F5 (NASDAQ:FFIV) CEO Sells $1,186,727.10 in Stock

F5, Inc. (NASDAQ:FFIV) CEO Francois Locoh-Donou sold 3,783 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Thursday, November 5th. The shares were sold at an average price of $313.70, for a total transaction of $1,186,727.10. Following the completion of the sale, the chief executive officer directly owned 185,683 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $58,248,757.10. The trade was a 2.00% decrease in their position. The sale was disclosed in a filing with the SEC, which is accessible through this link. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan.

F5 Trading Up 0.9%

FFIV opened at $320.01 on Thursday. The firm’s fifty day moving average is $416.83 and its two-hundred day moving average is $364.89. The firm has a market cap of $18.12 billion, a PE ratio of 25.54, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 2.81 and a beta of 1.07. F5, Inc. has a twelve month low of $223.76 and a twelve month high of $483.30. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.23, a quick ratio of 1.59 and a current ratio of 1.73.

F5 (NASDAQ:FFIV) last announced its quarterly earnings results on Tuesday, October 27th. The network technology company reported $4.42 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate 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 during the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $884.03 million. During the same quarter in the previous year, the business earned $4.39 EPS. The firm’s revenue was up 13.2% on a year-over-year basis. Equities research analysts anticipate that F5, Inc. will post 14.19 EPS for the current year.

F5 announced that its Board of Directors has approved a stock buyback program on Tuesday, October 27th that allows the company to buy back $1.50 billion in outstanding shares. This buyback authorization allows the network technology company to repurchase shares of its stock through open market purchases. Share buyback programs are often an indication that the company’s leadership believes its shares are undervalued.

Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth

A number of research firms have issued reports on FFIV. Royal Bank Of Canada boosted their target price on F5 from $525.00 to $540.00 and gave the company an “outperform” rating in a research note on Wednesday, October 28th. Barclays restated a “mixed” rating on shares of F5 in a report on Wednesday, October 28th. Evercore reaffirmed an “outperform” rating on shares of F5 in a research report on Wednesday, October 28th. Morgan Stanley lifted their price objective on F5 from $415.00 to $448.00 and gave the company an “equal weight” rating in a report on Wednesday, October 28th. Finally, Zacks Research lowered F5 from a “strong-buy” rating to a “hold” rating in a research report on Monday, July 27th. Four analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating, seven have assigned a Hold rating and one has issued a Sell rating to the company. According to MarketBeat.com, the company currently has a consensus rating of “Hold” and a consensus price target of $443.00.

Hedge Funds Weigh In On F5

A number of institutional investors and hedge funds have recently added to or reduced their stakes in the stock. Bank of America Corp DE bought a new position in shares of F5 during the second quarter worth about $70,355,000. BlackRock Inc. acquired a new stake in F5 in the 2nd quarter valued at approximately $2,611,637,000. Nykredit A S acquired a new stake in F5 in the 2nd quarter valued at approximately $14,596,000. Sequoia Financial Advisors LLC lifted its stake in F5 by 14.6% in the 2nd quarter. Sequoia Financial Advisors LLC now owns 22,144 shares of the network technology company’s stock valued at $9,211,000 after acquiring an additional 2,814 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Amundi lifted its stake in F5 by 96.0% in the 2nd quarter. Amundi now owns 555,809 shares of the network technology company’s stock valued at $231,194,000 after acquiring an additional 272,273 shares in the last quarter. 90.66% of the stock is owned by institutional investors and hedge funds.

F5 Company Profile

F5, Inc. provides application delivery and security solutions that help organizations manage, protect and optimize applications across data centers, public clouds and edge environments. Its offerings serve businesses, government agencies and service providers around the world. The company’s products and services include BIG-IP application delivery and security software, NGINX technologies for application development and delivery, and F5 Distributed Cloud Services. These offerings support functions such as traffic management, web and API protection, application security and multicloud connectivity.