Do Analysts Think FireEye Is Worth Buying Now?

By Chris Lange Updated Jan 13, 9:43AM EST · Published May 8, 10:20AM EDT

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Do Analysts Think FireEye Is Worth Buying Now? — © Thinkstock

FireEye Inc. (NASDAQ: FEYE) reported its first-quarter financial results after the markets closed on Thursday. This quarter was thoroughly underwhelming for investors, despite beating analysts’ estimates on the bottom line. As a result, analysts piled into the stock, and a lot of them lowered their targets.

24/7 Wall St. has included some highlights from the earnings report, as well as what analysts are saying about FireEye after the fact.

The company said it had a net loss of $0.47 per share on $168.0 million in revenue, versus consensus estimates from Thomson Reuters that called for a net loss of $0.50 per share on $171.82 million in revenue. In the same period of the previous year, FireEye posted a net loss of $0.48 per share on revenue of $125.37 million.

Revenue for the first quarter increased 34% year over year. At the same time, billings totaled $186 million, a gain of 23%.
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In terms of the outlook for the second quarter, FireEye expects to have a net loss per share in the range of $0.38 to $0.40, with revenues in the range of $178 million to $185 million. Consensus estimates are a net loss of $0.36 per share on $192.75 million in revenue.

David DeWalt, chairman and CEO of FireEye, had an optimistic take on the earnings report:

Our first quarter billings exceeded the high end of our guidance range, driven by demand for our threat intelligence, cloud-based Email Threat Protection, and FireEye as a Service subscriptions. Our billings performance and customer metrics point to continued strength in our business as customer preference for cloud-based and cloud-enabled solutions grows. We expect this trend to continue as we extend our MVX detection engine to public and private clouds and introduce new software-only solutions like the FireEye Security Orchestrator and virtual MVX appliances. These platform expansions create incremental opportunities to deliver FireEye detection, investigation and remediation technologies to branch offices of our existing customers and to small and mid-sized enterprises.

After the earnings report, a few analysts weighed in:

Barclays has an Equal Weight rating and lowered its price target to $19 from $21.
BTIG lowered its price target to $20 from $24.
Cowen lowered its price target to $18 from $19.
Goldman Sachs lowered its price target from $20 to $18.
JPMorgan lowered its price target to $20 from $30.
Nomura has a Buy rating and lowered its target to $26 from $30.
Piper Jaffray lowered its price target to $20 from $24.
Stifel has a Buy rating but lowered its price target from $45 to $32.
UBS has a Neutral rating and lowered its price target to $16 from $18.
Wedbush has a Neutral rating and also lowered its target to $16 from $18.

Shares of FireEye were down about 19% at $12.94 on Friday’s close, with a consensus analyst price target of $24.85 and a 52-week trading range of $11.35 to $55.33.

About the Author Chris Lange →

Chris Lange is a writer for 24/7 Wall St., based in Houston. He has covered financial markets over the past decade with an emphasis on healthcare, tech, and IPOs. During this time, he has published thousands of articles with insightful analysis across these complex fields. Currently, Lange's focus is on military and geopolitical topics.

Lange's work has been quoted or mentioned in Forbes, The New York Times, Business Insider, USA Today, MSN, Yahoo, The Verge, Vice, The Intelligencer, Quartz, Nasdaq, The Motley Fool, Fox Business, International Business Times, The Street, Seeking Alpha, Barron’s, Benzinga, and many other major publications.

A graduate of Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas, Lange majored in business with a particular focus on investments. He has previous experience in the banking industry and startups.