How much a stock's price changes over time is a significant driver for most investors. Not only can price performance impact your portfolio, but it can help you compare investment results across sectors and industries as well.
Another thing that can drive investing is the fear of missing out, or FOMO. This particularly applies to tech giants and popular consumer-facing stocks.
What if you'd invested in Fortinet (FTNT) ten years ago? It may not have been easy to hold on to FTNT for all that time, but if you did, how much would your investment be worth today?
Fortinet's Business In-Depth
With that in mind, let's take a look at Fortinet's main business drivers.
Headquartered in Sunnyvale, CA, Fortinet, Inc. is a provider of network security appliances and Unified Threat Management (UTM) network security solutions to enterprises, service providers and government entities worldwide.
Its solutions are designed to integrate multiple levels of security protection, including firewall, virtual private networking (VPN), antivirus, intrusion prevention (IP), web filtering, anti-spam and wide area network (WAN) acceleration.
Through its products and subscription services, the company provides integrated protection against dynamic security threats while simplifying the IT security infrastructure. Its solutions incorporate application-specific integrated circuits, hardware architecture, operating system, and associated security and networking functions to defend against multiple categories of IT security attacks without impacting network performance.
The company’s network security gateways protect customer data, reduce security complexities and lower the total cost of ownership. Customers are able to implement their security policies on traffic between internal networks and the Internet, as well as between internal and private networks shared with partners.
Its flagship UTM solution consists of the FortiGate appliance product line and FortiGuard security subscription services.
Its products and services are sold through a network of more than 20,000 channel partners worldwide, including distributors, resellers, value-added resellers and managed service providers. The company caters to more than 450,000 customers worldwide that includes most of the Fortune 100 companies.
Fortinet reported revenues of $5.3 billion in 2023, which increased 20.1% from 2022. Product revenue was $1.93 billion, up 8.2% while Service revenue of $3.38 billion improved 28.1% year over year in 2023.
The company faces significant competition with Palo Alto Networks, CyberArk, Qualys and Cisco in the network security as well as cloud security space.
Bottom Line
Putting together a successful investment portfolio takes a combination of research, patience, and a little bit of risk. For Fortinet, if you bought shares a decade ago, you're likely feeling really good about your investment today.
According to our calculations, a $1000 investment made in October 2014 would be worth $17,488.34, or a 1,648.83% gain, as of October 11, 2024. Investors should keep in mind that this return excludes dividends but includes price appreciation.
In comparison, the S&P 500 gained 203.23% and the price of gold went up 106.50% over the same time frame.
Analysts are forecasting more upside for FTNT too.
Fortinet is benefiting from rising demand from large enterprise customers and growth in the company's security subscriptions. The company is also gaining from the robust growth in Fortinet Security Fabric, cloud and Software-defined Wide Area Network (SD-WAN) offerings. Higher IT spending on cybersecurity is further expected to aid Fortinet in growing faster than the security market. We expect 2024 net sales to rise 9.9% from 2023. The company has a strong balance sheet that bodes well for investors. The focus on enhancing its unified threat management (UTM) portfolio through product development and acquisitions is a tailwind for the company. However, intensifying competition because of increasing consolidation in the security industry poses concerns. Increased hiring and mergers & acquisitions spending remain overhangs on profit margin.
Over the past four weeks, shares have rallied 10.72%, and there have been 2 higher earnings estimate revisions in the past two months for fiscal 2024 compared to none lower. The consensus estimate has moved up as well.Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report
Fortinet, Inc. (FTNT) : Free Stock Analysis Report
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