Brokerages Set EchoStar Co. (NASDAQ:SATS) Target Price at $23.00

EchoStar Co. (NASDAQ:SATS) has been given an average rating of “Moderate Buy” by the six ratings firms that are covering the company, MarketBeat Ratings reports. Four investment analysts have rated the stock with a hold recommendation, one has issued a buy recommendation and one has issued a strong buy recommendation on the company. The average 12 month price objective among brokerages that have covered the stock in the last year is $23.00.

Several equities analysts have commented on the stock. UBS Group lifted their target price on shares of EchoStar from $11.00 to $14.00 and gave the stock a “neutral” rating in a research report on Tuesday, March 5th. TD Cowen dropped their target price on shares of EchoStar from $39.00 to $38.00 and set an “outperform” rating on the stock in a research report on Monday, March 4th. StockNews.com initiated coverage on shares of EchoStar in a report on Saturday, April 13th. They issued a “sell” rating on the stock. Finally, Morgan Stanley lowered their price target on shares of EchoStar from $14.25 to $14.00 and set an “equal weight” rating on the stock in a report on Wednesday, April 3rd.

EchoStar Price Performance

Shares of NASDAQ SATS opened at $18.49 on Friday. EchoStar has a fifty-two week low of $9.53 and a fifty-two week high of $24.80. The stock has a market cap of $5.02 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of -2.40 and a beta of 0.62. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.99, a quick ratio of 0.35 and a current ratio of 0.44. The firm’s 50-day simple moving average is $15.26 and its 200 day simple moving average is $13.92.

EchoStar (NASDAQ:SATS) last announced its quarterly earnings results on Wednesday, May 8th. The communications equipment provider reported ($0.40) earnings per share for the quarter, missing the consensus estimate of ($0.17) by ($0.23). EchoStar had a negative net margin of 23.47% and a positive return on equity of 2.26%. The business had revenue of $4.01 billion during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $4.07 billion. During the same period in the previous year, the business posted $0.38 EPS. EchoStar’s revenue was down 8.5% compared to the same quarter last year. As a group, research analysts anticipate that EchoStar will post -1.5 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Insider Activity

In other news, Director James Defranco purchased 110,000 shares of EchoStar stock in a transaction dated Friday, March 8th. The stock was purchased at an average cost of $13.48 per share, for a total transaction of $1,482,800.00. Following the transaction, the director now directly owns 306,951 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $4,137,699.48. The purchase was disclosed in a document filed with the SEC, which is available at the SEC website. Company insiders own 55.90% of the company’s stock.

Institutional Trading of EchoStar

A number of hedge funds have recently made changes to their positions in SATS. Vanguard Group Inc. lifted its holdings in shares of EchoStar by 238.7% during the 1st quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. now owns 13,707,909 shares of the communications equipment provider’s stock worth $195,338,000 after acquiring an additional 9,661,167 shares during the last quarter. Pennant Select LLC bought a new stake in EchoStar in the fourth quarter worth $36,892,000. Beryl Capital Management LLC bought a new stake in EchoStar in the third quarter worth $36,090,000. Pennant Investors LP bought a new stake in EchoStar in the fourth quarter worth $35,679,000. Finally, Monarch Alternative Capital LP bought a new stake in EchoStar in the first quarter worth $21,375,000. 33.62% of the stock is owned by institutional investors.

EchoStar Company Profile

EchoStar Corporation, together with its subsidiaries, provides networking technologies and services worldwide. The company operates in four segments: Pay-TV, Retail Wireless, 5G Network Deployment, Broadband and Satellite Services. The Pay-TV segment offers a direct broadcast and fixed satellite services; designs, develops, and distributes receiver system; and provides digital broadcast operations, including satellite uplinking/downlinking, transmission and, other services to third-party pay-TV providers; and multichannel, live-linear and on-demand streaming over-the-top internet-based domestic, international, Latino, and Freestream video programming services under the DISH and SLING brand names.