Seven of 147: One Holder Is 69.0% of the Superinvestors' EchoStar Stake. Its Insiders Have Never Bought a Share.

GetCoattail Research — The Filing Tape #98. EchoStar arrived in the premarket focus list on an upgrade headline, and the filings describe a narrow, concentrated register: 7 of the 147 superinvestors we track hold the common stock, one of them is 69.0% of the cohort, the verified holders cut 20.2% in Q2, its insiders recorded no purchase against 4 sales, and short interest has eased 18.0% off its first EchoStar settlement.

The Hype

EchoStar drew attention before the open on October 16. A StockTwits premarket account carried by Asianet Newsable, published October 16, 2026, put EchoStar among the names moving premarket and reported that JPMorgan had raised the stock from Underweight to Overweight with a $144 price target, citing TheFly as reported. The same account said the shares were up about 2.7% premarket, and it relayed JPMorgan's view, as reported, that roughly $43 billion of spectrum sales to AT&T and SpaceX had reduced balance-sheet risk. The account also described retail sentiment as bearish with low message volume, and put the stock down more than 16% year to date in that account — kept separate from our price file below, which shows a 13.3% year-to-date decline through October 2, a 13.3% fall across the second quarter and a last close 33.5% below its 252-session closing high.

The Tape

For EchoStar — the ninety-eighth Filing Tape audit — the tape shows a cohort of just seven common-stock holders dominated by one name, a full market that added filers and shares, an insider record with no purchase in a small sample, no congressional row, a 5% register headed by a holder above 50%, and a borrow stepping down since June.

Lens 1 — the superinvestors: 7 common-stock holders, one at 69.0%, and a verified cut of 20.2%. We track 149 large, mostly long-only managers whose 13F portfolios we collect directly from SEC EDGAR — 147 managers are in the collection: 144 at a June 30 period-end, and 3 early filers already at September 30. The count in this audit is common stock only, on the single common-stock CUSIP 278768106: 7 holders, totalling 7,244,464 shares worth $735,309,854, and every one of the seven is a June 30, 2026 row, so there is no period mix in this name. The labels read four UNCHANGED, two INCREASED and one DECREASED, with no NEW holder and no equity exit. Darsana Capital Partners is the largest holder: 5,000,000 shares worth $507,500,000 — 69.0% of the cohort — at a 2.28% portfolio weight, labelled DECREASED (-28.6%). Next, Carl Icahn - Icahn Capital Management holds 1,404,542 shares worth $142,561,013 — 19.4% of the cohort — labelled UNCHANGED. Carronade Capital Management holds 697,709 shares, INCREASED (+19.7%); ACR Alpine Capital Research holds 66,050 shares, INCREASED (+428.4%); First Pacific Advisors holds 47,066 shares, UNCHANGED; Eagle Capital Management holds 24,887 shares, UNCHANGED; and EdgePoint Investment Group holds 4,210 shares, UNCHANGED. All seven verify row by row against the first quarter, moving together from 9,076,290 shares at March 31 to 7,244,464 at June 30 (-1,831,826 shares, -20.2%) — in a quarter the price fell 13.3%, with Darsana's move from 7,000,000 to 5,000,000 shares accounting for most of it. Two related rows are not counted as equity holders: First Pacific Advisors also carries a put row of 47,000 shares on the same CUSIP, and four tracked managers hold the issuer's 3.875% notes on a separate debt CUSIP. The only exited row is Carronade Capital Management's call option row (214,700 shares) — an option-row exit, not an equity exit. Six of the seven rows imply exactly $101.50 per share, the June 30 close; EdgePoint's small row implies $100.84, printed as filed. 13F figures are as of June 30, 2026; funds have up to 45 days to file, so this is the complete second-quarter picture — and, as ever, a lagging one.

Lens 2 — institutions: 52 more filers, 16.2 million more shares. At June 30, 2026, 720 institutions reported positions, up 52 from 668 at March 31 (+7.78%); 700 are long. Reported shares rose 10.4%, from 155,632,059 to 171,823,920 — a gain of 16,191,861 shares — while reported value rose 3.06% to $21,883,944,870, labelled "reported" because the aggregate includes option rows (see methodology). That reported value implies $127.36 per share against a June 30, 2026 close of $101.50 in our price file, a gap of +25.48% — printed here as found.

