Needham & Company Raises Price Target on Fortinet (FTNT) Following 2Q Results
Needham & Company reiterated a Buy rating on Fortinet (NASDAQ: FTNT), and raised the price target to $54.00 (from $48.00), following 2Q results. Fortinet’s $240m revs and $0.11 EPS were well above $228m consensus revenue and $0.09 consensus EPS. Analyst Scott Zeller believes that the franchise is benefiting from overall strong secular IT spending on network security.
Zeller commented, "We reiterate our BUY on FTNT shares, following a strong revenue “beat” in JuneQ and a material increase in CY15 guidance. As we discussed in our FTNT upgrade in May (5/22/15), we believe the franchise is benefiting from overall strong secular IT spending on network security, which also benefits our other coverage names PANW, CHKP, and IMPV. Our upgrade, however, was focused on the “change in perception” of FTNT that we detect in the field, going from UTM “well rounded player” to a high-end, high-performance firewall in the Corporate Datacenter; US Enterprise growth at FTNT was +90% y/y in JuneQ and follows MarQ’s +70% y/y growth. We believe the material guide-up on CY15 of +67m at midpoint is only modestly (approx. $10m) due to the Meru acquisition. Reiterate BUY, upping estimates materially, our target goes from $48 to $54."
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Shares of Fortinet closed at $42.30 yesterday.