Qualys, Inc. $QLYS Shares Purchased by Principal Financial Group Inc.

Principal Financial Group Inc. raised its holdings in Qualys, Inc. (NASDAQ:QLYS) by 19.1% during the 1st quarter, according to the company in its most recent Form 13F filing with the SEC. The fund owned 140,317 shares of the software maker’s stock after purchasing an additional 22,498 shares during the quarter. Principal Financial Group Inc. owned 0.40% of Qualys worth $12,327,000 at the end of the most recent reporting period.

Other hedge funds have also recently modified their holdings of the company. Fuller & Thaler Asset Management Inc. acquired a new position in Qualys in the fourth quarter valued at approximately $78,591,000. Alyeska Investment Group L.P. acquired a new position in shares of Qualys in the 3rd quarter valued at $45,854,000. AQR Capital Management LLC boosted its holdings in Qualys by 46.9% during the second quarter. AQR Capital Management LLC now owns 1,012,100 shares of the software maker’s stock worth $144,133,000 after buying an additional 323,324 shares in the last quarter. Clark Capital Management Group Inc. grew its position in Qualys by 402.2% during the fourth quarter. Clark Capital Management Group Inc. now owns 363,593 shares of the software maker’s stock valued at $48,322,000 after buying an additional 291,192 shares during the period. Finally, Arrowstreet Capital Limited Partnership increased its holdings in Qualys by 291.0% in the fourth quarter. Arrowstreet Capital Limited Partnership now owns 366,844 shares of the software maker’s stock valued at $48,754,000 after buying an additional 273,017 shares in the last quarter. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 99.31% of the company’s stock.

Analysts Set New Price Targets

Several brokerages recently weighed in on QLYS. Weiss Ratings upgraded Qualys from a “hold (c-)” rating to a “hold (c)” rating in a research note on Thursday, July 16th. Morgan Stanley set a $96.00 price objective on Qualys in a research report on Wednesday, May 6th. Piper Sandler decreased their target price on Qualys from $135.00 to $100.00 and set a “neutral” rating on the stock in a research report on Wednesday, May 6th. JPMorgan Chase & Co. raised shares of Qualys from an “underweight” rating to a “neutral” rating and lifted their price target for the company from $87.00 to $139.00 in a research note on Tuesday, June 30th. Finally, Truist Financial upped their price objective on shares of Qualys from $85.00 to $160.00 and gave the stock a “hold” rating in a research report on Tuesday. One investment analyst has rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, three have given a Buy rating, twelve have given a Hold rating and one has assigned a Sell rating to the company’s stock. According to MarketBeat, Qualys presently has a consensus rating of “Hold” and an average target price of $141.80.

Insider Activity

In other news, CEO Sumedh S. Thakar sold 30,000 shares of the stock in a transaction that occurred on Tuesday, June 30th. The shares were sold at an average price of $135.00, for a total value of $4,050,000.00. Following the completion of the sale, the chief executive officer owned 196,686 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $26,552,610. This represents a 13.23% decrease in their position. The transaction was disclosed in a filing with the SEC, which is available at this hyperlink. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Also, insider Bruce K. Posey sold 1,000 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Monday, July 6th. The stock was sold at an average price of $155.00, for a total transaction of $155,000.00. Following the sale, the insider owned 63,571 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $9,853,505. This represents a 1.55% decrease in their position. The disclosure for this sale is available in the SEC filing. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Insiders sold 73,846 shares of company stock valued at $9,239,073 in the last quarter. Insiders own 0.72% of the company’s stock.

Qualys Price Performance

QLYS stock opened at $137.48 on Friday. Qualys, Inc. has a 1 year low of $74.51 and a 1 year high of $167.86. The firm has a market capitalization of $4.84 billion, a PE ratio of 24.68 and a beta of 0.61. The business has a 50 day simple moving average of $125.13 and a 200-day simple moving average of $110.59.

Qualys (NASDAQ:QLYS) last released its quarterly earnings data on Tuesday, May 5th. The software maker reported $1.95 earnings per share for the quarter, topping analysts’ consensus estimates of $1.81 by $0.14. The company had revenue of $175.64 million for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $173.63 million. Qualys had a return on equity of 37.15% and a net margin of 29.41%.The firm’s revenue for the quarter was up 9.8% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same quarter in the previous year, the company posted $1.67 earnings per share. Qualys has set its FY 2026 guidance at 7.440-7.650 EPS and its Q2 2026 guidance at 1.730-1.800 EPS. On average, equities research analysts expect that Qualys, Inc. will post 5.47 EPS for the current year.

Qualys Profile

Qualys, Inc (NASDAQ: QLYS) is a leading provider of cloud-based security and compliance solutions designed to help organizations streamline their IT security programs. Operating on a unified, modular platform, Qualys offers continuous visibility into global IT assets through a combination of lightweight cloud agents and on-premises scanner appliances. The platform supports an array of security and compliance use cases, enabling real-time detection of vulnerabilities, policy violations and misconfigurations across on-premises, cloud and hybrid environments.

The company’s flagship Qualys Cloud Platform delivers a suite of integrated applications, including vulnerability management, detection and response (VMDR), policy compliance, web application scanning, file integrity monitoring, asset inventory and container security.