Atika Capital Management LLC Buys Shares of 189,360 EchoStar Co. (NASDAQ:SATS)

Atika Capital Management LLC purchased a new stake in EchoStar Co. (NASDAQ:SATS) during the fourth quarter, according to the company in its most recent Form 13F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The institutional investor purchased 189,360 shares of the communications equipment provider’s stock, valued at approximately $4,336,000. Atika Capital Management LLC owned 0.07% of EchoStar as of its most recent SEC filing.

Other hedge funds and other institutional investors have also made changes to their positions in the company. Pictet Asset Management Holding SA lifted its stake in EchoStar by 18.6% in the fourth quarter. Pictet Asset Management Holding SA now owns 18,868 shares of the communications equipment provider’s stock valued at $432,000 after buying an additional 2,954 shares during the period. New Age Alpha Advisors LLC acquired a new stake in shares of EchoStar in the 4th quarter valued at approximately $408,000. Moment Partners LLC bought a new position in EchoStar during the 4th quarter worth approximately $307,000. Vanguard Group Inc. grew its holdings in EchoStar by 0.6% during the fourth quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. now owns 13,737,733 shares of the communications equipment provider’s stock valued at $314,594,000 after purchasing an additional 88,488 shares during the period. Finally, LPL Financial LLC bought a new stake in EchoStar in the fourth quarter valued at approximately $204,000. 33.62% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors.

Analysts Set New Price Targets

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

EchoStar Trading Down 7.7 %

SATS opened at $21.53 on Friday. The stock has a market capitalization of $6.17 billion, a P/E ratio of -2.35 and a beta of 0.72. 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 12 month low of $13.00 and a 12 month high of $32.48. The firm’s fifty day simple moving average is $27.69 and its 200 day simple moving average is $25.61.

EchoStar (NASDAQ:SATS) last issued its quarterly earnings results on Thursday, February 27th. The communications equipment provider reported $1.24 EPS for the quarter, beating analysts’ consensus estimates of ($0.63) by $1.87. EchoStar had a negative return on equity of 0.64% and a negative net margin of 15.51%. The company had revenue of $3.97 billion for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $3.93 billion. As a group, research analysts anticipate that EchoStar Co. will post -1.99 EPS 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.