Daiwa Securities Group Inc. Has $2.37 Million Stock Holdings in F5, Inc. $FFIV

Key Points

• Daiwa Securities Group Inc. cut its F5 position by 34.2% in the fourth quarter, ending with 9,292 shares worth about $2.37 million.
• F5 has drawn mixed but improving analyst attention: Evercore upgraded the stock to outperform, while the consensus rating remains Hold with an average price target of $382.67.
• The company reported strong quarterly results, beating earnings and revenue estimates, and it lifted guidance for Q3 2026 and FY 2026 after revenue rose 11% year over year.

Daiwa Securities Group Inc. trimmed its position in shares of F5, Inc. (NASDAQ:FFIV - Free Report) by 34.2% during the fourth quarter, according to its most recent disclosure with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The institutional investor owned 9,292 shares of the network technology company's stock after selling 4,826 shares during the quarter. Daiwa Securities Group Inc.'s holdings in F5 were worth $2,372,000 as of its most recent SEC filing.

A number of other hedge funds have also recently made changes to their positions in FFIV. Northwestern Mutual Wealth Management Co. boosted its stake 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 purchasing an additional 1,162,519 shares in the last quarter. Norges Bank acquired a new stake in shares of F5 during the fourth quarter valued at about $205,706,000. UBS Group AG boosted its stake in shares of F5 by 141.2% during the fourth quarter. UBS Group AG now owns 1,023,869 shares of the network technology company's stock valued at $261,353,000 after purchasing an additional 599,384 shares in the last quarter. William Blair Investment Management LLC acquired a new stake in shares of F5 during the fourth quarter valued at about $140,460,000. Finally, M&T Bank Corp boosted its stake in shares of F5 by 17,181.1% during the fourth quarter. M&T Bank Corp now owns 309,158 shares of the network technology company's stock valued at $78,916,000 after purchasing an additional 307,369 shares in the last quarter. 90.66% of the stock is owned by institutional investors and hedge funds.

Analysts Set New Price Targets

A number of analysts have recently commented on FFIV shares. Evercore raised F5 from an "in-line" rating to an "outperform" rating and set a $475.00 price target on the stock in a research note on Monday, May 18th. Weiss Ratings raised F5 from a "hold (c+)" rating to a "buy (b-)" rating in a research note on Monday, March 30th. Barclays lifted their price target on F5 from $292.00 to $386.00 and gave the company an "equal weight" rating in a research note on Friday, May 29th. Bank of America raised their price objective on F5 from $250.00 to $300.00 and gave the stock an "underperform" rating in a research report on Tuesday, May 26th. Finally, Needham & Company LLC restated a "hold" rating on shares of F5 in a research report on Wednesday, April 29th. Six research analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating, five have given a Hold rating and one has issued a Sell rating to the company's stock. According to MarketBeat, the stock presently has an average rating of "Hold" and a consensus price target of $382.67.

F5 Price Performance

Shares of FFIV opened at $395.23 on Wednesday. F5, Inc. has a 1 year low of $223.76 and a 1 year high of $411.52. The company has a market capitalization of $22.30 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 32.42, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 9.12 and a beta of 1.04. The business has a 50-day moving average of $342.74 and a 200-day moving average of $294.44.

F5 (NASDAQ:FFIV - Get Free Report) last issued its quarterly earnings data on Tuesday, April 28th. The network technology company reported $3.90 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, topping analysts' consensus estimates of $3.47 by $0.43. The company had revenue of $811.70 million during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $783.82 million. F5 had a return on equity of 21.50% and a net margin of 21.96%.The firm's revenue was up 11.0% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same period last year, the company earned $3.42 earnings per share. 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, sell-side analysts anticipate that F5, Inc. will post 12.78 EPS for the current year.

Insiders Place Their Bets

In other F5 news, CEO Francois Locoh-Donou sold 3,783 shares of F5 stock in a transaction that occurred on Tuesday, May 5th. The stock was sold at an average price of $337.39, for a total value of $1,276,346.37. Following the completion of the sale, the chief executive officer directly owned 146,989 shares in the company, valued at approximately $49,592,618.71. The trade was a 2.51% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The sale was disclosed in a document filed with the SEC, which can be accessed through this hyperlink. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Also, EVP Thomas Dean Fountain sold 1,328 shares of F5 stock in a transaction that occurred on Tuesday, May 5th. The stock was sold at an average price of $330.58, for a total value of $439,010.24. Following the completion of the sale, the executive vice president owned 8,060 shares of the company's stock, valued at approximately $2,664,474.80. The trade was a 14.15% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The SEC filing for this sale provides additional information. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Insiders sold a total of 21,579 shares of company stock valued at $7,437,510 in the last 90 days. Company insiders own 0.48% of the company's stock.

F5 Profile

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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