Palo Alto Networks Inc (NYSE:PANW)’s stock has plunged by more than 12% after the cyber-security firm reported fiscal third-quarter adjusted earnings of $0.42 per share on sales of $345.8 million, meeting profit estimates and beating revenue expectations by $6.32 million. Although sales rose by 47.7% year-over-year, shareholders focused on the company’s GAAP loss of $70.2 million due to $112.7 million in share compensation expenses. Guidance is on the lower end of expectations, with management predicting fiscal fourth quarter revenue of $386 million to $390 million and adjusted EPS of $0.48 to $0.50 versus the consensus of $389.3 million and $0.50, respectively.
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In today’s marketplace there are tons of tools that stock market investors employ to analyze their holdings. A duo of the most innovative tools are hedge fund and insider trading signals. Our experts have shown that, historically, those who follow the best picks of the top fund managers can outperform the broader indices by a significant margin (see the details here).
Now, let’s check out the recent action surrounding Palo Alto Networks Inc (NYSE:PANW).
Is Palo Alto Networks Inc (NYSE:PANW) the right pick for your portfolio? Investors who are in the know are getting less optimistic. The number of long hedge fund positions went down by eight during the first quarter and 42 funds tracked by Insider Monkey reported long positions as of the end of March.
According to publicly available hedge fund and institutional investor holdings data compiled by Insider Monkey, Jim Simons’s Renaissance Technologies has the biggest position in Palo Alto Networks Inc (NYSE:PANW), worth close to $151.9 million, amounting to 0.3% of its total 13F portfolio. The second most bullish fund manager is Citadel Investment Group, managed by Ken Griffin, which holds a $97.3 million position; the fund has 0.1% of its 13F portfolio invested in the stock. Remaining peers that are bullish encompass Christopher James’s Partner Fund Management, Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group and Anand Parekh’s Alyeska Investment Group.
Since Palo Alto Networks Inc (NYSE:PANW) has witnessed falling interest from the aggregate hedge fund industry, we can see that there were a few hedgies that slashed their positions entirely in the fourth quarter and on the next page, we are going to take a look at some of those funds. In addition, at the end of this article we will also compare PANW to other stocks including W.W. Grainger, Inc. (NYSE:GWW), Viacom, Inc. (NASDAQ:VIAB), and Potash Corp./Saskatchewan (USA) (NYSE:POT) to get a better sense of its popularity.
