Hello, World!
Intro to Case
Self-Introduction
Hello all!
My name is Case and though not my official title, I consider myself to be a professional summarizer—succinctly identifying and communicating key points from new information is at the heart of what I love to do.
I have a background in equity research (previously worked on a team covering media and cable/telco), investor relations (worked on a top-ranked megacap team), and corporate finance (currently).
Unlike many of the people I follow on space twitter, I have NOT been interested in space since I was a child. Rather, I started following the industry within the last year when I first started hearing more about Starlink after the company’s successful acquisition of ~$900M in FCC subsidies in Dec. 2020 via the RDOF auction, to support deployment of high-speed broadband service in rural areas.
Image Source: Tesmanian.com
After learning both Elon Musk and SpaceX President & COO Gwen Stowell had previously hinted at Starlink potentially going public in the future, I started to learn as much as I could about the company. It seemed like a no-brainer to invest in another Musk company if Starlink was going public, but I wanted to have more concrete backup…and I wanted be ready to take action if/when the company was going to be listed.
This was early 2021, the same time that space-SPAC-mania was heating up, and in my research on Starlink I started to read the investor presentations for Rocket Lab…then Astra, AST SpaceMobile, Virgin Galactic, BlackSky, Spire Global, Redwire and Momentus. Then I dug into some of the more high-profile private companies in the space like Blue Origin and OneWeb. I burned through as many episodes of the TerraWatch Space podcasts as I could (shoutout @aravind_raves) and was still hungry for more.
There are far more space SPACs at this point, but this group is what got me interested in the industry.
Image source: twitter user @Tornike.eth
The promise of hyper-growth and a new era of space technology, including LEO connectivity, was intoxicating compared to the low to mid-single digit revenue growth of the legacy telco industry that I was more familiar with—I had no choice but to keep digging into the space industry simply because it was exciting.
It has been a fun exercise to apply what I’ve learned in equity research, investor relations and corp finance as I follow the emergence of the new space sector in the public equity markets. The new space SPAC stocks are relatively early stage companies compared to already public, legacy space companies like DISH, Viasat, Maxar, and Iridium, and these new space companies still have significant technical and financial milestones ahead of them—I can’t wait to see how their maturation unfolds and if company execs are able to manage messaging to the Street in a way so that their respective stocks go up…something much easier said than done.
Let’s Connect
If you are reading this, you probably follow me on twitter, but if you don’t already follow me then you should—I would love to connect with more people who are interested in discussing specific space companies or space industry themes.
If interested, feel free to reach out via twitter and we can set up time to chat offline—I would enjoy the opportunity to discuss the space industry and/or specific companies with people who have different perspectives than myself!