Astrotech (ASTC) Deep Dive — a tiny public shell wrapped around real detection technology, chronic cash burn, optionality on strategic review, and a capital structure that matters more than the ticker headline

Executive summary

Astrotech is one of those names that can fool almost everyone at first glance. The company name still carries a legacy aerospace flavor, the ticker is tiny, the market capitalization is microscopic, and the chart can make it look like a forgotten penny stock with occasional bursts of life. But once you actually go through the filings, the press releases, the management changes, and the product portfolio, a more nuanced picture appears. Astrotech today is not really a “space” business in the way casual traders might assume. It is a commercialization vehicle built around proprietary mass spectrometry and gas chromatography platforms, with the strongest current business relevance in security screening and detection through 1st Detect, and a secondary emerging angle in field environmental testing through EN-SCAN.

That distinction matters because it changes how the company should be judged. This is not a mature operating company throwing off cash. It is a small public entity trying to bridge from years of development into commercial adoption across highly specialized markets. That means the story sits at the uncomfortable intersection of real technology and weak operating scale. The technology platform appears legitimate and differentiated enough to win actual contracts and placements. At the same time, the income statement still looks like a classic development-stage company: limited sales, recurring losses, and a balance sheet that shrinks quarter after quarter unless commercialization accelerates or an external transaction changes the equation.

The reason ASTC keeps staying on watchlists despite those weaknesses is straightforward. First, the company does have tangible commercial breadcrumbs. The TRACER 1000 line has been deployed in roughly 35 locations across 16 countries through December 31, 2025, according to the company. In 2025 the business announced a first TSA-approved sale of its explosive trace detector, a Department of Homeland Security research and development contract tied to next-generation explosives trace detection, an enhanced narcotics detector launch, and a first narcotics detector system sale in Vietnam. Those are not fantasy press releases about a concept that exists only on slides. They are evidence that the company is at least in the room with real customers and real use cases.

Second, the market value is so depressed relative to the last reported balance-sheet equity and cash-plus-investments position that strategic optionality becomes part of the bull case almost by default. On November 19, 2025, Astrotech announced that its board had initiated a review of strategic alternatives that could include raising equity capital, reverse mergers, combination transactions, or sale of all or part of the business. That announcement completely changed how the market has to think about ASTC. Before that, the company was mainly a slow-burn commercialization story. After that, it became a hybrid of technology optionality and corporate-transaction optionality.

Third, the capital structure creates both danger and speculative appeal. The outstanding common share count looks tiny, but the true dilution picture is larger once you account for the Series D preferred stock convertible on a one-to-thirty basis, more than two hundred thousand outstanding options, and tens of thousands of warrants. That overhang is a serious reason to stay disciplined. It is also one reason why traders keep watching the name: low absolute float, corporate optionality, and episodic headline flow can create sudden bursts of volatility.

My blunt read is this: ASTC is not a clean quality story, and it is not a simple deep-value story either. It is a fragile optionality story. If commercial wins remain too small and the strategic review produces nothing, time works against shareholders because burn continues. If, however, one of three things happens — commercial scale-up at 1st Detect, meaningful traction at EN-SCAN, or a transaction that crystallizes value above the current market price — then the disconnect between enterprise perception and asset value can narrow quickly. That is exactly why the stock attracts both skeptics and opportunists.

What Astrotech actually is now — and what it is not

One of the first traps in analyzing Astrotech is historical branding. Older retail commentary still references the company as if it were mainly tied to its past aerospace identity. The reality is that today’s Astrotech is a platform company centered on analytical instrumentation. The parent commercializes its Astrotech Mass Spectrometer Technology through wholly owned subsidiaries. In the FY2025 10-K, the company describes Astrotech Technologies as the IP owner and lists 1st Detect, AgLAB, BreathTech, Pro-Control, and EN-SCAN as the main application-specific operating vehicles. The business is therefore best viewed as a holding structure around several narrow product tracks, not as a single monolithic operating line.

That matters because investors often over-simplify ASTC into one sentence: “small security scanner company” or “space shell” or “weird micro-cap with cash.” All three phrases catch part of the story, but none of them is enough. 1st Detect is clearly the most commercially advanced asset, especially through the TRACER 1000 explosive and narcotics trace detection systems. Yet Astrotech is trying to broaden the platform’s relevance beyond security. AgLAB targets hemp and cannabis process analysis. Pro-Control is focused on industrial process control. BreathTech remains the most speculative health-adjacent concept. EN-SCAN, the newer environmental testing subsidiary, is important because it gives the company another possible route to monetize the platform outside the airport and checkpoint context.

