New Mexico Educational Retirement Board Acquires New Position in EchoStar Corporation (NASDAQ:SATS)

New Mexico Educational Retirement Board bought a new position in EchoStar Corporation (NASDAQ:SATS - Free Report) in the first quarter, according to the company in its most recent 13F filing with the SEC. The firm bought 24,800 shares of the communications equipment provider's stock, valued at approximately $634,000.

Several other hedge funds and other institutional investors also recently added to or reduced their stakes in the stock. FIL Ltd boosted its holdings in EchoStar by 139.9% in the 4th quarter. FIL Ltd now owns 601,250 shares of the communications equipment provider's stock worth $13,769,000 after buying an additional 350,650 shares during the last quarter. Amalgamated Bank boosted its holdings in EchoStar by 50.3% in the 1st quarter. Amalgamated Bank now owns 53,287 shares of the communications equipment provider's stock worth $1,363,000 after buying an additional 17,830 shares during the last quarter. Rhumbline Advisers boosted its holdings in EchoStar by 4.7% in the 1st quarter. Rhumbline Advisers now owns 391,985 shares of the communications equipment provider's stock worth $10,027,000 after buying an additional 17,448 shares during the last quarter. Nebula Research & Development LLC boosted its holdings in EchoStar by 88.7% in the 4th quarter. Nebula Research & Development LLC now owns 41,673 shares of the communications equipment provider's stock worth $954,000 after buying an additional 19,590 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Retirement Systems of Alabama acquired a new stake in EchoStar in the 1st quarter worth about $3,762,000. 33.62% of the stock is owned by institutional investors and hedge funds.

Wall Street Analyst Weigh In

Separately, Citigroup boosted their target price on EchoStar from $27.00 to $28.50 and gave the company a "neutral" rating in a research report on Monday, June 23rd. Two research analysts have rated the stock with a sell rating, four have given a hold rating and one has given a buy rating to the stock. Based on data from MarketBeat, the stock currently has a consensus rating of "Hold" and an average price target of $24.70.

EchoStar Stock Performance

NASDAQ SATS traded down $0.51 during trading hours on Wednesday, hitting $29.09. The company had a trading volume of 2,583,377 shares, compared to its average volume of 2,332,039. The business has a 50 day moving average of $23.51 and a 200-day moving average of $24.93. EchoStar Corporation has a 1-year low of $14.79 and a 1-year high of $33.04. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.26, a quick ratio of 1.19 and a current ratio of 1.26. The company has a market cap of $8.36 billion, a PE ratio of -38.79 and a beta of 0.90.

EchoStar (NASDAQ:SATS - Get Free Report) last posted its quarterly earnings results on Friday, May 9th. The communications equipment provider reported ($0.71) earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of ($0.90) by $0.19. EchoStar had a negative net margin of 1.37% and a negative return on equity of 1.08%. The firm had revenue of $3.87 billion during the quarter, compared to analysts' expectations of $3.87 billion. During the same period in the prior year, the company posted ($0.40) earnings per share. The firm's revenue for the quarter was down 3.6% on a year-over-year basis. As a group, equities research analysts expect that EchoStar Corporation will post -1.99 EPS for the current 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.