Van ECK Associates Corp Purchases 97 Shares of Qualys, Inc. (NASDAQ:QLYS)

Van ECK Associates Corp boosted its stake in Qualys, Inc. (NASDAQ:QLYS – Get Rating) by 9.9% in the third quarter, HoldingsChannel reports. The firm owned 1,073 shares of the software maker’s stock after acquiring an additional 97 shares during the period. Van ECK Associates Corp’s holdings in Qualys were worth $150,000 at the end of the most recent quarter.

Other institutional investors and hedge funds have also added to or reduced their stakes in the company. Hoey Investments Inc. bought a new stake in Qualys in the second quarter valued at about $38,000. Wipfli Financial Advisors LLC bought a new stake in Qualys in the third quarter valued at about $57,000. Castle Wealth Management LLC bought a new stake in Qualys in the second quarter valued at about $102,000. Advisors Asset Management Inc. bought a new stake in Qualys in the second quarter valued at about $120,000. Finally, Orion Portfolio Solutions LLC bought a new stake in shares of Qualys in the first quarter worth about $205,000. Institutional investors own 92.61% of the company’s stock.

Insider Activity at Qualys

In related news, CEO Sumedh S. Thakar sold 5,576 shares of the stock in a transaction that occurred on Monday, November 14th. The stock was sold at an average price of $125.75, for a total transaction of $701,182.00. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief executive officer now directly owns 183,984 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $23,135,988. The sale was disclosed in a legal filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is accessible through the SEC website. In other news, CEO Sumedh S. Thakar sold 5,576 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Monday, November 14th. The stock was sold at an average price of $125.75, for a total value of $701,182.00. Following the completion of the sale, the chief executive officer now directly owns 183,984 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $23,135,988. The transaction was disclosed in a legal filing with the SEC, which is accessible through this link. Also, CRO Allan Peters sold 553 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Thursday, December 8th. The shares were sold at an average price of $115.50, for a total value of $63,871.50. Following the completion of the sale, the executive now directly owns 43,075 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $4,975,162.50. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Over the last ninety days, insiders sold 17,281 shares of company stock valued at $2,027,125. Insiders own 1.40% of the company’s stock.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

Several brokerages have issued reports on QLYS. Piper Sandler lowered their price target on Qualys from $138.00 to $115.00 and set a “neutral” rating for the company in a report on Thursday, January 5th. Wedbush lowered their price target on Qualys from $150.00 to $140.00 in a report on Thursday, November 3rd. Morgan Stanley lowered their price target on Qualys from $118.00 to $103.00 and set an “underweight” rating for the company in a report on Thursday, January 12th. Royal Bank of Canada lowered their price target on Qualys from $148.00 to $140.00 and set a “sector perform” rating for the company in a report on Thursday, November 3rd. Finally, Canaccord Genuity Group started coverage on Qualys in a report on Tuesday, October 11th. They issued a “buy” rating and a $180.00 price target for the company. One investment analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, seven have issued a hold rating and five have assigned a buy rating to the company’s stock. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, the stock currently has a consensus rating of “Hold” and an average target price of $143.77.

Qualys Stock Performance

Shares of NASDAQ QLYS opened at $104.51 on Friday. The stock has a 50 day moving average price of $115.27 and a 200 day moving average price of $130.28. Qualys, Inc. has a 52 week low of $101.10 and a 52 week high of $162.36. The stock has a market capitalization of $3.97 billion, a PE ratio of 40.67 and a beta of 0.58.

Qualys (NASDAQ:QLYS – Get Rating) last issued its quarterly earnings results on Wednesday, November 2nd. The software maker reported $0.71 EPS for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $0.58 by $0.13. Qualys had a return on equity of 25.13% and a net margin of 21.66%. The firm had revenue of $125.56 million during the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $125.12 million. As a group, research analysts forecast that Qualys, Inc. will post 2.54 EPS for the current year.

Qualys Company Profile

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Qualys, Inc provides cloud-based information technology (IT), security, and compliance solutions in the United States and internationally. The company offers Qualys Cloud Apps, which includes Vulnerability Management; Vulnerability Management, Detection and Response; Threat Protection; Continuous Monitoring; Patch Management; Multi-Vector Endpoint Detection and Response; Certificate Assessment; SaaS Detection and Response; Secure Enterprise Mobility; Policy Compliance; Security Configuration Assessment; PCI Compliance; File Integrity Monitoring; Security Assessment Questionnaire; Out of-Band Configuration Assessment; Web Application Scanning; Web Application Firewall; Global Asset Inventory; Cybersecurity Asset Management; Certificate Inventory; Cloud Inventory; Cloud Security Assessment; and Container Security.