Fortinet Gains From SASE & SecOps Momentum: More Upside Ahead?

Fortinet FTNT is capitalizing on surging demand for Unified SASE (Secure Access Service Edge) and SecOps (Security Operations), which are rapidly reshaping its growth trajectory. In the second quarter of 2025, Unified SASE billings climbed 21% year over year, while SecOps billings rose 31%, together making up about 35% of total billings. These segments are now core to the company’s strategy of boosting recurring revenues and deepening customer engagement.

Enterprise adoption of zero-trust architectures and hybrid work environments is accelerating the need for integrated security solutions. Fortinet’s Security Fabric platform and FortiSASE offering deliver cost efficiency, superior performance and a unified approach to security — key differentiators driving large deals. Notably, transactions above $1 million surged over 50% in value, reflecting strong multi-product adoption.

The company’s confidence in this growth is evident. Management raised its full-year billings outlook midpoint by $100 million, citing robust enterprise adoption and expanding demand for cloud-delivered services. Recent strategic moves, like the acquisition of Suridata.ai in May 2025, further strengthened its SaaS security capabilities, enhancing Fortinet’s competitive edge.

Fortinet remains the only vendor to develop all core SASE capabilities — next-gen firewall, SD-WAN, ZTNA, secure web gateway, CASB and DLP — within a single operating system, FortiOS. This integration reduces cost and complexity while ensuring seamless hybrid security across on-prem and cloud environments.

According to the Zacks model, 2025 revenues are projected to grow 12.8% year over year to $6.72 billion, with total billings expected to climb 13.9% to $7.44 billion, underscoring the strong momentum from SASE and SecOps as key long-term growth drivers.

FTNT’s Key Rivals in the Security Solutions Space

Cisco Systems CSCO leverages its network dominance to deliver tightly integrated security through Secure Firewall, Umbrella and Talos threat intelligence. Unlike Fortinet’s cost-effective, performance-driven FortiGate focus, CSCO caters to large enterprises with advanced threat protection, scalability and deep network control. Its broad hardware-software portfolio, now strengthened by the Splunk acquisition, embeds security across IT ecosystems. For organizations requiring robust, enterprise-grade protection and unified operations, Cisco Systems holds a distinct competitive edge in security solutions.

Check Point Software CHKP is a firewall pioneer recognized for its Infinity Platform, ThreatCloud AI and Quantum firewalls. Check Point emphasizes real-time threat prevention, centralized management and identity-based control, often outperforming Fortinet in malware and phishing benchmarks. With subscription growth and strategic acquisitions, Check Point strengthens its market position, leveraging decades of expertise to deliver mission-critical security solutions that support long-term market share expansion.

FTNT’s Share Price Performance, Valuation & Estimates

Year to date, FTNT shares have declined 19%, underperforming the Zacks Security industry’s 8.6% gain and falling well behind the Zacks Computer and Technology sector’s 11.8% rise.

FTNT’s YTD Price Performance

From a valuation standpoint, Fortinet appears overvalued, trading at a Price/Book ratio of 28.45X, higher than the industry’s 20.4X. FTNT has a Value Score of D.

FTNT’s Valuation

The consensus mark for 2025 earnings is pegged at $2.51 per share, reflecting upward revisions of 3 cents over both the 30- and 60-day periods. The estimate indicates 5.91% year-over-year growth.

Fortinet stock currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

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This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).

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