My camera at the mo', but not done any real world hi-speed shooting (even with Tracking on).
Can't get much more decent than 26x optical zoom, with 2x intelligent zoom that does seem to be very high quality compared to digital zooms on my previous Panny FZs, which to be fair, were positively ancient by comparison.
At the right price, it's a cracking buy, but it's not going to re-write the rules of photography.
Depending on his budget, and other factors, he could do worse than look at the Pentax K-30 with it's £50 cashback until 15th Jan, and a long lens to partner the kit one - make sure it's the WR version.
Pentax have their own 55-300mm lens, but there's others from Sigma/Tamron/Tokina to be had pre-owned at a fair price.
In manual mode, the Fuji hits a weird design brickwall - highest aperture of f11 is only able to dial in 4 sec shutter time, before going to bulb mode.
Compared to a 6 yo Panny FZ50, which was good for f11 with 30 sec max.
So it'll all depend on which compromises are liveable with, and which kill the notion of going for a specific package, stone dead.