JPMorgan Chase & Co. Upgrades F5 (NASDAQ:FFIV) to “Overweight”

F5 (NASDAQ:FFIV) was upgraded by analysts at JPMorgan Chase & Co. from a “neutral” rating to an “overweight” rating in a research report issued on Thursday, Marketbeat.com reports. The brokerage presently has a $345.00 price objective on the network technology company’s stock, up from their previous price objective of $295.00. JPMorgan Chase & Co.‘s target price indicates a potential upside of 29.00% from the company’s current price.

Other equities analysts also recently issued research reports about the company. Morgan Stanley cut their target price on F5 from $336.00 to $296.00 and set an “equal weight” rating for the company in a research report on Wednesday, December 17th. Weiss Ratings reissued a “buy (b-)” rating on shares of F5 in a report on Monday, December 29th. Wall Street Zen lowered shares of F5 from a “buy” rating to a “hold” rating in a report on Friday, November 28th. Piper Sandler raised shares of F5 from a “neutral” rating to an “overweight” rating and lifted their price target for the company from $277.00 to $295.00 in a report on Monday, January 5th. Finally, Zacks Research upgraded shares of F5 from a “strong sell” rating to a “hold” rating in a research report on Friday, January 9th. Six analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating, five have assigned a Hold rating and two have given a Sell rating to the company. According to data from MarketBeat, the stock has a consensus rating of “Hold” and a consensus price target of $299.78.

F5 Stock Down 0.9%

FFIV stock opened at $267.45 on Thursday. F5 has a twelve month low of $223.76 and a twelve month high of $346.00. The company has a market cap of $15.54 billion, a PE ratio of 22.65, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 8.60 and a beta of 0.98. The business’s 50-day simple moving average is $251.27 and its 200 day simple moving average is $289.01.

F5 (NASDAQ:FFIV) last posted its quarterly earnings results on Monday, October 27th. The network technology company reported $4.39 earnings per share for the quarter, topping analysts’ consensus estimates of $3.96 by $0.43. The firm had revenue of $810.09 million for the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $794.06 million. F5 had a net margin of 22.42% and a return on equity of 21.76%. The business’s revenue was up 8.5% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same quarter in the previous year, the company earned $3.67 earnings per share. F5 has set its FY 2026 guidance at 14.500-15.500 EPS and its Q1 2026 guidance at 3.350-3.850 EPS. On average, equities research analysts anticipate that F5 will post 11.2 EPS for the current year.

Insider Buying and Selling at F5

In other news, Director Alan Higginson sold 1,309 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Wednesday, December 3rd. The shares were sold at an average price of $237.11, for a total transaction of $310,376.99. Following the transaction, the director directly owned 8,610 shares in the company, valued at approximately $2,041,517.10. This represents a 13.20% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The sale was disclosed in a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is accessible through this link. Also, EVP Thomas Dean Fountain sold 1,110 shares of the stock in a transaction that occurred on Monday, January 12th. The shares were sold at an average price of $265.00, for a total transaction of $294,150.00. Following the sale, the executive vice president directly owned 12,513 shares in the company, valued at $3,315,945. This trade represents a 8.15% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The SEC filing for this sale provides additional information. In the last 90 days, insiders sold 32,705 shares of company stock worth $8,152,655. 0.52% of the stock is currently owned by corporate insiders.

Hedge Funds Weigh In On F5

Several hedge funds have recently added to or reduced their stakes in the company. State Street Corp raised its holdings in F5 by 1.7% during the 3rd quarter. State Street Corp now owns 3,226,326 shares of the network technology company’s stock worth $1,042,716,000 after purchasing an additional 53,712 shares during the last quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC grew its position in shares of F5 by 3.8% during the 2nd quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC now owns 1,741,117 shares of the network technology company’s stock worth $511,016,000 after buying an additional 64,420 shares during the period. First Trust Advisors LP raised its stake in shares of F5 by 1.2% during the third quarter. First Trust Advisors LP now owns 1,634,361 shares of the network technology company’s stock worth $528,209,000 after buying an additional 18,806 shares during the last quarter. Northern Trust Corp raised its stake in shares of F5 by 2.5% during the third quarter. Northern Trust Corp now owns 1,017,715 shares of the network technology company’s stock worth $328,915,000 after buying an additional 25,052 shares during the last quarter. Finally, AQR Capital Management LLC lifted its holdings in F5 by 4.1% in the third quarter. AQR Capital Management LLC now owns 839,648 shares of the network technology company’s stock valued at $271,366,000 after buying an additional 32,970 shares during the period. Institutional investors own 90.66% of the company’s stock.

More F5 News

Here are the key news stories impacting F5 this week:

• Positive Sentiment: Product momentum: F5 continues to push cloud adoption with NGINXaaS for Google Cloud, which supports cloud‑native application delivery and could help sustain subscription and platform revenue growth. Read More.
• Positive Sentiment: AI security product update: F5 announced integrated runtime protection for enterprise AI, a strategic extension of its security stack that targets a growing enterprise spending area. Read More.
• Neutral Sentiment: Insider selling: EVP Thomas Dean Fountain sold 1,110 shares (filed with the SEC), part of a string of scheduled sales; typically neutral unless tied to material information. Read More.
• Neutral Sentiment: Analyst tweak: Zacks trimmed a Q4 EPS estimate slightly and keeps a Hold — a minor signal of caution but not a material revision. Read More.
• Negative Sentiment: Class‑action surge: Multiple plaintiff firms filed or are soliciting lead‑plaintiff appointments in a securities class action tied to F5’s disclosed August 2025 cybersecurity incident and its subsequent guidance revisions — litigation exposure, potential settlements and reputational damage are the main near‑term risks. Read More.
• Negative Sentiment: Litigation detail and financial impact: Notices from Hagens Berman and other firms cite F5’s disclosures that the cybersecurity incident had an adverse effect on expected 2026 revenue, which underpins investor concerns about earnings risk and potential legal costs. Read More.
• Negative Sentiment: Multiple law firms (ClaimsFiler, Bronstein, Rosen, others) are publicly soliciting investor claims and reminding holders of the Feb. 17, 2026 lead‑plaintiff deadline — this amplifies headline risk and trading volatility. Read More.

F5 Company 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.