs, prove to be the more accurate read on how much execution risk this story still carries. Where the stock settles between those outcomes is exactly what next week's technical coverage is built to capture.
Conclusion
One-line takeaway: AST SpaceMobile's satellite build-out and European partnerships are genuinely advancing, but a Q2 miss, an accelerating cash burn, and a fresh securities lawsuit have widened the gap between the bull and bear case to nearly $75 a share — and next week's technical read will show which side the market is currently leaning toward.
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