Insider Selling: F5 (NASDAQ:FFIV) CFO Sells $194,111.94 in Stock

F5, Inc. (NASDAQ:FFIV) CFO Edward Werner sold 599 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction dated Tuesday, November 3rd. The stock was sold at an average price of $324.06, for a total value of $194,111.94. Following the sale, the chief financial officer directly owned 2,851 shares in the company, valued at approximately $923,895.06. This trade represents a 17.36% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The transaction was disclosed in a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available through the SEC website. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan.

F5 Stock Performance

Shares of NASDAQ FFIV opened at $310.84 on Friday. The company’s fifty day moving average price is $421.67 and its 200 day moving average price is $364.03. F5, Inc. has a 1 year low of $223.76 and a 1 year high of $483.30. The company has a market capitalization of $17.60 billion, a PE ratio of 24.81, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 2.76 and a beta of 1.07. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.23, a quick ratio of 1.59 and a current ratio of 1.73.

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

F5 announced that its board has initiated a stock buyback program on Tuesday, October 27th that permits the company to buy back $1.50 billion in shares. This repurchase authorization permits the network technology company to buy shares of its stock through open market purchases. Stock repurchase programs are often an indication that the company’s board of directors believes its stock is undervalued.

Institutional Inflows and Outflows

A number of hedge funds and other institutional investors have recently bought and sold shares of the stock. Bank of America Corp DE acquired a new position in shares of F5 in the 2nd quarter valued at $70,355,000. BlackRock Inc. purchased a new position in shares of F5 in the 2nd quarter valued at $2,611,637,000. Nykredit A S acquired a new stake in F5 during the 2nd quarter worth $14,596,000. Amundi raised its stake 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 acquiring an additional 272,273 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Sequoia Financial Advisors LLC raised its stake in F5 by 14.6% during the 2nd quarter. Sequoia Financial Advisors LLC now owns 22,144 shares of the network technology company’s stock worth $9,211,000 after acquiring an additional 2,814 shares in the last quarter. 90.66% of the stock is currently owned by hedge funds and other institutional investors.

Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth

A number of research firms have commented on FFIV. Zacks Research cut F5 from a “strong-buy” rating to a “hold” rating in a research note on Monday, July 27th. Evercore reaffirmed an “outperform” rating on shares of F5 in a research note on Wednesday, October 28th. Needham & Company LLC reiterated a “hold” rating on shares of F5 in a report on Tuesday, July 28th. Wall Street Zen raised F5 from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating in a research note on Saturday, August 1st. Finally, JPMorgan Chase & Co. lifted their price objective on shares of F5 from $500.00 to $515.00 and gave the company an “overweight” rating in a report on Tuesday, July 28th. Four equities research 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. According to data from MarketBeat, F5 has a consensus rating of “Hold” and an average price target of $443.00.

Key Stories Impacting F5

Here are the key news stories impacting F5 this week:

• Positive Sentiment: F5’s board authorized a $1.5 billion share-repurchase program, which could support demand for shares. The company also recently beat quarterly earnings and revenue estimates, with revenue up 13.2% year over year.
• Neutral Sentiment: An article noted recent options-market activity in FFIV but did not specify whether trading was bullish or bearish, so its significance is unclear. Do Options Traders Know Something About F5 Stock We Don’t?
• Negative Sentiment: Seven F5 executives and insiders sold roughly $7.2 million in shares in transactions dated November 3–4, including the CFO, CTOs and EVPs. The sales could create near-term concern, though they were made under pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 plans, which can reduce their significance as a signal about executives’ views of the company. Insider Selling: F5 CFO Sells Shares

F5 Company Profile

F5, Inc provides application delivery and security solutions that help organizations manage, protect and optimize applications across data centers, public clouds and edge environments. Its offerings serve businesses, government agencies and service providers around the world.

The company’s products and services include BIG-IP application delivery and security software, NGINX technologies for application development and delivery, and F5 Distributed Cloud Services. These offerings support functions such as traffic management, web and API protection, application security and multicloud connectivity.

Founded in 1996 and headquartered in Seattle, F5 was previously known as F5 Networks before adopting the F5 name in 2021.