American Century Companies Inc. Reduces Stock Position in F5, Inc. $FFIV

American Century Companies Inc. reduced its stake in shares of F5, Inc. (NASDAQ:FFIV) by 21.1% during the 3rd quarter, according to its most recent disclosure with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The fund owned 424,331 shares of the network technology company’s stock after selling 113,816 shares during the quarter. American Century Companies Inc. owned about 0.74% of F5 worth $137,140,000 as of its most recent SEC filing.

Several other hedge funds and other institutional investors have also made changes to their positions in the company. Brand Asset Management Group Inc. purchased a new stake in shares of F5 in the third quarter worth approximately $239,000. Andra AP fonden increased its holdings in shares of F5 by 4.9% in the 3rd quarter. Andra AP fonden now owns 82,000 shares of the network technology company’s stock valued at $26,502,000 after acquiring an additional 3,800 shares during the period. DNB Asset Management AS raised its holdings in F5 by 5.1% in the third quarter. DNB Asset Management AS now owns 17,488 shares of the network technology company’s stock worth $5,652,000 after purchasing an additional 847 shares in the last quarter. Choreo LLC raised its stake in shares of F5 by 11.9% during the 3rd quarter. Choreo LLC now owns 2,590 shares of the network technology company’s stock worth $837,000 after acquiring an additional 275 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Interchange Capital Partners LLC purchased a new stake in shares of F5 during the 3rd quarter valued at $202,000. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 90.66% of the company’s stock.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

A number of analysts recently commented on FFIV shares. Needham & Company LLC reiterated a “hold” rating on shares of F5 in a research note on Wednesday, January 28th. Piper Sandler restated an “overweight” rating and issued a $325.00 price objective (up from $295.00) on shares of F5 in a research report on Wednesday, January 28th. Weiss Ratings cut F5 from a “buy (b-)” rating to a “hold (c+)” rating in a research report on Tuesday, January 27th. Morgan Stanley cut their price target on shares of F5 from $336.00 to $296.00 and set an “equal weight” rating for the company in a report on Wednesday, December 17th. Finally, Wall Street Zen cut F5 from a “buy” rating to a “hold” rating in a report on Friday, November 28th. Five research analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating, six have given a Hold rating and two have assigned a Sell rating to the company’s stock. According to data from MarketBeat, the stock has a consensus rating of “Hold” and an average price target of $309.89.

F5 Trading Down 2.2%

Shares of FFIV opened at $271.36 on Monday. The company’s 50-day moving average price is $270.02 and its 200 day moving average price is $281.86. F5, Inc. has a 12-month low of $223.76 and a 12-month high of $346.00. The firm has a market cap of $15.34 billion, a P/E ratio of 22.44, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 7.69 and a beta of 1.01.

F5 (NASDAQ:FFIV) last posted its earnings results on Tuesday, January 27th. The network technology company reported $4.45 earnings per share for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $3.63 by $0.82. F5 had a net margin of 22.45% and a return on equity of 22.08%. The firm had revenue of $822.47 million during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $755.97 million. During the same quarter last year, the firm earned $3.84 EPS. The firm’s revenue for the quarter was up 7.3% on a year-over-year basis. F5 has set its Q2 2026 guidance at 3.340-3.460 EPS and its FY 2026 guidance at 15.650-16.050 EPS. Equities research analysts forecast that F5, Inc. will post 11.2 earnings per share for the current year.

Insider Activity at F5

In other F5 news, Director Alan Higginson sold 1,770 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction dated Thursday, February 19th. The stock was sold at an average price of $275.25, for a total transaction of $487,192.50. Following the sale, the director owned 6,840 shares in the company, valued at $1,882,710. This represents a 20.56% decrease in their position. The sale was disclosed in a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available through this link. Also, Director Michael L. Dreyer sold 3,067 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Friday, February 20th. The stock was sold at an average price of $282.41, for a total transaction of $866,151.47. Following the sale, the director owned 1,309 shares in the company, valued at $369,674.69. The trade was a 70.09% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The disclosure for this sale is available in the SEC filing. Over the last quarter, insiders sold 20,508 shares of company stock worth $5,473,043. Corporate insiders own 0.48% of the company’s stock.

About F5

F5 Inc (NASDAQ:FFIV) specializes in application services and delivery networking, helping organizations ensure the availability, performance and security of their applications. The company’s core offerings include advanced load balancing, traffic management and application security solutions designed to optimize user experiences and protect against threats such as distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks and web application exploits.

At the heart of F5’s product portfolio is the BIG-IP platform, which provides a suite of software modules for local and global traffic management, secure web application firewalling and DNS service delivery.