Insider Selling: F5 (NASDAQ:FFIV) CEO Sells $1,186,727.10 in Stock

Key Points

• F5 CEO Francois Locoh-Donou sold 3,783 shares for about $1.19 million under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 plan, reducing his stake by 2%; he still directly owns 185,683 shares.
• F5 reported quarterly EPS of $4.42 and revenue of $917.4 million, beating analyst estimates; revenue grew 13.2% year over year.
• The board authorized a $1.5 billion share repurchase program. Analysts’ consensus rating is Hold, with an average price target of $443.

F5, Inc. (NASDAQ:FFIV - Get Free Report) CEO Francois Locoh-Donou sold 3,783 shares of the business's stock in a transaction dated Thursday, November 5th. The stock was sold at an average price of $313.70, for a total transaction of $1,186,727.10. Following the sale, the chief executive officer directly owned 185,683 shares in the company, valued at $58,248,757.10. This trade represents a 2.00% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The sale was disclosed in a 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.

F5 Stock Up 2.2%

Shares of F5 stock traded up $6.91 during trading hours on Monday, reaching $317.75. 823,899 shares of the company's stock were exchanged, compared to its average volume of 753,245. The stock has a market cap of $17.99 billion, a P/E ratio of 25.36, a P/E/G ratio of 2.76 and a beta of 1.07. The company has a 50 day moving average of $421.67 and a two-hundred day moving average of $364.03. The company has a current ratio of 1.73, a quick ratio of 1.59 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.23. F5, Inc. has a fifty-two week low of $223.76 and a fifty-two week high of $483.30.

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

F5 declared that its board has authorized a stock buyback program on Tuesday, October 27th that authorizes the company to buy back $1.50 billion in outstanding shares. This buyback authorization authorizes the network technology company to repurchase shares of its stock through open market purchases. Share buyback programs are typically a sign that the company's board believes its shares are undervalued.

Hedge Funds Weigh In On F5

Institutional investors have recently bought and sold shares of the business. Intech Investment Management LLC increased its holdings in shares of F5 by 853.1% during the 3rd quarter. Intech Investment Management LLC now owns 36,245 shares of the network technology company's stock worth $16,136,000 after acquiring an additional 32,442 shares during the last quarter. Hantz Financial Services Inc. lifted its holdings in F5 by 19.8% during the 3rd quarter. Hantz Financial Services Inc. now owns 278 shares of the network technology company's stock valued at $124,000 after purchasing an additional 46 shares during the last quarter. Virtus Advisers LLC lifted its holdings in F5 by 16.1% during the 3rd quarter. Virtus Advisers LLC now owns 1,626 shares of the network technology company's stock valued at $724,000 after purchasing an additional 226 shares during the last quarter. Phoenix Financial Ltd. lifted its holdings in F5 by 14.6% during the 3rd quarter. Phoenix Financial Ltd. now owns 706 shares of the network technology company's stock valued at $314,000 after purchasing an additional 90 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Migdal Insurance & Financial Holdings Ltd. boosted its position in F5 by 3.8% during the third quarter. Migdal Insurance & Financial Holdings Ltd. now owns 5,400 shares of the network technology company's stock worth $2,404,000 after purchasing an additional 200 shares during the period. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 90.66% of the company's stock.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

FFIV has been the subject of several recent analyst reports. Piper Sandler downgraded F5 from an "overweight" rating to a "neutral" rating and set a $461.00 price objective for the company. in a report on Wednesday, October 28th. Wolfe Research downgraded shares of F5 from a "strong-buy" rating to a "hold" rating in a report on Thursday, October 29th. Royal Bank Of Canada upped their price target on shares of F5 from $525.00 to $540.00 and gave the stock an "outperform" rating in a research report on Wednesday, October 28th. Evercore reiterated an "outperform" rating on shares of F5 in a research note on Wednesday, October 28th. Finally, Wall Street Zen raised shares of F5 from a "hold" rating to a "buy" rating in a research report on Saturday, August 1st. Four equities research analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating, seven have issued a Hold rating and one has assigned a Sell rating to the company's stock. According to MarketBeat, the stock presently has a consensus rating of "Hold" and a consensus price target of $443.00.

F5 Company Profile

F5, Inc provides application delivery and security solutions that help organizations manage, protect and optimize applications across data centers, public clouds and edge environments. Its offerings serve businesses, government agencies and service providers around the world.

The company's products and services include BIG-IP application delivery and security software, NGINX technologies for application development and delivery, and F5 Distributed Cloud Services. These offerings support functions such as traffic management, web and API protection, application security and multicloud connectivity.

Founded in 1996 and headquartered in Seattle, F5 was previously known as F5 Networks before adopting the F5 name in 2021.

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