Wedbush Lowers Qualys (NASDAQ:QLYS) Price Target to $125.00

Key Points

• Wedbush cut its price target on Qualys from $155 to $125 but kept an "outperform" rating, implying about 34.3% upside; overall analyst consensus is a "Hold" with an average target of $122.14 amid multiple recent downgrades and target cuts.
• Qualys beat quarterly estimates with EPS of $1.95 versus $1.81 and revenue of $175.6M, and provided FY2026 guidance of 7.44–7.65 EPS and Q2 guidance of 1.73–1.80 EPS.
• Shares rose to $93.07 (market cap ≈ $3.28B) — below the 200‑day average of $117.78 — and institutional ownership is very high at 99.31%, with several large recent institutional buys reported.

Qualys (NASDAQ:QLYS - Get Free Report) had its price target dropped by equities researchers at Wedbush from $155.00 to $125.00 in a research note issued to investors on Thursday,Benzinga reports. The brokerage currently has an "outperform" rating on the software maker's stock. Wedbush's target price indicates a potential upside of 34.31% from the company's current price.

Other analysts have also recently issued reports about the company. Weiss Ratings cut Qualys from a "hold (c-)" rating to a "sell (d+)" rating in a research note on Friday, April 17th. William Blair lowered Qualys from an "outperform" rating to a "market perform" rating in a research report on Tuesday, April 28th. Canaccord Genuity Group reduced their price target on Qualys from $150.00 to $125.00 and set a "buy" rating for the company in a research report on Wednesday. Scotiabank reduced their price target on Qualys from $135.00 to $100.00 and set a "sector perform" rating for the company in a research report on Wednesday. Finally, Morgan Stanley set a $96.00 price objective on Qualys in a report on Wednesday. One equities research analyst has rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, two have given a Buy rating, eleven have given a Hold rating and three have issued a Sell rating to the stock. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, Qualys presently has an average rating of "Hold" and an average target price of $122.14.

Qualys Trading Up 2.5%

Shares of Qualys stock traded up $2.23 during trading on Thursday, reaching $93.07. The company's stock had a trading volume of 175,362 shares, compared to its average volume of 740,802. The stock has a 50-day moving average price of $90.08 and a two-hundred day moving average price of $117.78. Qualys has a one year low of $74.51 and a one year high of $155.47. The stock has a market capitalization of $3.28 billion, a P/E ratio of 16.74 and a beta of 0.58.

Qualys (NASDAQ:QLYS - Get Free Report) last released its quarterly earnings results on Tuesday, May 5th. The software maker reported $1.95 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, beating analysts' consensus estimates of $1.81 by $0.14. The business had revenue of $175.64 million during the quarter, compared to analysts' expectations of $173.63 million. Qualys had a return on equity of 37.80% and a net margin of 29.41%.The firm's revenue for the quarter was up 9.8% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same period in the previous year, the business posted $1.67 earnings per share. 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, sell-side analysts anticipate that Qualys will post 5.38 EPS for the current fiscal year.

Institutional Inflows and Outflows

Several large investors have recently added to or reduced their stakes in QLYS. RWA Wealth Partners LLC bought a new position in shares of Qualys in the third quarter worth $80,820,000. Fuller & Thaler Asset Management Inc. bought a new position in Qualys in the fourth quarter valued at about $78,591,000. Alyeska Investment Group L.P. bought a new position in Qualys in the third quarter valued at about $45,854,000. AQR Capital Management LLC grew its position in Qualys by 46.9% in the second quarter. AQR Capital Management LLC now owns 1,012,100 shares of the software maker's stock valued at $144,133,000 after acquiring an additional 323,324 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Clark Capital Management Group Inc. grew its position in Qualys by 402.2% in the fourth quarter. Clark Capital Management Group Inc. now owns 363,593 shares of the software maker's stock valued at $48,322,000 after acquiring an additional 291,192 shares during the last quarter. Institutional investors own 99.31% of the company's stock.

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.

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