Ergen: Win some, lose some

Charlie Ergen’s Dish Network, and his EchoStar satellite division, are having mixed fortunes. Last week Dish was hit with a massive fine over unwarranted marketing telephone calls, and its EchoStar-21 satellite is stuck in Kazakhstan awaiting a much delayed launch.

But Wall Street seemingly loves Ergen, and a Morgan Stanley equity report yesterday prompted a significant 1.8 per cent rise in Dish Network’s share price, with the bank’s analysts praising Ergen’s strategy as far as the company’s spectrum assets were concerned, and saying that Dish’s portfolio of spectrum is increasingly valuable.

Indeed, equity analyst Benjamin Swinburne not only said that that the spectrum has a value, but that the likes of Verizon – and others – have an insatiable demand for extra bandwidth, and Ergen’s companies have it!

Morgan Stanley rated Dish Network a ‘Buy’, and with a significant upside in its share price, 22.5 per cent up on today’s $61 to $75 a share.