Momentus

Phase A — Understand the business

Lens 1 · Company Overview

Momentus is a "commercial space infrastructure" company. Per its own framing, it offers (or plans to offer — the hedging is constant) five product lines:

1. Space transportation — a "hub-and-spoke" model: ride-share the customer's satellite to a drop-off orbit on a partner rocket (primarily SpaceX), then use a Momentus Orbital Service Vehicle (OSV) — the Vigoride — to tug the payload "last mile" to a precise custom orbit.
2. Hosted payloads — bolt a customer's instrument onto a Momentus bus that shares power/comms; the customer tests a capability in orbit without buying a whole satellite. This is what actually generated 2025–26 revenue.
3. Satellite buses / constellation buses — high-volume production of low-cost buses (M-500, M-1000 variants introduced Aug 2023) sold as a traditional prime contractor.
4. Satellite components — the TASSA solar array, 3D-printed propulsion tanks, MET thrusters.
5. In-orbit servicing (future) — inspection, refueling, life-extension, de-orbit, debris removal. Aspirational; requires Rendezvous & Proximity Operations (RPO) the company is only now demonstrating.

Core technology. The MET uses water as propellant — non-toxic, easy to handle, high specific impulse — and Momentus claims TRL-9 ("hundreds of successful firings in space"). The TASSA is a deployable/retractable solar array pitched as substantially cheaper than competitors. IP estate as of 12/31/25: eight U.S. issued patents, four non-U.S. issued, one additional application family — a thin portfolio.

Customers. Government and commercial satellite operators. In practice the 2025–26 revenue is overwhelmingly U.S. government / defense-adjacent: NASA, DARPA, AFRL, the U.S. Space Force's SpaceWERX (which awarded a Direct-to-Phase-II SBIR for an RPO sensor suite), plus commercial names flying on Vigoride 7 (Orbit Fab, Portal Space Systems, CisLunar Industries, DPhi Space, Solstar). The customers.csv on disk is empty — no per-customer revenue concentration is compiled, so concentration below is inferred from disclosure.

Contract structure. Hosted-payload and engineering-services contracts, recognized over time as performance obligations are satisfied. No take-or-pay, no recurring SaaS-like base — revenue is project-lumpy (the 10x YoY Q1 swing, $0.3M → $3.2M, proves it). Backlog is not quantified anywhere in the 10-K beyond risk-factor boilerplate about "converting backlog or inbound inquiries into revenue" — a tell that backlog is immaterial or undisclosed.

Bottom line: a pre-commercial space-logistics option with one genuinely-differentiated subsystem (water-plasma propulsion), monetized today as a government hosted-payload integrator, wrapped in a much larger "someday in-orbit servicing" story.

Lens 2 · Supply Chain

The commercial-layer supply-chain.md for the space topic is missing (the briefing flags it), so this is mapped from the 10-K + web. Named stakeholders along the chain:

Upstream (inputs into Momentus):

• Launch providers (the critical dependency): Momentus does not launch — it buys ride-share. Named relationships: SpaceX (primary; Vigoride 7 flew on Transporter-16), Relativity Space, Blue Origin, United Launch Alliance (ULA), Rocket Factory Augsburg (RFA). SpaceX Transporter ride-share is the single most important supplier — pricing, cadence, and manifest slots are all SpaceX-controlled.
• Additive manufacturing: Velo3D — strategic partner producing a 3D-printed metal fuel tank flight-tested on Vigoride 7. Note Velo3D is itself a distressed post-SPAC additive-manufacturing name (recently raised ~$30M) — a fragile supplier.
• Components / raw materials: the 10-K explicitly warns Momentus relies "on a limited number of suppliers for certain raw materials, specialized labor, and supplied components" — i.e. single-source exposure on inputs, unquantified.
• Specialized labor with security clearances — a named constraint given the defense customer mix.

Momentus (the integrator): designs/builds the Vigoride OSV and buses in San Jose (1762 Automation Parkway), integrates customer payloads, obtains FCC/export licenses, operates the vehicle on orbit.

Downstream (end customers): U.S. government (NASA, DARPA, AFRL, SpaceWERX) + commercial satellite operators / space-tech startups (Orbit Fab, Portal Space, CisLunar, DPhi, Solstar).

