Wall Street Zen Downgrades F5 (NASDAQ:FFIV) to Buy

F5 (NASDAQ:FFIV) was downgraded by stock analysts at Wall Street Zen from a “strong-buy” rating to a “buy” rating in a research note issued to investors on Saturday.

Several other equities research analysts have also issued reports on the company. Piper Sandler dropped their price objective on F5 from $355.00 to $277.00 and set a “neutral” rating for the company in a research note on Tuesday. Bank of America dropped their price objective on F5 from $260.00 to $250.00 and set an “underperform” rating for the company in a research note on Tuesday. Weiss Ratings reissued a “buy (b)” rating on shares of F5 in a research note on Wednesday, October 8th. JPMorgan Chase & Co. dropped their price objective on F5 from $320.00 to $295.00 and set a “neutral” rating for the company in a research note on Tuesday. Finally, Evercore ISI reissued a “cautious” rating on shares of F5 in a research note on Tuesday. Three research analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating, eight have given a Hold rating and two have assigned a Sell rating to the stock. Based on data from MarketBeat, F5 has an average rating of “Hold” and a consensus price target of $295.56.

F5 Stock Performance

NASDAQ:FFIV opened at $253.05 on Friday. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.22, a quick ratio of 1.56 and a current ratio of 1.56. F5 has a 52-week low of $227.04 and a 52-week high of $346.00. The firm has a market cap of $14.54 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 21.43, a PEG ratio of 7.53 and a beta of 1.06. The business’s fifty day moving average is $315.24 and its 200 day moving average is $299.48.

F5 (NASDAQ:FFIV) last released its quarterly earnings data on Monday, October 27th. The network technology company reported $4.39 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, beating analysts’ consensus estimates of $3.96 by $0.43. F5 had a return on equity of 21.76% and a net margin of 22.42%.The company had revenue of $810.09 million for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $794.06 million. During the same period in the previous year, the company posted $3.67 EPS. The firm’s revenue for the quarter was up 8.5% compared to the same quarter last year. F5 has set its FY 2026 guidance at 14.500-15.500 EPS. Q1 2026 guidance at 3.350-3.850 EPS. Research analysts predict that F5 will post 11.2 EPS for the current year.

Insider Transactions at F5

In other F5 news, insider Lyra Amber Schramm sold 2,701 shares of F5 stock in a transaction dated Monday, September 8th. The stock was sold at an average price of $316.57, for a total transaction of $855,055.57. The sale was disclosed in a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is accessible through the SEC website. Also, EVP Chad Michael Whalen sold 5,297 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction dated Monday, August 11th. The shares were sold at an average price of $322.24, for a total value of $1,706,905.28. Following the completion of the sale, the executive vice president directly owned 23,591 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $7,601,963.84. This trade represents a 18.34% decrease in their position. The disclosure for this sale is available in the SEC filing. In the last three months, insiders sold 10,645 shares of company stock worth $3,395,960. 0.52% of the stock is currently owned by company insiders.

Institutional Investors Weigh In On F5

Hedge funds and other institutional investors have recently modified their holdings of the stock. Whipplewood Advisors LLC lifted its stake in shares of F5 by 275.0% in the 2nd quarter. Whipplewood Advisors LLC now owns 90 shares of the network technology company’s stock valued at $26,000 after acquiring an additional 66 shares during the last quarter. Annis Gardner Whiting Capital Advisors LLC lifted its stake in shares of F5 by 134.1% in the 1st quarter. Annis Gardner Whiting Capital Advisors LLC now owns 103 shares of the network technology company’s stock valued at $27,000 after acquiring an additional 59 shares during the last quarter. Groupe la Francaise bought a new stake in shares of F5 in the 1st quarter valued at about $34,000. Flaharty Asset Management LLC bought a new position in F5 during the 1st quarter valued at approximately $35,000. Finally, CYBER HORNET ETFs LLC bought a new position in F5 during the 2nd quarter valued at approximately $45,000. Institutional investors own 90.66% of the company’s stock.

F5 Company Profile

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.