Investors Purchase Large Volume of EchoStar Call Options (NASDAQ:SATS)

EchoStar Co. (NASDAQ:SATS) saw unusually large options trading activity on Monday. Traders acquired 28,395 call options on the company. This represents an increase of 1,124% compared to the average daily volume of 2,320 call options.

Analyst Ratings Changes

SATS has been the subject of a number of analyst reports. JPMorgan Chase & Co. reiterated an “underweight” rating and set a $12.00 target price on shares of EchoStar in a report on Monday, August 12th. TD Cowen dropped their target price on shares of EchoStar from $38.00 to $37.00 and set a “buy” rating for the company in a report on Monday, August 12th. Morgan Stanley increased their target price on shares of EchoStar from $14.00 to $20.00 and gave the stock an “equal weight” rating in a report on Friday, September 13th. UBS Group increased their target price on shares of EchoStar from $14.00 to $15.00 and gave the stock a “neutral” rating in a report on Tuesday, August 13th. Finally, StockNews.com upgraded shares of EchoStar to a “sell” rating in a report on Tuesday, July 30th. Two research analysts have rated the stock with a sell rating, three have given a hold rating, one has given a buy rating and one has assigned a strong buy rating to the company’s stock. According to data from MarketBeat, the company currently has an average rating of “Hold” and an average price target of $23.00.

Hedge Funds Weigh In On EchoStar

Large investors have recently made changes to their positions in the business. GAMMA Investing LLC lifted its holdings in shares of EchoStar by 125.3% during the second quarter. GAMMA Investing LLC now owns 1,442 shares of the communications equipment provider’s stock valued at $26,000 after purchasing an additional 802 shares during the last quarter. Hexagon Capital Partners LLC lifted its holdings in shares of EchoStar by 694.8% during the second quarter. Hexagon Capital Partners LLC now owns 1,677 shares of the communications equipment provider’s stock valued at $30,000 after purchasing an additional 1,466 shares during the last quarter. Eagle Bay Advisors LLC lifted its holdings in shares of EchoStar by 183.6% during the first quarter. Eagle Bay Advisors LLC now owns 2,269 shares of the communications equipment provider’s stock valued at $32,000 after purchasing an additional 1,469 shares during the last quarter. Quarry LP purchased a new position in shares of EchoStar during the fourth quarter valued at approximately $41,000. Finally, Quest Partners LLC purchased a new position in shares of EchoStar during the fourth quarter valued at approximately $42,000. 33.62% of the stock is currently owned by hedge funds and other institutional investors.

EchoStar Stock Performance

EchoStar stock opened at $25.33 on Wednesday. The stock’s 50 day simple moving average is $20.34 and its two-hundred day simple moving average is $17.82. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.00, a quick ratio of 0.32 and a current ratio of 0.40. The stock has a market cap of $6.88 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of -3.29 and a beta of 0.70. EchoStar has a fifty-two week low of $9.53 and a fifty-two week high of $27.15.

EchoStar (NASDAQ:SATS) last posted its quarterly earnings data on Friday, August 9th. The communications equipment provider reported ($0.76) earnings per share for the quarter, missing the consensus estimate of ($0.37) by ($0.39). EchoStar had a negative net margin of 18.65% and a positive return on equity of 0.18%. The firm had revenue of $3.95 billion for the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $3.98 billion. During the same period in the previous year, the firm posted $0.39 earnings per share. The business’s revenue was down 9.3% compared to the same quarter last year. As a group, analysts expect that EchoStar will post -1.81 earnings per share for the current fiscal 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.