Cantor Fitzgerald has reiterated a Neutral recommendation and maintained an $87.00 price target on Fortinet (NASDAQ:FTNT) ahead of the cybersecurity vendor’s fourth-quarter 2025 earnings announcement, set to arrive in just 8 days on February 5. With the stock trading at $82.07, InvestingPro data referenced by the research note indicates Fortinet may be trading below its Fair Value estimate.
The firm described conflicting market signals. Broader channel feedback pointed to soft firewall demand, but Fortinet-specific checks showed quarter-over-quarter improvement, which Cantor Fitzgerald interpreted as evidence of growing traction in the company’s services businesses. The research note also highlighted Fortinet’s robust gross profit margins of 80.9% as a structural strength.
While Cantor Fitzgerald labelled Fortinet "best-in-class in firewalls," the analyst team emphasized the need for clearer evidence of sustained traction in longer-term growth vectors, specifically SASE (Secure Access Service Edge) and SecOps. Those areas are singled out by the firm as the principal drivers of future expansion, and current market pricing - a P/E ratio of 33.7 - implies investors are anticipating that growth.
On near-term results, Cantor Fitzgerald expects Fortinet to beat fourth-quarter top-line estimates, citing product strength as the engine for that upside. For fiscal year 2026, the research firm anticipates guidance to come in roughly in line with expectations at just above 11% revenue growth. The note also struck a cautious tone on product margins, pointing to upward pressure on DRAM pricing as a margin headwind even as product revenue contributes to top-line outperformance. Fortinet reported 14.8% revenue growth over the last twelve months, providing some context for the analyst view.
The research bulletin referenced industry memory dynamics, noting that Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix plan to raise server memory prices by up to 70% in the first quarter. Cantor Fitzgerald estimated that DRAM comprises roughly 10-15% of a firewall’s bill of materials, and therefore a meaningful rise in memory costs could act as a catalyst for some customers to consider migration away from traditional firewall appliances toward SASE architectures.
In product development news cited by the firm, Fortinet announced enhancements to its FortiCNAPP cloud security platform. The updated platform aims to improve prioritization of cloud security risks by integrating multiple security considerations; the upgrades include network security posture, data security management, and runtime validation capabilities. Those functional additions are presented as part of Fortinet’s broader effort to deepen its cloud security and services footprint.
The research landscape surrounding Fortinet shows diverging analyst views. TD Cowen upgraded the stock to Buy while keeping a $100 price target, with analyst Shaul Eyal pointing to fiscal year 2026 stability and potential upside in fourth-quarter 2025 billings and revenue estimates. Truist Securities moved its price target down to $88 from $95 but retained a Buy rating, citing muted service revenue growth of 12.7% year-over-year in the third quarter of 2025. Bernstein SocGen Group maintained a Market Perform rating with a $76 price target. These actions illustrate a mix of optimism on product momentum and caution around services growth and geography-specific headwinds.
Cantor Fitzgerald’s note also referenced reported restrictions from China that limited domestic companies from purchasing cybersecurity products from foreign vendors, including Fortinet. The firm framed these developments alongside product enhancements and memory-cost dynamics as a collection of factors that together shape the company’s near-term commercial environment.
InvestingPro is cited as providing additional depth on the company, with a Pro Research Report that contains 14 additional tips and a range of metrics for subscribers. The note positions those resources as supplementary to the analyst assessment but does not alter the primary view of a Neutral rating and an $87 price objective.
Contextual note: The analyst conclusions stress the interplay between product-driven top-line momentum, margin sensitivity to semiconductor pricing, and the strategic importance of SASE and SecOps adoption for Fortinet’s longer-term trajectory.