Chokepoints / single-source dependencies:

• Launch access = the master chokepoint. No SpaceX slot, no mission. Momentus is a price-taker on the most important line of its cost stack (cost of revenue is "primarily third-party launch costs").
• Capital is the real upstream input. The genuine "supply chain" here is the equity market: every mission is funded by a fresh stock issuance (Lens 5/9). The supplier of last resort is AGP's ATM desk.
• Regulatory licensing (FCC, export/ITAR) is a non-negotiable gate on every mission.

This lens is thin by necessity — Momentus is small enough that its "supply chain" is mostly "buy a SpaceX seat, integrate in-house, get a license."

Lens 3 · Competitive Advantages (moats)

Claimed moats: (1) modular common technology across vehicles; (2) patent-pending water-plasma propulsion; (3) launch-provider compatibility/relationships; (4) an experienced management team (ex-DoD, Raytheon, Lockheed, Maxar, ULA, Northrop).

Honest assessment — the moat is shallow-to-nonexistent at current scale:

• Water-plasma propulsion (MET) is the one defensible differentiator — non-toxic propellant, demonstrated on orbit, eight issued patents. But electric/chemical propulsion is a crowded field, and the company itself says it can swap in third-party chemical/electric thrusters, undercutting the "our thruster is the moat" story.
• Switching costs: low. Hosted-payload and last-mile tug services are substitutable. A customer can fly the same payload on D-Orbit's ION, Impulse Space's Mira, Exolaunch, or Spaceflight, or simply buy a dedicated SpaceX rideshare slot.
• Network effects: none. Brand: negative — the SPAC-fraud heritage is a reputational liability with exactly the government customers it needs (Lens 10).
• Scale: anti-moat. At $1–10M revenue and 35 employees, Momentus is sub-scale against vertically-integrated, well-funded rivals.
• Bargaining power: weak both ways. It needs SpaceX more than SpaceX needs it; it needs each customer more than the customer needs it (it is one of many tug/host options).

The only real edge is credibility-as-a-defense-vendor — John Rood's national-security résumé reopened the U.S.-government door that founder Kokorich's CFIUS problem had slammed shut. That is a relationship/clearance moat, not a technology moat, and it is personal to Rood.

Lens 4 · Segments

segments.csv is empty — Momentus does not report multiple segments. It operates as a single reportable segment reviewed by the CEO as chief operating decision-maker. All revenue is "Service revenue."

By the only available cut — period and (inferred) end-market:

Trend & cause. FY2025 revenue fell 47% as the Vigoride 5/6 performance obligations wound down. Then Q1 2026 exploded to $3.2M — more than all of FY2025 in a single quarter — driven by the Vigoride 7 hosted-payload mission and government engineering-services work. Management now guides ~$10M FY2026 revenue. Geographic split is not disclosed; the de-facto concentration is U.S. government. The takeaway: revenue is mission-gated and binary — it spikes when a Vigoride flies and collapses between missions. There is no smooth segment trend to extrapolate; there is a launch calendar.

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Phase B — Measure performance

Lens 5 · Earnings Result

FY2025 income statement:

Q1 2026: Service revenue $3,215K (vs $322K), cost of revenue $1,398K, R&D $4,169K, SG&A $6,340K, total opex $10,509K, loss from operations $(8,692)K, net loss $(9,480)K (vs $(6,172)K — loss widened YoY despite the revenue jump, because opex scaled with the Vigoride 7 campaign).

Read-through:

• Revenue is de minimis relative to the cost base. FY2025 generated $1.1M of revenue while spending $28.4M to operate — a ~25:1 burn-to-revenue ratio. The cost structure is essentially fixed R&D + SG&A for a company with almost no commercial output.
• Cost of revenue near-zero in FY25 ($2K) means the trivial revenue carried ~100% gross margin — but that is an artifact of recognizing residual obligations, not a margin story. Q1 2026 cost of revenue ($1,398K on $3,215K revenue, ~57% gross margin) is more representative once a real mission is flying.
• The losses are shrinking only because the company is shrinking (headcount cuts, restructurings), not because it is scaling toward profitability.

Balance sheet (12/31/25): Total assets $40.3M (up sharply from $9.95M a year earlier — financing-driven: cash + a $9.3M "prepaids/other current assets" line that includes prepaid launch/services, + $11.3M restricted cash), total liabilities $23.2M, stockholders' equity swung to +$17.1M from a $(7.8)M deficit — entirely because of equity raises, not earnings.

