MetLife Investment Management LLC Increases Stock Holdings in EchoStar Co. (NASDAQ:SATS)

MetLife Investment Management LLC boosted its stake in EchoStar Co. (NASDAQ:SATS) by 5.8% in the 4th quarter, according to its most recent disclosure with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The firm owned 73,973 shares of the communications equipment provider’s stock after buying an additional 4,041 shares during the period. MetLife Investment Management LLC’s holdings in EchoStar were worth $1,694,000 at the end of the most recent reporting period.

Other hedge funds also recently made changes to their positions in the company. Invesco Ltd. boosted its position in shares of EchoStar by 26.0% in the 4th quarter. Invesco Ltd. now owns 2,301,367 shares of the communications equipment provider’s stock worth $52,701,000 after purchasing an additional 474,313 shares in the last quarter. FIL Ltd boosted its position in EchoStar by 139.9% in the fourth quarter. FIL Ltd now owns 601,250 shares of the communications equipment provider’s stock worth $13,769,000 after purchasing an additional 350,650 shares during the last quarter. Renaissance Technologies LLC bought a new stake in EchoStar during the fourth quarter valued at approximately $5,351,000. Atika Capital Management LLC bought a new stake in shares of EchoStar during the 4th quarter valued at $4,336,000. Finally, Bank of New York Mellon Corp grew its holdings in EchoStar by 15.1% during the fourth quarter. Bank of New York Mellon Corp now owns 1,019,809 shares of the communications equipment provider’s stock valued at $23,354,000 after purchasing an additional 133,819 shares during the period. 33.62% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors.

EchoStar Trading Up 0.1 %

SATS stock opened at $22.70 on Wednesday. The firm has a fifty day moving average price of $25.25 and a 200 day moving average price of $25.19. EchoStar Co. has a fifty-two week low of $14.40 and a fifty-two week high of $32.48. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.11, a quick ratio of 0.61 and a current ratio of 0.67. The firm has a market cap of $6.50 billion, a PE ratio of -2.48 and a beta of 0.72.

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

Analysts Set New Price Targets

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

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.