F5 (NASDAQ:FFIV) Stock: Insider Chad Michael Whalen Sells 6,950 Shares

F5, Inc. (NASDAQ:FFIV) EVP Chad Whalen sold 6,950 shares of the stock in a transaction that occurred on Tuesday, November 3rd. The stock was sold at an average price of $329.56, for a total transaction of $2,290,442.00. Following the completion of the transaction, the executive vice president owned 25,467 shares in the company, valued at $8,392,904.52. This trade represents a 21.44% decrease in their position. The sale was disclosed in a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is accessible through this link. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan.

F5 Stock Performance

F5 stock traded down $17.98 during trading on Thursday, reaching $311.74. The company had a trading volume of 1,380,704 shares, compared to its average volume of 751,325. F5, Inc. has a 52 week low of $223.76 and a 52 week high of $483.30. The firm’s 50-day simple moving average is $425.41 and its 200 day simple moving average is $363.56. The firm has a market capitalization of $17.65 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 24.88, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 2.94 and a beta of 1.07. The company has a current ratio of 1.73, a quick ratio of 1.59 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.23.

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

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

Hedge Funds Weigh In On F5

A number of hedge funds have recently added to or reduced their stakes in FFIV. BlackRock Inc. bought a new position in F5 in the second quarter worth approximately $2,611,637,000. William Blair Investment Management LLC bought a new stake in F5 during the 2nd quarter valued at $243,865,000. Hsbc Holdings PLC bought a new stake in F5 during the 2nd quarter valued at $208,277,000. Legal & General Group Plc purchased a new stake in shares of F5 in the 2nd quarter worth $205,453,000. Finally, Deutsche Bank AG purchased a new stake in shares of F5 in the 2nd quarter worth $172,297,000. 90.66% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors.

Analyst Ratings Changes

Several analysts have recently issued reports on FFIV shares. JPMorgan Chase & Co. upped their target price 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. Weiss Ratings lowered F5 from a “buy (b)” rating to a “buy (b-)” rating in a research report on Tuesday. Royal Bank Of Canada boosted their price objective on F5 from $525.00 to $540.00 and gave the stock an “outperform” rating in a research note on Wednesday, October 28th. Zacks Research downgraded F5 from a “strong-buy” rating to a “hold” rating in a research report on Monday, July 27th. Finally, Barclays reaffirmed a “mixed” rating on shares of F5 in a research note on Wednesday, October 28th. Four research analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating, seven have issued a Hold rating and one has issued a Sell rating to the company’s stock. According to data from MarketBeat.com, F5 currently has a consensus rating of “Hold” and an average target price of $443.00.

About F5

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.