Cash flow: Net cash used in operating activities $(23.3)M in FY2025 (vs $(16.6)M FY2024) — burn accelerated by ~40%. Against year-end cash of $12.8M, that is roughly half a year of runway absent new financing — which is exactly why the going-concern flag was raised.

Guidance & tone change. The pivotal disclosure shift: the 10-K (March 2026) carried explicit going-concern / substantial-doubt language; the Q1 10-Q (May 2026) states "substantial doubt no longer exists" after ~$84.6M of post-year-end raises lifted cash to ~$76M. Tone flipped from survival to "executing long-term growth strategy."

Market reaction: violent. MNTS ran from a $4.57 close (May 1) to $13.85 (May 26), +200%+, on the Q1 print + going-concern removal + SpaceX-IPO-halo, then bled back toward ~$7.30 by June 29. This is squeeze-and-fade behavior, not fundamental re-rating.

Lens 6 · Earnings Calls (sentiment trend)

transcripts/ is empty (none ingested; the small-cap calls are not on Fool/Insider-Monkey). Sentiment is reconstructed from filings + press releases, so treat the trend as ``-derived.

Trajectory of management messaging over the last ~4 quarters:

• Mid-2025: existential. Repeated reverse-split announcements, Nasdaq deficiency letters, going-concern emphasis. Theme: survival and compliance.
• Late 2025 (Dec): the 1-for-17.85 reverse split — framed as "making the bid price attractive to institutional investors," but the market read it as a desperation move (shares fell on the announcement).
• Early 2026 (Jan–Mar): pivot to mission narrative — Velo3D 3D-printed tank, Vigoride 7 prep, 10 hosted payloads, SpaceWERX RPO award. Theme: we have real technology and real government customers.
• Q1 2026 (Apr–Jun): triumphal — "strengthened balance sheet, $76M cash, debt-free," "going-concern doubt removed," "~$10M revenue guide," Vigoride 8 fully subscribed for NASA in 2027. Theme: turnaround / long-term growth.

Recurring phrases: "in-space infrastructure services," "modular vehicles," "water plasma propulsion," "flight heritage," "fully subscribed." What they stopped saying: the going-concern caveat (dropped in May 2026) and the reverse-split/compliance language (resolved). The sentiment arc is genuinely improving — but it tracks the financing window and one successful deployment, not durable commercial traction. The risk is that the same arc has played before (post-2021 it was also "real technology, real customers") and ended in two reverse splits.

Lens 7 · Comps

Momentus is nearly un-comparable on multiples — it has almost no revenue, so EV/Sales is meaningless-to-absurd and there are no earnings for P/E. Multiples below are ``; where a clean figure isn't sourceable it is marked n/a. ROE for a company with a $438.6M accumulated deficit and equity that only just turned positive is not meaningful (n/m).

What the table says: the credible public space-infrastructure names trade on hundreds of millions of revenue (Redwire ~5.7x sales; Rocket Lab ~73x sales on a growth premium). Momentus has ~$10M of guided revenue and a market cap that is a rounding error and a function of float-squeeze mechanics, not fundamentals. On its FY2025 actual $1.1M, the ~$42M cap is ~38x trailing sales for a shrinking, loss-making, serially-diluting micro-cap. There is no multiple at which this is "cheap"; it is an option on execution, priced by sentiment.

Lens 8 · Stock-Price Catalysts

What has moved MNTS >5% over its public life:

• 2021-07 — SEC fraud charges + $7M settlement (founding event; permanent reputational scar). Down.
• 2022 — Vigoride 3 inaugural mission anomalies (solar-array deployment problems, couldn't complete tech demos). Down.
• 2023–2025 — serial dilution & Nasdaq compliance saga — deficiency letters, two reverse splits (1-for-14, then 1-for-17.85 effective Dec 17, 2025), repeated ATM/PIPE raises. Each issuance announcement = a leg down (e.g. −27% on a $25M offering; −16% premarket on a registered direct).
• 2026-01 — Velo3D partnership / Vigoride 7 prep. Up.
• 2026-04 — Vigoride 7 deployment off Transporter-16. Up.
• 2026-05 — Q1 print ($3.2M rev) + going-concern removal. +200%+ squeeze ($4.57 → $13.85).
• 2026-Q2 — SpaceX $1.75T IPO halo lifting the entire space complex; MNTS +145% YTD at one point.
• 2026-06 — new $75M ATM filing. Down (dilution).

