F5 (NASDAQ:FFIV) CEO Francois Locoh-Donou Sells 3,782 Shares

F5, Inc. (NASDAQ:FFIV) CEO Francois Locoh-Donou sold 3,782 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction dated Wednesday, August 5th. The stock was sold at an average price of $412.44, for a total value of $1,559,848.08. Following the transaction, the chief executive officer directly owned 146,989 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $60,624,143.16. This represents a 2.51% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The transaction was disclosed in a filing with the SEC, which is accessible through this link. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan.

F5 Stock Performance

FFIV opened at $413.07 on Friday. F5, Inc. has a one year low of $223.76 and a one year high of $435.00. The company has a market cap of $23.31 billion, a P/E ratio of 32.89, a PEG ratio of 4.05 and a beta of 1.03. The business’s 50-day simple moving average is $403.18 and its 200-day simple moving average is $338.33.

F5 (NASDAQ:FFIV) last posted its 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 firm had revenue of $865.08 million during the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $834.60 million. F5 had a return on equity of 21.54% and a net margin of 21.95%.The firm’s revenue 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. As a group, analysts predict that F5, Inc. will post 13.53 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

Several brokerages have recently issued reports on FFIV. Bank of America upped their target price on shares of F5 from $250.00 to $300.00 and gave the company an “underperform” rating in a report on Tuesday, May 26th. Weiss Ratings reiterated a “buy (b-)” rating on shares of F5 in a research note on Friday, June 26th. Barclays boosted their price target on shares of F5 from $386.00 to $397.00 and gave the company an “equal weight” rating in a research report on Tuesday, July 28th. Morgan Stanley upped their price objective 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. Finally, Piper Sandler restated an “overweight” rating and issued a $461.00 price objective (up from $423.00) on shares of F5 in a research note on Tuesday, July 28th. Five equities research analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating, five have issued a Hold rating and one has given a Sell rating to the company’s stock. Based on data from MarketBeat, the company has an average rating of “Hold” and a consensus target price of $416.62.

Hedge Funds Weigh In On F5

A number of hedge funds have recently modified their holdings of FFIV. Pinnacle Wealth Management Advisory Group LLC grew its stake in shares of F5 by 2.6% in the 1st quarter. Pinnacle Wealth Management Advisory Group LLC now owns 1,447 shares of the network technology company’s stock worth $419,000 after purchasing an additional 36 shares during the last quarter. Smartleaf Asset Management LLC raised its holdings in shares of F5 by 3.4% in the 4th quarter. Smartleaf Asset Management LLC now owns 1,190 shares of the network technology company’s stock worth $309,000 after purchasing an additional 39 shares in the last quarter. Meiji Yasuda Asset Management Co Ltd. raised its holdings in shares of F5 by 4.4% in the 4th quarter. Meiji Yasuda Asset Management Co Ltd. now owns 968 shares of the network technology company’s stock worth $247,000 after purchasing an additional 41 shares in the last quarter. Coldstream Capital Management Inc. lifted its stake in F5 by 4.5% during the third quarter. Coldstream Capital Management Inc. now owns 1,047 shares of the network technology company’s stock valued at $338,000 after purchasing an additional 45 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Optas LLC lifted its stake in F5 by 4.7% during the first quarter. Optas LLC now owns 1,035 shares of the network technology company’s stock valued at $299,000 after purchasing an additional 46 shares during the last quarter. 90.66% of the stock is currently 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.