AST SpaceMobile (ASTS 0.06%) The stock is moving again on Monday. Today’s gain is about 2.3% as of 12:20 p.m., although the stock is quite volatile and if you blink, it could just as easily go down as it could go up.

The credit for today’s turbulence goes to Scotiabank analyst Andres Graham, who this morning raised his price target on AST shares from $28 to $45.90 – a very precise valuation for a stock that is not particularly easy to value (because it does not generate earnings).

What Scotiabank likes about AST SpaceMobile stock

Graham denies that his new price target is tied to any “short-term trading opportunities” in AST. He takes a long-term view, arguing that AST has superior satellite technology that could one day make it “the world’s largest wireless company by subscribers.”

(If that prediction sounds familiar, it’s a good thing. When AST touted its IPO, the company boasted that it was targeting “five billion wireless subscribers” in a “$1 trillion global wireless market.”)

According to Graham, AST’s technology So Well, with an estimated peak data rate of up to 120 megabits per second per satellite, it’s even better than SpaceX’s Starlink.

Is AST stock a buy?

Graham says that because of AST’s higher data transfer speeds (which Starlink would likely challenge) and greater beam precision, SpaceX may have to completely redesign its satellites to remain competitive. That could prove quite difficult, as SpaceX already has more than 6,200 Starlink satellites in orbit.

But what probably has investors even more excited today is Graham’s suggestion that SpaceX could decide to simply buy AST SpaceMobile outright. With AST stock currently valued at $9 billion and SpaceX worth well over $200 billion, that’s not completely out of the question. SpaceX could easily afford to buy AST.

I wouldn’t bet on it happening, though. After all, Starlink is profitable and AST is not. I would much rather own a share of a profitable Starlink IPO than unprofitable AST shares.