Pattern: MNTS reacts to exactly two things — (1) dilution events (always down) and (2) narrative/mission/macro-halo events (sharp, short-lived squeezes up). It does not re-rate on fundamentals because there are none to anchor to. This is a catalyst-and-float trading vehicle: low share count post-split (5.7M → ~10M and climbing), high retail interest, SpaceX-IPO beta. The tape rewards momentum and punishes the inevitable next raise.

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Phase C — Judge people & books

Lens 9 · Management

CEO / President / Chairman: John C. Rood (since Aug 2021). The defining fact about Momentus's management is that Rood was installed as the fix for the fraud. Background:

• Under Secretary of Defense for Policy (2018–Feb 2020) — principal policy advisor to the SecDef. (Notably, asked to resign by President Trump in Feb 2020.)
• SVP Lockheed Martin International (2016–2018); VP US Business Development at Raytheon (2009–2014); senior State Dept / NSC / CIA roles.
• Track record: a career national-security-policy and defense-BD executive, not an operator who has built and scaled a hardware company to profitability. His quantified Momentus deliverable is modest: took the company public, launched its first OSVs, "placed eight customer satellites in orbit." He has not delivered profitability, scale, or a stable share price.

Why he matters: Rood's clearances and DoD relationships are the asset. Founder Mikhail Kokorich (Russian-born) was a CFIUS national-security problem that blocked the licenses Momentus needs; the SEC found Momentus misrepresented how badly that undermined its licensing. Rood is the American defense insider who made Momentus fundable by U.S. government customers again. CFO: Lon Ensler.

Skin in the game / insider ownership: thin. The 10-K shows the meaningful equity holders are the financing counterparties — serial warrant investors (March/Aug/Oct/Dec 2025 warrant tranches, each with 9.99% beneficial-ownership blockers) and entities like "SIV" (Space Infrastructures Ventures) — i.e. the cap table is dominated by dilutive financiers, not aligned founder/insider stakes. After two reverse splits and constant issuance, original insider stakes are heavily diluted.

Capital-allocation history: value-destructive by necessity. $438.6M of cumulative losses funded almost entirely by equity; two reverse splits; ROE/ROIC deeply negative throughout. Management's "capital allocation" is serial dilution — there is no buyback, no acquisition discipline, no FCF to allocate. To their credit, the company is now debt-free with ~$76M cash, and they have repeatedly avoided delisting and bankruptcy — survival itself is a (low-bar) achievement.

Founder vs. professional manager: decisively professional/turnaround manager (the founder was forced out). Implication: Momentus is run by a credentialed fixer optimizing for survival, government access, and narrative — appropriate for its stage, but it means the company lacks a technical founder-visionary driving the product, and the CEO's edge (DoD relationships) is personal and non-transferable.

Red flags: the entire founding fraud (Lens 10); pay-vendors/settle-disputes-in-stock behavior (e.g. issuing 5,723 shares to a vendor in March 2026 to settle payables ); a cap table built on toxic-adjacent warrant financing.

Lens 10 · Forensic Red Flags

Accounting-statement risks:

• Going-concern whiplash (the #1 flag). The 10-K (Mar 2026) disclosed substantial doubt; the 10-Q (May 2026) removed it after post-quarter raises. The doubt was removed by financing, not by operations — burn is still ~$23M/yr against ~$10M of guided revenue, so the going-concern question will recur the moment the cash window closes. Treat "doubt removed" as a temporary, financing-dependent state.
• Revenue recognition / lumpiness. Service revenue swings 10x quarter-to-quarter ($0.3M → $3.2M) on mission timing and over-time performance-obligation recognition. Tiny absolute numbers make any single contract's timing material to the trend — easy to flatter a quarter.
• Equity-classified vs. liability-classified instruments — fair-value noise. The ELOC pre-funded warrants are liability-classified, Level 3 fair-valued. Changes in fair value of derivatives/warrants flow through the P&L and can distort "other income/expense" and the bottom line independent of operations. With many warrant tranches outstanding (2,096,947 warrants in one block alone, plus numerous smaller tranches), mark-to-market swings are a recurring non-operating distortion.
• Stock-based comp & stock-for-payables flatter cash burn vs. GAAP loss; paying vendors in shares (Mar 2026) shifts cost off the cash statement onto dilution.
• Restricted cash $11.3M is a large share of the balance sheet — encumbered, not freely available; the "$76M cash" headline should be read net of restrictions.
• Material weakness: a prior material weakness (misclassification errors) was disclosed and management states it has been remediated and ICFR is now effective. Worth monitoring given a small finance team and a small auditor (Frank, Rimerman + Co. LLP, San Francisco — a regional firm, not a Big Four).

