Legal & General Group Plc Increases Stock Holdings in EchoStar Co. (NASDAQ:SATS)

Legal & General Group Plc boosted its position in shares of EchoStar Co. (NASDAQ:SATS) by 2.6% in the 4th quarter, according to the company in its most recent 13F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The institutional investor owned 325,573 shares of the communications equipment provider’s stock after buying an additional 8,340 shares during the period. Legal & General Group Plc owned 0.12% of EchoStar worth $7,456,000 at the end of the most recent quarter.

Several other hedge funds have also recently added to or reduced their stakes in the company. Smartleaf Asset Management LLC increased its holdings in shares of EchoStar by 251.3% in the fourth quarter. Smartleaf Asset Management LLC now owns 1,609 shares of the communications equipment provider’s stock valued at $37,000 after purchasing an additional 1,151 shares during the last quarter. KBC Group NV boosted its holdings in EchoStar by 65.1% during the 4th quarter. KBC Group NV now owns 6,684 shares of the communications equipment provider’s stock valued at $153,000 after acquiring an additional 2,635 shares during the period. Xponance Inc. grew its holdings in shares of EchoStar by 8.7% in the fourth quarter. Xponance Inc. now owns 8,773 shares of the communications equipment provider’s stock valued at $201,000 after purchasing an additional 701 shares in the last quarter. LPL Financial LLC purchased a new stake in shares of EchoStar during the fourth quarter worth $204,000. Finally, Cibc World Markets Corp purchased a new stake in EchoStar during the 4th quarter worth about $261,000. 33.62% of the stock is owned by institutional investors and hedge funds.

Wall Street Analyst Weigh In

Separately, UBS Group lifted their price target on EchoStar from $15.00 to $28.00 and gave the stock a “neutral” rating in a report on Monday, January 13th. Two investment analysts have rated the stock with a sell rating, three have issued a hold rating and one has given a buy rating to the company. According to data from MarketBeat.com, the company has a consensus rating of “Hold” and a consensus price target of $23.75.

EchoStar Stock Down 1.6 %

SATS opened at $21.75 on Friday. The business has a 50 day simple moving average of $26.28 and a 200-day simple moving average of $25.31. The stock has a market capitalization of $6.23 billion, a P/E ratio of -2.37 and a beta of 0.72. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.11, a current ratio of 0.67 and a quick ratio of 0.61. EchoStar Co. has a 12 month low of $13.52 and a 12 month high of $32.48.

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 analysts’ consensus estimates of ($0.63) by $1.87. The company had revenue of $3.97 billion during the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $3.93 billion. EchoStar had a negative return on equity of 0.64% and a negative net margin of 15.51%. On average, equities analysts anticipate that EchoStar Co. will post -1.99 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

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.