For most investors, how much a stock's price changes over time is important. Not only can it impact your investment portfolio, but it can also help you compare investment results across sectors and industries.
The fear of missing out, or FOMO, also plays a factor in investing, especially with particular tech giants, as well as 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 December 2014 would be worth $17,537.97, or a gain of 1,653.80%, as of December 17, 2024, and this return excludes dividends but includes price increases.
Compare this to the S&P 500's rally of 207.90% and gold's return of 114.07% over the same time frame.
Looking ahead, analysts are expecting more upside for FTNT.
Fortinet’s third-quarter results reflect strength in demand from large enterprise customers and growth in the company's security subscriptions amid a slowdown in networking products, along with challenges in sales execution and marketing efficiency. Continued deal wins, especially those of high value, are a key driver. Higher IT spending on cybersecurity is further expected to aid Fortinet in growing faster than the security market. The focus on enhancing its unified threat management (UTM) portfolio through product development and acquisitions is a tailwind. Considering the abovementioned factors, we expect 2024 net sales to increase 10.9% from 2023. However, intensifying competition due to increasing consolidation in the security industry poses concerns. Increased hiring and mergers & acquisitions spending remain overhangs on margin.
The stock is up 6.84% over the past four weeks, and no earnings estimate has gone lower in the past two months, compared to 16 higher, for fiscal 2024. The consensus estimate has moved up as well.Zacks Naming Top 10 Stocks for 2025
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Fortinet, Inc. (FTNT) : Free Stock Analysis Report
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The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Nasdaq, Inc.