Regulatory findings (required sub-section):

• SEC EDGAR EFTS (LR + AAER): regulatory/regulatory-findings.md reports 0 Litigation Releases and 0 AAERs naming Momentus in 2021-06-30 → 2026-06-30. However, this understates reality: the landmark action was an administrative cease-and-desist settlement, not an LR/AAER, so it does not appear in those two indices.
• The founding fraud (the central red flag): The SEC charged the Stable Road SPAC, its sponsor (SRC-NI), its CEO Brian Kabot, Momentus, and founder Mikhail Kokorich for misleading disclosures. Findings: Momentus repeatedly told investors it had "successfully tested" its propulsion technology in space when its only in-space test had FAILED to achieve its primary objectives; and it misrepresented the national-security (CFIUS) concerns around Kokorich that undermined its ability to get licenses. Settlement (no admit/deny): Momentus paid $7M, Stable Road $1M, Kabot $40,000; sponsor forfeited founder shares; investor-protection undertakings imposed. SEC litigation continued against Kokorich in D.D.C. This is the most important single fact in the dossier: the company's origin story was a securities fraud about the very technology and government-access that are its thesis.
• Civil litigation (Item 3 + notes): Multiple shareholder derivative actions (Lindsey, Rivlin, Hanna; "Derivative Action II" names CEO John Rood) echoing the Securities Class Actions; the Securities Class Action was settled and paid in full; an ongoing insurance-coverage dispute with ANV (the Side-A D&O insurer) — agreed in principle April 2026 to settle for ~$1M. Item 3 itself states management does not consider pending proceedings, individually or in aggregate, currently likely to be material — but the litigation tail is entirely fraud-derived.
• Non-SEC agencies (web search): No material FTC/DOJ/FDA/CFPB enforcement found. Export-control/ITAR compliance is an ongoing risk (heavily flagged in risk factors) but no enforcement action is on record.
• Net: SEC EDGAR LR/AAER clean, but a defining 2021 SEC fraud settlement ($7M) + a heavy fraud-derived civil-litigation tail. Verified via SEC EDGAR EFTS (LR, AAER), SEC press release 2021-124, web search, and 10-K Item 3 as of 2026-06-30.

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Phase D — Project & stress-test

Lens 11 · Forward Projection

Momentus does not give multi-year EPS guidance; it guides only ~$10M FY2026 revenue. EPS is deeply negative and dominated by a moving, diluting share count (5.73M shares at the 10-K → ~9.99M by mid-May → climbing as the $75M ATM is used). Projecting EPS three years out for a pre-commercial serial-diluter is low-confidence by construction; I give a directional range and explicitly refuse to manufacture false precision. No forecast.ts logged (unattended --watchlist; no committed base case — this is a watch, not a conviction position).

Inputs:

• Revenue: FY2026 ~$10M (mgmt guide); FY2027 ~$15–25M if Vigoride 8 (NASA, fully subscribed, 2027) flies and 1–2 new missions convert; FY2028 highly path-dependent — could be $25–50M if servicing/bus contracts scale, or flat-to-down if missions slip.
• Opex: roughly fixed ~$30–40M/yr R&D+SG&A, scaling with mission cadence.
• Net loss: ~$25–35M/yr continuing for the foreseeable future; positive operating income is not in view on a 3-year horizon without a step-change in contract scale.
• Shares: diluting materially every year via ATM/PIPE/warrants — the per-share denominator is a headwind that swamps any modeling.

