NextNav (NN) Beats in Q3 and Has $291 Million in Cash, but the Stock Still Waits on the FCC

Written about 10:00 PM ET Tuesday, Nov 10, 2026. All times Eastern. Company figures are from NextNav's third-quarter release and call on Nov. 10; after-hours prices are as of the 6:42 PM ET trade.

This is our third standalone look at NN. We laid out the bull case in Why We Like NextNav (NN) on Oct. 13 at $11.77 and covered the SpaceX filing spike in our Oct. 26 piece. Since then the stock has lost 29% of the Oct. 12 price we used in that piece. Tonight's report doesn't change the thesis much, but it does show how much the wait is costing shareholders.

Results vs. expectations

Strip out the warrant gain and the picture is closer to expectations. The pre-tax loss would have been about $17.2 million, or roughly 10 cents a share on 168.7 million weighted shares. That is still a little better than the consensus, helped by $2.4 million of interest income on the cash pile. Research and development was flat at $5.2 million. The cost increase was in selling, general and administrative expense, which includes the lobbying and policy work that the regulatory push requires.

There was no guidance. Management never gives revenue targets, and tonight it again declined to put a date on the regulatory process. The stated priorities were to keep testing in Santa Clara under its experimental license, keep talking to federal agencies and Congress, work with carriers, tech companies and public-safety groups, and keep spending carefully.

The 900 MHz petition: still at the White House

NextNav asked the FCC in April 2024 to rewrite the rules for its Lower 900 MHz (902–928 MHz) licenses. It wants a 15 MHz flexible-use block that could carry 5G broadband and a 5G positioning signal. The FCC wrote a draft notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) and sent it to the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) for interagency review in March. It has been there for about eight months.

• Oct. 8: the FCC's October agenda came out without the item.
• Oct. 26: SpaceX (SPCX) asked the FCC to add NextNav's band to its satellite-to-phone rulemaking. The stock rose 12% that day.
• Oct. 29: the FCC adopted that rulemaking without the band. The bureau chief said the agency did not act on SpaceX's last-minute request.
• Nov. 2: a coalition of more than 100 companies and trade groups calling itself the SpecTech Alliance urged officials to reject the plan. It warned of interference with RFID readers, toll tags, smart meters and warehouse trackers. NN fell 16.5%.
• Nov. 4: NN fell another 11.1% the day after Democrats won control of Congress. The first analyst question on tonight's call was about what that means for the rule.

On the call, CEO Mariam Sorond said GPS resilience has long had support from both parties. She noted that the FCC's earlier notice of inquiry passed 4 to 0, and that Chairman Brendan Carr has said the agency will go "full steam ahead" in 2027 whatever the election result. She also said opponents are using the OIRA process, as expected, and that "some parties are slower than others to have their meetings." She would not give a timeline. On coexistence, NextNav has finished testing with the freight rail industry and has started early talks with other users of the band. The tentative agenda for the FCC's Nov. 19 open meeting has no 900 MHz item.

The GPS-backup case got a little stronger

The technical news was good. Since early this year NextNav has run a live 5G network in Santa Clara County, California, under an experimental license, using the band plan it proposed. In September it reported single-digit-meter horizontal accuracy indoors and outdoors. On the call, Sorond said the network runs at full 5G power on both towers and devices and that "there has not been a single claim of interference." The parts are falling into place: Safran for positioning, Oscilloquartz for timing, and Tiami Networks and AiRANACULUS for long-range counter-drone sensing on the same spectrum. NextNav has also pitched indoor location to fire departments from Fairfax County to Phoenix.

Counter-drone sensing is the newest angle. The FCC's Nov. 19 agenda includes a separate order opening other bands to drones and counter-drone systems, which shows Washington wants that capability. Sorond said some sensing can run under NextNav's current licenses, but it works best on a full 5G network, and that needs the rule change. Interference is still the real dispute. The band's unlicensed users are not convinced by NextNav's own testing.

Balance sheet and dilution

This is where the year changed the story. NextNav converted its convertible notes into stock, called its public warrants, and saw its private warrants exercised on a cashless basis in October. It now has $290.9 million of cash and investments and no debt, against $273.6 million of long-term debt at the end of 2025. Warrant liabilities fell to $1.6 million from $33.2 million, so the swings in reported earnings should get smaller from here.

