F5 (NASDAQ:FFIV) EVP Thomas Dean Fountain Sells 9,387 Shares of Company Stock

F5, Inc. (NASDAQ:FFIV) EVP Thomas Fountain sold 9,387 shares of F5 stock in a transaction dated Wednesday, November 4th. The shares were sold at an average price of $329.74, for a total transaction of $3,095,269.38. Following the sale, the executive vice president directly owned 8,060 shares in the company, valued at $2,657,704.40. The trade was a 53.80% decrease in their position. The sale was disclosed in a filing with the SEC, which is available at the SEC website. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan.

F5 Stock Down 5.5%

Shares of FFIV stock traded down $17.98 during midday trading on Thursday, reaching $311.74. 1,380,704 shares of the stock were exchanged, compared to its average volume of 751,325. The company’s 50 day moving average is $425.41 and its two-hundred day moving average is $363.56. 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 firm has a market cap of $17.65 billion, a PE ratio of 24.88, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 2.94 and a beta of 1.07. F5, Inc. has a 1 year low of $223.76 and a 1 year high of $483.30.

F5 (NASDAQ:FFIV) last announced 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. F5 had a return on equity of 21.00% and a net margin of 21.14%. The business had revenue of $917.43 million during the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $884.03 million. During the same quarter last year, the firm posted $4.39 earnings per share. The company’s revenue for the quarter was up 13.2% on a year-over-year basis. On average, equities research analysts predict that F5, Inc. will post 14.19 EPS for the current year.

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

Institutional Inflows and Outflows

A number of large investors have recently made changes to their positions in the stock. Persistent Asset Partners Ltd bought a new position in F5 during the second quarter valued at $36,000. Bell Investment Advisors Inc purchased a new stake in shares of F5 in the second quarter valued at $49,000. Elevation Wealth Partners LLC lifted its holdings in shares of F5 by 373.1% in the 2nd quarter. Elevation Wealth Partners LLC now owns 123 shares of the network technology company’s stock worth $51,000 after acquiring an additional 97 shares during the last quarter. Jacobi Capital Management LLC bought a new stake in shares of F5 in the 3rd quarter worth about $53,000. Finally, Root Financial Partners LLC boosted its stake in shares of F5 by 91.4% during the 1st quarter. Root Financial Partners LLC now owns 201 shares of the network technology company’s stock worth $58,000 after purchasing an additional 96 shares during the period. 90.66% of the stock is owned by hedge funds and other institutional investors.

Wall Street Analyst Weigh In

Several research analysts have issued reports on the company. Evercore reissued an “outperform” rating on shares of F5 in a research report on Wednesday, October 28th. Morgan Stanley boosted their target price on shares of F5 from $415.00 to $448.00 and gave the company an “equal weight” rating in a research report on Wednesday, October 28th. Piper Sandler cut shares of F5 from an “overweight” rating to a “neutral” rating and set a $461.00 target price for the company. in a report on Wednesday, October 28th. Zacks Research downgraded shares of F5 from a “strong-buy” rating to a “hold” rating in a research report on Monday, July 27th. Finally, Wells Fargo & Company set a $500.00 price target on shares of F5 in a research note on Wednesday, October 28th. Four analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating, seven have given a Hold rating and one has assigned a Sell rating to the company. Based on data from MarketBeat, F5 presently has an average rating of “Hold” and an average price target of $443.00.

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.