First Trust Advisors LP Lowers Position in F5, Inc. $FFIV

First Trust Advisors LP trimmed its position in shares of F5, Inc. (NASDAQ:FFIV) by 46.4% during the 1st quarter, according to the company in its most recent 13F filing with the SEC. The institutional investor owned 1,476,987 shares of the network technology company’s stock after selling 1,276,665 shares during the quarter. First Trust Advisors LP’s holdings in F5 were worth $427,337,000 at the end of the most recent quarter.

Other hedge funds and other institutional investors have also recently made changes to their positions in the company. Jericho Capital Asset Management L.P. bought a new position in shares of F5 in the 4th quarter worth approximately $579,699,000. Northwestern Mutual Wealth Management Co. boosted its position in shares of F5 by 15,103.5% during the fourth quarter. Northwestern Mutual Wealth Management Co. now owns 1,170,216 shares of the network technology company’s stock valued at $298,709,000 after purchasing an additional 1,162,519 shares in the last quarter. Norges Bank purchased a new stake in F5 in the fourth quarter worth $205,706,000. Deutsche Bank AG grew its stake in F5 by 175.2% in the fourth quarter. Deutsche Bank AG now owns 958,947 shares of the network technology company’s stock worth $244,781,000 after purchasing an additional 610,437 shares during the period. Finally, UBS Group AG grew its stake in F5 by 141.2% in the fourth quarter. UBS Group AG now owns 1,023,869 shares of the network technology company’s stock worth $261,353,000 after purchasing an additional 599,384 shares during the period. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 90.66% of the company’s stock.

Insider Activity at F5

In other F5 news, Director Elizabeth Buse sold 1,000 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction dated Wednesday, June 10th. The shares were sold at an average price of $399.35, for a total transaction of $399,350.00. Following the completion of the sale, the director directly owned 4,947 shares in the company, valued at approximately $1,975,584.45. This trade represents a 16.82% decrease in their position. The transaction was disclosed in a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which can be accessed through this hyperlink. Also, EVP Chad Michael Whalen sold 6,200 shares of F5 stock in a transaction dated Friday, May 8th. The stock was sold at an average price of $350.19, for a total transaction of $2,171,178.00. Following the completion of the transaction, the executive vice president directly owned 20,832 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $7,295,158.08. This trade represents a 22.94% decrease in their ownership of the stock. Additional details regarding this sale are available in the official SEC disclosure. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Insiders sold a total of 22,579 shares of company stock worth $7,836,860 in the last ninety days. 0.48% of the stock is currently owned by company insiders.

Analysts Set New Price Targets

FFIV has been the subject of several recent research reports. Weiss Ratings reissued a “buy (b-)” rating on shares of F5 in a research report on Friday, June 26th. Barclays upped their target price on shares of F5 from $292.00 to $386.00 and gave the stock an “equal weight” rating in a research report on Friday, May 29th. Piper Sandler increased their price target on shares of F5 from $356.00 to $423.00 and gave the stock an “overweight” rating in a research note on Friday, May 29th. JPMorgan Chase & Co. lifted their price target on shares of F5 from $355.00 to $365.00 and gave the company an “overweight” rating in a research report on Wednesday, April 29th. Finally, Royal Bank Of Canada reissued an “outperform” rating on shares of F5 in a research note on Thursday, July 16th. One equities research analyst has rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, five have issued a Buy rating, four have issued a Hold rating and one has assigned a Sell rating to the company’s stock. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, the stock presently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average price target of $382.67.

F5 Trading Down 0.8%

F5 stock opened at $408.74 on Wednesday. F5, Inc. has a 12 month low of $223.76 and a 12 month high of $435.00. The company has a market capitalization of $23.06 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 33.53, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 4.83 and a beta of 1.03. The business’s fifty day simple moving average is $398.31 and its two-hundred day simple moving average is $327.04.

F5 (NASDAQ:FFIV) last issued its quarterly earnings results on Tuesday, April 28th. The network technology company reported $3.90 earnings per share for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $3.47 by $0.43. The firm had revenue of $811.70 million during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $783.82 million. F5 had a return on equity of 21.50% and a net margin of 21.96%.The company’s revenue was up 11.0% on a year-over-year basis. During the same period last year, the company earned $3.42 earnings per share. F5 has set its Q3 2026 guidance at 3.910-4.030 EPS and its FY 2026 guidance at 16.250-16.550 EPS. On average, equities research analysts predict that F5, Inc. will post 12.78 EPS for the current year.

About F5

F5 Inc (NASDAQ:FFIV) specializes in application services and delivery networking, helping organizations ensure the availability, performance and security of their applications. The company’s core offerings include advanced load balancing, traffic management and application security solutions designed to optimize user experiences and protect against threats such as distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks and web application exploits.

At the heart of F5’s product portfolio is the BIG-IP platform, which provides a suite of software modules for local and global traffic management, secure web application firewalling and DNS service delivery.