Burney Co. Cuts Stock Holdings in F5, Inc. (NASDAQ:FFIV)

Burney Co. reduced its stake in F5, Inc. (NASDAQ:FFIV) by 1.4% during the fourth quarter, according to its most recent Form 13F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The institutional investor owned 20,056 shares of the network technology company’s stock after selling 280 shares during the quarter. Burney Co.’s holdings in F5 were worth $5,044,000 as of its most recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

Several other hedge funds have also bought and sold shares of FFIV. Park Avenue Securities LLC increased its holdings in shares of F5 by 17.0% in the 4th quarter. Park Avenue Securities LLC now owns 1,090 shares of the network technology company’s stock worth $274,000 after buying an additional 158 shares during the last quarter. Assenagon Asset Management S.A. grew its position in F5 by 34.4% in the fourth quarter. Assenagon Asset Management S.A. now owns 170,905 shares of the network technology company’s stock worth $42,977,000 after acquiring an additional 43,782 shares in the last quarter. Board of the Pension Protection Fund bought a new position in F5 in the fourth quarter valued at $1,081,000. Friedenthal Financial purchased a new stake in F5 during the fourth quarter valued at about $50,000. Finally, Czech National Bank lifted its stake in F5 by 6.1% during the fourth quarter. Czech National Bank now owns 12,596 shares of the network technology company’s stock worth $3,168,000 after purchasing an additional 723 shares during the last quarter. 90.66% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors.

Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth

Several equities analysts have recently commented on FFIV shares. The Goldman Sachs Group increased their price objective on F5 from $212.00 to $241.00 and gave the company a “neutral” rating in a research report on Tuesday, October 29th. Royal Bank of Canada increased their price target on shares of F5 from $240.00 to $260.00 and gave the company a “sector perform” rating in a research report on Friday, January 3rd. StockNews.com upgraded shares of F5 from a “buy” rating to a “strong-buy” rating in a report on Tuesday, October 29th. JPMorgan Chase & Co. increased their target price on shares of F5 from $225.00 to $250.00 and gave the company a “neutral” rating in a report on Tuesday, October 29th. Finally, Morgan Stanley boosted their price target on shares of F5 from $230.00 to $262.00 and gave the stock an “equal weight” rating in a research note on Tuesday, December 17th. Seven research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating, two have assigned a buy rating and one has issued a strong buy rating to the company’s stock. Based on data from MarketBeat, the stock has an average rating of “Hold” and a consensus target price of $239.33.

F5 Price Performance

FFIV opened at $261.69 on Wednesday. The firm has a market capitalization of $15.34 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 27.37, a PEG ratio of 3.54 and a beta of 1.06. F5, Inc. has a one year low of $159.01 and a one year high of $264.50. The business has a 50 day simple moving average of $251.32 and a two-hundred day simple moving average of $218.75.

F5 (NASDAQ:FFIV) last announced its quarterly earnings results on Monday, October 28th. The network technology company reported $3.67 EPS for the quarter, topping analysts’ consensus estimates of $3.45 by $0.22. The company had revenue of $747.00 million during the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $730.43 million. F5 had a return on equity of 20.80% and a net margin of 20.13%. The firm’s revenue was up 5.7% on a year-over-year basis. During the same quarter last year, the firm posted $2.76 earnings per share. As a group, sell-side analysts expect that F5, Inc. will post 11.01 EPS for the current fiscal year.

F5 announced that its Board of Directors has approved a share buyback plan on Monday, October 28th that allows the company to buyback $1.00 billion in outstanding shares. This buyback authorization allows the network technology company to reacquire up to 7.9% of its stock through open market purchases. Stock buyback plans are often an indication that the company’s management believes its stock is undervalued.

Insider Transactions at F5

In other F5 news, Director Alan Higginson sold 825 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction dated Tuesday, November 19th. The shares were sold at an average price of $239.77, for a total value of $197,810.25. Following the completion of the sale, the director now directly owns 9,882 shares in the company, valued at $2,369,407.14. This trade represents a 7.71 % decrease in their ownership of the stock. The sale was disclosed in a filing with the SEC, which is available at this link. Also, CFO Francis J. Pelzer sold 600 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Monday, October 21st. The stock was sold at an average price of $217.67, for a total value of $130,602.00. Following the transaction, the chief financial officer now owns 29,825 shares in the company, valued at $6,492,007.75. This trade represents a 1.97 % decrease in their position. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Corporate insiders own 0.58% of the company’s stock.

About F5

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.