Needham & Company Upgrades Fortinet (FTNT) to Buy

In a reported dated May 22, Needham & Company upgraded Fortinet (NASDAQ: FTNT) from Hold to Buy with a price target of $48.00 following field discussions.

Analyst Scott Zeller commented, ": We are upgrading shares of FTNT to BUY following recent discussions with field contacts. We missed an opportunity to upgrade FTNT last year when the company made a decision to invest in S&M to stimulate top-line growth for Enterprise; in short, we believed Service Provider was the only growth driver at FTNT, and we were wrong. Simply put, we misjudged the changing buying behavior at Large Enterprises, which is increasingly open to UTM appliances for “performance” environments; secondly, we underestimated FTNT’s ability to execute in building enterprise sales (and vertical sales) teams effectively. Our field discussions suggest FTNT is still accelerating and we believe consensus estimates are conservative. Raising estimates, establishing price target of $48, upgrade to BUY. Our $48 target is 6.5x EV/ CY16 revenue."

For an analyst ratings summary and ratings history on Fortinet click here. For more ratings news on Fortinet click here.

Shares of Fortinet closed at $39.29 yesterday.

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