In practical terms, though, the story is not equally distributed across these subsidiaries. When you read the recent filings and releases, the center of gravity is still 1st Detect, with EN-SCAN emerging as a possible second leg. That is why the real question for ASTC is not whether the platform can theoretically apply to many markets. The real question is whether any one of those markets can produce enough recurring commercial momentum to outrun burn. A technology story can survive a long time on optionality. A public company cannot do that forever.

The second analytical trap is assuming that product breadth automatically means product depth. Astrotech has several brands and applications, but the current revenue base remains very small. That tells you the company is still early in the transition from engineering promise to scaled adoption. So when investors hear about multiple subsidiaries, the mature way to interpret that is not “diversified revenue machine.” It is “multiple shots on goal, but limited proof of scale so far.”

There is one more nuance worth saying clearly. Astrotech does appear to own real technological know-how, and management consistently emphasizes the advantage of mass spectrometry-based detection for better specificity and lower false alarm rates. If that edge continues to hold up in live customer environments, it could matter a lot because security and environmental applications reward accuracy, not marketing language. But until that advantage translates into a visibly larger sales base, the market will continue discounting the company as a micro-cap R&D-heavy operator rather than rewarding it as a scaled instrument business.

The long road here — why the past still matters

If you want to understand ASTC properly, you have to understand that this is a company that has already reinvented itself before. Management biographies on the company site explicitly reference the successful sale of Astrotech’s satellite operations business to Lockheed Martin, and the board and executive roster includes people with backgrounds in restructuring, M&A, government technology, security, and capital raising. That is not incidental. It helps explain why the board eventually moved to a strategic alternatives review in late 2025 instead of simply pretending the stock market would eventually “get it.”

The past matters in a second way too. Astrotech has spent years trying to translate platform technology into commercial subsidiaries. That long incubation period cuts both ways. On one side, skeptics can say the company has had plenty of time and still has not produced meaningful top-line scale. That criticism is fair. On the other side, the fact that the company has persisted long enough to produce certifications, real placements, government-linked work, and product launches suggests this is not a pure promotional shell. It is better described as a company with a long and frustrating development arc that still has not crossed the threshold into proof of business model.

That distinction is important for evaluating risk. In many failed micro-cap stories, the core issue is that the product never really existed in a serious form. At Astrotech, the more realistic concern is not product non-existence. It is commercialization insufficiency. The company appears capable of building, certifying, and placing systems. The market is still waiting for evidence that those capabilities can become a durable revenue engine.

The board composition reinforces that framing. The company’s public management page highlights leadership experience tied to government, security, technology, finance, M&A, and public-company restructuring. John Halinski’s TSA background is especially relevant because 1st Detect sells into security markets where procurement understanding and agency relationships matter. Tom Wilkinson’s turnaround and transaction background is relevant because strategic review situations require directors who can think like allocators, not only like operators. Eric Stober’s background includes the prior sale of the satellite operations business and substantial capital raising. When you put those pieces together, the board does not look random. It looks assembled for a company that knows technology alone is not enough and may need either transactions or sharp portfolio decisions to unlock value.

That does not make the equity automatically attractive. It simply means the company’s past is not dead history. It is part of the playbook management may be preparing to use again.

Products and subsidiaries — where the actual value may sit

1st Detect: the lead commercial asset

1st Detect is the one business inside Astrotech that already looks like a real market-facing operation. In the 10-K, Astrotech states that 1st Detect manufactures explosive trace detectors and narcotic trace detectors for airports, border checkpoints, cargo hubs, infrastructure security, correctional facilities, military bases, and law enforcement. The business case is straightforward: mass spectrometry-based trace detection can provide more precise molecular identification and potentially lower false alarms than traditional techniques. In theory, that means better workflow, lower friction, and better trust in results. In practice, adoption depends on procurement cycles, certification pathways, field performance, total cost, and sales execution.

