Fortinet (NASDAQ:FTNT) Posts Quarterly Earnings Results, Beats Estimates By $0.05 EPS

Fortinet (NASDAQ:FTNT) released its earnings results on Thursday. The software maker reported $0.43 earnings per share for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of $0.38 by $0.05, Briefing.com reports. Fortinet had a net margin of 22.23% and a negative return on equity of 5,061.85%. The business had revenue of $1.35 billion for the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $1.34 billion. During the same period last year, the firm posted $0.29 earnings per share. The firm’s quarterly revenue was up 7.2% compared to the same quarter last year. Fortinet updated its Q2 guidance to $0.39-0.41 EPS and its FY24 guidance to $1.73 to $1.79 EPS.

Fortinet Price Performance

NASDAQ:FTNT opened at $58.88 on Friday. The stock has a market cap of $44.94 billion, a P/E ratio of 38.48, a PEG ratio of 2.61 and a beta of 1.08. Fortinet has a one year low of $44.12 and a one year high of $81.24. The company has a fifty day moving average price of $67.53 and a 200 day moving average price of $61.90. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 13.38, a current ratio of 1.19 and a quick ratio of 1.06.

Insider Activity at Fortinet

In related news, CEO Ken Xie sold 23,694 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction on Tuesday, March 12th. The shares were sold at an average price of $71.40, for a total transaction of $1,691,751.60. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief executive officer now directly owns 48,625,005 shares in the company, valued at approximately $3,471,825,357. The transaction was disclosed in a filing with the SEC, which is available through the SEC website. In related news, CEO Ken Xie sold 23,694 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Tuesday, March 12th. The shares were sold at an average price of $71.40, for a total value of $1,691,751.60. Following the completion of the sale, the chief executive officer now owns 48,625,005 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $3,471,825,357. The sale was disclosed in a document filed with the SEC, which is accessible through the SEC website. Also, VP Michael Xie sold 24,710 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Thursday, May 2nd. The stock was sold at an average price of $64.48, for a total transaction of $1,593,300.80. Following the completion of the transaction, the vice president now owns 10,867,018 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $700,705,320.64. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Insiders sold a total of 118,480 shares of company stock worth $8,021,556 in the last ninety days. 17.54% of the stock is currently owned by insiders.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

A number of brokerages recently commented on FTNT. Citigroup downgraded shares of Fortinet from a “buy” rating to a “neutral” rating and boosted their price objective for the company from $60.00 to $62.00 in a research report on Tuesday, January 9th. Wells Fargo & Company lowered their price objective on shares of Fortinet from $70.00 to $62.00 and set an “equal weight” rating on the stock in a research report on Friday. Susquehanna reaffirmed a “neutral” rating and set a $80.00 price objective on shares of Fortinet in a research report on Wednesday, April 3rd. Scotiabank lowered their price objective on shares of Fortinet from $90.00 to $80.00 and set a “sector outperform” rating on the stock in a research report on Friday. Finally, BMO Capital Markets lowered their price objective on shares of Fortinet from $82.00 to $70.00 and set a “market perform” rating on the stock in a research report on Friday. Two equities research 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. Based on data from MarketBeat, the company has a consensus rating of “Hold” and a consensus target price of $70.68.

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.