F5 (NASDAQ:FFIV) Price Target Raised to $540.00

F5 (NASDAQ:FFIV) had its price objective raised by Royal Bank Of Canada from $525.00 to $540.00 in a report released on Wednesday morning,Benzinga reports. They currently have an outperform rating on the network technology company’s stock.

Other research analysts have also recently issued research reports about the stock. JPMorgan Chase & Co. boosted their price target on shares of F5 from $500.00 to $515.00 and gave the company an “overweight” rating in a research report on Tuesday, July 28th. Barclays reiterated a “mixed” rating on shares of F5 in a research report on Wednesday. Evercore reissued an “outperform” rating on shares of F5 in a research note on Wednesday. Wall Street Zen upgraded shares of F5 from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating in a report on Saturday, August 1st. Finally, Morgan Stanley upped their price objective on shares of F5 from $380.00 to $415.00 and gave the stock an “equal weight” rating in a report on Tuesday, July 28th. Four investment 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’s stock. According to data from MarketBeat, F5 presently has a consensus rating of “Hold” and an average price target of $443.00.

F5 Stock Down 6.9%

Shares of FFIV stock opened at $338.34 on Wednesday. The company has a current ratio of 1.73, a quick ratio of 1.59 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.23. The stock has a market cap of $19.16 billion, a P/E ratio of 27.00, a P/E/G ratio of 3.23 and a beta of 1.03. The stock has a 50 day moving average of $428.63 and a 200 day moving average of $362.68. F5 has a twelve month low of $223.76 and a twelve month high of $483.30.

F5 (NASDAQ:FFIV) last posted its quarterly earnings data on Tuesday, October 27th. The network technology company reported $4.42 EPS for the quarter, beating analysts’ consensus estimates of $4.26 by $0.16. The business had revenue of $917.43 million during the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $884.03 million. F5 had a return on equity of 21.00% and a net margin of 21.14%. The business’s revenue was up 13.2% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same period in the previous year, the business earned $4.39 earnings per share. As a group, sell-side analysts expect that F5 will post 14.16 EPS for the current year.

F5 declared that its Board of Directors has initiated a share buyback plan on Tuesday, October 27th that allows the company to repurchase $1.50 billion in shares. This repurchase authorization allows the network technology company to repurchase shares of its stock through open market purchases. Share repurchase plans are typically an indication that the company’s leadership believes its shares are undervalued.

Insider Activity

In other F5 news, CTO Kunal Anand sold 392 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction dated Monday, August 3rd. The stock was sold at an average price of $404.63, for a total transaction of $158,614.96. Following the transaction, the chief technology officer owned 12,586 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $5,092,673.18. This trade represents a 3.02% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The sale was disclosed in a document filed with the SEC, which can be accessed through this hyperlink. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Also, EVP Thomas Fountain sold 1,208 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction dated Wednesday, August 5th. The shares were sold at an average price of $414.63, for a total value of $500,873.04. Following the completion of the sale, the executive vice president directly owned 8,060 shares of the company’s stock, 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 12,829 shares of company stock worth $5,259,502 over the last three months. Company insiders own 0.48% of the company’s stock.

Institutional Investors Weigh In On F5

A number of hedge funds have recently added to or reduced their stakes in the company. BlackRock Inc. purchased a new position in shares of F5 in the 2nd quarter valued at about $2,611,637,000. Robeco Institutional Asset Management B.V. grew its position in F5 by 23.9% during the third quarter. Robeco Institutional Asset Management B.V. now owns 732,219 shares of the network technology company’s stock worth $325,969,000 after buying an additional 141,131 shares during the period. UBS AM a distinct business unit of UBS ASSET MANAGEMENT AMERICAS LLC boosted its position in shares of F5 by 24.8% in the 2nd quarter. UBS AM a distinct business unit of UBS ASSET MANAGEMENT AMERICAS LLC now owns 726,844 shares of the network technology company’s stock worth $302,338,000 after buying an additional 144,534 shares in the last quarter. William Blair Investment Management LLC purchased a new stake in shares of F5 in the second quarter valued at about $243,865,000. Finally, Amundi increased its position in F5 by 96.0% during the 2nd quarter. Amundi now owns 555,809 shares of the network technology company’s stock worth $231,194,000 after purchasing an additional 272,273 shares in the last quarter. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 90.66% of the company’s stock.

Key F5 News

Here are the key news stories impacting F5 this week:

• Positive Sentiment: F5 authorized an additional $1.5 billion share repurchase program, bringing total available buyback capacity to approximately $1.8 billion, or about 9% of its market value. The authorization could support earnings per share and provide demand for the stock following its sell-off. Share Buyback Program Announced by F5
• Positive Sentiment: F5 reported fiscal fourth-quarter revenue of approximately $917 million and adjusted earnings of $4.42 per share, exceeding analyst expectations. AI-related bookings surpassed $100 million and increased roughly 300% year over year, indicating continued demand for AI data-delivery solutions. F5 Beat on Revenue and Still Dropped
• Positive Sentiment: Technical analysts say the stock is now oversold after its recent decline, while upward earnings-estimate revisions could support a potential trend reversal. Morgan Stanley, Barclays and RBC also raised their price targets or maintained a constructive outlook. F5 May See a Trend Reversal
• Positive Sentiment: F5 and Oracle announced a collaboration focused on strengthening application security for AI-era workloads, potentially improving F5’s enterprise and cloud-security opportunities. F5 and Oracle Collaborate

About F5

F5, Inc (NASDAQ: FFIV) provides application delivery, security and traffic management solutions for enterprises, service providers and public-sector organizations. Its offerings are designed to help customers secure, optimize and manage applications and application programming interfaces (APIs) across data centers, private and public clouds, and edge environments.

The company’s portfolio includes BIG-IP software and appliances, NGINX application delivery and web server technologies, and F5 Distributed Cloud services.