AST SpaceMobile (ASTS) faces an uphill battle to compete with Starlink and without a single retail customer, the company’s share price has “once again overshoot to what we see as irrational levels,” says Scotiabank analyst Andres Coello, earning the stock a recommendation to Sell and a $45.60 target price that implies 53% downside to Tuesday’s closing price.
Coello warns investors that they will have to wait until 2028 or 2029 for tangible equity free cash flow generation, while competing with Starlink, “a leader that already has, in terms of revenue, the equivalent of 340 million global DTC users,” a number that will reach ~680 million by the time ASTS launches in select markets.
“While it has been an ordeal for ASTS to launch seven satellites since 2017, in 2025 alone, Starlink orbited 3,169 units,” Coello adds.
Despite the disparity between Starlink and ASTS, Coello considers the company’s large satellites “one of the great technological breakthroughs of our time.” Unfortunately, the five-year delay in deploying the satellites allowed Starlink to not only get two years ahead of ASTS in the direct-to-cell race, but to become the “absolute leader” on the satellite fixed-broadband side in 150 countries.
“As little as a 48-hour delay means ASTS will fall further behind Starlink, which is completing a mission every one to two days,” Coello says, adding that Starlink’s integration with SpaceX means it does not have to depend on others to orbit its satellites as ASTS does.
But despite the disadvantages to Starlink, Coello warns that shorting ASTS presents risks as well. He cites a photo of ASTS CEO Abel Avellan next to Jeff Bezos titled “Amazing things are happening at AST & Science + @blueorigin.” In the photo, Avellan was wearing a visiting badge while Bezos was not suggesting the ASTS CEO was at a Blue Origin launch site. While Coello thinks Amazon’s Project Kuiper’s (now Amazon LEO) “plate may be full when thinking about investing in new satellite technology,” it makes sense for Kuiper to seek synergies with ASTS.
After gaining as much as 34% over the previous three days, Scotiabank’s downgrade of AST SpaceMobile (ASTS) to Sector Underperform from Sector Perform led to an 8% decline in shares on Wednesday.