Strs Ohio Makes New Investment in F5, Inc. $FFIV

Strs Ohio purchased a new position in F5, Inc. (NASDAQ:FFIV) during the 1st quarter, according to the company in its most recent Form 13F filing with the SEC. The firm purchased 8,466 shares of the network technology company’s stock, valued at approximately $2,254,000.

Several other hedge funds have also recently added to or reduced their stakes in the business. Janus Henderson Group PLC grew its holdings in shares of F5 by 2.2% in the 4th quarter. Janus Henderson Group PLC now owns 6,226 shares of the network technology company’s stock worth $1,566,000 after acquiring an additional 134 shares during the last quarter. Nuveen Asset Management LLC increased its stake in shares of F5 by 25.3% in the fourth quarter. Nuveen Asset Management LLC now owns 174,812 shares of the network technology company’s stock worth $43,960,000 after purchasing an additional 35,291 shares during the period. Nomura Holdings Inc. bought a new position in shares of F5 in the fourth quarter worth about $482,000. Man Group plc lifted its position in shares of F5 by 337.3% in the 4th quarter. Man Group plc now owns 40,550 shares of the network technology company’s stock worth $10,197,000 after acquiring an additional 31,277 shares during the period. Finally, Royal Bank of Canada increased its position in shares of F5 by 143.5% during the fourth quarter. Royal Bank of Canada now owns 73,824 shares of the network technology company’s stock valued at $18,565,000 after purchasing an additional 43,507 shares during the period. Institutional investors own 90.66% of the company’s stock.

Analysts Set New Price Targets

A number of research firms recently commented on FFIV. Piper Sandler increased their price target on F5 from $304.00 to $355.00 and gave the stock a “neutral” rating in a research report on Thursday, July 31st. Morgan Stanley raised their price objective on F5 from $305.00 to $312.00 and gave the company an “equal weight” rating in a report on Thursday, July 31st. Barclays lifted their price target on F5 from $274.00 to $321.00 and gave the stock an “equal weight” rating in a report on Thursday, July 31st. Wolfe Research assumed coverage on F5 in a report on Monday, July 7th. They set an “outperform” rating for the company. Finally, JPMorgan Chase & Co. boosted their price objective on shares of F5 from $285.00 to $305.00 and gave the company a “neutral” rating in a research report on Thursday, July 17th. Three analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating, seven have given a Hold rating and one has given a Sell rating to the stock. Based on data from MarketBeat, the stock currently has a consensus rating of “Hold” and a consensus price target of $309.89.

F5 Trading Up 0.8%

FFIV opened at $324.10 on Tuesday. The company has a 50 day moving average of $311.47 and a 200 day moving average of $288.11. The company has a market cap of $18.62 billion, a PE ratio of 28.56, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 3.71 and a beta of 1.08. F5, Inc. has a 12 month low of $210.72 and a 12 month high of $337.39.

F5 (NASDAQ:FFIV) last announced its quarterly earnings results on Wednesday, July 30th. The network technology company reported $4.16 EPS for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $3.49 by $0.67. The firm had revenue of $780.37 million during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $750.64 million. F5 had a net margin of 22.06% and a return on equity of 21.77%. The business’s quarterly revenue was up 12.2% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same period last year, the firm earned $3.36 EPS. F5 has set its FY 2025 guidance at 15.240-15.380 EPS. Q4 2025 guidance at 3.870-3.990 EPS. Research analysts forecast that F5, Inc. will post 11.2 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Insider Activity

In other news, insider Lyra Amber Schramm sold 2,701 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Monday, September 8th. The shares were sold at an average price of $316.57, for a total transaction of $855,055.57. The transaction was disclosed in a legal filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available through this hyperlink. Also, CEO Francois Locoh-Donou sold 1,300 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Friday, August 1st. The shares were sold at an average price of $308.14, for a total transaction of $400,582.00. Following the sale, the chief executive officer directly owned 110,153 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $33,942,545.42. This represents a 1.17% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Insiders sold a total of 11,945 shares of company stock valued at $3,762,365 over the last ninety days. 0.52% of the stock is currently owned by corporate insiders.

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.