The recent company news flow suggests this is the area with the strongest near-term relevance. In January 2025, 1st Detect announced a DHS research and development contract to support next-generation explosives trace detection. Later that month, the company announced what it described as the first TSA-approved sale of its TRACER 1000 explosive trace detectors. In March 2025, it launched an enhanced TRACER 1000 Narcotics Trace Detector specifically configured to screen synthetic opiates and novel psychoactive substances. In July 2025, it announced the first sale and deployment of the narcotics detector in Vietnam. By February 2026, management said TRACER 1000 systems were deployed in about 35 locations in 16 countries.

That sequence tells a useful story. The company is not simply repeating the same old certification headline. It is trying to move from certification and platform validation toward wider geographic and application-specific commercialization. The question is whether those wins are big enough and frequent enough to meaningfully bend the revenue curve. So far the answer is: not yet, at least not on a scale visible in reported results.

EN-SCAN: the new leg investors should not ignore

EN-SCAN could become more important than many investors realize. Astrotech highlighted the formation of EN-SCAN as a wholly owned subsidiary to produce environmental testing instruments for real-time air, water, and soil analysis in the field. In August 2025 the company announced deployment of EN-SCAN devices and positioned the product line around instant on-site field monitoring. Why does this matter? Because if 1st Detect is the security-and-defense face of the platform, EN-SCAN is the environmental-and-industrial face. That diversification is not just cosmetic. It broadens the set of potential customers and reduces dependence on one procurement ecosystem.

The catch is obvious. EN-SCAN is even earlier than 1st Detect from a commercialization standpoint. Investors should therefore resist the temptation to value it like a proven business. For now, EN-SCAN is an option on future adoption, not a demonstrated earnings pillar. Still, it may have strategic value precisely because environmental testing is a market where portability, speed, and field use can matter a lot. If the product genuinely solves a workflow problem for customers, that creates optionality beyond traditional security screening.

AgLAB, Pro-Control, BreathTech

These units are still interesting, but they are not currently the heart of the investment debate. AgLAB targets agriculture-related process analysis, especially hemp and cannabis applications. Pro-Control addresses industrial chemical process control. BreathTech remains focused on volatile organic compound analysis in breath, which sounds intriguing but remains the most speculative and likely the least relevant to the present market thesis. The important thing is not to ignore them entirely. The important thing is not to overstate them either. Today, they are better thought of as latent embedded optionality than as pillars supporting the current valuation case.

Timeline of the last meaningful developments

Financial condition — the real battlefield

If you strip away all the product language and market narrative, ASTC ultimately lives or dies on a brutally simple question: can commercialization or a strategic event outrun cash burn? The company’s reported numbers tell you why this remains the decisive issue. For fiscal year 2025, revenue was just $1.0 million, with gross margin improving to 45.3%, but net cash used in operating activities was $12.95 million. At June 30, 2025, Astrotech had $3.1 million of cash and cash equivalents and $15.1 million of short-term investments. Management stated in the 10-K that cash and investments would enable the company to fund operating expenses and capital expenditures for at least twelve months following issuance of the financial statements.

That was the June view. By December 31, 2025, the picture was already tighter. In the Q2 FY2026 earnings release, Astrotech reported cash of $3.095 million and short-term investments of $7.037 million, for a combined roughly $10.1 million. Over the first six months of fiscal 2026, revenue totaled only $445 thousand, while net loss was $7.392 million. Research and development expense remained heavy at $3.776 million for the six-month period, and SG&A was another $3.857 million. Total liabilities were still manageable, but the issue is not debt pressure. The issue is operating depletion.

That distinction matters. ASTC is not obviously trapped by a conventional debt wall. It is trapped by the math of an under-scaled income statement. The company’s liabilities at December 31, 2025 were around $4.178 million, and a large chunk of balance-sheet obligation relates to leases rather than financial debt. So this is not a classic insolvency story. It is a burn-versus-time story. That is better than being overlevered, but it is still dangerous because micro-caps often destroy equity holders through repeated dilution before they ever reach operational insolvency.

If you use a crude burn-based lens, the numbers are sobering. A combined cash-and-investments base a little above $10 million against a six-month net loss of roughly $7.4 million does not leave much room for complacency if there is no inflection. Now, net loss and pure cash burn are not identical, and working-capital movements can change the pace. But directionally, the message is obvious: commercialization needs to accelerate, spending needs to moderate, a transaction needs to occur, or some combination of those three must happen. Otherwise, the structure eventually leans back on capital raising.

