SpaceX Buys Spectrum; Carrier Stocks Fall Up to 7% Premarket
SpaceX agreed last night to buy Grain Management's nationwide 800 MHz spectrum portfolio. The package covers 14 MHz of low-band spectrum. The price was not disclosed, and the deal needs FCC approval.
UBS says this is the layer Starlink Mobile needs to reach dense cities and building interiors that its satellites cannot. SpaceX says it aims to become a major U.S. mobile carrier.
In premarket trading, T-Mobile is down 7.2%, AT&T 6.9% and Verizon 5.7%. SpaceX is up 3.2%. The market did not read this as a satellite story; it read it as a warning of price competition for the carriers.
Yesterday's Nasdaq slide came from OpenAI. The Financial Times reported its direct annualized revenue at about $50B at the end of September, against the $70B previously cited. The gap largely reflects whether cloud partner sales are counted.
The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index fell 3.4% yesterday. Nvidia lost about 3%, AMD 4% and Oracle more than 5%. Chip stocks are rebounding 1.2%-1.6% this morning.
