Aware Super Pty Ltd as trustee of Aware Super Buys 35,025 Shares of F5, Inc. $FFIV

Key Points

• Aware Super increased its F5 stake by 450.1% in the third quarter, buying 35,025 shares and bringing its holding to 42,807 shares, valued at about $19.1 million.
• F5 reported quarterly EPS of $4.42, topping the $4.26 consensus, while revenue rose 13.2% year over year to $917.4 million.
• Analysts’ consensus rating was Hold, with a $443 price target; F5’s board also authorized a $1.5 billion share repurchase program.

Aware Super Pty Ltd as trustee of Aware Super lifted its stake in shares of F5, Inc. (NASDAQ:FFIV - Free Report) by 450.1% in the 3rd quarter, according to the company in its most recent 13F filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission. The fund owned 42,807 shares of the network technology company's stock after purchasing an additional 35,025 shares during the period. Aware Super Pty Ltd as trustee of Aware Super owned 0.08% of F5 worth $19,057,000 at the end of the most recent quarter.

Other hedge funds also recently modified their holdings of the company. Bank of America Corp DE purchased a new stake in shares of F5 during the 2nd quarter valued at approximately $70,355,000. BlackRock Inc. bought a new position in F5 in the 2nd quarter worth approximately $2,611,637,000. Nykredit A S bought a new position in F5 in the 2nd quarter worth approximately $14,596,000. Amundi grew its stake in F5 by 96.0% in the 2nd quarter. Amundi now owns 555,809 shares of the network technology company's stock valued at $231,194,000 after buying an additional 272,273 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Sequoia Financial Advisors LLC grew its stake in F5 by 14.6% in the 2nd quarter. Sequoia Financial Advisors LLC now owns 22,144 shares of the network technology company's stock valued at $9,211,000 after buying an additional 2,814 shares in the last quarter. Institutional investors own 90.66% of the company's stock.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

A number of brokerages have issued reports on FFIV. Evercore reissued an "outperform" rating on shares of F5 in a report on Wednesday, October 28th. Morgan Stanley raised their price target on F5 from $415.00 to $448.00 and gave the stock an "equal weight" rating in a report on Wednesday, October 28th. Needham & Company LLC reaffirmed a "hold" rating on shares of F5 in a report on Tuesday, July 28th. Weiss Ratings upgraded F5 from a "buy (b-)" rating to a "buy (b)" rating in a research report on Friday, October 9th. Finally, Wolfe Research lowered F5 from a "strong-buy" rating to a "hold" rating in a research note on Thursday, October 29th. Four analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating, seven have issued a Hold rating and one has given a Sell rating to the company's stock. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, F5 has a consensus rating of "Hold" and a consensus target price of $443.00.

Insider Transactions at F5

In other news, insider John Maddison sold 204 shares of the firm's stock in a transaction on Monday, September 14th. The stock was sold at an average price of $406.24, for a total value of $82,872.96. Following the transaction, the insider directly owned 1,149 shares in the company, valued at $466,769.76. This trade represents a 15.08% decrease in their position. The transaction was disclosed in a filing with the SEC, which is available at this link. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Also, CTO Michael F. Montoya sold 4,426 shares of the company's stock in a transaction that occurred on Monday, September 14th. The shares were sold at an average price of $410.16, for a total transaction of $1,815,368.16. Following the sale, the chief technology officer directly owned 1,309 shares of the company's stock, valued at approximately $536,899.44. This represents a 77.18% decrease in their ownership of the stock. 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. 0.48% of the stock is currently owned by corporate insiders.

F5 Trading Up 2.0%

NASDAQ FFIV opened at $331.15 on Wednesday. The company has a market capitalization of $18.75 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 26.43, a PEG ratio of 2.88 and a beta of 1.07. The company has a quick ratio of 1.59, a current ratio of 1.73 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.23. F5, Inc. has a twelve month low of $223.76 and a twelve month high of $483.30. The stock's 50-day simple moving average is $426.47 and its two-hundred day simple moving average is $363.28.

F5 (NASDAQ:FFIV - Get Free Report) last posted its quarterly earnings results on Tuesday, October 27th. The network technology company reported $4.42 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $4.26 by $0.16. The business had revenue of $917.43 million during the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $884.03 million. F5 had a net margin of 21.14% and a return on equity of 21.00%. The company's revenue was up 13.2% on a year-over-year basis. During the same period in the prior year, the business posted $4.39 earnings per share. Research analysts forecast that F5, Inc. will post 14.19 EPS for the current fiscal year.

F5 declared that its Board of Directors has approved a share repurchase program on Tuesday, October 27th that allows the company to repurchase $1.50 billion in shares. This repurchase authorization allows the network technology company to purchase shares of its stock through open market purchases. Share repurchase programs are typically an indication that the company's board believes its stock is undervalued.

F5 Company Profile

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.

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