The bull counterargument is that ASTC still had more than $15.5 million of stockholders’ equity at December 31, 2025, while the current market capitalization is only around $6.1 million. In other words, the market is discounting the company far below stated book value. That can happen for a reason. Investors may believe a material portion of balance-sheet value will be consumed before it is ever monetized. So the discount alone is not enough. For that discount to matter in a positive way, shareholders need evidence that the assets can either generate much more revenue or be realized through strategic action.

Capital structure, dilution, and why the “tiny float” narrative is incomplete

This is where ASTC becomes much more complicated than casual trading commentary suggests. Looking only at the common share count can make the stock look extraordinarily tight. At September 30, 2025, the company reported 1,758,953 outstanding common shares. That is indeed tiny. But it is not the whole picture. Astrotech also had 280,898 shares of Series D convertible preferred stock outstanding, and those preferred shares are convertible into common on a one-to-thirty basis at the holder’s option. That means the Series D stack alone represents a very large potential common equivalent overhang.

Then there are options. At June 30, 2025, Astrotech reported 213,113 stock options outstanding. The company also still had 77 thousand warrants outstanding as of September 30, 2025, according to the 10-Q. None of this means all of that dilution arrives tomorrow. But it absolutely means that anyone pitching ASTC as a “simple super-low-float” idea without discussing preferred, options, and warrants is leaving out the most important part of the setup.

The correct framework is this: ASTC has a very small current common base, but a much heavier fully diluted silhouette than the headline number implies. That duality cuts in both directions. It can contribute to violent squeezes or bursts of price discovery when the market suddenly focuses on a catalyst. It can also cap longer-term upside if investors begin underwriting conversion, exercise, or future financing risk more aggressively.

The rights plan also matters conceptually. The company extended the expiration date of its rights agreement to December 20, 2025 in a prior amendment disclosed in the filings, and later in December 2025 filed another amendment to the rights agreement. On its own, a rights plan does not tell you what transaction is coming. But it does tell you the board is attentive to control, structure, and strategic flexibility. In a company under strategic review, that is not irrelevant.

One more subtle point: because ASTC has repeatedly used equity markets in the past to finance operations, the market has a long memory. The 10-K explicitly states the company historically financed operations through several public offerings, raising approximately $67.6 million in net proceeds. That historical pattern is exactly why current shareholders watch burn so closely. When a company has revenue this small and a public history of using equity as oxygen, dilution is never an abstract theoretical risk. It is part of the inherited DNA of the story.

Management, insiders, and alignment

Leadership analysis in a company this small is not a cosmetic exercise. It is central. Thomas B. Pickens III remains the defining figure. He serves as chairman and chief executive officer and, by the company’s own description, also has deep restructuring, capital allocation, and operating history. That long tenure can be read two ways. Bulls will say continuity matters because platform companies take time and Pickens has already overseen a major value-realization event in the company’s history. Bears will say long tenure without scale proves the strategy has not delivered enough.

The more practical question is whether management is behaving like people trying to force a commercialization turn, or like people waiting for the market to bail them out. On that score, the recent actions are more constructive than passive. The promotion of Nihanth Badugu to COO in August 2025 came with incentives tied to revenue targets and gross margin performance. That is the kind of compensation language you want to see if the company truly believes execution is the bottleneck. The January 2026 hiring of David Spada as Director of Global Sales for 1st Detect points in the same direction. The message is pretty obvious: Astrotech knows the next step is not more storytelling. It is sales execution.

The finance side is messier. CFO turnover in 2025 is not ideal. Jaime Hinojosa resigned in January 2025. Jennifer Cañas was appointed CFO in May 2025 and later received an option grant that vested over time. By October 2025 she had resigned, and in late October the company announced Scott Bartley as interim CFO. For a company under strategic review and still burning capital, that kind of turnover is a yellow flag. It does not prove anything sinister by itself, but it absolutely adds complexity at the exact time when capital discipline and transaction readiness matter most.

Insider activity, at least in the recent filings I could verify directly, looks more like compensation-related equity grants than aggressive open-market buying. Jennifer Cañas’ Form 4/A in June 2025 disclosed a grant of 5,250 employee stock options at an exercise price of $5.95. Nihanth Badugu’s COO package included 5,000 options tied to his August 2025 promotion. Those grants align personnel, but they are not the same thing as management putting fresh cash into the stock in the open market. That distinction matters, especially when investors are trying to judge conviction.

