Principal Financial Group Inc. Sells 4,111 Shares of F5, Inc. $FFIV

Principal Financial Group Inc. trimmed its holdings in shares of F5, Inc. (NASDAQ:FFIV) by 4.9% in the first quarter, according to the company in its most recent filing with the SEC. The institutional investor owned 79,186 shares of the network technology company’s stock after selling 4,111 shares during the quarter. Principal Financial Group Inc.’s holdings in F5 were worth $22,911,000 as of its most recent filing with the SEC.

Several other hedge funds have also recently bought and sold shares of FFIV. Pinnacle Wealth Management Advisory Group LLC lifted its stake in F5 by 2.6% in the first quarter. Pinnacle Wealth Management Advisory Group LLC now owns 1,447 shares of the network technology company’s stock valued at $419,000 after buying an additional 36 shares in the last quarter. Smartleaf Asset Management LLC increased its position in shares of F5 by 3.4% during the fourth quarter. Smartleaf Asset Management LLC now owns 1,190 shares of the network technology company’s stock worth $309,000 after acquiring an additional 39 shares in the last quarter. Pacific Sage Partners LLC increased its position in shares of F5 by 0.6% during the fourth quarter. Pacific Sage Partners LLC now owns 7,122 shares of the network technology company’s stock worth $1,818,000 after acquiring an additional 40 shares in the last quarter. Meiji Yasuda Asset Management Co Ltd. raised its holdings in shares of F5 by 4.4% during the fourth quarter. Meiji Yasuda Asset Management Co Ltd. now owns 968 shares of the network technology company’s stock worth $247,000 after acquiring an additional 41 shares during the period. Finally, Coldstream Capital Management Inc. raised its holdings in shares of F5 by 4.5% during the third quarter. Coldstream Capital Management Inc. now owns 1,047 shares of the network technology company’s stock worth $338,000 after acquiring an additional 45 shares during the period. 90.66% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors and hedge funds.

Analyst Ratings Changes

FFIV has been the topic of several research reports. Bank of America boosted their price objective on shares of F5 from $250.00 to $300.00 and gave the company an “underperform” rating in a research report on Tuesday, May 26th. Zacks Research raised F5 from a “hold” rating to a “strong-buy” rating in a research note on Friday, June 26th. Evercore upgraded F5 from an “in-line” rating to an “outperform” rating and set a $475.00 price target on the stock in a report on Monday, May 18th. Weiss Ratings reaffirmed a “buy (b-)” rating on shares of F5 in a research report on Friday, June 26th. Finally, Barclays increased their price objective on F5 from $292.00 to $386.00 and gave the stock an “equal weight” rating in a report on Friday, May 29th. One analyst has rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, five have issued a Buy rating, four have given a Hold rating and one has issued a Sell rating to the company. According to MarketBeat, F5 currently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average price target of $382.67.

Insider Activity

In other F5 news, EVP Chad Michael Whalen sold 6,200 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Friday, May 8th. The stock was sold at an average price of $350.19, for a total transaction of $2,171,178.00. Following the transaction, the executive vice president owned 20,832 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $7,295,158.08. The trade was a 22.94% decrease in their position. The transaction was disclosed in a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available through this link. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Also, CTO Kunal Anand sold 3,123 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Monday, May 4th. The stock was sold at an average price of $322.33, for a total value of $1,006,636.59. Following the sale, the chief technology officer owned 12,194 shares in the company, valued at approximately $3,930,492.02. This represents a 20.39% decrease in their position. The disclosure for this sale is available in the SEC filing. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. In the last ninety days, insiders sold 22,579 shares of company stock valued at $7,836,860. Corporate insiders own 0.48% of the company’s stock.

F5 Price Performance

Shares of NASDAQ:FFIV opened at $408.74 on Wednesday. The company’s 50-day moving average price is $398.31 and its two-hundred day moving average price is $327.04. F5, Inc. has a one year low of $223.76 and a one year high of $435.00. The stock has a market capitalization of $23.06 billion, a PE ratio of 33.53, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 4.83 and a beta of 1.03.

F5 (NASDAQ:FFIV) last posted its quarterly earnings data on Tuesday, April 28th. The network technology company reported $3.90 EPS for the quarter, topping analysts’ consensus estimates of $3.47 by $0.43. The company had revenue of $811.70 million during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $783.82 million. F5 had a net margin of 21.96% and a return on equity of 21.50%. The company’s quarterly revenue was up 11.0% on a year-over-year basis. During the same period in the prior year, the business posted $3.42 EPS. F5 has set its Q3 2026 guidance at 3.910-4.030 EPS and its FY 2026 guidance at 16.250-16.550 EPS. On average, analysts anticipate that F5, Inc. will post 12.78 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

F5 Profile

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.