William Blair Investment Management LLC Buys Shares of 586,271 F5, Inc. $FFIV

William Blair Investment Management LLC bought a new stake in shares of F5, Inc. (NASDAQ:FFIV) in the 2nd quarter, Holdings Channel.com reports. The institutional investor bought 586,271 shares of the network technology company’s stock, valued at approximately $243,865,000. F5 accounts for about 0.7% of William Blair Investment Management LLC’s portfolio, making the stock its 24th biggest holding.

A number of other institutional investors and hedge funds have also made changes to their positions in the stock. Pinnacle Wealth Management Advisory Group LLC lifted its holdings in shares of F5 by 2.6% in the 1st quarter. Pinnacle Wealth Management Advisory Group LLC now owns 1,447 shares of the network technology company’s stock worth $419,000 after purchasing an additional 36 shares during the last quarter. Smartleaf Asset Management LLC grew its stake in F5 by 3.4% during the 4th quarter. Smartleaf Asset Management LLC now owns 1,190 shares of the network technology company’s stock worth $309,000 after buying an additional 39 shares during the last quarter. Meiji Yasuda Asset Management Co Ltd. grew its stake in F5 by 4.4% during the 4th quarter. Meiji Yasuda Asset Management Co Ltd. now owns 968 shares of the network technology company’s stock worth $247,000 after buying an additional 41 shares during the last quarter. Coldstream Capital Management Inc. increased its position in F5 by 4.5% in the third quarter. Coldstream Capital Management Inc. now owns 1,047 shares of the network technology company’s stock worth $338,000 after buying an additional 45 shares during the period. Finally, Optas LLC increased its position in F5 by 4.7% in the first quarter. Optas LLC now owns 1,035 shares of the network technology company’s stock worth $299,000 after buying an additional 46 shares during the period. 90.66% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors and hedge funds.

Insiders Place Their Bets

In other F5 news, CEO Francois Locoh-Donou sold 3,782 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction dated Wednesday, August 5th. The shares were sold at an average price of $412.44, for a total transaction of $1,559,848.08. Following the transaction, the chief executive officer owned 146,989 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $60,624,143.16. This trade represents a 2.51% decrease in their position. The transaction was disclosed in a filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available at this hyperlink. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Also, CTO Kunal Anand sold 392 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction dated Monday, August 3rd. The stock was sold at an average price of $404.63, for a total transaction of $158,614.96. Following the sale, the chief technology officer owned 12,586 shares in the company, valued at $5,092,673.18. This trade represents a 3.02% decrease in their ownership of the stock. Additional details regarding this sale are available in the official SEC disclosure. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Over the last ninety days, insiders have sold 15,699 shares of company stock valued at $6,316,411. Corporate insiders own 0.48% of the company’s stock.

F5 Price Performance

FFIV opened at $384.63 on Friday. The stock’s 50 day moving average price is $403.83 and its 200 day moving average price is $347.86. The stock has a market cap of $21.78 billion, a P/E ratio of 30.62, a P/E/G ratio of 3.69 and a beta of 1.03. F5, Inc. has a 12 month low of $223.76 and a 12 month high of $435.00.

F5 (NASDAQ:FFIV) last released its quarterly earnings results on Monday, July 27th. The network technology company reported $4.73 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of $4.00 by $0.73. The company had revenue of $865.08 million during the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $834.60 million. F5 had a return on equity of 21.54% and a net margin of 21.95%.The company’s revenue for the quarter was up 10.9% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same quarter in the prior year, the business posted $4.16 earnings per share. F5 has set its Q4 2026 guidance at 4.140-4.260 EPS and its FY 2026 guidance at 17.210-17.330 EPS. Equities analysts anticipate that F5, Inc. will post 13.65 EPS for the current year.

Wall Street Analyst Weigh In

A number of research firms have issued reports on FFIV. JPMorgan Chase & Co. raised their target price on F5 from $500.00 to $515.00 and gave the company an “overweight” rating in a research note on Tuesday, July 28th. Weiss Ratings upgraded shares of F5 from a “buy (b-)” rating to a “buy (b)” rating in a research report on Tuesday, August 11th. Bank of America increased their price objective on shares of F5 from $250.00 to $300.00 and gave the stock an “underperform” rating in a report on Tuesday, May 26th. Morgan Stanley lifted their price objective on shares of F5 from $380.00 to $415.00 and gave the company an “equal weight” rating in a research report on Tuesday, July 28th. Finally, Evercore raised shares of F5 from an “in-line” rating to an “outperform” rating and set a $475.00 target price for the company in a research note on Monday, May 18th. Five research analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating, five have issued a Hold rating and one has assigned a Sell rating to the stock. Based on data from MarketBeat, the company has a consensus rating of “Hold” and a consensus price target of $416.62.

About F5

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.