The November 2025 Transaction Bonus Plan is one of the most revealing insider-alignment documents in the entire story. It creates a bonus pool tied to net proceeds from a qualifying transaction, with no pool triggered unless net proceeds reach at least $30 million. In plain English, the board did not set up that plan for decoration. It set it up because a corporate transaction was considered sufficiently realistic to warrant a framework for reward allocation. For shareholders, that is a double-edged signal. On the one hand, it means insiders are financially motivated to consummate a meaningful transaction. On the other hand, it reminds you that the board is explicitly thinking beyond simple stand-alone commercialization.

Institutional, analyst, and retail lens

Institutional footprint

ASTC does not look like a stock with deep institutional sponsorship. Aggregated ownership data based on filed 13D/G and 13F forms show only a small set of institutional holders and a limited overall share count in institutional hands. That is what you would expect in a micro-cap with sub-scale revenues, limited liquidity, and an unresolved commercial model. The absence of strong sponsorship is not shocking. It is almost structural.

For the bull case, that can be framed as room for discovery if the company executes or lands a transaction. For the bear case, it means there is very little durable sponsorship to stabilize the name when retail attention leaves. In other words, the institutional thinness is both optionality and fragility.

Analyst visibility

This is not a well-covered sell-side name. Broad, active mainstream analyst coverage is not visible in the company’s own materials or primary disclosures, and public market-data pages generally show either no meaningful target data or only very sparse coverage. That fits the stock’s size and profile. Practically, it means there is no analyst ecosystem waiting to “discover” ASTC quarter by quarter the way there is for larger small caps. Re-rating, if it happens, will likely come from fundamentals or from a transaction, not from a wave of Wall Street note-writing.

Retail sentiment

Retail sentiment is exactly what you would expect in a name like this: episodic, highly narrative-driven, and usually centered on a few recurring hooks. On Reddit and similar channels, the themes lean toward low float, government/security relevance, hidden-value balance-sheet angles, and the possibility that the company is under-followed rather than broken. On Stocktwits, the symbol stream shows the classic signs of a tiny speculative ticker: bursts of chatter when the price moves, long quiet stretches when it does not, and community interest that is much more event-driven than institutionally grounded.

That kind of sentiment can help ASTC when the tape is hot because retail likes stories with a small float, real products, and an “asset value versus market cap” narrative. But it is also unstable. Retail enthusiasm does not build a revenue base. It only changes the speed and violence of price discovery around headlines.

Short interest and market behavior

Short interest does not currently look extreme enough on its own to define the stock, but it is also not irrelevant. Recent market-data summaries show roughly 28.8 thousand shares sold short around the March 13, 2026 reporting date, representing around 1.7% to 2.0% of float depending on the source and methodology, with days to cover in the low-4 range. That is not a classic crowding profile. It is a modest short presence in a very small and quirky structure.

What matters more than the absolute short figure is how the stock trades around narrative events. Because ASTC is such a small capitalization name, volume and intraday range can shift quickly even without a giant short base. On March 27, 2026, for example, the stock’s market data showed a wide intraday range and a sharp percentage move relative to its price level. In a name like this, squeezes can come more from thin liquidity and sudden demand than from textbook high short-interest setups.

So the correct read is this: short interest is a secondary accelerant, not the primary thesis. If the company delivers a transaction update or a surprisingly strong commercial win, the thin trading structure can amplify the move. But ASTC should not be treated as if it already has the kind of extreme short setup that, by itself, guarantees mechanical upside pressure.

Bull case

The first pillar of the bull case is that 1st Detect is clearly closer to commercial reality than many micro-cap technology products ever get. The company has ECAC certification history, a TSA-approved sale, a DHS-linked contract, international deployments, and a growing installed footprint. That does not yet equal scale, but it does mean the product conversation has moved beyond laboratory fantasy. If 1st Detect begins winning more recurring placements, consumables, maintenance, or expansion orders, the market could start assigning much more value to the security-detection franchise.

The second pillar is EN-SCAN. Investors often miss secondary optionality because the market tends to focus on the loudest storyline. Yet field environmental analysis is a serious application area. If EN-SCAN proves to be more commercially straightforward than expected, ASTC suddenly looks less like a single-asset story and more like a portfolio story with at least two monetizable directions.

