Fortinet, Inc. (NASDAQ:FTNT) Stock Rated “Hold” by Wall Street Brokerages

Fortinet, Inc. (NASDAQ:FTNT) has received a consensus recommendation of “Hold” from the thirty-six research firms that are currently covering the stock, MarketBeat reports. Five analysts have rated the stock with a sell rating, nineteen have issued a hold rating, ten have assigned a buy rating and two have given a strong buy rating to the company. The average twelve-month target price among brokerages that have issued a report on the stock in the last year is $152.79.

A number of brokerages have recently weighed in on FTNT. BMO Capital Markets lifted their price target on shares of Fortinet from $170.00 to $185.00 and gave the stock a “market perform” rating in a research report on Thursday, July 30th. Citigroup boosted their price objective on Fortinet from $165.00 to $185.00 and gave the company a “neutral” rating in a research report on Thursday, July 30th. Royal Bank Of Canada set a $185.00 target price on Fortinet and gave the stock a “sector perform” rating in a research note on Thursday, July 30th. Susquehanna raised their target price on shares of Fortinet from $115.00 to $160.00 and gave the stock a “neutral” rating in a report on Friday, July 31st. Finally, Bank of America restated a “buy” rating on shares of Fortinet in a report on Monday, July 27th.

Insiders Place Their Bets

In other Fortinet news, VP Michael Xie sold 3,121 shares of Fortinet stock in a transaction dated Monday, August 3rd. The stock was sold at an average price of $162.63, for a total value of $507,568.23. Following the sale, the vice president owned 9,918,360 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $1,613,022,886.80. This trade represents a 0.03% decrease in their position. The transaction was disclosed in a document filed with the SEC, which is available through the SEC website. 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. Also, COO John Whittle sold 53,865 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction dated Monday, September 14th. The shares were sold at an average price of $165.44, for a total value of $8,911,425.60. Following the completion of the sale, the chief operating officer owned 96,987 shares in the company, valued at approximately $16,045,529.28. This trade represents a 35.71% decrease in their ownership of the stock. 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. In the last 90 days, insiders sold 221,303 shares of company stock worth $36,164,034. Corporate insiders own 17.60% of the company’s stock.

Institutional Trading of Fortinet

A number of hedge funds and other institutional investors have recently made changes to their positions in the business. BlackRock Inc. bought a new position in Fortinet in the second quarter valued at $9,561,650,000. Bank of New York Mellon Corp boosted its stake in shares of Fortinet by 6.6% during the 4th quarter. Bank of New York Mellon Corp now owns 14,504,597 shares of the software maker’s stock worth $1,151,810,000 after buying an additional 893,190 shares during the last quarter. First Trust Advisors LP grew its holdings in shares of Fortinet by 45.5% in the 1st quarter. First Trust Advisors LP now owns 11,506,173 shares of the software maker’s stock valued at $940,284,000 after acquiring an additional 3,598,487 shares in the last quarter. Arrowstreet Capital Limited Partnership grew its holdings in shares of Fortinet by 87.4% in the 1st quarter. Arrowstreet Capital Limited Partnership now owns 9,651,024 shares of the software maker’s stock valued at $788,682,000 after acquiring an additional 4,500,194 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Van ECK Associates Corp increased its position in shares of Fortinet by 38.9% in the fourth quarter. Van ECK Associates Corp now owns 7,730,954 shares of the software maker’s stock valued at $613,915,000 after acquiring an additional 2,166,396 shares during the last quarter. 83.71% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors and hedge funds.

Fortinet Stock Performance

Shares of NASDAQ FTNT opened at $184.13 on Thursday. The business has a fifty day simple moving average of $164.36 and a 200 day simple moving average of $136.56. 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 market capitalization of $135.10 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 64.83, a PEG ratio of 3.41 and a beta of 1.03. Fortinet has a one year low of $73.55 and a one year high of $184.63.

Fortinet (NASDAQ:FTNT) last released its quarterly earnings data on Wednesday, July 29th. The software maker reported $0.90 earnings per share for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of $0.75 by $0.15. The business had revenue of $2.05 billion for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $1.89 billion. Fortinet had a net margin of 28.17% and a return on equity of 191.54%. Fortinet’s quarterly revenue was up 25.6% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same quarter last year, the firm earned $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. Sell-side analysts expect that Fortinet will post 3.07 EPS for the current year.

About Fortinet

Fortinet, Inc develops and provides cybersecurity products and services for businesses, governments, and service providers. The company’s portfolio is designed to protect networks, endpoints, applications, cloud environments, and operational technology from cyber threats.

Its offerings include FortiGate next-generation firewalls, FortiSwitch secure networking switches, FortiAP wireless access points, FortiClient endpoint security, and FortiSASE secure access service edge solutions. Fortinet also provides centralized management and analytics through products such as FortiManager and FortiAnalyzer, along with security operations, threat intelligence, and other subscription-based services through its FortiGuard portfolio.

Founded in 2000, Fortinet serves customers globally through direct sales, channel partners, and managed security service providers.