State of Alaska Department of Revenue Decreases Stake in EchoStar Co. (NASDAQ:SATS)

State of Alaska Department of Revenue cut its stake in shares of EchoStar Co. (NASDAQ:SATS) by 2.7% during the third quarter, Holdings Channel.com reports. The institutional investor owned 68,870 shares of the communications equipment provider’s stock after selling 1,907 shares during the quarter. State of Alaska Department of Revenue’s holdings in EchoStar were worth $1,709,000 as of its most recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

Several other hedge funds have also recently made changes to their positions in SATS. Vanguard Group Inc. grew its stake in EchoStar by 238.7% during the 1st quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. now owns 13,707,909 shares of the communications equipment provider’s stock valued at $195,338,000 after purchasing an additional 9,661,167 shares during the last quarter. Goldentree Asset Management LP increased its holdings in EchoStar by 20.4% in the 1st quarter. Goldentree Asset Management LP now owns 2,505,475 shares of the communications equipment provider’s stock worth $35,703,000 after buying an additional 424,259 shares during the period. American Century Companies Inc. raised its position in EchoStar by 51.5% during the 2nd quarter. American Century Companies Inc. now owns 2,243,761 shares of the communications equipment provider’s stock worth $39,961,000 after buying an additional 762,462 shares during the last quarter. Darsana Capital Partners LP acquired a new stake in EchoStar during the 2nd quarter valued at approximately $36,908,000. Finally, Monarch Alternative Capital LP boosted its holdings in shares of EchoStar by 23.6% in the 2nd quarter. Monarch Alternative Capital LP now owns 1,854,000 shares of the communications equipment provider’s stock valued at $33,020,000 after acquiring an additional 354,000 shares during the last quarter. 33.62% of the stock is owned by institutional investors and hedge funds.

Analysts Set New Price Targets

SATS has been the subject of several recent research reports. JPMorgan Chase & Co. reissued an “underweight” rating and set a $12.00 target price on shares of EchoStar in a report on Monday, August 12th. UBS Group boosted their price objective on EchoStar from $14.00 to $15.00 and gave the company a “neutral” rating in a report on Tuesday, August 13th. StockNews.com raised EchoStar to a “sell” rating in a report on Tuesday, July 30th. Raymond James downgraded EchoStar from a “strong-buy” rating to a “market perform” rating in a report on Tuesday, October 1st. Finally, Morgan Stanley upped their price objective on EchoStar from $14.00 to $20.00 and gave the stock an “equal weight” rating in a research report on Friday, September 13th. Two research analysts have rated the stock with a sell rating, three have given a hold rating and one has issued a buy rating to the stock. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, the company presently has a consensus rating of “Hold” and an average target price of $24.20.

EchoStar Price Performance

Shares of EchoStar stock opened at $24.68 on Friday. The firm has a market cap of $6.71 billion, a PE ratio of -2.87 and a beta of 0.70. The business has a 50-day moving average price of $23.83 and a 200 day moving average price of $19.95. The company has a quick ratio of 0.32, a current ratio of 0.40 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.00. EchoStar Co. has a twelve month low of $9.53 and a twelve month high of $30.08.

EchoStar (NASDAQ:SATS) last announced its earnings results on Friday, August 9th. The communications equipment provider reported ($0.76) earnings per share for the quarter, missing the consensus estimate of ($0.37) by ($0.39). The business had revenue of $3.95 billion for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $3.98 billion. EchoStar had a positive return on equity of 0.18% and a negative net margin of 18.65%. The company’s quarterly revenue was down 9.3% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same period in the previous year, the company earned $0.39 earnings per share. Sell-side analysts predict that EchoStar Co. will post -1.73 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

About EchoStar

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.