Three-year EPS path:

• Bear: missions slip / a Vigoride fails / revenue stalls near $5–10M; continued $25–30M losses; heavy dilution → another reverse split possible. EPS deeply negative; equity → near-zero.
• Base: revenue $10M (FY26) → ~$18M (FY27) → ~$30M (FY28); losses persist ~$25–30M/yr; share count up 30–50%/yr. Still loss-making in FY28; EPS negative throughout.
• Bull: Vigoride 7/8 RPO+servicing demos succeed → larger DoD/NASA servicing and bus contracts → revenue $10M → $30M → $60M+; losses narrow toward breakeven by ~FY29; the SpaceX-IPO halo sustains a financing premium so dilution is "cheap." Even here, GAAP profitability is beyond the 3-year window.

The honest projection: there is no credible path to positive EPS within three fiscal years. The investable question is not "what's the EPS" — it's "does the cash runway (~$76M, mid-2026) reach enough revenue-generating missions to keep the equity window open without a value-destroying down-round or another reverse split?" At ~$23M/yr operating burn, $76M is ~3 years of runway if burn doesn't rise — but burn rises with mission cadence, and the $75M ATM signals management expects to keep tapping the market.

Lens 12 · Bull vs Bear

Bull case. Momentus is a cheap (~$42M) call option on three converging tailwinds: (1) a structurally growing space-logistics/in-orbit-servicing market (autonomous space-tug market ~$1.8B in 2026 → ~$3.3B by 2030 at ~16.6% CAGR; orbital-transfer tug forecasts as high as ~$7.9B by 2033 ); (2) genuinely differentiated, flight-proven water-plasma propulsion and a credible DoD/NASA customer roster (SpaceWERX RPO award, NASA Space Act Agreement, Vigoride 8 NASA-subscribed); (3) a defense-credentialed CEO who reopened the government channel. With going-concern doubt removed, ~$76M cash, debt-free, and Vigoride 7 flying 10 real payloads, the survival overhang has lifted — and in a SpaceX-$1.75T-IPO-halo environment, a sub-scale name with real hardware and a low float can re-rate violently (it already ran +200% on the Q1 print). If the RPO/servicing demos succeed, Momentus becomes an acquisition target or a genuine niche servicing prime.

Bear case (the structural reality — 2–3 permanent-impairment risks):

1. The economics don't work and may never. $1.1M revenue / $28M opex / $30.5M loss / $438.6M accumulated deficit. The model has been "almost commercial" for five years and produced two reverse splits. Sub-scale against vertically-integrated, better-funded rivals (Impulse, D-Orbit, Astroscale, Rocket Lab), with no moat, low switching costs, and a negative brand.
2. Perpetual dilution is the business model. Every mission is equity-funded; the share count compounds (5.7M → 10M+ in two months) and a fresh $75M ATM is loaded. Equity holders are diluted continuously; the stock falls on every raise. This is mathematically hostile to long-term holders.
3. Mission/technology failure risk is existential. One Vigoride loss (and Vigoride 3 already under-delivered) destroys the narrative and the financing window simultaneously. A 35-person company has no margin for a failed mission.

Pre-mortem (18 months out, thesis broke): Vigoride 7's RPO/servicing demos disappointed or a subsequent mission failed; the SpaceX-IPO halo faded and the space-momentum trade reversed; the $75M ATM got used at progressively lower prices, the stock slid back below $1 post-dilution, and a third reverse split was announced — going-concern doubt returned. The squeeze-buyers from May 2026 were the exit liquidity.

Are multiples too high? There is no multiple — it's an option priced on sentiment. At ~38x trailing actual sales (and only ~4x on a guided number management has every incentive to hit-or-miss), it is expensive for what it is: a pre-commercial, cash-burning micro-cap. The market is pricing optionality + squeeze mechanics, not cash flows.

Contrarian view (what the market refuses to see): Bulls see "debt-free, $76M cash, going-concern removed, revenue +900%, SpaceX halo" and price a turnaround. The contrarian read: the going-concern removal is the tell, not the all-clear — it was bought with $84.6M of dilution at squeeze-inflated prices, which is precisely how this management funds a structurally-unprofitable business between narrative spikes. The +900% revenue is $0.3M → $3.2M — a single mission, not a trend. The most dangerous thing for new shareholders is that the company is now well-capitalized enough to keep diluting them for two more years without the discipline of an imminent bankruptcy.

