Head to Head Comparison: ADTRAN (NASDAQ:ADTN) & F5 (NASDAQ:FFIV)

ADTRAN (NASDAQ:ADTN) and F5 (NASDAQ:FFIV) are both technology companies, but which is the better business? We will compare the two businesses based on the strength of their dividends, profitability, valuation, analyst recommendations, institutional ownership, earnings and risk.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a breakdown of current recommendations for ADTRAN and F5, as reported by MarketBeat.com.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
ADTRAN	2	1	4	0	2.29
F5	1	5	5	0	2.36

ADTRAN currently has a consensus price target of $14.67, suggesting a potential upside of 114.42%. F5 has a consensus price target of $416.62, suggesting a potential downside of 6.41%. Given ADTRAN’s higher probable upside, research analysts plainly believe ADTRAN is more favorable than F5.

Earnings and Valuation

This table compares ADTRAN and F5″s gross revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
ADTRAN	$1.08 billion	0.51	-$45.66 million	($0.28)	-24.43
F5	$3.09 billion	8.16	$692.38 million	$12.56	35.44

F5 has higher revenue and earnings than ADTRAN. ADTRAN is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than F5, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.

Risk and Volatility

ADTRAN has a beta of 1.47, indicating that its share price is 47% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, F5 has a beta of 1.03, indicating that its share price is 3% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Profitability

This table compares ADTRAN and F5’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
ADTRAN	-2.29%	14.24%	1.66%
F5	21.95%	21.54%	12.16%

Institutional & Insider Ownership

80.6% of ADTRAN shares are owned by institutional investors. Comparatively, 90.7% of F5 shares are owned by institutional investors. 2.2% of ADTRAN shares are owned by company insiders. Comparatively, 0.5% of F5 shares are owned by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that large money managers, endowments and hedge funds believe a stock will outperform the market over the long term.

Summary

F5 beats ADTRAN on 11 of the 14 factors compared between the two stocks.

About ADTRAN

ADTRAN Holdings, Inc., through its subsidiaries, provides networking and communications platforms, software, systems, and services in the United States, Germany, the United Kingdom, and internationally. It operates through two segments, Network Solutions, and Services & Support. It offers residential gateways; ethernet passive optical network ONUs; gigabit passive optical network/XGS-PON ONTs; traditional SSE, routers, and switches; edge cloud; carrier ethernet network interface devices; Optical Line Terminals; Packet Aggregation, Copper Access, and Oscilloquartz; optical transport and engine solutions; infrastructure monitoring solution; and training, professional, software, and managed services. The company also provides various software, such as Mosaic One SaaS, n-Command, Procloud, MCP, AOE and ACI-E, and Ensemble Controller. It serves large, medium, and small service providers; alternative service providers, such as utilities, municipalities and fiber overbuilders; cable/MSOs; and SMBs and distributed enterprises. ADTRAN Holdings, Inc. was incorporated in 1985 and is headquartered in Huntsville, Alabama.

About F5

F5, Inc. provides multi-cloud application security and delivery solutions in the United States, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and the Asia Pacific region. The company’s distributed cloud services enable its customers to deploy, secure, and operate applications in any architecture, from on-premises to the public cloud. It offers unified, security, networking, and application management solutions, such as web app and API protection; multi-cloud networking; application delivery and deployment; domain name system; content delivery network; and application deployment and orchestration. The company also provides application security and delivery products, including NGINX Plus; NGINX Management Suite; NGINX Ingress Controller; NGINX App Protect; BIG-IP Packaged Software; and BIG-IP Systems. In addition, it provides a range of professional services, including maintenance, consulting, training, and other technical support services. F5, Inc. sells its products to large enterprise businesses, public sector institutions, governments, and service providers through distributors, value-added resellers, managed service providers, systems integrators, and other indirect channel partners. It has partnerships with public cloud providers, such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform. The company was formerly known as F5 Networks, Inc. and changed its name to F5, Inc. in November 2021. F5, Inc. was incorporated in 1996 and is headquartered in Seattle, Washington.