Wall Street Zen Downgrades Fortinet (NASDAQ:FTNT) to Hold

Fortinet (NASDAQ:FTNT) was downgraded by Wall Street Zen from a “buy” rating to a “hold” rating in a research note issued on Saturday, Wall Street Zen reports.

Several other equities analysts have also recently weighed in on FTNT. Zacks Research upgraded Fortinet from a “hold” rating to a “strong-buy” rating in a report on Tuesday, July 14th. HC Wainwright reaffirmed a “buy” rating on shares of Fortinet in a report on Thursday, July 30th. Mizuho set a $125.00 target price on Fortinet and gave the company an “underperform” rating in a research report on Wednesday, July 15th. TD Cowen reissued a “buy” rating on shares of Fortinet in a report on Wednesday, September 16th. Finally, Evercore set a $165.00 price target on shares of Fortinet in a research report on Thursday, July 30th. Two analysts have rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, ten have issued a Buy rating, nineteen have issued a Hold rating and five have issued a Sell rating to the company’s stock. According to MarketBeat.com, the stock has a consensus rating of “Hold” and a consensus price target of $152.79.

Fortinet Stock Performance

Shares of NASDAQ FTNT opened at $173.46 on Friday. Fortinet has a 12-month low of $73.55 and a 12-month high of $181.37. The firm has a market capitalization of $127.27 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 61.08, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 3.26 and a beta of 1.06. The company has a current ratio of 1.28, a quick ratio of 1.19 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.32. The firm has a 50 day moving average of $161.46 and a 200 day moving average of $132.54.

Fortinet (NASDAQ:FTNT) last announced its quarterly earnings data on Wednesday, July 29th. The software maker reported $0.90 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, beating analysts’ consensus estimates of $0.75 by $0.15. The company had revenue of $2.05 billion during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $1.89 billion. Fortinet had a return on equity of 191.54% and a net margin of 28.17%.The firm’s revenue was up 25.6% on a year-over-year basis. During the same period in the previous year, the company posted $0.64 EPS. Fortinet has set its FY 2026 guidance at 3.410-3.470 EPS and its Q3 2026 guidance at 0.830-0.870 EPS. On average, research analysts anticipate that Fortinet will post 3.07 earnings per share for the current year.

Insider Buying and Selling

In other Fortinet news, COO John Whittle sold 2,835 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction on Tuesday, September 15th. The stock was sold at an average price of $168.74, for a total transaction of $478,377.90. Following the completion of the sale, the chief operating officer owned 96,987 shares in the company, valued at $16,365,586.38. This represents a 2.84% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The transaction was disclosed in a filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available at the SEC website. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Also, VP Michael Xie sold 3,121 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction dated Monday, August 3rd. The shares were sold at an average price of $162.63, for a total value of $507,568.23. Following the sale, the vice president directly owned 9,918,360 shares in the company, valued at approximately $1,613,022,886.80. The trade was a 0.03% decrease in their position. Additional details regarding this sale are available in the official SEC disclosure. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. The sale was made to cover tax withholding obligations related to the vesting of equity awards. Insiders sold a total of 221,303 shares of company stock valued at $36,164,034 over the last three months. 17.60% of the stock is owned by company insiders.

Institutional Inflows and Outflows

A number of hedge funds and other institutional investors have recently made changes to their positions in the stock. BlackRock Inc. acquired a new stake in Fortinet during the 2nd quarter valued at approximately $9,561,650,000. Norges Bank acquired a new stake in shares of Fortinet in the fourth quarter worth $1,152,917,000. Bank of New York Mellon Corp acquired a new stake in shares of Fortinet in the second quarter worth $1,432,842,000. Legal & General Group Plc purchased a new position in shares of Fortinet during the second quarter worth $979,062,000. Finally, Arrowstreet Capital Limited Partnership raised its holdings in shares of Fortinet by 87.4% during the first quarter. Arrowstreet Capital Limited Partnership now owns 9,651,024 shares of the software maker’s stock worth $788,682,000 after purchasing an additional 4,500,194 shares during the last quarter. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 83.71% of the company’s stock.

Fortinet Company Profile

Fortinet, Inc develops cybersecurity products and services designed to protect enterprise, small and midsize business, service provider, and government networks. Its portfolio covers network security, endpoint protection, cloud security, secure access service edge (SASE), security operations, and zero-trust access.

The company’s offerings include FortiGate next-generation firewalls, FortiSwitch secure networking switches, FortiAP wireless access points, FortiClient endpoint security, and FortiManager and FortiAnalyzer management and analytics tools.