Lens 3 — insiders: no purchase in the parsed record, against 4 sales — in a small sample. The parsed Form 4 record holds 14 filings through October 2, 2026 — a small sample, and this audit states that size wherever the zero appears — with 0 open-market purchase transactions in any window: not in the last 90 days, not in the last year, and not in the full record, with zero buyers in every window. Sales number 4 across the record: 13,508 shares for $1,224,685.59, by 2 sellers, and none of the 4 is an officer sale transaction. The last 90 days hold all 4 of those sales, across 12 filings, and the one-year window holds the same 4 sales across 14 filings, so no sale in the record falls outside the recent windows. The sales imply $90.66 per share, inside the 90-day traded close range of $83.89 to $98.29 on our price file.

Lens 4 — Congress: no row at all. The combined record (as of October 3, 2026) carries no row for this name, and neither does the House aggregate (as of October 3, 2026) or the Senate aggregate (as of October 1, 2026). This audit records an absence — no EchoStar row to count — rather than zero trades.

Lens 5 — the 5% register: 44 filings, headed by a controlling holder at 51.5%. Our full parse holds 44 SC 13D/G filings matching the site aggregate exactly — 13 SC 13D/A, 9 SC 13G and 22 SC 13G/A filings, 35 of them amendments, across 42 reporter names. The register maximum is 51.5%: Charles W. Ergen reports 148,810,952 shares as of May 12, 2025, filed May 14, 2025 as SC 13D/A. The Ergen filings are a repeating control-stake series; the latest Ergen print reports 148,681,347 shares (50.9%) as of July 29, 2026, filed July 31, 2026. The latest filing overall is Wellington Management Group LLP's SC 13G, reporting 8,440,336 shares (5.3%) as of June 30, 2026, filed August 13, 2026. Darsana's 13G history runs alongside its 13F rows: 7,452,052 shares (5.3%) as of January 7, 2025, then 7,000,000 shares (4.5%) as of December 31, 2025 — matching its first-quarter 13F row — before the second-quarter row of 5,000,000 shares.

Lens 6 — short interest: 26,618,406 shares, down at each of the last two settlements. This lens uses EchoStar-named FINRA rows only: 6 settlements, from June 30, 2026 to September 15, 2026. As of September 15, 2026, 26,618,406 shares were sold short, down 4.21% from the prior settlement (27,787,201 on August 31, 2026), at 10.14 days to cover. The first EchoStar settlement in the series, June 30, 2026, printed 32,472,179 shares — also the series maximum — so the latest sits 18.0% below it. The series stepped 32,472,179 (June 30) to 31,083,612 (July 15) to 27,285,044 (July 31), up to 29,426,431 (August 14), then down to 27,787,201 (August 31) and 26,618,406 (September 15). Against 287,589,000 shares outstanding, the borrow is 9.26% of the share count. The FINRA files also hold 21 earlier settlements under the ECHO symbol that belong to a different issuer, Echo Global Logistics; those rows are excluded from this series and stated here so the short history is not misread as longer than it is.

The Gap

The narrative arriving with this week's session is an upgrade — Overweight and a $144 target, as reported, on the argument that spectrum sales eased the balance sheet — with retail sentiment still bearish in the same account. The filings, which mostly end before that session, describe a register narrowing at the tracked level. The full market added: 52 more filers (+7.78%) holding 16,191,861 more shares (+10.4%). The tracked cohort did the opposite, every holder verified: 9,076,290 shares to 7,244,464 (-20.2%), with Darsana at 69.0% of the cohort cutting 28.6% — and no new holder entering. Insiders did not buy either: no purchase in 14 parsed filings, against 4 sales worth $1,224,685.59, none by an officer. Congress offers no counterweight — no row in any aggregate — and the 5% register is dominated by a control position, Ergen at 51.5% at its maximum and 50.9% at its latest print. The borrow is the one lens easing: short interest fell from 32,472,179 on June 30 to 26,618,406 on September 15 (-18.0%), still 9.26% of shares outstanding. One plausible reading is that the upgrade landed on a positioning picture set by the decline — a broad market adding, a concentrated cohort trimming, insiders absent as buyers in a small record, and a borrow slowly unwinding.

