F5 (NASDAQ:FFIV) Price Target Raised to $428.00

F5 (NASDAQ:FFIV) had its price target lifted by Barclays from $397.00 to $428.00 in a research note released on Wednesday,Benzinga reports. They currently have an equal weight rating on the network technology company’s stock.

Several other research firms have also recently commented on FFIV. Wells Fargo & Company set a $500.00 price objective on shares of F5 in a research report on Wednesday. Morgan Stanley upped their price objective on F5 from $380.00 to $415.00 and gave the stock an “equal weight” rating in a research report on Tuesday, July 28th. Needham & Company LLC reiterated a “hold” rating on shares of F5 in a report on Tuesday, July 28th. Royal Bank Of Canada lifted their target price on F5 from $508.00 to $525.00 and gave the company an “outperform” rating in a research report on Monday, October 12th. Finally, JPMorgan Chase & Co. boosted their target price on F5 from $500.00 to $515.00 and gave the company an “overweight” rating in a research note on Tuesday, July 28th. Four investment analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating, seven have issued a Hold rating and one has assigned a Sell rating to the company. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, the stock presently has an average rating of “Hold” and an average target price of $443.00.

F5 Stock Performance

FFIV stock opened at $338.34 on Wednesday. The business’s fifty day moving average is $428.63 and its 200-day moving average is $362.68. The company has a quick ratio of 1.59, a current ratio of 1.73 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.23. The company has a market cap of $19.16 billion, a P/E ratio of 27.00, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 3.23 and a beta of 1.03. F5 has a twelve month low of $223.76 and a twelve month high of $483.30.

F5 (NASDAQ:FFIV) last announced its quarterly earnings results on Tuesday, October 27th. The network technology company reported $4.42 earnings per share for the quarter, topping analysts’ consensus estimates of $4.26 by $0.16. F5 had a net margin of 21.14% and a return on equity of 21.00%. The company had revenue of $917.43 million for the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $884.03 million. During the same period last year, the firm posted $4.39 earnings per share. The business’s quarterly revenue was up 13.2% compared to the same quarter last year. Equities research analysts forecast that F5 will post 14.16 EPS for the current year.

F5 announced that its Board of Directors has initiated a share repurchase program on Tuesday, October 27th that authorizes the company to buy back $1.50 billion in outstanding shares. This buyback authorization authorizes the network technology company to buy shares of its stock through open market purchases. Stock buyback programs are typically an indication that the company’s board believes its stock is undervalued.

Insider Buying and Selling

In related news, CTO Kunal Anand sold 392 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction on Monday, August 3rd. The shares were sold at an average price of $404.63, for a total value of $158,614.96. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief technology officer directly owned 12,586 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $5,092,673.18. This trade represents a 3.02% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The transaction was disclosed in a filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which can be accessed through the SEC website. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Also, CTO Michael Montoya sold 4,426 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction on Monday, September 14th. The stock was sold at an average price of $410.16, for a total transaction of $1,815,368.16. Following the transaction, the chief technology officer owned 1,309 shares in the company, valued at approximately $536,899.44. The trade was a 77.18% 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 have sold a total of 12,829 shares of company stock worth $5,259,502 in the last quarter. 0.48% of the stock is owned by company insiders.

Institutional Inflows and Outflows

Several hedge funds and other institutional investors have recently made changes to their positions in FFIV. BlackRock Inc. bought a new position in shares of F5 in the 2nd quarter worth about $2,611,637,000. Robeco Institutional Asset Management B.V. lifted its stake in shares of F5 by 23.9% in the third quarter. Robeco Institutional Asset Management B.V. now owns 732,219 shares of the network technology company’s stock worth $325,969,000 after buying an additional 141,131 shares in the last quarter. UBS AM a distinct business unit of UBS ASSET MANAGEMENT AMERICAS LLC lifted its stake in shares of F5 by 24.8% in the second quarter. UBS AM a distinct business unit of UBS ASSET MANAGEMENT AMERICAS LLC now owns 726,844 shares of the network technology company’s stock worth $302,338,000 after buying an additional 144,534 shares in the last quarter. William Blair Investment Management LLC bought a new stake in shares of F5 during the second quarter valued at approximately $243,865,000. Finally, Amundi raised its position in F5 by 96.0% during the second quarter. Amundi now owns 555,809 shares of the network technology company’s stock valued at $231,194,000 after purchasing an additional 272,273 shares during the period. 90.66% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors.

F5 News Summary

Here are the key news stories impacting F5 this week:

• Positive Sentiment: F5 authorized an additional $1.5 billion share repurchase program, bringing total available buyback capacity to approximately $1.8 billion, or about 9% of its market value. The authorization could support earnings per share and provide demand for the stock following its sell-off. Share Buyback Program Announced by F5
• Positive Sentiment: F5 reported fiscal fourth-quarter revenue of approximately $917 million and adjusted earnings of $4.42 per share, exceeding analyst expectations. AI-related bookings surpassed $100 million and increased roughly 300% year over year, indicating continued demand for AI data-delivery solutions. F5 Beat on Revenue and Still Dropped
• Positive Sentiment: Technical analysts say the stock is now oversold after its recent decline, while upward earnings-estimate revisions could support a potential trend reversal. Morgan Stanley, Barclays and RBC also raised their price targets or maintained a constructive outlook. F5 May See a Trend Reversal
• Positive Sentiment: F5 and Oracle announced a collaboration focused on strengthening application security for AI-era workloads, potentially improving F5’s enterprise and cloud-security opportunities. F5 and Oracle Collaborate

About F5

F5, Inc (NASDAQ: FFIV) provides application delivery, security and traffic management solutions for enterprises, service providers and public-sector organizations. Its offerings are designed to help customers secure, optimize and manage applications and application programming interfaces (APIs) across data centers, private and public clouds, and edge environments.

The company’s portfolio includes BIG-IP software and appliances, NGINX application delivery and web server technologies, and F5 Distributed Cloud services.