NEW YORK, January 9, 2026, 10:51 EST
- AST SpaceMobile shares were up about 9% in morning trading, rebounding after a sharp earlier-this-week slide triggered by a Scotiabank downgrade
- Scotiabank analyst Andres Coello put a $45.60 target on the stock and said the satellite-to-phone challenger is still coming up short on customers
- The direct-to-cell race is getting tighter as SpaceX’s Starlink rolls out similar service with major carrier partners
AST SpaceMobile shares were up about 9% on Friday morning, finding their footing after a midweek drop triggered by a Scotiabank downgrade that pointed to rising pressure from SpaceX’s Starlink and raised doubts about the company’s valuation.
The call matters now because the market is trying to price a business that has to spend heavily before it can sell much. In direct-to-cell, the first network to show it can deliver reliable coverage — and lock in carriers at scale — could wind up controlling the most profitable lanes.
Direct-to-cell is satellite coverage that links directly to standard phones using mobile spectrum, not a dedicated handset. The change has made launch pace, early user uptake and cash burn day-to-day trading triggers for smaller players like AST.
Scotiabank downgraded AST SpaceMobile to “Sector Underperform” and put a $45.60 price target on the stock, GuruFocus reported — about 54% below where the shares traded on Friday morning. “Sector underperform” signals the analyst sees the stock trailing its peers, not merely choppy trading. 1
Coello wrote that AST’s share price had “once again overshoot to what we see as irrational levels,” Seeking Alpha reported, and flagged the absence of “a single retail customer.” The note said sluggish adoption and heavy capital spending could delay meaningful free cash flow — cash left after operating costs and investment — until 2028 or 2029, and it described any tie-up with Amazon’s Project Kuiper as speculative. 2
AST has signed up telecom partners including Verizon and AT&T, though it still has to scale up its constellation to deliver continuous service. The company has said it plans to launch roughly “50 satellites” by “late 2026 or early 2027,” while adoption in the U.S. and Japan has been “slow” and pricing “modest,” The Motley Fool wrote, citing the Scotiabank note. 3
Starlink already sells broadband internet, and it’s also pressing ahead with direct-to-cell. On its website, Starlink says the service “works with every LTE phone” with no special hardware or apps. It also lists mobile partners including T-Mobile in the United States and KDDI in Japan. 4
AST says its next-generation BlueBird satellites are built to provide 24/7 high-speed cellular broadband straight to everyday smartphones. The company said its first next-gen satellite, BlueBird 6, lifted off on Dec. 23, 2025 from India and linked up with its earlier spacecraft in low Earth orbit. 5
Still, the bounce doesn’t get AST past the hard part: it needs to finance and pull off a fast buildout before Starlink locks in more leverage with broader coverage or tougher carrier deals. Blow the launch window, see take-up lag, or go back for another capital raise, and the selloff could flare again — keeping the shares whippy. Starlink’s speed is back in the spotlight, as one market blog put it this week. 6