What Would Change the Picture

Nothing above is a recommendation. It is a record. These filings would change it:

• 1. The 2026Q3 13Fs (filing window closing mid-November 2026). All seven common-stock holders sit on a June 30 period-end. Whether Darsana's 5,000,000-share position — 69.0% of the cohort after a 28.6% cut — is still there, and whether the verified cohort's 20.2% cut continues, decides whether the register still reads as concentrated and narrowing.
• 2. A first insider purchase of any kind. The record holds 0 purchases in every window against 4 sales, in a sample of just 14 filings. A single open-market purchase, at any size, would be this lens's first fact of its kind in our record.
• 3. A first congressional row. The combined, House and Senate aggregates each hold no EchoStar row. A first reported purchase or sale by any member, in either chamber, would give this lens its first fact.
• 4. A materially different control or 5% print. The register's maximum — Ergen at 51.5% — is dated May 12, 2025, and its latest Ergen print is 50.9% as of July 29, 2026. A print that moves the control stake materially, or a new 5% holder outside the existing series, would be this lens's first change of substance.
• 5. Short interest picking a direction. The borrow stands at 26,618,406 shares, down 18.0% from the June 30, 2026 settlement of 32,472,179 and down 4.21% at the latest settlement. A move back above the August 14, 2026 reading of 29,426,431 would break the recent easing; a fall below the July 31, 2026 reading of 27,285,044 sustained across settlements would extend it.

Related reading: Twelve of 147: Viking's New Position Is 35.1% of the Superinvestors' Qualcomm Stake. Its Insiders Have Never Bought a Share. — Filing Tape #97; Fifteen of 147: One Holder Is 47.3% of the Superinvestors' Intuit Stake. Its Insiders Have Bought Twice. — Filing Tape #96. EchoStar's own page: EchoStar (ECHO) on GetCoattail.

