Creative Planning Acquires 10,491 Shares of EchoStar Co. (NASDAQ:SATS)

Creative Planning raised its holdings in EchoStar Co. (NASDAQ:SATS) by 42.1% during the third quarter, according to its most recent disclosure with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The institutional investor owned 35,395 shares of the communications equipment provider’s stock after buying an additional 10,491 shares during the period. Creative Planning’s holdings in EchoStar were worth $878,000 as of its most recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

A number of other large investors have also recently made changes to their positions in the business. Vanguard Group Inc. lifted 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 in the last quarter. Goldentree Asset Management LP lifted its stake in shares of EchoStar by 20.4% in the first quarter. Goldentree Asset Management LP now owns 2,505,475 shares of the communications equipment provider’s stock valued at $35,703,000 after buying an additional 424,259 shares in the last quarter. American Century Companies Inc. lifted its stake in shares of EchoStar by 51.5% in the second quarter. American Century Companies Inc. now owns 2,243,761 shares of the communications equipment provider’s stock valued at $39,961,000 after buying an additional 762,462 shares in the last quarter. Darsana Capital Partners LP bought a new position in shares of EchoStar during the second quarter valued at about $36,908,000. Finally, Monarch Alternative Capital LP lifted its position in shares of EchoStar by 23.6% during the second quarter. Monarch Alternative Capital LP now owns 1,854,000 shares of the communications equipment provider’s stock valued at $33,020,000 after purchasing an additional 354,000 shares in the last quarter. 33.62% of the stock is owned by institutional investors.

Analysts Set New Price Targets

A number of research analysts recently weighed in on SATS shares. Raymond James lowered shares of EchoStar from a “strong-buy” rating to a “market perform” rating in a research report on Tuesday, October 1st. JPMorgan Chase & Co. reissued an “underweight” rating and set a $12.00 price target on shares of EchoStar in a research report on Monday, August 12th. UBS Group raised their price target on shares of EchoStar from $14.00 to $15.00 and gave the company a “neutral” rating in a research report on Tuesday, August 13th. StockNews.com raised shares of EchoStar to a “sell” rating in a research report on Tuesday, July 30th. Finally, Morgan Stanley raised their price target on shares of EchoStar from $14.00 to $20.00 and gave the company 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 assigned a buy rating to the company. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, EchoStar presently has a consensus rating of “Hold” and an average target price of $24.20.

EchoStar Stock Performance

Shares of SATS stock opened at $24.68 on Friday. The firm has a market cap of $6.71 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of -2.87 and a beta of 0.71. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.00, a quick ratio of 0.32 and a current ratio of 0.40. EchoStar Co. has a 52 week low of $9.53 and a 52 week high of $30.08. The firm’s 50-day simple moving average is $23.73 and its two-hundred day simple moving average is $19.88.

EchoStar (NASDAQ:SATS) last announced its quarterly earnings data on Friday, August 9th. The communications equipment provider reported ($0.76) EPS for the quarter, missing the consensus estimate of ($0.37) by ($0.39). The company had revenue of $3.95 billion during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $3.98 billion. EchoStar had a positive return on equity of 0.18% and a negative net margin of 18.65%. The business’s revenue was down 9.3% on a year-over-year basis. During the same period in the prior year, the firm posted $0.39 EPS. As a group, equities analysts forecast that EchoStar Co. will post -1.73 earnings per share for the current 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.