F5 (NASDAQ:FFIV) Rating Lowered to “Buy” at StockNews.com

F5 (NASDAQ:FFIV) was downgraded by equities researchers at StockNews.com from a “strong-buy” rating to a “buy” rating in a report issued on Wednesday.

FFIV has been the subject of a number of other research reports. Bank of America boosted their price objective on shares of F5 from $180.00 to $260.00 and gave the company an “underperform” rating in a research report on Friday, January 31st. Royal Bank of Canada reiterated a “sector perform” rating and set a $290.00 price target on shares of F5 in a research report on Tuesday. Barclays reduced their price objective on F5 from $296.00 to $274.00 and set an “equal weight” rating for the company in a research report on Tuesday. Morgan Stanley increased their target price on F5 from $269.00 to $280.00 and gave the stock an “equal weight” rating in a research report on Tuesday. Finally, Evercore ISI boosted their price target on shares of F5 from $240.00 to $270.00 and gave the company an “in-line” rating in a report on Friday, January 17th. One analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, seven have assigned a hold rating and two have given a buy rating to the stock. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, F5 presently has an average rating of “Hold” and an average target price of $282.56.

F5 Stock Performance

Shares of FFIV stock opened at $265.77 on Wednesday. The stock has a market capitalization of $15.32 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 26.42, a PEG ratio of 3.85 and a beta of 1.14. F5 has a one year low of $163.12 and a one year high of $313.00. The company’s 50-day simple moving average is $266.38 and its 200-day simple moving average is $261.65.

F5 (NASDAQ:FFIV) last issued its quarterly earnings results on Monday, April 28th. The network technology company reported $3.42 earnings per share for the quarter, beating analysts’ consensus estimates of $3.11 by $0.31. F5 had a return on equity of 20.98% and a net margin of 20.58%. The business had revenue of $590.16 million during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $719.91 million. During the same period in the previous year, the business earned $2.91 EPS. The business’s quarterly revenue was up 7.3% on a year-over-year basis. As a group, research analysts forecast that F5 will post 11.2 EPS for the current year.

Insiders Place Their Bets

In other F5 news, EVP Chad Michael Whalen sold 4,093 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction dated Monday, February 3rd. The stock was sold at an average price of $290.33, for a total transaction of $1,188,320.69. Following the completion of the sale, the executive vice president now directly owns 27,264 shares in the company, valued at approximately $7,915,557.12. This trade represents a 13.05 % decrease in their position. The sale was disclosed in a legal filing with the SEC, which is available through this hyperlink. Also, Director Marianne Budnik sold 1,872 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction dated Friday, March 14th. The shares were sold at an average price of $260.72, for a total value of $488,067.84. Following the completion of the transaction, the director now owns 1,207 shares in the company, valued at $314,689.04. This represents a 60.80 % decrease in their position. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Insiders sold a total of 17,504 shares of company stock worth $5,088,492 over the last ninety days. 0.52% of the stock is currently owned by company insiders.

Institutional Inflows and Outflows

Several large investors have recently added to or reduced their stakes in the stock. Vanguard Group Inc. grew its holdings in shares of F5 by 0.9% during the 4th quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. now owns 7,544,256 shares of the network technology company’s stock valued at $1,897,154,000 after acquiring an additional 64,261 shares in the last quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC boosted its position in F5 by 1.9% during the fourth quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC now owns 1,604,362 shares of the network technology company’s stock valued at $402,536,000 after purchasing an additional 30,367 shares during the last quarter. First Trust Advisors LP increased its position in F5 by 3.1% in the 4th quarter. First Trust Advisors LP now owns 1,259,848 shares of the network technology company’s stock worth $316,814,000 after purchasing an additional 37,354 shares during the last quarter. Northern Trust Corp raised its stake in shares of F5 by 38.0% during the 4th quarter. Northern Trust Corp now owns 913,021 shares of the network technology company’s stock worth $229,597,000 after purchasing an additional 251,534 shares in the last quarter. Finally, GAMMA Investing LLC lifted its holdings in shares of F5 by 34,698.9% during the 1st quarter. GAMMA Investing LLC now owns 746,089 shares of the network technology company’s stock valued at $198,661,000 after buying an additional 743,945 shares during the last quarter. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 90.66% of the company’s stock.

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.