F5, Inc. (NASDAQ:FFIV) Sees Large Decline in Short Interest

F5, Inc. (NASDAQ:FFIV) saw a large drop in short interest in March. As of March 31st, there was short interest totalling 1,710,000 shares, a drop of 6.0% from the March 15th total of 1,820,000 shares. Currently, 2.9% of the company’s stock are short sold. Based on an average trading volume of 445,000 shares, the days-to-cover ratio is presently 3.8 days.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

A number of brokerages have recently issued reports on FFIV. The Goldman Sachs Group raised their price target on shares of F5 from $156.00 to $179.00 and gave the company a “neutral” rating in a report on Tuesday, January 30th. JPMorgan Chase & Co. raised their price target on shares of F5 from $197.00 to $205.00 and gave the company a “neutral” rating in a report on Thursday, April 11th. Royal Bank of Canada reaffirmed a “sector perform” rating and set a $204.00 price target on shares of F5 in a report on Friday, February 9th. KeyCorp raised their price target on shares of F5 from $186.00 to $204.00 and gave the company an “overweight” rating in a report on Thursday, January 18th. Finally, Needham & Company LLC reissued a “buy” rating and issued a $220.00 price objective on shares of F5 in a report on Tuesday, February 13th. One investment analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, seven have given a hold rating, three have given a buy rating and one has assigned a strong buy rating to the company’s stock. According to MarketBeat, the company has an average rating of “Hold” and an average target price of $186.82.

Insider Buying and Selling

In related news, CFO Francis J. Pelzer sold 500 shares of the stock in a transaction dated Monday, January 22nd. The shares were sold at an average price of $180.09, for a total value of $90,045.00. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief financial officer now directly owns 31,508 shares in the company, valued at approximately $5,674,275.72. The sale was disclosed in a document filed with the SEC, which can be accessed through this hyperlink. In other F5 news, CEO Francois Locoh-Donou sold 6,400 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction dated Friday, March 1st. The shares were sold at an average price of $188.02, for a total transaction of $1,203,328.00. Following the completion of the sale, the chief executive officer now directly owns 123,251 shares in the company, valued at approximately $23,173,653.02. The transaction was disclosed in a document filed with the SEC, which can be accessed through the SEC website. Also, CFO Francis J. Pelzer sold 500 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction dated Monday, January 22nd. The shares were sold at an average price of $180.09, for a total transaction of $90,045.00. Following the sale, the chief financial officer now owns 31,508 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $5,674,275.72. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Insiders sold a total of 10,201 shares of company stock worth $1,908,705 in the last three months. 0.58% of the stock is owned by corporate insiders.

Institutional Investors Weigh In On F5

Several institutional investors and hedge funds have recently modified their holdings of the stock. Vanguard Group Inc. raised its position in shares of F5 by 1.8% during the fourth quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. now owns 7,435,868 shares of the network technology company’s stock valued at $1,330,872,000 after buying an additional 131,341 shares during the last quarter. BlackRock Inc. increased its position in F5 by 2.9% in the first quarter. BlackRock Inc. now owns 5,846,893 shares of the network technology company’s stock worth $851,834,000 after purchasing an additional 163,465 shares during the last quarter. State Street Corp increased its position in F5 by 4.7% in the second quarter. State Street Corp now owns 3,015,128 shares of the network technology company’s stock worth $440,993,000 after purchasing an additional 134,644 shares during the last quarter. Ameriprise Financial Inc. increased its position in F5 by 13.3% in the third quarter. Ameriprise Financial Inc. now owns 1,812,095 shares of the network technology company’s stock worth $292,001,000 after purchasing an additional 212,784 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Geode Capital Management LLC increased its position in F5 by 2.9% in the first quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC now owns 1,313,274 shares of the network technology company’s stock worth $190,917,000 after purchasing an additional 36,415 shares during the last quarter. Institutional investors own 90.66% of the company’s stock.

F5 Stock Down 0.4 %

NASDAQ:FFIV traded down $0.72 during trading hours on Tuesday, hitting $183.06. 243,057 shares of the stock traded hands, compared to its average volume of 434,104. F5 has a 1 year low of $127.05 and a 1 year high of $199.49. The company has a market cap of $10.77 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 23.90, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 2.77 and a beta of 1.11. The stock has a 50 day moving average price of $188.26 and a 200 day moving average price of $175.08.

F5 (NASDAQ:FFIV) last released its quarterly earnings data on Monday, January 29th. The network technology company reported $3.43 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $3.04 by $0.39. The firm had revenue of $693.00 million for the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $684.77 million. F5 had a net margin of 16.43% and a return on equity of 20.81%. The company’s revenue for the quarter was down 1.0% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same quarter last year, the business posted $1.65 earnings per share. Equities analysts forecast that F5 will post 9.58 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

About F5

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.