F5 (NASDAQ:FFIV) Upgraded to “Buy” at Wall Street Zen

Wall Street Zen upgraded shares of F5 (NASDAQ:FFIV) from a hold rating to a buy rating in a research note published on Saturday.

A number of other equities analysts have also recently weighed in on the stock. Piper Sandler reissued an “overweight” rating and set a $461.00 price target (up from $423.00) on shares of F5 in a research report on Tuesday. Zacks Research cut shares of F5 from a “strong-buy” rating to a “hold” rating in a research report on Monday, July 27th. Evercore raised F5 from an “in-line” rating to an “outperform” rating and set a $475.00 price objective on the stock in a research note on Monday, May 18th. Needham & Company LLC reiterated a “hold” rating on shares of F5 in a report on Tuesday. 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. Five research analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating, five have given a Hold rating and one has given a Sell rating to the stock. According to data from MarketBeat, the company currently has an average rating of “Hold” and a consensus price target of $416.62.

F5 Trading Up 3.6%

Shares of FFIV opened at $402.57 on Friday. The stock has a market cap of $22.71 billion, a P/E ratio of 32.05, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 3.97 and a beta of 1.03. F5 has a 1 year low of $223.76 and a 1 year high of $435.00. The stock’s 50-day moving average price is $401.57 and its two-hundred day moving average price is $333.91.

F5 (NASDAQ:FFIV) last released its quarterly earnings data 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 analyst estimates of $834.60 million. F5 had a net margin of 21.95% and a return on equity of 21.54%. F5’s quarterly revenue was up 10.9% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same quarter last year, the firm earned $4.16 EPS. 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 forecast that F5 will post 13.53 EPS for the current year.

Insider Buying and Selling

In other news, CFO Edward Cooper Werner sold 2,500 shares of the stock in a transaction on Tuesday, June 2nd. The shares were sold at an average price of $400.00, for a total transaction of $1,000,000.00. Following the completion of the sale, the chief financial officer owned 406 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $162,400. This represents a 86.03% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The sale was disclosed in a legal filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available at this hyperlink. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Also, EVP Chad Michael Whalen sold 6,200 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction on Friday, May 8th. The stock was sold at an average price of $350.19, for a total transaction of $2,171,178.00. Following the sale, the executive vice president owned 20,832 shares in the company, valued at approximately $7,295,158.08. The trade was a 22.94% 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. Over the last three months, insiders have sold 22,579 shares of company stock valued at $7,836,860. 0.48% of the stock is owned by corporate insiders.

Institutional Trading of F5

Several hedge funds and other institutional investors have recently modified their holdings of the company. Hazlett Burt & Watson Inc. bought a new position in shares of F5 during the fourth quarter worth about $26,000. Hantz Financial Services Inc. lifted its stake in F5 by 109.8% in the 4th quarter. Hantz Financial Services Inc. now owns 107 shares of the network technology company’s stock valued at $27,000 after acquiring an additional 56 shares in the last quarter. Elyxium Wealth LLC bought a new stake in F5 in the 4th quarter valued at approximately $28,000. SJS Investment Consulting Inc. boosted its position in F5 by 963.6% during the 1st quarter. SJS Investment Consulting Inc. now owns 117 shares of the network technology company’s stock worth $34,000 after acquiring an additional 106 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Capital Advisors Ltd. LLC boosted its position in F5 by 113.8% during the 1st quarter. Capital Advisors Ltd. LLC now owns 124 shares of the network technology company’s stock worth $36,000 after acquiring an additional 66 shares during the last quarter. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 90.66% of the company’s stock.

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.