CENTRAL TRUST Co Reduces Stake in Fortinet, Inc. (NASDAQ:FTNT)

CENTRAL TRUST Co lowered its stake in shares of Fortinet, Inc. (NASDAQ:FTNT) by 12.2% in the 1st quarter, HoldingsChannel reports. The firm owned 4,159 shares of the software maker’s stock after selling 580 shares during the quarter. CENTRAL TRUST Co’s holdings in Fortinet were worth $400,000 as of its most recent filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission.

Other hedge funds also recently modified their holdings of the company. Proficio Capital Partners LLC increased its stake in shares of Fortinet by 18,353.2% in the fourth quarter. Proficio Capital Partners LLC now owns 547,323 shares of the software maker’s stock worth $547,000 after purchasing an additional 544,357 shares in the last quarter. BRITISH COLUMBIA INVESTMENT MANAGEMENT Corp boosted its holdings in Fortinet by 14.9% in the 4th quarter. BRITISH COLUMBIA INVESTMENT MANAGEMENT Corp now owns 124,501 shares of the software maker’s stock worth $11,763,000 after buying an additional 16,139 shares during the period. Ritholtz Wealth Management grew its stake in Fortinet by 38.4% in the 1st quarter. Ritholtz Wealth Management now owns 6,794 shares of the software maker’s stock valued at $654,000 after buying an additional 1,885 shares in the last quarter. Assenagon Asset Management S.A. raised its holdings in Fortinet by 4.0% during the 1st quarter. Assenagon Asset Management S.A. now owns 17,739 shares of the software maker’s stock valued at $1,708,000 after acquiring an additional 677 shares during the period. Finally, West Family Investments Inc. purchased a new stake in shares of Fortinet during the fourth quarter worth $234,000. Institutional investors own 83.71% of the company’s stock.

Analysts Set New Price Targets

Several equities analysts have recently weighed in on FTNT shares. Wolfe Research assumed coverage on Fortinet in a research report on Monday, May 12th. They issued a “peer perform” rating for the company. KeyCorp reduced their target price on Fortinet from $120.00 to $115.00 and set an “overweight” rating for the company in a report on Thursday, May 8th. Stephens assumed coverage on shares of Fortinet in a report on Tuesday, April 1st. They issued an “equal weight” rating and a $108.00 price target on the stock. DZ Bank upgraded shares of Fortinet from a “strong sell” rating to a “hold” rating in a research report on Thursday, May 8th. Finally, Roth Capital set a $103.00 target price on shares of Fortinet and gave the stock a “neutral” rating in a report on Tuesday, April 22nd. One analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, twenty have assigned a hold rating, twelve have issued a buy rating and two have issued a strong buy rating to the company. According to data from MarketBeat, Fortinet has a consensus rating of “Hold” and a consensus price target of $104.80.

Fortinet Price Performance

FTNT stock opened at $100.82 on Friday. The firm has a market cap of $77.17 billion, a P/E ratio of 41.49, a P/E/G ratio of 3.48 and a beta of 1.06. The firm’s fifty day moving average is $101.82 and its 200 day moving average is $100.25. Fortinet, Inc. has a 52 week low of $54.57 and a 52 week high of $114.82. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.25, a quick ratio of 1.29 and a current ratio of 1.36.

Fortinet (NASDAQ:FTNT) last announced its quarterly earnings data on Wednesday, May 7th. The software maker reported $0.58 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, beating analysts’ consensus estimates of $0.53 by $0.05. The firm had revenue of $1.54 billion for the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $1.54 billion. Fortinet had a return on equity of 148.79% and a net margin of 30.60%. The company’s revenue for the quarter was up 13.8% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same period last year, the firm earned $0.43 earnings per share. Research analysts predict that Fortinet, Inc. will post 2.09 earnings per share for the current year.

Insiders Place Their Bets

In other news, VP Michael Xie sold 3,546 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction dated Friday, May 2nd. The shares were sold at an average price of $106.11, for a total transaction of $376,266.06. Following the completion of the transaction, the vice president now directly owns 11,000,068 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $1,167,217,215.48. This represents a 0.03% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The sale was disclosed in a legal filing with the SEC, which is accessible through this hyperlink. Also, CEO Ken Xie sold 158,488 shares of the stock in a transaction dated Friday, May 2nd. The stock was sold at an average price of $106.10, for a total transaction of $16,815,576.80. Following the sale, the chief executive officer now owns 51,391,879 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $5,452,678,361.90. This represents a 0.31% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Insiders own 17.20% of the company’s stock.

Fortinet Profile

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.