Methodology and data notes

• As-of & limits: The lenses rest on different clocks, none live: 13F is a June 30, 2026 snapshot published up to 45 days later; Form 4 runs through October 2, 2026; Congress aggregates run through October 3, 2026 (Senate through October 1, 2026); 13D/G through August 13, 2026; short interest through September 15, 2026; the price file ends October 2, 2026. Three limits are specific to this audit. First, the roster expanded before the recent audits — from 85 managers (83 filing) to 149 (147 filing) — so "of 147" counts are not comparable to earlier pieces' "of 83" figures. Second, the insider record for this name is small — 14 parsed filings in total — so the zero-purchase statement is a statement about that full parsed record, not about a large sample. Third, this week's session (through October 16, 2026) postdates every lens here; the session is known to this audit only from outside coverage, not from our own files.
• Superinvestor lens: 147 managers in the collection (of a 149-manager roster; 144 at a June 30, 2026 period-end and 3 early filers at September 30, 2026) collected directly from SEC EDGAR Form 13F (managers_13f collection, regenerated October 15, 2026 for the expanded roster); EchoStar equity positions are counted on the common-stock CUSIP 278768106 only. Seven distinct managers hold long common-stock positions, totalling 7,244,464 shares worth $735,309,854, all at a June 30, 2026 period-end. The direction count on those rows is four UNCHANGED, two INCREASED and one DECREASED, with no NEW row. Darsana Capital Partners' share of the cohort is 69.0% = 5,000,000 / 7,244,464; Carl Icahn - Icahn Capital Management's share is 19.4% = 1,404,542 / 7,244,464. All seven holders verify row by row against the first quarter under the rule used in the previous audits — each continuing holder's first-quarter row accepted only when it sits under the same filing-agent prefix as the manager's second-quarter accession and its implied shares-change reproduces the EDGAR shares-change label at one decimal place — so the verified continuing total is 9,076,290 shares at March 31 moving to 7,244,464 at June 30 (-20.2%). First-quarter rows: Darsana 7,000,000; Icahn 1,404,542; Carronade 583,085; First Pacific 47,066; Eagle 24,887; ACR 12,500; EdgePoint 4,210. Rows excluded from the equity count, and stated wherever the count appears: First Pacific Advisors' put row of 47,000 shares ($4,770,500) on the common CUSIP, and the 3.875% notes on debt CUSIP 278768AB2 held by four managers (First Pacific Advisors $114,192,866; Howard Marks - Oaktree Capital Management $56,250,003; Aequim Alternative Investments $215,625,000; Carronade Capital Management $86,097,000) — note share counts in the source are principal-style figures and are not added to equity shares. No tracked manager exited an equity position in the second quarter; the only exited row for this issuer is Carronade Capital Management's call option row (214,700 shares, $25,135,000 prior value). The pipeline register totals are not identical to the collection totals for this name and are not used as cohort figures: the register carries 8 second-quarter rows totalling 7,291,464 shares (the 7,244,464 common-stock shares plus the 47,000-share put row) and 9 first-quarter rows totalling 9,337,990 shares.
• Full-market lens: SEC Form 13F Data Sets full-market aggregation. The primary table is the full13f collection's by-ticker file (holders = distinct filers reporting the ticker's CUSIP; 700 reported long positions out of 720 filers). EchoStar carries a single CUSIP in this aggregation (278768106), and the backfill fixtures' by-CUSIP row for it matches the by-ticker row on every field — holders, long holders, shares, reported value, prior holders and prior reported value — exactly. The by-ticker file's entered/exited fields (647 and 595, a net of +52 that matches the change in holder count) are gross flows, so this audit headlines the net change. Reported-value caution: the aggregate value ($21,883,944,870 over 171,823,920 shares) implies $127.36 per share against a June 30, 2026 close of $101.50 in our price file, a gap of +25.48% — printed here as found. The aggregate sums the VALUE of every information-table row — including put and call option rows — while the share count covers long common-stock rows only, so we headline filer and share counts and label dollar values "reported."
• Insider lens: full-parse Form 4 aggregation (agg_by_ticker), record as of October 2, 2026 (14 filings). Sale and purchase counts are transaction-code counts (S and P) in non-derivative rows; grants and exercises are not counted as purchases, and one filing can contain many transaction rows. Purchase transactions total 0 across the record — 0 in the 90-day window (July 5 to October 2, 2026), 0 in the one-year window (October 3, 2025 to October 2, 2026) and 0 in the full record, with zero buyers and zero officer purchase transactions in every window. Sale transactions total 4 across the record (13,508 shares, $1,224,685.59, 2 sellers, 0 officer sale transactions), and the same 4 sales appear in the one-year window and in the 90-day window (12 filings in that window). The site's insider aggregate (compiled as of October 16, 2026, over its own 90-day window) matches the full parse's 90-day window on every field — 0 purchases, 4 sales, 0 buyers, 2 sellers and $1,224,685.59 of sale value. The full-parse aggregate's sale totals imply $90.66 per share in every window, inside the traded close range of the 90-day window on our price file ($83.89 to $98.29), so the totals are cited as figures in this article.
