Insider Selling: F5 (NASDAQ:FFIV) CTO Sells $158,614.96 in Stock

F5, Inc. (NASDAQ:FFIV) CTO Kunal Anand sold 392 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction dated Monday, August 3rd. The shares were sold at an average price of $404.63, for a total transaction of $158,614.96. Following the sale, the chief technology officer directly owned 12,586 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $5,092,673.18. The trade was a 3.02% decrease in their position. The transaction was disclosed in a legal filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is accessible through the SEC website. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan.

F5 Stock Up 0.4%

Shares of NASDAQ:FFIV opened at $413.07 on Friday. The stock has a market capitalization of $23.31 billion, a PE ratio of 32.89, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 4.05 and a beta of 1.03. The firm’s 50 day moving average price is $403.18 and its 200-day moving average price is $338.33. F5, Inc. has a twelve month low of $223.76 and a twelve month high of $435.00.

F5 (NASDAQ:FFIV) last announced its earnings results on Monday, July 27th. The network technology company reported $4.73 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $4.00 by $0.73. F5 had a net margin of 21.95% and a return on equity of 21.54%. The company had revenue of $865.08 million during the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $834.60 million. During the same period in the previous year, the business posted $4.16 earnings per share. The firm’s quarterly revenue was up 10.9% compared to the same quarter last year. F5 has set its Q4 2026 guidance at 4.140-4.260 EPS and its FY 2026 guidance at 17.210-17.330 EPS. Analysts expect that F5, Inc. will post 13.53 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Institutional Trading of F5

Institutional investors have recently made changes to their positions in the business. Vanguard Group Inc. lifted its holdings in F5 by 1.6% in the 4th quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. now owns 7,357,293 shares of the network technology company’s stock worth $1,878,023,000 after purchasing an additional 114,533 shares in the last quarter. State Street Corp grew 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 valued at $1,042,716,000 after buying an additional 53,712 shares in the last quarter. First Trust Advisors LP raised its position in shares of F5 by 68.5% during the fourth quarter. First Trust Advisors LP now owns 2,753,652 shares of the network technology company’s stock valued at $702,897,000 after buying an additional 1,119,291 shares during the last quarter. Jericho Capital Asset Management L.P. bought a new stake in shares of F5 during the fourth quarter valued at approximately $579,699,000. Finally, Invesco Ltd. lifted its holdings in shares of F5 by 7.5% in the fourth quarter. Invesco Ltd. now owns 1,537,680 shares of the network technology company’s stock worth $392,508,000 after buying an additional 106,616 shares in the last quarter. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 90.66% of the company’s stock.

Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth

A number of research firms have recently weighed in on FFIV. Needham & Company LLC reaffirmed a “hold” rating on shares of F5 in a research report on Tuesday, July 28th. Barclays increased their target price on shares of F5 from $386.00 to $397.00 and gave the stock an “equal weight” rating in a report on Tuesday, July 28th. Wall Street Zen raised shares of F5 from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating in a report on Saturday, August 1st. Royal Bank Of Canada reiterated an “outperform” rating on shares of F5 in a research report on Thursday, July 16th. Finally, Zacks Research cut shares of F5 from a “strong-buy” rating to a “hold” rating in a research note on Monday, July 27th. Five analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating, five have issued a Hold rating and one has given a Sell rating to the stock. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, F5 has an average rating of “Hold” and an average target price of $416.62.

About F5

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.