Stock under consideration today: Infoblox Inc. (NYSE:BLOX)

The shares of Infoblox Inc (NYSE:BLOX) currently has mean rating of 2.36 while 3 analysts have recommended the shares as “BUY”, 4 recommended as “OUTPERFORM” and 2 recommended as “HOLD”. The rating score is on a scale of 1 to 5 where 1 stands for strong buy and 5 stands for sell.

The company’s mean estimate for sales for the current quarter ending Jul-16 is 84.55 million by 9 analysts. The means estimate of sales for the year ending Jul-16 is 356.52 million by 11 analysts.

The mean price target for the shares of Infoblox Inc (NYSE:BLOX) is at 20.61 while the highest price target suggested by the analysts is 28.00 and low price target is 12.00. The mean price target is calculated keeping in view the consensus of 9 brokerage firms.

The average estimate of EPS for the current fiscal quarter for Infoblox Inc (NYSE:BLOX) stands at 0.06 while the EPS for the current year is fixed at 0.42 by 11 analysts.

The next one year’s EPS estimate is set at 0.54 by 11 analysts while a year ago the analysts suggested the company’s EPS at 0.42. The analysts also projected the company’s long-term growth at 9.87% for the upcoming five years.

In its latest quarter ended on 30^th April 2016, Infoblox Inc (NYSE:BLOX) reported earnings of $0.06. The posted earnings topped the analyst’s consensus by $0.01 with the surprise factor of 20.00%. In the matter of earnings surprises, the term “Cockroach Effect” is often implied. Cockroach Effect is a market theory that suggests that when a company reveals bad news to the public, there may be many more related negative events that have yet to be revealed. In the case of earnings surprises, if a company is suggesting a negative earnings surprise it means there are more to come.

On June 1, 2016 Infoblox Inc (NYSE:BLOX) released the Infoblox DNS Threat Index for the first quarter of 2016, highlighting a 35-fold increase in newly observed ransomware domains from the fourth quarter of 2015. This dramatic uptick helped propel the overall threat index, which measures creation of malicious Domain Name System (DNS) infrastructure including malware, exploit kits, phishing, and other threats, to its highest level ever.

Ransomware is a relatively brazen attack where a malware infection is used to seize data by encrypting it, and then payment is demanded for the decryption key. According to Rod Rasmussen, vice president of cybersecurity at Infoblox, “There has been a seismic shift in the ransomware threat, expanding from a few actors pulling off limited, small-dollar heists targeting consumers to industrial-scale, big-money attacks on all sizes and manner of organizations, including major enterprises. The threat index shows cybercriminals rushing to take advantage of this opportunity.”

The FBI recently revealed that ransomware victims in the United States reported costs of $209 million in the first quarter of 2016, compared to $24 million for all of 2015. High-profile Q1 ransomware incidents include the February 2016 attack on Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center in Los Angeles and the March 2016 breach at MedStar Health in Washington D.C.