F5’s (FFIV) Buy Rating Reaffirmed at Needham & Company LLC

Needham & Company LLC reissued their buy rating on shares of F5 (NASDAQ:FFIV) in a research report report published on Tuesday, Benzinga reports. The brokerage currently has a $220.00 price objective on the network technology company’s stock.

Other analysts have also recently issued reports about the stock. The Goldman Sachs Group upped their target price on shares of F5 from $156.00 to $179.00 and gave the company a neutral rating in a report on Tuesday, January 30th. Barclays upped their price target on shares of F5 from $163.00 to $206.00 and gave the stock an equal weight rating in a research report on Tuesday, January 30th. Piper Sandler upped their price target on shares of F5 from $170.00 to $187.00 and gave the stock a neutral rating in a research report on Tuesday, January 30th. KeyCorp upped their price target on shares of F5 from $186.00 to $204.00 and gave the stock an overweight rating in a research report on Thursday, January 18th. Finally, Royal Bank of Canada reiterated a sector perform rating and issued a $204.00 price target on shares of F5 in a research report on Friday, February 9th. One research analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, seven have assigned a hold rating, two have given a buy rating and one has assigned a strong buy rating to the company. According to data from MarketBeat, the stock has an average rating of Hold and an average target price of $185.10.

F5 Trading Down 9.2 %

Shares of FFIV stock opened at $165.31 on Tuesday. F5 has a 12 month low of $129.93 and a 12 month high of $199.49. The stock has a market cap of $9.72 billion, a P/E ratio of 21.50, a P/E/G ratio of 2.68 and a beta of 1.11. The company has a 50 day simple moving average of $187.66 and a two-hundred day simple moving average of $176.72.

F5 (NASDAQ:FFIV) last announced its earnings results on Monday, April 29th. The network technology company reported $2.91 EPS for the quarter, beating analysts’ consensus estimates of $2.88 by $0.03. F5 had a net margin of 16.43% and a return on equity of 20.81%. The business had revenue of $681.00 million during the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $685.47 million. During the same period in the prior year, the company earned $1.70 earnings per share. The firm’s revenue was down 3.1% on a year-over-year basis. As a group, equities analysts forecast that F5 will post 9.59 earnings per share for the current year.

Insider Buying and Selling

In related news, CFO Francis J. Pelzer sold 500 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction on Monday, April 22nd. The shares were sold at an average price of $178.81, for a total transaction of $89,405.00. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief financial officer now owns 31,290 shares in the company, valued at $5,594,964.90. The sale was disclosed in a document filed with the SEC, which is available through this hyperlink. In other F5 news, CEO Francois Locoh-Donou sold 6,400 shares of the stock in a transaction on Friday, March 1st. The shares were sold at an average price of $188.02, for a total transaction of $1,203,328.00. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief executive officer now owns 123,251 shares in the company, valued at $23,173,653.02. The transaction was disclosed in a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available through the SEC website. Also, CFO Francis J. Pelzer sold 500 shares of the stock in a transaction on Monday, April 22nd. The shares were sold at an average price of $178.81, for a total transaction of $89,405.00. Following the transaction, the chief financial officer now owns 31,290 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $5,594,964.90. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Over the last quarter, insiders sold 10,201 shares of company stock worth $1,908,065. 0.58% of the stock is owned by insiders.

Hedge Funds Weigh In On F5

Several institutional investors have recently bought and sold shares of the business. Norden Group LLC bought a new position in F5 during the first quarter valued at $317,000. Van ECK Associates Corp raised its stake in shares of F5 by 6.6% in the first quarter. Van ECK Associates Corp now owns 10,362 shares of the network technology company’s stock valued at $1,965,000 after acquiring an additional 642 shares during the period. Commonwealth Equity Services LLC raised its stake in shares of F5 by 776.6% in the first quarter. Commonwealth Equity Services LLC now owns 36,424 shares of the network technology company’s stock valued at $6,906,000 after acquiring an additional 32,269 shares during the period. Principal Financial Group Inc. raised its stake in shares of F5 by 3.1% in the first quarter. Principal Financial Group Inc. now owns 89,991 shares of the network technology company’s stock valued at $17,061,000 after acquiring an additional 2,666 shares during the period. Finally, New York State Teachers Retirement System raised its stake in shares of F5 by 3.8% in the first quarter. New York State Teachers Retirement System now owns 56,046 shares of the network technology company’s stock valued at $10,626,000 after acquiring an additional 2,036 shares during the period. Institutional investors own 90.66% of the company’s stock.

F5 Company Profile

F5, Inc provides multi-cloud application security and delivery solutions in the United States, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and the Asia Pacific region. The company's distributed cloud services enable its customers to deploy, secure, and operate applications in any architecture, from on-premises to the public cloud.