Rosenblatt Securities Issues Positive Forecast for Fortinet (NASDAQ:FTNT) Stock Price

Fortinet (NASDAQ:FTNT) had its price objective raised by Rosenblatt Securities from $85.00 to $90.00 in a research note issued to investors on Friday morning,Benzinga reports. They currently have a buy rating on the software maker’s stock.

A number of other equities research analysts have also recently commented on FTNT. Morgan Stanley decreased their target price on shares of Fortinet from $73.00 to $69.00 and set an “overweight” rating for the company in a research report on Wednesday, July 17th. Cantor Fitzgerald raised their price target on shares of Fortinet from $65.00 to $88.00 and gave the company a “neutral” rating in a research report on Tuesday, October 29th. Guggenheim downgraded shares of Fortinet from a “buy” rating to a “neutral” rating in a report on Monday, July 29th. DZ Bank raised shares of Fortinet from a “sell” rating to a “hold” rating and set a $65.00 price target on the stock in a research note on Thursday, August 8th. Finally, Hsbc Global Res raised shares of Fortinet from a “moderate sell” rating to a “hold” rating in a research note on Wednesday, August 7th. One research analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, twenty-one have issued a hold rating and eleven have issued a buy rating to the company’s stock. Based on data from MarketBeat, the company currently has an average rating of “Hold” and an average target price of $77.72.

Fortinet Trading Up 10.0 %

Shares of Fortinet stock traded up $8.36 during trading on Friday, reaching $92.04. 13,790,376 shares of the stock were exchanged, compared to its average volume of 3,707,677. The stock’s fifty day moving average is $78.74 and its 200 day moving average is $68.13. Fortinet has a 1 year low of $49.63 and a 1 year high of $92.53. The firm has a market cap of $70.40 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 54.46, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 2.85 and a beta of 1.00. The company has a quick ratio of 1.22, a current ratio of 1.32 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 3.45.

Fortinet (NASDAQ:FTNT) last released its earnings results on Tuesday, August 6th. The software maker reported $0.57 earnings per share for the quarter, beating analysts’ consensus estimates of $0.41 by $0.16. Fortinet had a net margin of 23.71% and a negative return on equity of 2,160.10%. The company had revenue of $1.43 billion for the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $1.40 billion. During the same quarter in the previous year, the company earned $0.31 EPS. Fortinet’s revenue for the quarter was up 10.9% on a year-over-year basis. As a group, equities research analysts expect that Fortinet will post 1.75 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Insiders Place Their Bets

In related news, CEO Ken Xie sold 23,307 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction dated Wednesday, October 16th. The shares were sold at an average price of $81.89, for a total transaction of $1,908,610.23. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief executive officer now owns 48,915,530 shares in the company, valued at $4,005,692,751.70. This represents a 0.00 % decrease in their position. The transaction was disclosed in a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available at the SEC website. Over the last three months, insiders have sold 70,538 shares of company stock valued at $5,403,559. 18.00% of the stock is currently owned by insiders.

Institutional Trading of Fortinet

Several hedge funds and other institutional investors have recently made changes to their positions in the stock. Vanguard Group Inc. grew its stake in Fortinet by 1.2% during the first quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. now owns 68,052,487 shares of the software maker’s stock worth $4,648,665,000 after buying an additional 779,271 shares during the period. Price T Rowe Associates Inc. MD increased its stake in Fortinet by 664.8% during the 1st quarter. Price T Rowe Associates Inc. MD now owns 35,137,089 shares of the software maker’s stock valued at $2,400,215,000 after buying an additional 30,542,551 shares during the period. Swedbank AB increased its position in shares of Fortinet by 1.7% in the second quarter. Swedbank AB now owns 8,156,797 shares of the software maker’s stock worth $491,610,000 after acquiring an additional 134,366 shares in the last quarter. Marshall Wace LLP lifted its stake in Fortinet by 198.5% in the second quarter. Marshall Wace LLP now owns 6,238,856 shares of the software maker’s stock valued at $376,016,000 after acquiring an additional 4,148,520 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Van ECK Associates Corp raised its position in shares of Fortinet by 94.9% in the second quarter. Van ECK Associates Corp now owns 5,755,599 shares of the software maker’s stock valued at $346,890,000 after purchasing an additional 2,802,446 shares during the period. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 83.71% of the company’s stock.

Fortinet Company Profile

Fortinet, Inc provides cybersecurity and convergence of networking and security solutions worldwide. It offers secure networking solutions focus on the convergence of networking and security; network firewall solutions that consist of FortiGate data centers, hyperscale, and distributed firewalls, as well as encrypted applications; wireless LAN solutions; and secure connectivity solutions, including FortiSwitch secure ethernet switches, FortiAP wireless local area network access points, FortiExtender 5G connectivity gateways, and other products.