Price T Rowe Associates Inc. MD Grows Stock Position in F5, Inc. (NASDAQ:FFIV)

Price T Rowe Associates Inc. MD lifted its holdings in F5, Inc. (NASDAQ:FFIV - Free Report) by 31.5% in the 4th quarter, according to its most recent Form 13F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The fund owned 139,932 shares of the network technology company's stock after purchasing an additional 33,514 shares during the quarter. Price T Rowe Associates Inc. MD owned 0.24% of F5 worth $35,190,000 as of its most recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

Other hedge funds and other institutional investors have also recently modified their holdings of the company. Norges Bank purchased a new stake in shares of F5 during the 4th quarter valued at about $171,127,000. Arrowstreet Capital Limited Partnership boosted its holdings in F5 by 598.3% in the fourth quarter. Arrowstreet Capital Limited Partnership now owns 425,275 shares of the network technology company's stock worth $106,944,000 after purchasing an additional 364,372 shares during the last quarter. Edge Capital Group LLC bought a new stake in F5 in the 4th quarter worth approximately $59,623,000. Cookson Peirce & Co. Inc. purchased a new stake in F5 during the 4th quarter valued at $53,212,000. Finally, Jupiter Asset Management Ltd. lifted its holdings in shares of F5 by 83.1% during the 4th quarter. Jupiter Asset Management Ltd. now owns 296,506 shares of the network technology company's stock valued at $74,562,000 after buying an additional 134,537 shares during the period. 90.66% of the stock is owned by institutional investors.

Analysts Set New Price Targets

FFIV has been the subject of a number of research reports. Evercore ISI upped their price objective on F5 from $240.00 to $270.00 and gave the company an "in-line" rating in a research report on Friday, January 17th. Piper Sandler increased their price objective on shares of F5 from $262.00 to $269.00 and gave the stock a "neutral" rating in a research note on Tuesday, April 29th. StockNews.com lowered shares of F5 from a "strong-buy" rating to a "buy" rating in a research report on Wednesday. William Blair reiterated an "outperform" rating on shares of F5 in a research report on Tuesday, April 29th. Finally, Morgan Stanley boosted their price objective on shares of F5 from $269.00 to $280.00 and gave the company an "equal weight" rating in a research report on Tuesday, April 29th. One analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, seven have given a hold rating and two have assigned a buy rating to the company's stock. According to data from MarketBeat, F5 currently has an average rating of "Hold" and a consensus target price of $282.56.

F5 Stock Up 1.1 %

FFIV stock traded up $3.04 during trading on Friday, reaching $268.81. The company's stock had a trading volume of 514,304 shares, compared to its average volume of 575,721. The company's fifty day moving average is $265.90 and its 200-day moving average is $262.33. The company has a market capitalization of $15.50 billion, a P/E ratio of 26.72, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 3.85 and a beta of 1.00. F5, Inc. has a 1 year low of $164.45 and a 1 year high of $313.00.

F5 (NASDAQ:FFIV - Get Free Report) last released its earnings results on Monday, April 28th. The network technology company reported $3.42 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of $3.11 by $0.31. F5 had a return on equity of 20.98% and a net margin of 20.58%. The firm had revenue of $590.16 million during the quarter, compared to analysts' expectations of $719.91 million. During the same quarter last year, the business posted $2.91 earnings per share. The firm's revenue was up 7.3% on a year-over-year basis. Analysts anticipate that F5, Inc. will post 11.2 earnings per share for the current year.

Insider Buying and Selling

In other F5 news, CEO Francois Locoh-Donou sold 6,500 shares of the firm's stock in a transaction that occurred on Wednesday, February 12th. The stock was sold at an average price of $303.06, for a total transaction of $1,969,890.00. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief executive officer now owns 151,247 shares in the company, valued at $45,836,915.82. This trade represents a 4.12 % decrease in their position. The transaction was disclosed in a filing with the SEC, which is available through this link. Also, Director Marianne Budnik sold 1,872 shares of the company's stock in a transaction that occurred on Friday, March 14th. The stock was sold at an average price of $260.72, for a total value of $488,067.84. Following the sale, the director now directly owns 1,207 shares in the company, valued at $314,689.04. This trade represents a 60.80 % decrease in their ownership of the stock. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Over the last quarter, insiders sold 17,251 shares of company stock worth $5,013,285. 0.52% of the stock is owned by insiders.

F5 Profile

F5, Inc provides multi-cloud application security and delivery solutions in the United States, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and the Asia Pacific region. The company's distributed cloud services enable its customers to deploy, secure, and operate applications in any architecture, from on-premises to the public cloud.