25% Upside Seen In Palo Alto, Argus Research Upgrades To Buy

Palo Alto Networks IncPANWJoseph BonnerPalo Alto's stock rating from Hold to Buy with a $183 price target.

Various sales execution issues apparent in the past few quarters have now been fixed, Bonner commented in his upgrade note. As such, the company finished its fiscal 2017 year on a positive note and successfully delivered product refresh cycles while adding new services to its portfolio of offerings.

Meanwhile, Palo Alto's management team is very active in taking advantage of emerging trends, highlighted by its 2017 acquisition of an Israel-based security machine-learning analytics company called LightCyber, the analyst continued. In fact, automated security analytics based on machine learning will prove to become a key trend across the entire cybersecurity industry and Palo Alto could boast a leadership position in this area (see Bonner's track record here).

Palo Alto could also prove to be another industry-leading innovator through the planned introduction of its "Application Framework."

Finally, investors could also be attracted to the stock as there is always the possibility of it being acquired by a larger tech player — although there is no sign of any offer being on the table now, Bonner noted.

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