• 13D/G lens: full-parse SC 13D/G parsed filings (44 filings matching issuer CIK 1415404 on CUSIP 278768106: 13 SC 13D/A, 9 SC 13G and 22 SC 13G/A, 35 of them amendments), filings through August 13, 2026. The site aggregation carries this name under a ticker-keyed row; that row (44 filings, 13 D-filings, 31 G-filings, 35 amendments, 42 reporters, latest date August 13, 2026, maximum 51.5%) matches the parsed filings on filings, form mix, amendments, latest date and maximum. The parsed reporting-person rows sum to a cross-date total that is not used as a stake figure in the article. The rows are reported as filed, under the names exactly as they appear: Charles W. Ergen printing 148,810,952 shares at 51.5% as of May 12, 2025, filed May 14, 2025 as SC 13D/A (the register maximum); Charles W. Ergen printing 148,681,347 shares at 50.9% as of July 29, 2026, filed July 31, 2026 as SC 13D/A (the latest Ergen print); and Wellington Management Group LLP printing 8,440,336 shares at 5.3% as of June 30, 2026, filed August 13, 2026 as SC 13G (the latest filing). Darsana Capital Partners LP's SC 13G/A history in the parse runs 7,452,052 shares (5.3%) as of January 7, 2025 to 7,000,000 shares (4.5%) as of December 31, 2025. The parsed coverage for this issuer holds these 44 filings; a 5% holder that has not filed in the covered window would not appear here.
• Congress lens: Senate PTR archive and House PTR archive as maintained on this site. The combined record (as of October 3, 2026), the House aggregate (as of October 3, 2026) and the Senate aggregate (as of October 1, 2026) each carry no row for this name. This audit therefore describes the lens as a recorded absence, not as zero reported trades.
• Short interest lens: FINRA Equity Short Interest files (biweekly settlement dates), collected directly from FINRA's public distribution. The published series covers only the 6 settlements whose issue name is EchoStar, from June 30, 2026 (first EchoStar settlement in the collection, 32,472,179 shares) to September 15, 2026. The latest reading is 26,618,406 shares on September 15, 2026, down 4.21% from the prior settlement (27,787,201 on August 31, 2026), at 10.14 days to cover. The series maximum is 32,472,179 shares on June 30, 2026 — the first EchoStar settlement is also the maximum — so the latest reading sits 18.0% below it. The files also hold 21 settlements under the ECHO symbol for a different issuer, Echo Global Logistics, Inc.; those rows are excluded from the series, and the first EchoStar row's prior-settlement field (41,494,894 shares, as filed) is not used, because it compares across the ticker's change of issuer. FINRA publishes each settlement about two weeks after the fact, so the October price action is not yet in this series. The share-count ratio (9.26%) uses the fundamentals file's shares-outstanding figure below.
• Fundamentals note: our fundamentals collection carries EchoStar's revenue of $15,004,989,000, net income of -$14,497,180,000 and assets of $43,016,355,000, each labelled fiscal 2025 in the file. The file is marked ok for this name, with no missing fields: shares outstanding of 287,589,000 (sourced in the file to the weighted-average basic share count as of December 31, 2025) and a file-computed market value of $28,761,776,504.36. The file does not flag the issuer as a foreign private issuer, and it carries SIC 4899, Communications Services, NEC. The file's price for the name is $100.01 as of October 6, 2026; our daily-close file ends October 2, 2026 at $94.25, and we keep the two files' figures separate rather than blending them.
• Prices: our own daily-close file for EchoStar through October 2, 2026 ($94.25 close, -13.3% year to date on that file; the 252-session closing high is $141.80 on May 20, 2026, so the last close sits 33.5% below it; the 252-session closing low is $66.93 on November 17, 2025, so the last close sits 40.8% above it; closes of $117.07 at March 31, 2026 and $101.50 at June 30, 2026, a second-quarter change of -13.3%; change from June 30 to October 2 of -7.1%; change from the September 30, 2025 close of $76.36 of +23.4%; the December 31, 2025 close is $108.70). The series in our price file begins June 1, 2021 at $27.21 and holds 1,342 rows; the file's full-period close range is $9.68 to $141.80.
• Market context sources: StockTwits' premarket account carried by Asianet Newsable (published October 16, 2026, checked October 16, 2026; EchoStar among the names moving premarket; JPMorgan raised the stock from Underweight to Overweight with a $144 price target, citing TheFly as reported; shares up about 2.7% premarket; roughly $43 billion of spectrum sales to AT&T and SpaceX described, in JPMorgan's view as reported, as having reduced balance-sheet risk; retail sentiment bearish with low message volume; stock down more than 16% year to date in that account — a third-party figure kept separate from our price file's -13.3%). Figures we could not confirm were left out; the external items above are reported speech from that outlet, not GetCoattail measurements.
• EchoStar is in the GetCoattail stock-page universe: EchoStar (ECHO) stock page. Series data: echo_lens_data.csv · echo_short_interest_series.csv. Earlier audits: Qualcomm · Intuit.

Past patterns are not a promise of future results. For education only — not investment advice.

This article describes public filings as of the dates stated. It is not investment advice and makes no recommendation. Filings lag reality: 13F positions are as of June 30, 2026, and later trading is not yet public.

Revision history

• v1.0 — October 16, 2026: first publication.