Lens 13 · Devil's Advocate (short-seller)

Dismantling the bull case:

• What structurally breaks the money-making? It was never built. Five years post-SPAC, peak annual revenue is ~$2M and falling; the "commercial" model is a government hosted-payload integrator with ~$10M of hoped-for revenue against ~$30M of cost. There is no operating leverage in sight.
• Revenue concentration: effectively U.S. government + a handful of small commercial payloads, recognized lumpily on mission timing. Lose or slip one mission and revenue halves. SpaceWERX/NASA budget priorities (and DoD program risk, explicitly flagged) can cut it off.
• Why the moat is weaker than bulls think: water-plasma propulsion is nice but swappable (the company itself offers chemical/electric alternatives); hosted-payload and last-mile tug are commoditized services with multiple substitutes; brand is a liability with the exact government buyers it courts.
• Most dangerous competitor bulls underestimate: Impulse Space — founded by SpaceX's Tom Mueller, far better funded, building Mira (LEO) and Helios (high-energy) tugs; it can out-capitalize and out-engineer Momentus on the same missions. Plus D-Orbit (real commercial last-mile heritage) and Astroscale (the servicing/RPO leader). Momentus is the smallest, weakest-balance-sheet player in a field about to consolidate.
• Worst capital-allocation / governance: the founding securities fraud (Momentus paid $7M; founder charged); a cap table built on toxic-adjacent warrant/ELOC financing with 9.99% blockers; paying vendors and settling disputes in stock; two reverse splits in a year. Incentives are oriented around survival-via-issuance, which is misaligned with buy-and-hold shareholders.
• What must hold for today's price? That the SpaceX-IPO halo + low float keep a squeeze premium alive, and that Vigoride 7/8 succeed, and that dilution stays "cheap." Three fragile conditions.
• If growth disappoints 20–30%: there's barely any growth to disappoint — but a missed $10M guide (very plausible given lumpiness) or a mission slip would collapse the narrative and the financing window, and the equity (already a squeeze artifact) would round-trip the entire May rally.
• Single scenario that permanently impairs: a Vigoride mission failure (loss of vehicle / customer payloads). It would simultaneously destroy the technology-credibility thesis, the government-customer pipeline, and the ability to raise equity — for a 35-person, equity-funded company, that is terminal. Plausibility: non-trivial (1 of ~4 missions has already materially under-delivered).

Lens 14 · Management Questions (ordered by information value)

1. At your current ~$23M+ annual operating burn, exactly how many revenue-generating missions does the present ~$76M cash fund, and what is the burn rate with a normal Vigoride mission cadence baked in?
2. What is the contracted, funded backlog in dollars (not "inbound inquiries") that converts to revenue in the next eight quarters — and what share is firm vs. optional?
3. The $10M FY2026 revenue guide: how much is already under signed contract today, and how much depends on missions not yet manifested or funded?
4. With the new $75M ATM stacked on the $50M just used, what is your expected share-count trajectory over the next two years, and at what point would you consider a third reverse split?
5. What were the quantified results of Vigoride 7's autonomous RPO and in-space-assembly demonstrations — did the multispectral RPO sensor suite and the NASA formation-flying objectives meet their primary success criteria?
6. Given Impulse Space, D-Orbit, and Astroscale are better-capitalized on the same missions, what specifically wins you a contract over them beyond price — and are you winning on price (i.e. below cost)?
7. How dependent is your U.S.-government revenue on specific SpaceWERX/AFRL/NASA line items that could be cut, and what is the concentration of your top customer?
8. What is the unit economics of a single Vigoride hosted-payload mission today — revenue, launch cost, integration cost, and gross margin per mission?
9. How transferable is the company's government-access advantage if John Rood were to depart — is the relationship/clearance moat institutional or personal?
10. What is the realistic timeline and incremental capital required to make OSVs reusable (the stated cost-down lever), and is that capital in the current plan?
11. What is the status and expected cost of the remaining ANV insurance-coverage matter and any residual fraud-derived derivative litigation?
12. Of the $76M cash, how much is restricted, and what are the encumbrances?
13. The ELOC pre-funded warrants and multiple warrant tranches: what is the maximum incremental share issuance from full exercise of all outstanding warrants/convertibles?
14. What gross-margin profile do you target at scale, and what annual revenue run-rate produces operating breakeven?
15. What is your honest assessment of the probability that a single mission failure would impair the company's ability to raise capital — and what is the contingency?

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