F5, Inc. (NASDAQ:FFIV) Receives Average Recommendation of "Hold" from Analysts

Key Points

• F5 has a consensus analyst rating of "Hold" from 12 covering firms, with six buy ratings, five holds, and one sell; the average 12-month price target is about $379.89.
• Recent analyst actions were mixed but generally constructive, including upgrades from Evercore and Weiss Ratings and higher price targets from JPMorgan and Piper Sandler.
• Insider selling has been notable, with both the CFO and CEO selling shares in pre-arranged 10b5-1 transactions; meanwhile, the company recently beat quarterly EPS and revenue estimates and raised its guidance.

F5, Inc. (NASDAQ:FFIV - Get Free Report) has received a consensus rating of "Hold" from the twelve research firms that are currently covering the firm, Marketbeat.com reports. One equities research analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, five have assigned a hold rating and six have assigned a buy rating to the company. The average 12-month target price among brokers that have covered the stock in the last year is $379.8889.

FFIV has been the subject of several recent analyst reports. Evercore upgraded shares of 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. JPMorgan Chase & Co. raised their price objective on shares of F5 from $355.00 to $365.00 and gave the stock an "overweight" rating in a research report on Wednesday, April 29th. Piper Sandler raised their price objective on shares of F5 from $356.00 to $423.00 and gave the stock an "overweight" rating in a research report on Friday. Weiss Ratings upgraded shares of F5 from a "hold (c+)" rating to a "buy (b-)" rating in a research report on Monday, March 30th. Finally, Bank of America increased their target price on shares of F5 from $250.00 to $300.00 and gave the stock an "underperform" rating in a research note on Tuesday, May 26th.

Insider Activity at F5

In other F5 news, CFO Edward Cooper Werner sold 1,500 shares of the stock in a transaction dated Friday, May 8th. The shares were sold at an average price of $350.00, for a total transaction of $525,000.00. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief financial officer owned 2,906 shares of the company's stock, valued at $1,017,100. This trade represents a 34.04% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The sale was disclosed in a filing with the SEC, which is available through the SEC website. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Also, CEO Francois Locoh-Donou sold 3,783 shares of the stock in a transaction dated Tuesday, May 5th. The stock was sold at an average price of $337.39, for a total transaction of $1,276,346.37. Following the transaction, the chief executive officer directly owned 146,989 shares of the company's stock, valued at approximately $49,592,618.71. This trade represents a 2.51% decrease in their position. Additional details regarding this sale are available in the official SEC disclosure. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Insiders have sold a total of 19,767 shares of company stock valued at $6,628,120 over the last quarter. 0.48% of the stock is owned by insiders.

Institutional Inflows and Outflows

Hedge funds have recently bought and sold shares of the stock. Hazlett Burt & Watson Inc. purchased a new position in F5 during the fourth quarter worth about $26,000. Hantz Financial Services Inc. boosted its stake in F5 by 109.8% during the fourth quarter. Hantz Financial Services Inc. now owns 107 shares of the network technology company's stock worth $27,000 after buying an additional 56 shares during the period. Elyxium Wealth LLC purchased a new position in F5 during the fourth quarter worth about $28,000. Abich Financial Wealth Management LLC purchased a new position in shares of F5 in the third quarter valued at approximately $37,000. Finally, SJS Investment Consulting Inc. boosted its stake in shares of F5 by 963.6% in the first quarter. SJS Investment Consulting Inc. now owns 117 shares of the network technology company's stock valued at $34,000 after purchasing an additional 106 shares during the period. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 90.66% of the company's stock.

F5 Trading Up 3.4%

F5 stock opened at $409.13 on Wednesday. F5 has a 12-month low of $223.76 and a 12-month high of $410.11. The stock has a market cap of $23.08 billion, a P/E ratio of 33.56, a PEG ratio of 9.10 and a beta of 1.04. The company has a 50-day moving average price of $329.29 and a 200 day moving average price of $287.29.

F5 (NASDAQ:FFIV - Get Free Report) last released its quarterly earnings data on Tuesday, April 28th. The network technology company reported $3.90 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of $3.47 by $0.43. F5 had a net margin of 21.96% and a return on equity of 21.50%. The firm had revenue of $811.70 million during the quarter, compared to analysts' expectations of $783.82 million. During the same period last year, the business earned $3.42 earnings per share. F5's revenue was up 11.0% compared to the same quarter last year. F5 has set its Q3 2026 guidance at 3.910-4.030 EPS and its FY 2026 guidance at 16.250-16.550 EPS. As a group, analysts forecast that F5 will post 12.78 EPS for the current year.

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.

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