Insider Selling: F5 (NASDAQ:FFIV) CEO Sells $1,186,727.10 in Stock

F5, Inc. (NASDAQ:FFIV) CEO Francois Locoh-Donou sold 3,783 shares of F5 stock in a transaction dated Thursday, November 5th. The stock was sold at an average price of $313.70, for a total transaction of $1,186,727.10. Following the sale, the chief executive officer directly owned 185,683 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $58,248,757.10. The trade was a 2.00% decrease in their position. The sale was disclosed in a document filed with the SEC, which is available through this hyperlink. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan.

F5 Stock Performance

FFIV traded up $6.91 on Monday, reaching $317.75. The company had a trading volume of 823,899 shares, compared to its average volume of 753,245. The stock has a market cap of $17.99 billion, a P/E ratio of 25.36, a P/E/G ratio of 2.76 and a beta of 1.07. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.23, a quick ratio of 1.59 and a current ratio of 1.73. F5, Inc. has a fifty-two week low of $223.76 and a fifty-two week high of $483.30. The company’s fifty day moving average is $421.67 and its 200 day moving average is $364.03.

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

F5 declared that its board has approved a stock repurchase plan on Tuesday, October 27th that permits the company to buy back $1.50 billion in outstanding shares. This repurchase authorization permits the network technology company to purchase shares of its stock through open market purchases. Share repurchase plans are often a sign that the company’s leadership believes its shares are undervalued.

Institutional Inflows and Outflows

Hedge funds have recently made changes to their positions in the business. Bank of America Corp DE bought a new stake in shares of F5 in the 2nd quarter valued at about $70,355,000. BlackRock Inc. acquired a new stake in shares of F5 in the second quarter valued at about $2,611,637,000. Nykredit A S acquired a new stake in shares of F5 in the second quarter valued at about $14,596,000. Amundi increased its stake in shares of F5 by 96.0% in the second quarter. Amundi now owns 555,809 shares of the network technology company’s stock valued at $231,194,000 after buying an additional 272,273 shares during the period. Finally, Sequoia Financial Advisors LLC raised its position in shares of F5 by 14.6% during the second quarter. Sequoia Financial Advisors LLC now owns 22,144 shares of the network technology company’s stock worth $9,211,000 after acquiring an additional 2,814 shares during the last quarter. 90.66% of the stock is owned by institutional investors.

Analysts Set New Price Targets

Several research firms recently weighed in on FFIV. Royal Bank Of Canada lifted their price target on F5 from $525.00 to $540.00 and gave the stock an “outperform” rating in a report on Wednesday, October 28th. Wells Fargo & Company set a $500.00 price objective on F5 in a report on Wednesday, October 28th. Wall Street Zen upgraded F5 from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating in a research report on Saturday, August 1st. Evercore reissued an “outperform” rating on shares of F5 in a report on Wednesday, October 28th. Finally, Zacks Research downgraded F5 from a “strong-buy” rating to a “hold” rating in a report on Monday, July 27th. Four equities research analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating, seven have given a Hold rating and one has given a Sell rating to the company. Based on data from MarketBeat, the company presently has a consensus rating of “Hold” and an average price target of $443.00.

About F5

F5, Inc provides application delivery and security solutions that help organizations manage, protect and optimize applications across data centers, public clouds and edge environments. Its offerings serve businesses, government agencies and service providers around the world.

The company’s products and services include BIG-IP application delivery and security software, NGINX technologies for application development and delivery, and F5 Distributed Cloud Services. These offerings support functions such as traffic management, web and API protection, application security and multicloud connectivity.

Founded in 1996 and headquartered in Seattle, F5 was previously known as F5 Networks before adopting the F5 name in 2021.