F5 (NASDAQ:FFIV) Stock: Insider Thomas Dean Fountain Sells 9,387 Shares

F5, Inc. (NASDAQ:FFIV) EVP Thomas Fountain sold 9,387 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Wednesday, November 4th. The shares were sold at an average price of $329.74, for a total value of $3,095,269.38. Following the transaction, the executive vice president owned 8,060 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $2,657,704.40. This trade represents a 53.80% decrease in their position. The sale was disclosed in a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available at the SEC website. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan.

F5 Trading Down 5.5%

Shares of FFIV traded down $17.98 during mid-day trading on Thursday, reaching $311.74. 1,380,704 shares of the company’s stock traded hands, compared to its average volume of 751,325. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.23, a current ratio of 1.73 and a quick ratio of 1.59. The stock’s 50-day moving average is $425.41 and its two-hundred day moving average is $363.56. F5, Inc. has a 12 month low of $223.76 and a 12 month high of $483.30. The stock has a market cap of $17.65 billion, a P/E ratio of 24.88, a P/E/G ratio of 2.94 and a beta of 1.07.

F5 (NASDAQ:FFIV) last issued its quarterly earnings results on Tuesday, October 27th. The network technology company reported $4.42 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, topping analysts’ consensus estimates of $4.26 by $0.16. F5 had a return on equity of 21.00% and a net margin of 21.14%. The firm had revenue of $917.43 million during the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $884.03 million. During the same period last year, the company earned $4.39 EPS. F5’s quarterly revenue was up 13.2% compared to the same quarter last year. Research analysts forecast that F5, Inc. will post 14.19 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

F5 announced that its board has authorized a share repurchase program on Tuesday, October 27th that allows the company to buy back $1.50 billion in outstanding shares. This repurchase authorization allows the network technology company to reacquire shares of its stock through open market purchases. Stock repurchase programs are typically an indication that the company’s board believes its stock is undervalued.

Institutional Investors Weigh In On F5

Hedge funds have recently made changes to their positions in the company. Ritholtz Wealth Management increased its position in F5 by 41.8% during the 3rd quarter. Ritholtz Wealth Management now owns 3,735 shares of the network technology company’s stock valued at $1,663,000 after purchasing an additional 1,101 shares during the period. Jacobi Capital Management LLC acquired a new position in shares of F5 during the third quarter worth $53,000. Machina Capital S.A.S. raised its stake in F5 by 58.9% in the third quarter. Machina Capital S.A.S. now owns 5,216 shares of the network technology company’s stock valued at $2,322,000 after buying an additional 1,933 shares during the last quarter. Lido Advisors LLC raised its position in shares of F5 by 15.7% in the 3rd quarter. Lido Advisors LLC now owns 6,736 shares of the network technology company’s stock valued at $2,999,000 after purchasing an additional 914 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Keybank National Association OH lifted its stake in shares of F5 by 11.1% during the third quarter. Keybank National Association OH now owns 763 shares of the network technology company’s stock worth $340,000 after buying an additional 76 shares during the period. 90.66% of the stock is currently owned by hedge funds and other institutional investors.

Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth

A number of analysts have recently issued reports on FFIV shares. Zacks Research lowered shares of F5 from a “strong-buy” rating to a “hold” rating in a research note on Monday, July 27th. Weiss Ratings downgraded shares of F5 from a “buy (b)” rating to a “buy (b-)” rating in a research note on Tuesday. Piper Sandler downgraded shares of F5 from an “overweight” rating to a “neutral” rating and set a $461.00 price target on the stock. in a research note on Wednesday, October 28th. Wolfe Research lowered shares of F5 from a “strong-buy” rating to a “hold” rating in a report on Thursday, October 29th. Finally, JPMorgan Chase & Co. boosted their price objective on shares of F5 from $500.00 to $515.00 and gave the company an “overweight” rating in a research report on Tuesday, July 28th. Four analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating, seven have given a Hold rating and one has issued a Sell rating to the company’s stock. According to MarketBeat.com, the stock presently has an average rating of “Hold” and a consensus price target of $443.00.

F5 Company Profile

F5, Inc (NASDAQ: FFIV) provides application delivery, security and traffic management solutions for enterprises, service providers and public-sector organizations. Its offerings are designed to help customers secure, optimize and manage applications and application programming interfaces (APIs) across data centers, private and public clouds, and edge environments.

The company’s portfolio includes BIG-IP software and appliances, NGINX application delivery and web server technologies, and F5 Distributed Cloud services.