Insider Selling: F5 (NASDAQ:FFIV) EVP Sells 6,950 Shares of Company Stock

F5, Inc. (NASDAQ:FFIV) EVP Chad Whalen sold 6,950 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Tuesday, November 3rd. The shares were sold at an average price of $329.56, for a total value of $2,290,442.00. Following the completion of the transaction, the executive vice president directly owned 25,467 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $8,392,904.52. This represents a 21.44% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The transaction was disclosed in a filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available through this link. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan.

F5 Stock Performance

F5 stock traded down $17.98 during mid-day trading on Thursday, reaching $311.74. 1,380,704 shares of the company’s stock were exchanged, compared to its average volume of 751,325. The firm has a market capitalization of $17.65 billion, a PE ratio of 24.88, a P/E/G ratio of 2.94 and a beta of 1.07. F5, Inc. has a one year low of $223.76 and a one year high of $483.30. The company has a quick ratio of 1.59, a current ratio of 1.73 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.23. The business’s fifty day simple moving average is $425.41 and its 200 day simple moving average is $363.56.

F5 (NASDAQ:FFIV) last issued its quarterly earnings results on Tuesday, October 27th. The network technology company reported $4.42 earnings per share for the quarter, topping analysts’ consensus estimates of $4.26 by $0.16. The company had revenue of $917.43 million for the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $884.03 million. F5 had a net margin of 21.14% and a return on equity of 21.00%. The firm’s quarterly revenue was up 13.2% on a year-over-year basis. During the same period in the previous year, the firm earned $4.39 EPS. On average, sell-side analysts expect that F5, Inc. will post 14.19 earnings per share for the current year.

F5 declared that its Board of Directors has authorized a stock repurchase plan on Tuesday, October 27th that permits the company to repurchase $1.50 billion in shares. This buyback authorization permits the network technology company to buy shares of its stock through open market purchases. Share buyback plans are often a sign that the company’s board of directors believes its stock is undervalued.

Institutional Investors Weigh In On F5

Several large investors have recently bought and sold shares of FFIV. BlackRock Inc. purchased a new stake in shares of F5 during the 2nd quarter valued at about $2,611,637,000. Robeco Institutional Asset Management B.V. lifted 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 valued at $325,969,000 after purchasing an additional 141,131 shares during the period. UBS AM a distinct business unit of UBS ASSET MANAGEMENT AMERICAS LLC lifted its position in F5 by 24.8% during the second 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 valued at $302,338,000 after purchasing an additional 144,534 shares during the period. Dimensional Fund Advisors LP lifted its position in F5 by 0.7% during the first quarter. Dimensional Fund Advisors LP now owns 603,086 shares of the network technology company’s stock valued at $174,463,000 after purchasing an additional 4,296 shares during the period. Finally, William Blair Investment Management LLC purchased a new stake in F5 in the second quarter worth approximately $243,865,000. 90.66% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors.

Analyst Ratings Changes

Several research analysts recently commented on FFIV shares. Piper Sandler downgraded shares of F5 from an “overweight” rating to a “neutral” rating and set a $461.00 price objective for the company. in a report on Wednesday, October 28th. Zacks Research lowered shares of F5 from a “strong-buy” rating to a “hold” rating in a research report on Monday, July 27th. Weiss Ratings lowered F5 from a “buy (b)” rating to a “buy (b-)” rating in a research report on Tuesday. Barclays reissued a “mixed” rating on shares of F5 in a research note on Wednesday, October 28th. Finally, Royal Bank Of Canada raised their target price on shares of F5 from $525.00 to $540.00 and gave the stock an “outperform” rating in a report on Wednesday, October 28th. Four investment analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating, seven have issued a Hold rating and one has given a Sell rating to the company’s stock. According to data from MarketBeat.com, the company has a consensus rating of “Hold” and an average price target of $443.00.

F5 Company Profile

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.