Legal & General Group Plc Takes Position in F5, Inc. $FFIV

Legal & General Group Plc acquired a new position in shares of F5, Inc. (NASDAQ:FFIV) in the 2nd quarter, Holdings Channel reports. The institutional investor acquired 493,925 shares of the network technology company’s stock, valued at approximately $205,453,000.

A number of other hedge funds and other institutional investors also recently made changes to their positions in FFIV. Norges Bank acquired a new stake in F5 in the fourth quarter worth $205,706,000. Jefferies Financial Group Inc. grew its holdings in shares of F5 by 127.0% in the 4th quarter. Jefferies Financial Group Inc. now owns 34,529 shares of the network technology company’s stock valued at $8,814,000 after buying an additional 19,315 shares during the period. iA Global Asset Management Inc. acquired a new position in shares of F5 in the 1st quarter valued at $6,469,000. William Blair Investment Management LLC bought a new stake in shares of F5 in the 4th quarter valued at $140,460,000. Finally, Tredje AP fonden raised its stake in F5 by 98.2% during the 4th quarter. Tredje AP fonden now owns 7,683 shares of the network technology company’s stock worth $1,961,000 after buying an additional 3,807 shares during the period. 90.66% of the stock is owned by institutional investors.

Insider Activity at F5

In other news, insider John Anthony Maddison sold 1,000 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction on Monday, August 3rd. The stock was sold at an average price of $405.85, for a total transaction of $405,850.00. Following the completion of the sale, the insider directly owned 1,353 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $549,115.05. This trade represents a 42.50% decrease in their position. The sale was disclosed in a document filed with the SEC, which is available through the SEC website. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Also, EVP Thomas Dean Fountain sold 1,208 shares of F5 stock in a transaction on Wednesday, August 5th. The stock was sold at an average price of $414.63, for a total value of $500,873.04. Following the sale, the executive vice president owned 8,060 shares in the company, valued at $3,341,917.80. The trade was a 13.03% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The disclosure for this sale is available in the SEC filing. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Insiders sold a total of 15,699 shares of company stock valued at $6,316,411 in the last ninety days. Insiders own 0.48% of the company’s stock.

Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth

FFIV has been the topic of several research analyst reports. Weiss Ratings upgraded shares of F5 from a “buy (b-)” rating to a “buy (b)” rating in a report on Tuesday, August 11th. Royal Bank Of Canada restated an “outperform” rating on shares of F5 in a research note on Thursday, July 16th. Needham & Company LLC reiterated a “hold” rating on shares of F5 in a research note on Tuesday, July 28th. Barclays boosted their price target on F5 from $386.00 to $397.00 and gave the stock an “equal weight” rating in a report on Tuesday, July 28th. Finally, Morgan Stanley raised their price target on shares of F5 from $380.00 to $415.00 and gave the company an “equal weight” rating in a research note on Tuesday, July 28th. Five research analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating, five have assigned a Hold rating and one has assigned a Sell rating to the company’s stock. Based on data from MarketBeat, F5 currently has a consensus rating of “Hold” and an average target price of $416.62.

F5 Price Performance

FFIV opened at $399.59 on Thursday. The firm’s fifty day moving average price is $403.65 and its two-hundred day moving average price is $350.72. The company has a market capitalization of $22.63 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 31.81, a P/E/G ratio of 3.74 and a beta of 1.03. F5, Inc. has a 1 year low of $223.76 and a 1 year high of $435.00.

F5 (NASDAQ:FFIV) last released its quarterly earnings results on Monday, July 27th. The network technology company reported $4.73 earnings per share for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of $4.00 by $0.73. The business had revenue of $865.08 million for the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $834.60 million. F5 had a net margin of 21.95% and a return on equity of 21.54%. The firm’s revenue for the quarter was up 10.9% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same period in the previous year, the company earned $4.16 earnings per share. F5 has set its Q4 2026 guidance at 4.140-4.260 EPS and its FY 2026 guidance at 17.210-17.330 EPS. As a group, equities analysts anticipate that F5, Inc. will post 13.65 EPS for the current year.

F5 Company Profile

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.