F5 (NASDAQ:FFIV) Stock Dropped to “Hold” by Wolfe Research

F5 (NASDAQ:FFIV) was downgraded by analysts at Wolfe Research from a “strong-buy” rating to a “hold” rating in a note issued to investors on Thursday, Zacks reports.

FFIV has been the subject of several other reports. Royal Bank Of Canada lifted their price objective on F5 from $525.00 to $540.00 and gave the stock an “outperform” rating in a report on Wednesday. Weiss Ratings raised F5 from a “buy (b-)” rating to a “buy (b)” rating in a report on Friday, October 9th. Wells Fargo & Company set a $500.00 price target on F5 in a research report on Wednesday. Piper Sandler downgraded F5 from an “overweight” rating to a “neutral” rating and set a $461.00 price target for the company. in a research note on Wednesday. Finally, Evercore reiterated an “outperform” rating on shares of F5 in a research report on Wednesday. Four equities research analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating, seven have given a Hold rating and one has assigned a Sell rating to the company. According to data from MarketBeat.com, the stock has a consensus rating of “Hold” and a consensus target price of $443.00.

F5 Stock Down 0.6%

Shares of NASDAQ FFIV opened at $363.46 on Thursday. The company has a quick ratio of 1.59, a current ratio of 1.73 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.23. F5 has a 52 week low of $223.76 and a 52 week high of $483.30. The firm has a 50-day moving average price of $429.42 and a 200 day moving average price of $362.35. The stock has a market capitalization of $20.58 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 29.01, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 3.46 and a beta of 1.03.

F5 (NASDAQ:FFIV) last issued its earnings results on Tuesday, October 27th. The network technology company reported $4.42 earnings per share for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of $4.26 by $0.16. F5 had a net margin of 21.14% and a return on equity of 21.00%. The company had revenue of $917.43 million for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $884.03 million. During the same period in the prior year, the business posted $4.39 earnings per share. The firm’s revenue for the quarter was up 13.2% compared to the same quarter last year. Equities research analysts anticipate that F5 will post 14.07 EPS for the current fiscal year.

F5 announced that its board has approved a stock buyback program on Tuesday, October 27th that permits the company to repurchase $1.50 billion in shares. This repurchase authorization permits the network technology company to repurchase shares of its stock through open market purchases. Share repurchase programs are generally a sign that the company’s board of directors believes its stock is undervalued.

Insider Buying and Selling at F5

In related news, CTO Michael Montoya sold 4,426 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Monday, September 14th. The shares were sold at an average price of $410.16, for a total value of $1,815,368.16. Following the sale, the chief technology officer directly owned 1,309 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $536,899.44. This trade represents a 77.18% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The transaction was disclosed in a legal 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. Also, CEO Francois Locoh-Donou sold 3,782 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction on Wednesday, August 5th. The shares were sold at an average price of $412.44, for a total transaction of $1,559,848.08. Following the sale, the chief executive officer directly owned 146,989 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $60,624,143.16. This represents a 2.51% decrease in their ownership of the stock. Additional details regarding this sale are available in the official SEC disclosure. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Over the last 90 days, insiders sold 12,829 shares of company stock worth $5,259,502. 0.48% of the stock is currently owned by insiders.

Institutional Trading of F5

A number of institutional investors have recently modified their holdings of the company. Persistent Asset Partners Ltd acquired a new position in F5 during the second quarter valued at approximately $36,000. Bell Investment Advisors Inc acquired a new stake in shares of F5 in the second quarter worth $49,000. Elevation Wealth Partners LLC increased its position in shares of F5 by 373.1% in the second quarter. Elevation Wealth Partners LLC now owns 123 shares of the network technology company’s stock worth $51,000 after acquiring an additional 97 shares in the last quarter. Root Financial Partners LLC raised its stake in shares of F5 by 91.4% in the 1st quarter. Root Financial Partners LLC now owns 201 shares of the network technology company’s stock valued at $58,000 after acquiring an additional 96 shares during the period. Finally, SBI Securities Co. Ltd. raised its stake in shares of F5 by 458.3% in the 3rd quarter. SBI Securities Co. Ltd. now owns 201 shares of the network technology company’s stock valued at $89,000 after acquiring an additional 165 shares during the period. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 90.66% of the company’s stock.

About F5

F5, Inc (NASDAQ: FFIV) provides application delivery, security and traffic management solutions for enterprises, service providers and public-sector organizations. Its offerings are designed to help customers secure, optimize and manage applications and application programming interfaces (APIs) across data centers, private and public clouds, and edge environments.

The company’s portfolio includes BIG-IP software and appliances, NGINX application delivery and web server technologies, and F5 Distributed Cloud services.