BlackRock Fund Advisors recently announced the acquisition of new stake in Fortinet Inc (NASDAQ:FTNT). The institutional investor has increased its shareholding in the Technology company by 0.65% to 32.5 million shares with purchase of 0.21 million shares. This fresh investment now brings its stake to 4.23% valued currently at $1.9 billion. In addition, AllianceBernstein LP raised its holdings by 0.28 million to 29.13 million shares. And Geode Capital Management LLC has lifted its position by 2.55% or 0.35 million shares – to 14.12 million shares.
Currently, there are 781.50M common shares owned by the public and among those 634.07M shares have been available to trade.
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Insiders at the company have transacted a total of 174 times over the past 12 months, according to data filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). 114 of these insider trades were purchases, accounting for 1,196,990 shares. Insider sales of the common stock occurred on 60 occasions, with total insider shares sold totaling 1,324,962 shares.
The top 3 mutual fund holders in Fortinet Inc are Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF, Vanguard 500 Index Fund, and Invesco QQQ Trust. Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF owns 20.48 million shares of the company’s stock, all valued at over $1.2 billion. The company sold -0.44 million shares recently to bring their total holdings to about 2.67% of the shares outstanding. Vanguard 500 Index Fund sold -0.32 million shares to see its total holdings shrink to 15.56 million shares valued at over $910.9 million and representing 2.03% of the shares outstanding. Invesco QQQ Trust sold 36250.0 shares to bring its total holdings to over 14.12 million shares at a value of $826.58 million. Invesco QQQ Trust now owns shares totaling to 1.84% of the shares outstanding.
However, the script later moved the day high at 62.80, up 2.89%. The company’s stock has a 5-day price change of 0.35% and 8.46% over the past three months. FTNT shares are trading 7.06% year to date (YTD), with the 12-month market performance up to 29.41% higher. It has a 12-month low price of $44.12 and touched a high of $81.24 over the same period. FTNT has an average intraday trading volume of 7.15 million shares. The stock is trading above its simple moving averages at the SMA20, SMA50, and SMA200, as the current price level is off by 4.76%, 12.70%, and -0.43% respectively.
Institutional ownership of Fortinet Inc (NASDAQ: FTNT) shares accounts for 67.95% of the company’s 781.50M shares outstanding. Mutual fund holders own 29.55%, while other institutional holders and individual stakeholders account for 39.84% and 17.85% respectively.
It has a market capitalization of $48.12B and a beta (3y monthly) value of 1.09. The stock’s trailing 12-month PE ratio is 43.18, while the earnings-per-share (ttm) stands at $1.45. The company has a PEG of 2.69 and a Quick Ratio of 1.17 with the debt-to-equity ratio at 13.38. Price movements for the stock have been influenced by the stock’s volatility, which stands at 2.61% over the week and 2.36% over the month.
Analysts forecast that Fortinet Inc (FTNT) will achieve an EPS of $0.43 for the current quarter, $0.37 for the next quarter and $1.68 for 2024. The lowest estimate earnings-per-share for the quarter is $0.42 while analysts give the company a high EPS estimate of $0.44. Comparatively, EPS for the current quarter was $0.44 a year ago. Earnings per share for the fiscal year are expected to increase by 30.94%, and 6.90% over the next financial year. EPS should shrink at an annualized rate of 16.06% over the next five years, compared to 97.64% over the past 5-year period.
Looking at the support for the FTNT, a number of firms have released research notes about the stock. Bernstein stated their Mkt Perform rating for the stock in a research note on January 18, 2024, with the firm’s price target at $65.
