Prudential Financial Inc. Decreases Position in EchoStar Co. (NASDAQ:SATS)

Prudential Financial Inc. decreased its position in EchoStar Co. (NASDAQ:SATS) by 1.2% during the 4th quarter, Holdings Channel.com reports. The firm owned 123,573 shares of the communications equipment provider’s stock after selling 1,450 shares during the period. Prudential Financial Inc.’s holdings in EchoStar were worth $2,830,000 as of its most recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Other institutional investors and hedge funds have also bought and sold shares of the company. Citigroup Inc. lifted its position in shares of EchoStar by 32.7% during the 3rd quarter. Citigroup Inc. now owns 164,534 shares of the communications equipment provider’s stock valued at $4,084,000 after buying an additional 40,533 shares during the last quarter. Quantbot Technologies LP purchased a new stake in EchoStar during the third quarter valued at about $383,000. Captrust Financial Advisors lifted its holdings in EchoStar by 3.7% during the third quarter. Captrust Financial Advisors now owns 21,589 shares of the communications equipment provider’s stock valued at $536,000 after purchasing an additional 772 shares during the last quarter. Verition Fund Management LLC boosted its position in EchoStar by 69.5% during the third quarter. Verition Fund Management LLC now owns 28,254 shares of the communications equipment provider’s stock worth $701,000 after purchasing an additional 11,586 shares during the period. Finally, Stonehill Capital Management LLC purchased a new position in shares of EchoStar in the third quarter worth about $9,235,000. 33.62% of the stock is owned by institutional investors.

Analysts Set New Price Targets

Several research analysts recently commented on the stock. Morgan Stanley assumed coverage on shares of EchoStar in a report on Monday, December 16th. They issued an “equal weight” rating and a $25.00 price objective for the company. UBS Group lifted their price target on EchoStar from $15.00 to $28.00 and gave the company a “neutral” rating in a research report on Monday, January 13th. Two research analysts have rated the stock with a sell rating, three have given a hold rating and one has given a buy rating to the stock. Based on data from MarketBeat, the stock presently has a consensus rating of “Hold” and an average price target of $23.75.

EchoStar Stock Performance

EchoStar stock opened at $26.29 on Thursday. The firm’s 50 day simple moving average is $27.91 and its 200 day simple moving average is $25.66. The company has a current ratio of 0.67, a quick ratio of 0.61 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.11. EchoStar Co. has a 1-year low of $12.66 and a 1-year high of $32.48. The firm has a market capitalization of $7.53 billion, a PE ratio of -2.87 and a beta of 0.65.

EchoStar (NASDAQ:SATS) last released its quarterly earnings results on Thursday, February 27th. The communications equipment provider reported $1.24 earnings per share for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of ($0.63) by $1.87. The firm had revenue of $3.97 billion for the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $3.93 billion. EchoStar had a negative net margin of 15.51% and a negative return on equity of 0.64%. As a group, analysts expect that EchoStar Co. will post -1.99 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

EchoStar 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.