F5’s (FFIV) Buy Rating Reaffirmed at Needham & Company LLC

F5 (NASDAQ:FFIV)‘s stock had its “buy” rating reissued by stock analysts at Needham & Company LLC in a research note issued to investors on Tuesday, Benzinga reports. They currently have a $220.00 price target on the network technology company’s stock. Needham & Company LLC’s price objective indicates a potential upside of 20.79% from the company’s previous close.

FFIV has been the subject of several other research reports. JPMorgan Chase & Co. lifted their price target on F5 from $197.00 to $205.00 and gave the stock a “neutral” rating in a research report on Thursday, April 11th. Piper Sandler lifted their price target on F5 from $170.00 to $187.00 and gave the stock a “neutral” rating in a research report on Tuesday, January 30th. The Goldman Sachs Group lifted their price objective on F5 from $156.00 to $179.00 and gave the stock a “neutral” rating in a report on Tuesday, January 30th. Barclays lifted their price objective on F5 from $163.00 to $206.00 and gave the stock an “equal weight” rating in a report on Tuesday, January 30th. Finally, Royal Bank of Canada reiterated a “sector perform” rating and issued a $204.00 price objective on shares of F5 in a report on Friday, February 9th. One investment analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, six have given a hold rating, two have given a buy rating and one has assigned a strong buy rating to the company. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, the company presently has a consensus rating of “Hold” and a consensus price target of $192.22.

F5 Price Performance

FFIV opened at $182.13 on Tuesday. The stock has a 50-day moving average price of $187.66 and a 200-day moving average price of $176.72. The firm has a market cap of $10.71 billion, a PE ratio of 23.68, a P/E/G ratio of 2.68 and a beta of 1.11. F5 has a 1 year low of $129.93 and a 1 year high of $199.49.

F5 (NASDAQ:FFIV) last posted its quarterly earnings results on Monday, April 29th. The network technology company reported $2.91 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of $2.88 by $0.03. The firm had revenue of $681.00 million during the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $685.47 million. F5 had a return on equity of 20.81% and a net margin of 16.43%. F5’s quarterly revenue was down 3.1% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same quarter in the previous year, the firm earned $1.70 EPS. As a group, sell-side analysts anticipate that F5 will post 9.59 EPS for the current year.

Insider Buying and Selling at F5

In other F5 news, EVP Thomas Dean Fountain sold 851 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction dated Thursday, February 8th. The stock was sold at an average price of $183.06, for a total transaction of $155,784.06. Following the completion of the sale, the executive vice president now directly owns 15,008 shares in the company, valued at approximately $2,747,364.48. The transaction was disclosed in a filing with the SEC, which is available at the SEC website. In other news, EVP Thomas Dean Fountain sold 851 shares of F5 stock in a transaction dated Thursday, February 8th. The stock was sold at an average price of $183.06, for a total transaction of $155,784.06. Following the transaction, the executive vice president now directly owns 15,008 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $2,747,364.48. The transaction was disclosed in a legal filing with the SEC, which can be accessed through this link. Also, CEO Francois Locoh-Donou sold 6,400 shares of F5 stock in a transaction dated Friday, March 1st. The shares were sold at an average price of $188.02, for a total value of $1,203,328.00. Following the transaction, the chief executive officer now directly owns 123,251 shares in the company, valued at $23,173,653.02. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Insiders sold a total of 10,201 shares of company stock worth $1,908,065 in the last three months. 0.58% of the stock is currently owned by company insiders.

Institutional Inflows and Outflows

A number of large investors have recently added to or reduced their stakes in the business. Atlantic Edge Private Wealth Management LLC purchased a new stake in shares of F5 during the 4th quarter worth approximately $25,000. Pacific Capital Wealth Advisors Inc. bought a new position in shares of F5 during the 4th quarter worth $34,000. Register Financial Advisors LLC bought a new position in shares of F5 during the 1st quarter worth $38,000. Washington Trust Advisors Inc. purchased a new stake in shares of F5 during the 4th quarter worth $36,000. Finally, Janiczek Wealth Management LLC lifted its stake in shares of F5 by 56.4% during the 4th quarter. Janiczek Wealth Management LLC now owns 258 shares of the network technology company’s stock worth $46,000 after purchasing an additional 93 shares during the last quarter. 90.66% of the stock is owned by hedge funds and other institutional investors.

F5 Company Profile

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.