New York, March 3, 2026, 06:25 ET — Premarket
AST SpaceMobile shares rose about 9.7% to $86.92 in premarket trade on Tuesday, after the satellite-to-mobile company’s latest results and partner updates. The move values the company at roughly $17.6 billion.
The stock has become a proxy for a simple question: can AST turn a handful of big satellites and carrier deals into a real service on a predictable schedule. Every launch date and funding detail lands hard because the business is expensive to scale, and still early.
Orange on Monday said it would work with AST SpaceMobile and Satellite Connect Europe, a joint venture between AST and Vodafone, to push “direct-to-device” service in Europe. The approach lets standard smartphones connect to satellites without special hardware; Orange said it plans voice, SMS and data demonstrations in Romania in late 2026. 1
AST on Monday reported fourth-quarter revenue of $54.3 million, up from $1.9 million a year earlier, and full-year revenue of $70.9 million, up from $4.4 million. It posted a loss of 26 cents a share for the quarter and said it had $2.8 billion in cash, cash equivalents and restricted cash at year-end; it also pointed to more than $3.9 billion of liquidity on a pro-forma basis after a February convertible-notes deal and available “ATM” capacity, an at-the-market program that allows shares to be sold into the market. “For the first time in 2025, AST SpaceMobile became a revenue generating business,” CEO Abel Avellan said in the release. 2
Analysts tracked by Nasdaq had been looking for a quarterly loss of 18 cents a share ahead of the report. The gap between losses and revenue momentum is one reason the stock can swing fast around updates like this. 3
On operations, AST said BlueBird 7 — a satellite it describes as identical to BlueBird 6 — is already encapsulated at Cape Canaveral and awaiting launch during March on Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket. The company said additional launches are expected every one to two months on average as it works toward having 45 to 60 satellites in orbit by the end of 2026. 4
The company has been trying to stack proof points beyond launches. It highlighted more than $1.2 billion of contracted revenue commitments, a $175 million commercial prepayment from stc Group and U.S. government work, including a $30 million Space Development Agency award and a prime contract position on the Missile Defense Agency’s SHIELD program. 5
But the calendar is not locked. A deployment plan included in the company’s materials warned that satellite timing depends on finishing assembly and tests and clearing regulatory approvals, “many of which are beyond our control.” 6
For traders, that’s the downside case in plain terms: a slipped launch window or a slower cadence can push back coverage targets and delay the point where service revenue matters more than gateway deliveries and milestones.
Regular trading will test whether the premarket bid holds once volumes thicken. The next near-term catalyst is whether AST can hit the March launch it has outlined and keep the follow-on cadence it is flagging into the spring. 7
