Fortinet Gets Set For IPO

Updated with FTNT stock ticker.

SUNNYVALE, Calif. (TheStreet) -- Fortinet(FTNT Quote) is set to become the latest tech company to take the IPO plunge.

The security specialist increased the size of its IPO Monday, offering 12.5 million shares, as opposed to its original plan of 12 million. Priced between $9 and $11 a share, Fortinet is hoping to raise $137.5 million at the high end of its offering. Shares traded at $16.60 in Thursday morning trading.

It will trade on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol FTNT. Fortinet's IPO is underwritten by Morgan Stanley(MS Quote), JPMorgan Chase(JPM Quote) and Deutsche Bank(DB Quote) Securities.

A note on the IPO Boutique Web site, which tracks the latest offerings, said that Fortinet's shares could begin trading on Wednesday.

Fortinet is well positioned to tap into the growing demand for cybersecurity. Earlier this year, for example, a headline-grabbing denial-of-service attack attempted to bring down the likes of the New York Stock Exchange and White House Web sites by bombarding them with requests from more than 100,000 infected computers dotted around the globe.

The company's core technology is its FortiGate appliance, a sort of security "god-box" combining a range of features, including anti-virus, firewall and virtual private network (VPN) capabilities. Long regarded as one of the security sector's rising stars, the company brought in revenue of $123.5 million, $155.4 million, and $211.8 million in 2006, 2007 and 2008, respectively.

IDC estimates that Fortinet has around 15.4% of the unified threat management (UTM) appliance market. The tech research firm also predicts that the UTM space will grow from $1.3 billion in 2007 to $3.5 billion in 2012, which bodes well for Fortinet's future as a public company.