NEW YORK, Jan 9, 2026, 10:48 EST
- AST SpaceMobile shares climbed about 8% on Friday after Bank of America raised its price target, coming a day after a Scotiabank downgrade sparked a double-digit drop.
- BofA lifted its price target to $100 from $85 and kept a Neutral rating; Scotiabank set a $45.60 target and downgraded the stock to Sell/Underperform.
- Analysts are divided on whether AST can ramp up quickly enough in satellite-to-phone service as competition from SpaceX’s Starlink heats up.
AST SpaceMobile shares climbed again Friday after Bank of America raised its price target, with the stock looking to find its footing after a steep drop sparked by a Scotiabank downgrade. The shares were up about 8% at $97.60 in morning trade.
The back-to-back calls highlight what’s on the line in the nascent “direct-to-cell” market, where companies are trying to link ordinary smartphones to satellites once users move beyond tower coverage. Investors have driven AST’s valuation sharply higher even though the business is still early, and that leaves little room for delays.
Bank of America lifted its price target — an analyst’s estimate of where the stock could trade over the next year — to $100 from $85 and kept a Neutral rating, TipRanks reported. The bank pointed to a 2026 outlook note calling for rising interest in low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite providers, referring to satellites that operate a few hundred miles above Earth.
Scotiabank analyst Andres Coello took the opposite tack this week, cutting AST to Underperform from Sector Perform and calling the rally disconnected from execution. In his client note, with shares at $97.60, Coello said the stock had “once again overshot” to “irrational levels,” putting the company’s value at about $37 billion.
https://investorsobserver.com/news/stock-u…
Coello also pointed to what he called the lack of a “single retail customer” and the lift required to get to continuous service — about 50 satellites in orbit by late 2026 or early 2027, according to The Motley Fool’s account of the note. He said adoption in the U.S. and Japan has been “slow,” pricing “modest,” and warned that heavy capital spending could push meaningful free cash flow — cash left after investment spending — out to 2028 or 2029.
https://www.fool.com/investing/2026/01/07/…
Valuation has become the whole argument. Barron’s said AST had surged 304% over the past 12 months before Wednesday’s selloff and was trading at more than 100 times analysts’ 2026 sales forecasts of about $270 million; it also said Wall Street expects sales to rise about tenfold from 2026 to 2029 and doesn’t see positive operating profit until 2027.
Still, the stock’s latest swings are a reminder the trade can turn fast if investors start judging the timeline more harshly. Coello pointed to Starlink’s “brand and scale” as a “major competitive headwind,” and set AST’s pace — seven satellites launched since 2017 — against Starlink’s ability to put 3,169 satellites into orbit in 2025 alone, InvestorsObserver reported.
AST says it’s building a satellite constellation meant to beam broadband straight to unmodified smartphones, with no specialized hardware required. Yahoo Finance said the stock’s midweek drop was sharper than the broader market’s move during the session.