The third pillar is balance-sheet discount. Current market cap sits far below the company’s last reported stockholders’ equity. That gap does not guarantee upside, but it does create room for strategic outcomes that could matter. If the board sells part of the business, combines with another entity, or unlocks asset value in a credible way, the market may have to move quickly because the starting valuation is so compressed.

The fourth pillar is strategic review optionality. Many micro-caps announce reviews that go nowhere. That is true. But ASTC’s review was paired with a formal transaction bonus plan and comes from a company whose ecosystem includes people with transaction and restructuring backgrounds. That does not prove a deal is coming. It does make the review harder to dismiss as empty theater.

The fifth pillar is structural. Because the current common base is so small, any real improvement in the narrative can have an outsized impact on price. ASTC does not need perfection to move. It needs a credible reason for the market to believe the cash is buying a real path rather than just postponing dilution.

Bear case

The first bear argument is execution history. Even with certifications, launches, and placements, the top line remains extremely small. That tells you the conversion from technical credibility to scalable revenue is still unproven. Until that changes, bulls are essentially front-running the hope of inflection rather than buying a demonstrated business trend.

The second bear argument is burn. The company’s cash and investment pool is shrinking, and although liabilities are manageable, that does not solve the problem. The risk is not a debt spiral. The risk is that time keeps transferring value from the balance sheet into operating losses faster than commercialization can replenish it.

The third bear argument is the capital structure. The Series D preferred stock, options, and warrants matter. Even if the current common base is small, eventual dilution risk is substantial enough to complicate any long-duration bullish thesis.

The fourth bear argument is leadership turnover on the finance side. In a tiny public company under strategic review, repeated CFO turnover is not nothing. It raises legitimate questions about continuity, execution pressure, and the organization’s ability to maintain a clean strategic process while still pushing product sales.

The fifth bear argument is that strategic reviews often disappoint. Sometimes they end with no deal. Sometimes they end with financing the market does not like. Sometimes they end with a reverse merger that changes the story entirely rather than rewarding existing holders the way they imagined. ASTC shareholders should not treat “strategic review” as a synonym for “takeout premium.” It is only a process, not an outcome.

What has to happen next for the story to improve

ASTC does not need everything to go right. But it does need something tangible to happen soon enough that the company’s shrinking liquidity stops dominating the narrative. In practical terms, I think there are five concrete checkpoints that matter.

• First, 1st Detect needs to show that deployments can become repeatable commercial revenue rather than isolated wins. More purchase orders, more expansions, more service and consumables revenue, or clearer evidence of recurring customer use would all help.
• Second, EN-SCAN needs to move from “interesting launch” to visible customer traction. Even a handful of meaningful deployments with follow-on business would matter because it would validate a second market for the platform.
• Third, the strategic review needs some form of output. That output does not have to be a full sale. It could be a partnership, asset monetization, business combination, or another transaction that proves the board is not simply burning time.
• Fourth, management needs to stabilize the finance function and communicate a more durable capital roadmap. Investors can live with small size. They struggle more with uncertainty layered on top of size.
• Fifth, the company needs to narrow the gap between technical promise and financial reality. Gross margin alone is not enough. The market needs to see that the commercial engine is capable of carrying more of the cost base over time.

Bottom line

Astrotech is one of the most interesting ugly ducklings in the micro-cap universe precisely because it is not pure nonsense and not clean quality. It sits in the uncomfortable middle. There is real technology here. There are real products here. There are real deployments here. There is also very real cash burn, a very real dilution stack, and a very real chance that the company reaches its next chapter through corporate action rather than through slow organic scaling alone.

That makes ASTC an idea that deserves study, but not romanticism. The strongest part of the story is that the market is assigning a very harsh value to a company that still has real assets, real optionality, and a board openly exploring alternatives. The weakest part of the story is that the reported income statement still supports the skeptics more than it supports the believers.

If you force me to reduce the whole thesis to one sentence, it would be this: ASTC is a tiny commercialization-and-optionality vehicle whose upside depends on proving that the remaining balance-sheet value will be converted into either faster real revenue or a transaction before it is simply consumed by time. That is the deep-dive truth. Not a fairy tale, not a dismissal — just the actual setup.