LSV Asset Management Cuts Stake in F5, Inc. $FFIV

LSV Asset Management reduced its stake in shares of F5, Inc. (NASDAQ:FFIV) by 20.9% during the 4th quarter, HoldingsChannel reports. The fund owned 42,484 shares of the network technology company’s stock after selling 11,233 shares during the period. LSV Asset Management’s holdings in F5 were worth $10,844,000 at the end of the most recent quarter.

Several other hedge funds have also recently bought and sold shares of the business. Meiji Yasuda Asset Management Co Ltd. raised its holdings in F5 by 4.4% in the fourth quarter. Meiji Yasuda Asset Management Co Ltd. now owns 968 shares of the network technology company’s stock valued at $247,000 after buying an additional 41 shares during the period. Global Retirement Partners LLC grew its position in F5 by 258.4% in the fourth quarter. Global Retirement Partners LLC now owns 1,190 shares of the network technology company’s stock valued at $304,000 after acquiring an additional 858 shares in the last quarter. ABN Amro Investment Solutions acquired a new stake in F5 in the fourth quarter valued at approximately $473,000. Tredje AP fonden grew its position in F5 by 98.2% in the fourth quarter. Tredje AP fonden now owns 7,683 shares of the network technology company’s stock valued at $1,961,000 after acquiring an additional 3,807 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Handelsbanken Fonder AB grew its position in F5 by 17.5% in the fourth quarter. Handelsbanken Fonder AB now owns 17,160 shares of the network technology company’s stock valued at $4,380,000 after acquiring an additional 2,560 shares in the last quarter. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 90.66% of the company’s stock.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

Several analysts have issued reports on the stock. The Goldman Sachs Group increased their price objective on shares of F5 from $285.00 to $320.00 and gave the company a “neutral” rating in a research report on Wednesday, January 28th. JPMorgan Chase & Co. increased their price objective on shares of F5 from $355.00 to $365.00 and gave the company an “overweight” rating in a research report on Wednesday, April 29th. Piper Sandler reaffirmed an “overweight” rating on shares of F5 in a research report on Wednesday, April 29th. Barclays raised their price target on shares of F5 from $283.00 to $292.00 and gave the stock an “equal weight” rating in a research report on Wednesday, April 29th. Finally, Royal Bank Of Canada raised their price target on shares of F5 from $375.00 to $425.00 and gave the stock an “outperform” rating in a research report on Tuesday, May 19th. Six research analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating, five have issued a Hold rating and one has given a Sell rating to the company. According to MarketBeat, F5 currently has a consensus rating of “Hold” and an average target price of $353.00.

Insider Activity at F5

In other news, EVP Thomas Dean Fountain sold 1,328 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction on Tuesday, May 5th. The stock was sold at an average price of $330.58, for a total transaction of $439,010.24. Following the transaction, the executive vice president directly owned 8,060 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $2,664,474.80. This trade represents a 14.15% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The sale was disclosed in a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is accessible through the SEC website. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Also, CEO Francois Locoh-Donou sold 3,783 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction on Tuesday, May 5th. The shares were sold at an average price of $337.39, for a total value of $1,276,346.37. Following the transaction, the chief executive officer directly owned 146,989 shares in the company, valued at $49,592,618.71. This trade represents a 2.51% decrease in their ownership of the stock. 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 three months, insiders sold 24,491 shares of company stock valued at $7,966,227. 0.48% of the stock is owned by corporate insiders.

F5 Stock Performance

FFIV stock opened at $393.63 on Tuesday. The stock has a market capitalization of $22.21 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 32.29, a PEG ratio of 9.05 and a beta of 1.00. F5, Inc. has a 1 year low of $223.76 and a 1 year high of $395.77. The stock’s fifty day moving average is $318.97 and its two-hundred day moving average is $282.16.

F5 (NASDAQ:FFIV) last posted its earnings results on Tuesday, April 28th. The network technology company reported $3.90 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, beating analysts’ consensus estimates of $3.47 by $0.43. The company had revenue of $811.70 million for the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $783.82 million. F5 had a return on equity of 21.50% and a net margin of 21.96%.The firm’s quarterly revenue was up 11.0% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same period last year, the business posted $3.42 earnings per share. F5 has set its Q3 2026 guidance at 3.910-4.030 EPS and its FY 2026 guidance at 16.250-16.550 EPS. As a group, analysts predict that F5, Inc. will post 12.79 EPS 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.