Is SATS Stock A Buy or Sell?

Insider Monkey has processed numerous 13F filings of hedge funds and successful value investors to create an extensive database of hedge fund holdings. The 13F filings show the hedge funds’ and successful investors’ positions as of the end of the fourth quarter. You can find articles about an individual hedge fund’s trades on numerous financial news websites. However, in this article we will take a look at their collective moves over the last 5 years and analyze what the smart money thinks of Echostar Corporation (NASDAQ:SATS) based on that data.

Is SATS stock a buy? Echostar Corporation (NASDAQ:SATS) has seen an increase in hedge fund interest in recent months. Echostar Corporation (NASDAQ:SATS) was in 31 hedge funds’ portfolios at the end of the fourth quarter of 2020. The all time high for this statistic is 34. There were 28 hedge funds in our database with SATS holdings at the end of September. Our calculations also showed that SATS isn’t among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds (click for Q4 rankings).

Hedge funds’ reputation as shrewd investors has been tarnished in the last decade as their hedged returns couldn’t keep up with the unhedged returns of the market indices. Our research was able to identify in advance a select group of hedge fund holdings that outperformed the S&P 500 ETFs by more than 124 percentage points since March 2017 (see the details here).

At Insider Monkey we leave no stone unturned when looking for the next great investment idea. For example, we heard that billionaire Peter Thiel is backing this psychedelic-drug startup. So, we are taking a closer look at this space. We go through lists like the 10 best biotech stocks under $10 to identify the next stock with 10x upside potential. Even though we recommend positions in only a tiny fraction of the companies we analyze, we check out as many stocks as we can. We read hedge fund investor letters and listen to stock pitches at hedge fund conferences. You can subscribe to our free daily newsletter on our website. Now let’s go over the recent hedge fund action encompassing Echostar Corporation (NASDAQ:SATS).

Do Hedge Funds Think SATS Is A Good Stock To Buy Now?

At the end of the fourth quarter, a total of 31 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were long this stock, a change of 11% from one quarter earlier. On the other hand, there were a total of 26 hedge funds with a bullish position in SATS a year ago. With hedge funds’ positions undergoing their usual ebb and flow, there exists a select group of noteworthy hedge fund managers who were boosting their stakes meaningfully (or already accumulated large positions).

The largest stake in Echostar Corporation (NASDAQ:SATS) was held by Renaissance Technologies, which reported holding $79.5 million worth of stock at the end of December. It was followed by Hound Partners with a $33.2 million position. Other investors bullish on the company included Park West Asset Management, Quaker Capital Investments, and Newtyn Management. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Quaker Capital Investments allocated the biggest weight to Echostar Corporation (NASDAQ:SATS), around 10.08% of its 13F portfolio. 59 North Capital is also relatively very bullish on the stock, earmarking 3.44 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to SATS.

With a general bullishness amongst the heavyweights, key money managers have been driving this bullishness. Greenlight Capital, managed by David Einhorn, assembled the biggest position in Echostar Corporation (NASDAQ:SATS). Greenlight Capital had $10.6 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Michael Bilger’s 59 North Capital also made a $9.2 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The other funds with new positions in the stock are Gavin Saitowitz and Cisco J. del Valle’s Prelude Capital (previously Springbok Capital), Brandon Haley’s Holocene Advisors, and Jay Petschek and Steven Major’s Corsair Capital Management.

Let’s now review hedge fund activity in other stocks similar to Echostar Corporation (NASDAQ:SATS). These stocks are Cinemark Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:CNK), Harmony Biosciences Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:HRMY), Yalla Group Limited (NYSE:YALA), Overstock.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:OSTK), PDC Energy Inc (NASDAQ:PDCE), Piedmont Office Realty Trust, Inc. (NYSE:PDM), and Arco Platform Limited (NASDAQ:ARCE). This group of stocks’ market caps resemble SATS’s market cap.

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As you can see these stocks had an average of 16.3 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $139 million. That figure was $264 million in SATS’s case. Cinemark Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:CNK) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Harmony Biosciences Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:HRMY) is the least popular one with only 8 bullish hedge fund positions. Compared to these stocks Echostar Corporation (NASDAQ:SATS) is more popular among hedge funds. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for SATS is 85.4. Stocks with higher number of hedge fund positions relative to other stocks as well as relative to their historical range receive a higher sentiment score. Our calculations showed that top 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds returned 81.2% in 2019 and 2020, and outperformed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by 26 percentage points. These stocks returned 12.2% in 2021 through April 12th but still managed to beat the market by 1.5 percentage points. Hedge funds were also right about betting on SATS as the stock returned 14% since the end of December (through 4/12) and outperformed the market by an even larger margin. Hedge funds were clearly right about piling into this stock relative to other stocks with similar market capitalizations.

Disclosure: None. This article was originally published at Insider Monkey.

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