Raymond James Downgrades EchoStar (NASDAQ:SATS) to Market Perform

EchoStar (NASDAQ:SATS) was downgraded by analysts at Raymond James from a “strong-buy” rating to a “market perform” rating in a research note issued on Tuesday, FinViz reports.

SATS has been the topic of a number of other research reports. StockNews.com upgraded shares of EchoStar to a “sell” rating in a report on Tuesday, July 30th. TD Cowen lowered their price objective on EchoStar from $38.00 to $37.00 and set a “buy” rating for the company in a research note on Monday, August 12th. Morgan Stanley lifted their target price on EchoStar from $14.00 to $20.00 and gave the company an “equal weight” rating in a research report on Friday, September 13th. JPMorgan Chase & Co. reissued an “underweight” rating and issued a $12.00 price target on shares of EchoStar in a research report on Monday, August 12th. Finally, UBS Group upped their target price on shares of EchoStar from $14.00 to $15.00 and gave the stock a “neutral” rating in a research note on Tuesday, August 13th. Two analysts have rated the stock with a sell rating, four have assigned a hold rating and one has issued a buy rating to the company. Based on data from MarketBeat, the company has an average rating of “Hold” and an average target price of $23.00.

EchoStar Stock Performance

Shares of SATS opened at $24.82 on Tuesday. The stock has a 50-day moving average of $20.85 and a 200-day moving average of $18.13. EchoStar has a one year low of $9.53 and a one year high of $30.08. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.00, a current ratio of 0.40 and a quick ratio of 0.32. The company has a market cap of $6.74 billion, a PE ratio of -3.22 and a beta of 0.70.

EchoStar (NASDAQ:SATS) last issued its 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 firm had revenue of $3.95 billion for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $3.98 billion. During the same period in the previous year, the company earned $0.39 earnings per share. EchoStar’s revenue for the quarter was down 9.3% compared to the same quarter last year. On average, equities research analysts predict that EchoStar will post -1.81 EPS for the current fiscal year.

Hedge Funds Weigh In On EchoStar

Several institutional investors have recently added to or reduced their stakes in the stock. Vanguard Group Inc. raised its stake in shares of EchoStar by 238.7% in the first quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. now owns 13,707,909 shares of the communications equipment provider’s stock valued at $195,338,000 after buying an additional 9,661,167 shares during the period. Pennant Select LLC bought a new stake in EchoStar in the 4th quarter valued at about $36,892,000. Pennant Investors LP purchased a new stake in EchoStar during the fourth quarter valued at about $35,679,000. Darsana Capital Partners LP purchased a new position in shares of EchoStar in the second quarter worth about $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.