The Manufacturers Life Insurance Company Takes Position in Palo Alto Networks, Inc. $PANW

The Manufacturers Life Insurance Company bought a new stake in Palo Alto Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ:PANW) during the 2nd quarter, HoldingsChannel.com reports. The fund bought 753,622 shares of the network technology company’s stock, valued at approximately $256,985,000.

Other hedge funds and other institutional investors also recently added to or reduced their stakes in the company. BlackRock Inc. purchased a new position in shares of Palo Alto Networks in the second quarter worth about $25,833,462,000. State Street Corp boosted its position in Palo Alto Networks by 2.0% in the fourth quarter. State Street Corp now owns 30,331,705 shares of the network technology company’s stock valued at $5,587,100,000 after buying an additional 594,789 shares during the last quarter. Bank of America Corp DE boosted its position in Palo Alto Networks by 16.0% in the first quarter. Bank of America Corp DE now owns 22,476,753 shares of the network technology company’s stock valued at $3,603,473,000 after buying an additional 3,101,267 shares during the last quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC increased its holdings in Palo Alto Networks by 3.5% in the 4th quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC now owns 15,989,257 shares of the network technology company’s stock worth $2,934,935,000 after buying an additional 540,756 shares during the period. Finally, Norges Bank acquired a new position in Palo Alto Networks in the 4th quarter worth approximately $1,415,364,000. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 79.82% of the company’s stock.

Analysts Set New Price Targets

PANW has been the subject of several research reports. HSBC lifted their price objective on shares of Palo Alto Networks from $114.00 to $207.00 in a research note on Thursday, June 4th. Rosenblatt Securities raised their target price on shares of Palo Alto Networks from $275.00 to $355.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a report on Wednesday, June 3rd. Guggenheim downgraded shares of Palo Alto Networks from a “neutral” rating to a “reduce” rating in a research report on Wednesday, May 27th. Cantor Fitzgerald upped their price target on shares of Palo Alto Networks from $340.00 to $425.00 and gave the company an “overweight” rating in a report on Wednesday, August 19th. Finally, Stifel Nicolaus set a $415.00 price target on Palo Alto Networks and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a research report on Wednesday, August 19th. One equities research analyst has rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, forty have given a Buy rating, six have given a Hold rating and one has issued a Sell rating to the company’s stock. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, Palo Alto Networks presently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus target price of $364.00.

Palo Alto Networks Price Performance

Shares of NASDAQ PANW opened at $350.90 on Tuesday. The stock has a market capitalization of $285.98 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 287.62, a PEG ratio of 12.00 and a beta of 0.91. Palo Alto Networks, Inc. has a 12 month low of $139.57 and a 12 month high of $398.88. The firm’s 50 day simple moving average is $338.70 and its 200-day simple moving average is $243.49. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.04, a current ratio of 0.86 and a quick ratio of 0.86.

Palo Alto Networks (NASDAQ:PANW) last posted its earnings results on Tuesday, June 2nd. The network technology company reported $0.85 earnings per share for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $0.79 by $0.06. Palo Alto Networks had a net margin of 7.95% and a return on equity of 10.53%. The firm had revenue of $3 billion during the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $2.94 billion. During the same period in the previous year, the firm earned $0.37 EPS. The business’s quarterly revenue was up 31.1% on a year-over-year basis. Palo Alto Networks has set its FY 2026 guidance at 3.770-3.790 EPS and its Q4 2026 guidance at 0.960-0.980 EPS. Analysts expect that Palo Alto Networks, Inc. will post 2.02 EPS for the current year.

Insider Buying and Selling

In other news, Director John P. Key sold 7,500 shares of the stock in a transaction dated Friday, June 12th. The shares were sold at an average price of $279.24, for a total transaction of $2,094,300.00. Following the sale, the director directly owned 12,500 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $3,490,500. This represents a 37.50% decrease in their position. The transaction was disclosed in a legal filing with the SEC, which is available through this link. Also, Director James J. Goetz sold 20,000 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction dated Friday, June 12th. The shares were sold at an average price of $279.90, for a total value of $5,598,000.00. Following the sale, the director owned 20,000 shares in the company, valued at $5,598,000. This trade represents a 50.00% decrease in their ownership of the stock. Additional details regarding this sale are available in the official SEC disclosure. Insiders have sold 37,935 shares of company stock valued at $10,809,461 in the last ninety days. Company insiders own 1.40% of the company’s stock.

About Palo Alto Networks

Palo Alto Networks (NASDAQ: PANW) is a cybersecurity company founded in 2005 and headquartered in Santa Clara, California. The firm develops a broad suite of security products and services designed to prevent successful cyberattacks and protect enterprise networks, clouds, and endpoints. Built around a platform strategy, its offerings target threat prevention, detection, response and governance across hybrid and multi-cloud environments.

The company’s product portfolio includes next‑generation firewalls as a core on‑premises capability, alongside cloud‑delivered security services and software for securing public and private clouds.