Louisiana State Employees Retirement System Makes New $914,000 Investment in Qualys, Inc. $QLYS

Louisiana State Employees Retirement System purchased a new stake in shares of Qualys, Inc. (NASDAQ:QLYS) during the first quarter, Holdings Channel.com reports. The firm purchased 10,400 shares of the software maker’s stock, valued at approximately $914,000.

A number of other hedge funds and other institutional investors have also made changes to their positions in QLYS. Nordea Investment Management AB raised its holdings in shares of Qualys by 62.4% during the fourth quarter. Nordea Investment Management AB now owns 125,636 shares of the software maker’s stock valued at $16,769,000 after acquiring an additional 48,267 shares during the last quarter. Comerica Bank increased its position in shares of Qualys by 100.6% during the fourth quarter. Comerica Bank now owns 22,710 shares of the software maker’s stock worth $3,018,000 after purchasing an additional 11,391 shares in the last quarter. Fort Washington Investment Advisors Inc. OH increased its position in shares of Qualys by 9.8% during the fourth quarter. Fort Washington Investment Advisors Inc. OH now owns 208,832 shares of the software maker’s stock worth $27,754,000 after purchasing an additional 18,711 shares in the last quarter. SG Americas Securities LLC raised its stake in Qualys by 147.0% in the 4th quarter. SG Americas Securities LLC now owns 33,416 shares of the software maker’s stock valued at $4,441,000 after purchasing an additional 19,889 shares during the last quarter. Finally, GHP Investment Advisors Inc. raised its stake in Qualys by 6,727.1% in the 4th quarter. GHP Investment Advisors Inc. now owns 14,883 shares of the software maker’s stock valued at $1,978,000 after purchasing an additional 14,665 shares during the last quarter. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 99.31% of the company’s stock.

Wall Street Analyst Weigh In

Several brokerages have issued reports on QLYS. Truist Financial lowered their target price on shares of Qualys from $120.00 to $85.00 and set a “hold” rating on the stock in a research note on Friday, April 24th. Weiss Ratings upgraded shares of Qualys from a “sell (d+)” rating to a “hold (c-)” rating in a research report on Thursday. Royal Bank Of Canada raised their price target on shares of Qualys from $85.00 to $90.00 and gave the stock a “sector perform” rating in a research note on Wednesday, May 6th. TD Cowen restated a “hold” rating on shares of Qualys in a research report on Tuesday, April 14th. Finally, Morgan Stanley set a $96.00 price objective on shares of Qualys in a report on Wednesday, May 6th. One analyst has rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, two have assigned a Buy rating, thirteen have given a Hold rating and one has given a Sell rating to the company’s stock. According to data from MarketBeat.com, Qualys has an average rating of “Hold” and an average price target of $125.86.

Insiders Place Their Bets

In related news, CEO Sumedh S. Thakar sold 30,000 shares of the stock in a transaction that occurred on Tuesday, June 30th. The stock was sold at an average price of $135.00, for a total value of $4,050,000.00. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief executive officer directly owned 196,686 shares in the company, valued at approximately $26,552,610. This represents a 13.23% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The sale was disclosed in a legal filing with the SEC, which is accessible through this link. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Also, Director Thomas Berquist sold 939 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction on Friday, June 12th. The stock was sold at an average price of $110.75, for a total value of $103,994.25. Following the sale, the director directly owned 6,781 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $750,995.75. This trade represents a 12.16% decrease in their position. The SEC filing for this sale provides additional information. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Over the last three months, insiders have sold 71,881 shares of company stock valued at $8,945,654. Insiders own 1.00% of the company’s stock.

Qualys Stock Performance

Qualys stock opened at $148.12 on Monday. The company has a 50-day moving average price of $106.09 and a 200 day moving average price of $108.92. Qualys, Inc. has a 12-month low of $74.51 and a 12-month high of $155.47. The stock has a market cap of $5.22 billion, a P/E ratio of 26.59 and a beta of 0.61.

Qualys (NASDAQ:QLYS) last posted its earnings results on Tuesday, May 5th. The software maker reported $1.95 earnings per share for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $1.81 by $0.14. Qualys had a net margin of 29.41% and a return on equity of 37.15%. The company had revenue of $175.64 million for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $173.63 million. During the same period in the previous year, the business posted $1.67 EPS. Qualys’s revenue was up 9.8% on a year-over-year basis. Qualys has set its FY 2026 guidance at 7.440-7.650 EPS and its Q2 2026 guidance at 1.730-1.800 EPS. As a group, analysts forecast that Qualys, Inc. will post 5.47 EPS for the current year.

Qualys Company Profile

Qualys, Inc (NASDAQ: QLYS) is a leading provider of cloud-based security and compliance solutions designed to help organizations streamline their IT security programs. Operating on a unified, modular platform, Qualys offers continuous visibility into global IT assets through a combination of lightweight cloud agents and on-premises scanner appliances. The platform supports an array of security and compliance use cases, enabling real-time detection of vulnerabilities, policy violations and misconfigurations across on-premises, cloud and hybrid environments.

The company’s flagship Qualys Cloud Platform delivers a suite of integrated applications, including vulnerability management, detection and response (VMDR), policy compliance, web application scanning, file integrity monitoring, asset inventory and container security.