AST SpaceMobile Stock Rides Out Earnings Miss

AST SpaceMobile computer chips are used in the company’s BlueWalker 3 test satellite. Coming into the week, AST stock was up 228% this year. (Courtesy AST)

Key Points

• AST SpaceMobile reported a third-quarter per-share loss of 45 cents on sales of $14.7 million, missing analyst expectations.
• AST SpaceMobile’s stock was up, despite the weaker-than-expected third-quarter results.
• The company’s stock has risen over 225% year to date, driven by increased investor interest in space communications.

Shares of AST SpaceMobile held their ground even though the company announced weaker-than-expected third-quarter results.

Monday, the satellite communications provider reported a third-quarter per-share loss of 45 cents from sales of $14.7 million. Wall Street was looking for a 22-cent loss from sales of $19.9 million. A year ago, in the third quarter of 2024, AST reported a $1.10 per-share loss from sales of $1.1 million.

ASTS stock traded as high as $71.50 on Tuesday before closing at $67.89, down 1.2%. The S&P 500 added 0.2% and the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 1.2%.

“AST SpaceMobile continues to lead the direct-to-device space-based cellular broadband industry,” said CEO Abel Avellan. “During the past few months, commercial activity has significantly accelerated, demonstrating the robust demand for our solution across the ecosystem.”

Increased activity should result in higher sales in the future. Wall Street projects 2026 sales of $267 million, up from projected 2025 revenue of $56.4 million, according to FactSet.

“We expect overweight-rated AST performs in line [Tuesday] versus the S&P 500 after confirming greater than $1 billion of committed revenue, reaffirming its outlook for satellite deployments as well as second-half 2025 sales, and delivering mostly in-line quarterly results vs. Street estimates,” wrote Cantor Fitzgerald analyst Colin Canfield in a Monday report.

Things look fine to him. Canfield’s price target for the stock is $80.

Things have been better than fine, lately. Coming into the week, AST stock was up more than 225% this year. Investors have bid up several space communications stocks as deals for broadband spectrum have surprised to the upside.

SpaceX, for instance, signed an agreement with EchoStar in September to buy spectrum licenses in a deal valued at some $17 billion. Coming into the week, EchoStar stock was up more than 220% this year.

Gains are pushing up AST’s valuation. Wall Street projects 2027 earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization, or Ebitda, of about $500 million, roughly flat over the past few months.

The result of stock and estimate changes is that today AST stock trades for about 50 times estimated 2027 Ebitda, up from about 12 times at the start of the year.

Write to Al Root at allen.root@dowjones.com