F5 (NASDAQ:FFIV) Stock: Insider Angelique Okeke Sells 1,007 Shares

F5, Inc. (NASDAQ:FFIV) EVP Angelique Okeke sold 1,007 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction dated Tuesday, November 3rd. The stock was sold at an average price of $324.06, for a total value of $326,328.42. Following the completion of the transaction, the executive vice president directly owned 2,862 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $927,459.72. The trade was a 26.03% decrease in their position. The transaction was disclosed in a document filed with the SEC, which is available through this link. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan.

F5 Price Performance

FFIV stock traded down $17.98 during mid-day trading on Thursday, reaching $311.74. 1,380,704 shares of the company’s stock were exchanged, compared to its average volume of 751,325. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.23, a current ratio of 1.73 and a quick ratio of 1.59. F5, Inc. has a 12-month low of $223.76 and a 12-month high of $483.30. The stock’s 50 day moving average is $425.41 and its 200 day moving average is $363.56. The company has a market cap of $17.65 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 24.88, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 2.94 and a beta of 1.07.

F5 (NASDAQ:FFIV) last posted its quarterly earnings data on Tuesday, October 27th. The network technology company reported $4.42 EPS for the quarter, beating analysts’ consensus estimates of $4.26 by $0.16. The business had revenue of $917.43 million during the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $884.03 million. F5 had a return on equity of 21.00% and a net margin of 21.14%. The business’s revenue was up 13.2% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same period in the previous year, the business earned $4.39 earnings per share. On average, research analysts expect that F5, Inc. will post 14.19 EPS for the current year.

F5 announced that its board has initiated a share repurchase plan on Tuesday, October 27th that authorizes the company to buy back $1.50 billion in outstanding shares. This repurchase authorization authorizes the network technology company to purchase shares of its stock through open market purchases. Share repurchase plans are generally a sign that the company’s leadership believes its shares are undervalued.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

A number of equities analysts have weighed in on the stock. Needham & Company LLC restated a “hold” rating on shares of F5 in a research report on Tuesday, July 28th. JPMorgan Chase & Co. increased their price objective on shares of F5 from $500.00 to $515.00 and gave the company an “overweight” rating in a report on Tuesday, July 28th. Wolfe Research lowered shares of F5 from a “strong-buy” rating to a “hold” rating in a research report on Thursday, October 29th. Evercore reissued an “outperform” rating on shares of F5 in a research note on Wednesday, October 28th. Finally, Royal Bank Of Canada upped their price target on shares of F5 from $525.00 to $540.00 and gave the stock an “outperform” rating in a research report on Wednesday, October 28th. Four equities research analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating, seven have issued a Hold rating and one has assigned a Sell rating to the company. According to MarketBeat, F5 currently has an average rating of “Hold” and an average target price of $443.00.

Institutional Trading of F5

A number of institutional investors have recently made changes to their positions in FFIV. BlackRock Inc. acquired a new position in F5 in the 2nd quarter valued at $2,611,637,000. Robeco Institutional Asset Management B.V. boosted its stake in F5 by 23.9% during the 3rd quarter. Robeco Institutional Asset Management B.V. now owns 732,219 shares of the network technology company’s stock worth $325,969,000 after purchasing an additional 141,131 shares during the last quarter. UBS AM a distinct business unit of UBS ASSET MANAGEMENT AMERICAS LLC grew its holdings in shares of F5 by 24.8% during the second quarter. UBS AM a distinct business unit of UBS ASSET MANAGEMENT AMERICAS LLC now owns 726,844 shares of the network technology company’s stock worth $302,338,000 after buying an additional 144,534 shares in the last quarter. Dimensional Fund Advisors LP grew its holdings in shares of F5 by 0.7% during the first quarter. Dimensional Fund Advisors LP now owns 603,086 shares of the network technology company’s stock worth $174,463,000 after buying an additional 4,296 shares in the last quarter. Finally, William Blair Investment Management LLC acquired a new stake in shares of F5 in the second quarter valued at about $243,865,000. 90.66% of the stock is owned by institutional investors and hedge funds.

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.