Man Group plc Purchases Shares of 63,294 F5, Inc. $FFIV

Man Group plc purchased a new position in shares of F5, Inc. (NASDAQ:FFIV) in the 2nd quarter, HoldingsChannel.com reports. The institutional investor purchased 63,294 shares of the network technology company’s stock, valued at approximately $26,328,000.

Other hedge funds and other institutional investors have also recently modified their holdings of the company. BlackRock Inc. bought a new position in shares of F5 during the 2nd quarter valued at about $2,611,637,000. Jericho Capital Asset Management L.P. bought a new position in F5 during the 4th quarter valued at approximately $579,699,000. Northwestern Mutual Wealth Management Co. raised its holdings in shares of F5 by 15,103.5% during the fourth quarter. Northwestern Mutual Wealth Management Co. now owns 1,170,216 shares of the network technology company’s stock valued at $298,709,000 after acquiring an additional 1,162,519 shares in the last quarter. First Trust Advisors LP lifted its holdings in F5 by 68.5% in the fourth quarter. First Trust Advisors LP now owns 2,753,652 shares of the network technology company’s stock worth $702,897,000 after buying an additional 1,119,291 shares during the period. Finally, Norges Bank purchased a new position in shares of F5 during the 4th quarter worth approximately $205,706,000. 90.66% of the stock is currently owned by hedge funds and other institutional investors.

F5 Price Performance

Shares of NASDAQ:FFIV opened at $399.59 on Thursday. The business has a fifty day moving average price of $403.65 and a 200-day moving average price of $350.72. The company has a market capitalization of $22.63 billion, a PE ratio of 31.81, a PEG ratio of 3.74 and a beta of 1.03. F5, Inc. has a 1-year low of $223.76 and a 1-year high of $435.00.

F5 (NASDAQ:FFIV) last released its quarterly earnings data on Monday, July 27th. The network technology company reported $4.73 earnings per share for the quarter, beating analysts’ consensus estimates of $4.00 by $0.73. The business had revenue of $865.08 million during the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $834.60 million. F5 had a net margin of 21.95% and a return on equity of 21.54%. F5’s revenue was up 10.9% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same period last year, the business earned $4.16 EPS. F5 has set its Q4 2026 guidance at 4.140-4.260 EPS and its FY 2026 guidance at 17.210-17.330 EPS. On average, sell-side analysts anticipate that F5, Inc. will post 13.65 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Insider Activity at F5

In related news, insider John Anthony Maddison sold 1,000 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Monday, August 3rd. The shares were sold at an average price of $405.85, for a total value of $405,850.00. Following the completion of the transaction, the insider directly owned 1,353 shares in the company, valued at $549,115.05. The trade was a 42.50% decrease in their position. The sale was disclosed in a legal filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available at the SEC website. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Also, EVP Angelique M. Okeke sold 515 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Monday, August 3rd. The stock was sold at an average price of $404.49, for a total transaction of $208,312.35. Following the completion of the transaction, the executive vice president owned 2,240 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $906,057.60. The trade was a 18.69% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The disclosure for this sale is available in the SEC filing. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Insiders have sold 15,699 shares of company stock valued at $6,316,411 over the last ninety days. Corporate insiders own 0.48% of the company’s stock.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

Several brokerages have recently issued reports on FFIV. Piper Sandler reissued an “overweight” rating and issued a $461.00 target price (up from $423.00) on shares of F5 in a research report on Tuesday, July 28th. Weiss Ratings upgraded F5 from a “buy (b-)” rating to a “buy (b)” rating in a report on Tuesday, August 11th. Evercore raised F5 from an “in-line” rating to an “outperform” rating and set a $475.00 price objective for the company in a research report on Monday, May 18th. Royal Bank Of Canada restated an “outperform” rating on shares of F5 in a report on Thursday, July 16th. Finally, Morgan Stanley upped their target price on shares of F5 from $380.00 to $415.00 and gave the stock an “equal weight” rating in a research report 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 issued a Sell rating to the company. According to MarketBeat, the stock currently has an average rating of “Hold” and an average target price of $416.62.

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.