Scotiabank Cuts Fortinet (NASDAQ:FTNT) Price Target to $80.00

Fortinet (NASDAQ:FTNT) had its price objective lowered by Scotiabank from $90.00 to $80.00 in a research note released on Friday morning, Benzinga reports. The brokerage currently has a sector outperform rating on the software maker’s stock.

A number of other brokerages also recently weighed in on FTNT. Evercore ISI dropped their price objective on Fortinet from $72.00 to $67.00 and set an in-line rating on the stock in a research report on Friday. Piper Sandler dropped their price objective on Fortinet from $75.00 to $70.00 and set a neutral rating on the stock in a research report on Friday. Citigroup downgraded Fortinet from a buy rating to a neutral rating and raised their price objective for the company from $60.00 to $62.00 in a research report on Tuesday, January 9th. Stifel Nicolaus raised their price target on Fortinet from $52.00 to $78.00 and gave the stock a hold rating in a report on Wednesday, February 7th. Finally, BMO Capital Markets lowered their price target on Fortinet from $82.00 to $70.00 and set a market perform rating for the company in a report on Friday. Two investment analysts have rated the stock with a sell rating, twenty have given a hold rating and twelve have assigned a buy rating to the company. According to MarketBeat, the stock has a consensus rating of Hold and a consensus target price of $70.37.

Fortinet Price Performance

FTNT opened at $58.81 on Friday. Fortinet has a 12-month low of $44.12 and a 12-month high of $81.24. The business’s fifty day simple moving average is $67.34 and its 200-day simple moving average is $61.96. The company has a market capitalization of $44.89 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 38.44, a PEG ratio of 2.60 and a beta of 1.08. The company has a current ratio of 1.20, a quick ratio of 1.08 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 13.38.

Fortinet (NASDAQ:FTNT) last issued its quarterly earnings data on Thursday, May 2nd. The software maker reported $0.43 earnings per share for the quarter, beating analysts’ consensus estimates of $0.38 by $0.05. Fortinet had a negative return on equity of 2,235.48% and a net margin of 22.23%. The company had revenue of $1.35 billion for the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $1.34 billion. During the same quarter last year, the company earned $0.29 earnings per share. The firm’s revenue for the quarter was up 7.2% compared to the same quarter last year. On average, equities research analysts anticipate that Fortinet will post 1.4 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Insider Activity

In other news, CEO Ken Xie sold 46,084 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Tuesday, February 13th. The stock was sold at an average price of $69.07, for a total value of $3,183,021.88. Following the completion of the sale, the chief executive officer now directly owns 51,813,638 shares in the company, valued at $3,578,767,976.66. The transaction was disclosed in a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which can be accessed through this link. In other news, CEO Ken Xie sold 46,084 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Tuesday, February 13th. The stock was sold at an average price of $69.07, for a total value of $3,183,021.88. Following the completion of the sale, the chief executive officer now directly owns 51,813,638 shares in the company, valued at $3,578,767,976.66. The transaction was disclosed in a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which can be accessed through this link. Also, VP Michael Xie sold 24,710 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Thursday, May 2nd. The shares were sold at an average price of $64.48, for a total value of $1,593,300.80. Following the completion of the sale, the vice president now owns 10,867,018 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $700,705,320.64. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Insiders sold 118,480 shares of company stock worth $8,021,556 over the last three months. 17.54% of the stock is currently owned by corporate insiders.

Institutional Trading of Fortinet

Institutional investors have recently made changes to their positions in the company. Rise Advisors LLC boosted its stake in shares of Fortinet by 135.6% in the first quarter. Rise Advisors LLC now owns 377 shares of the software maker’s stock worth $26,000 after acquiring an additional 217 shares during the last quarter. Vima LLC acquired a new position in Fortinet during the fourth quarter worth $25,000. Atwood & Palmer Inc. acquired a new position in Fortinet during the fourth quarter worth $29,000. Headinvest LLC acquired a new position in Fortinet during the third quarter worth $29,000. Finally, Creekmur Asset Management LLC acquired a new position in Fortinet during the fourth quarter worth $32,000. 83.71% of the stock is owned by institutional investors and hedge funds.

About Fortinet

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.