Morgan Stanley Boosts EchoStar (NASDAQ:SATS) Price Target to $20.00

EchoStar (NASDAQ:SATS) had its price objective boosted by Morgan Stanley from $14.00 to $20.00 in a report published on Friday, Benzinga reports. The brokerage currently has an equal weight rating on the communications equipment provider’s stock.

SATS has been the subject of several other research reports. JPMorgan Chase & Co. reissued an underweight rating and issued a $12.00 price target on shares of EchoStar in a research note on Monday, August 12th. StockNews.com raised EchoStar to a sell rating in a research note on Tuesday, July 30th. UBS Group boosted their price target on EchoStar from $14.00 to $15.00 and gave the company a neutral rating in a research note on Tuesday, August 13th. Finally, TD Cowen lowered their price target on EchoStar from $38.00 to $37.00 and set a buy rating for the company in a research note on Monday, August 12th. Two investment analysts have rated the stock with a sell rating, three have assigned a hold rating, one has given a buy rating and one has assigned a strong buy rating to the stock. According to data from MarketBeat, the company has a consensus rating of Hold and a consensus target price of $23.00.

EchoStar Trading Up 9.0 %

EchoStar stock opened at $24.27 on Friday. EchoStar has a twelve month low of $9.53 and a twelve month high of $24.40. The company has a current ratio of 0.40, a quick ratio of 0.32 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.00. The firm’s 50 day moving average price is $19.37 and its two-hundred day moving average price is $17.18.

EchoStar (NASDAQ:SATS) last posted its quarterly earnings results on Friday, August 9th. The communications equipment provider reported ($0.76) earnings per share for the quarter, missing analysts’ consensus estimates of ($0.37) by ($0.39). EchoStar had a positive return on equity of 0.18% and a negative net margin of 18.65%. The company had revenue of $3.95 billion during the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $3.98 billion. During the same period last year, the company posted $0.39 earnings per share. The company’s revenue was down 9.3% compared to the same quarter last year. On average, analysts forecast that EchoStar will post -1.64 EPS for the current year.

Institutional Investors Weigh In On EchoStar

A number of large investors have recently added to or reduced their stakes in SATS. Vanguard Group Inc. boosted its position in EchoStar by 238.7% during the first quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. now owns 13,707,909 shares of the communications equipment provider’s stock worth $195,338,000 after purchasing an additional 9,661,167 shares during the period. Pennant Select LLC bought a new stake in shares of EchoStar in the fourth quarter valued at approximately $36,892,000. Pennant Investors LP bought a new stake in shares of EchoStar in the fourth quarter valued at approximately $35,679,000. Darsana Capital Partners LP bought a new stake in shares of EchoStar in the second quarter valued at approximately $36,908,000. Finally, Monarch Alternative Capital LP bought a new stake in shares of EchoStar in the first quarter valued at approximately $21,375,000. Institutional investors own 33.62% of the company’s stock.

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.