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The cost was dilution. Shares outstanding rose to 169.8 million from 135.4 million at the start of the year, an increase of 25.5%. Stock-based pay was another $17.7 million over nine months. Operating cash use was $40.4 million for the nine months, about $12.4 million of it in the third quarter. At that pace the cash lasts more than five years, so NextNav does not need to sell stock while it waits on Washington. That is the strongest point in the bull case.

At tonight's close, NN's enterprise value (market value minus net cash) is about $1.14 billion. Spread over 3.5 billion active MHz-POPs (one megahertz of spectrum times one person covered), that is about $0.32 per MHz-POP, or $0.35 at the after-hours price. That compares with $0.51 when we wrote our October piece, about $1.73 implied by SpaceX's reported $8 billion purchase of Grain Management's 800 MHz spectrum, and the $1.40 to $1.70 that Anterix (ATEX) says utilities pay for 900 MHz. A rough way to read it: if approval would make the spectrum worth $1.00 per MHz-POP and failure would leave only the cash, today's price implies roughly 32% odds of approval. At the SpaceX price, the implied odds fall to about 19%.

The after-hours move

NN fell 5.8% in the regular session to $8.40, on 2.2 million shares against a 20-day average of about 3.5 million. It traded as low as $8.15, and the ATEX spectrum comp fell 6.6%. The release came out just after the 4 PM close. The first trades were near $9.10, the stock reached about $9.20 by 4:40 PM, and the 6:42 PM trade was at $8.91. That is 6.1% above the close and roughly back to Monday's $8.92. Options had been pricing about a 17% move either way, so a 6% bounce is a small reaction. As our Post-Market Summary noted, NN was one of the few names rising late on a hot-CPI day. Thin after-hours trading often fades by the next session's open.

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What the community is saying

X: NN chatter tonight is thin, mostly quick recaps of the beat, the $291 million cash figure and the Santa Clara result. Before the print, the tone among long-time holders was more frustrated than bearish. The most common posts urged the White House to finish the OIRA review. No one we saw argued the quarter changes the regulatory odds.

Reddit: the dedicated NextNav forum has been nearly silent since the stock dropped on Oct. 8. Its last threads split between believers who expect a large jump when an NPRM arrives and skeptics who say it "will probably never be approved." The tone is still divided and quiet. That kind of quiet usually means holders are tired of waiting, not that they have given up.

Substack: no new NN-specific posts since the print. Recent pieces put NN inside broader themes, such as GPS jamming and the national-security case for a backup, or weekly SpaceX spectrum notes. The NN-focused writers last weighed in after the second quarter, framing SpaceX's August filing as indirect support. The thesis has not changed there, but the writers who follow the name closely have mostly gone quiet.

Wick's take

We were early, and the stock has made us pay for it. The thesis has held up: the spectrum is real, the positioning technology now works in the field, SpaceX keeps naming the band in its filings, and the balance sheet can fund a long wait. What has gone wrong is timing and politics. OIRA has held the draft for eight months, a coalition of more than 100 companies is now organized against it, and the FCC passed on an easy chance to add the band on Oct. 29. Tonight's beat does not move any of that. What it does is confirm that waiting is cheap: about $12 million of cash a quarter, no debt and no need to raise money. At about $0.32 per MHz-POP, the market is pricing roughly one-in-three odds of a rule, or lower. We think the real odds are better than that, but the payoff could take until 2027.

What would change my mind: the draft going back to the FCC unpublished, more big trade groups joining the opposition, or any sign that NextNav needs to raise equity. Any of those would make the cash a floor to watch rather than a cushion. On the upside, a carrier or SpaceX deal, or an NPRM on an FCC agenda, would matter far more than any quarterly number.

What to watch (ET)

• Thu, Nov 12 to Fri, Nov 20: NextNav's CFO speaks at four investor conferences (Nov. 12, 16, 18 and 20). Listen for any update on OIRA meetings or partner talks..ics
• Thu, Nov 19, 10:30 AM: FCC November open meeting. There is no 900 MHz item, but there are counter-drone spectrum orders..ics
• Any day: the end of OIRA review, or the FCC's December agenda. Either would be the next real catalyst. No date has been announced.
• Wed, Dec 9, 2:00 PM: FOMC decision with projections. After today's hot CPI, higher rates are a headwind for long-dated stories like this one..ics

Not financial advice. This is Wick's analysis and opinion, for information only. Per-MHz-POP values and implied odds are our own rough calculations from company share, cash and license figures and reported deal values; they are not company figures. Scenario odds are Wick's estimates, not forecasts of any outcome. Community sentiment is unverified chatter summarized by us.