Thomas Dean Fountain Sells 1,208 Shares of F5 (NASDAQ:FFIV) Stock

F5, Inc. (NASDAQ:FFIV) EVP Thomas Dean Fountain sold 1,208 shares of F5 stock in a transaction dated Wednesday, August 5th. The stock was sold at an average price of $414.63, for a total transaction of $500,873.04. Following the transaction, the executive vice president directly owned 8,060 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $3,341,917.80. This represents a 13.03% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The transaction was disclosed in a document filed with the SEC, which can be accessed through the SEC website. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan.

F5 Price Performance

F5 stock opened at $400.23 on Friday. The firm has a market capitalization of $22.58 billion, a P/E ratio of 31.87, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 4.07 and a beta of 1.03. F5, Inc. has a 1-year low of $223.76 and a 1-year high of $435.00. The company’s 50-day moving average is $403.52 and its 200 day moving average is $338.76.

F5 (NASDAQ:FFIV) last announced its earnings results on Monday, July 27th. The network technology company reported $4.73 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $4.00 by $0.73. The business had revenue of $865.08 million during the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $834.60 million. F5 had a return on equity of 21.54% and a net margin of 21.95%.The company’s revenue for the quarter was up 10.9% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same quarter in the previous year, the business 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. Research analysts anticipate that F5, Inc. will post 13.53 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Analysts Set New Price Targets

A number of analysts have weighed in on FFIV shares. Needham & Company LLC reiterated a “hold” rating on shares of F5 in a research note on Tuesday, July 28th. Wall Street Zen raised shares of F5 from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating in a research note on Saturday, August 1st. Barclays upped their price target on shares of F5 from $386.00 to $397.00 and gave the stock an “equal weight” rating in a report on Tuesday, July 28th. Zacks Research lowered shares of F5 from a “strong-buy” rating to a “hold” rating in a report on Monday, July 27th. Finally, Royal Bank Of Canada reissued an “outperform” rating on shares of F5 in a research report on Thursday, July 16th. Five analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating, five have assigned a Hold rating and one has issued a Sell rating to the company. According to data from MarketBeat.com, the stock presently has an average rating of “Hold” and a consensus price target of $416.62.

Institutional Trading of F5

A number of hedge funds have recently added to or reduced their stakes in FFIV. Norges Bank purchased a new stake in F5 during the fourth quarter worth $205,706,000. Jefferies Financial Group Inc. increased 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 acquiring an additional 19,315 shares during the period. iA Global Asset Management Inc. bought a new position in shares of F5 in the 1st quarter worth $6,469,000. William Blair Investment Management LLC bought a new position in shares of F5 in the 4th quarter worth $140,460,000. Finally, Tredje AP fonden lifted its stake in shares of 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 purchasing an additional 3,807 shares during the last quarter. 90.66% of the stock is owned by hedge funds and other institutional investors.

About F5

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.