F5 (NASDAQ:FFIV) Hits New 52-Week High Following Analyst Upgrade

F5, Inc. (NASDAQ:FFIV)’s share price hit a new 52-week high during trading on Monday after Zacks Research upgraded the stock from a hold rating to a strong-buy rating. The stock traded as high as $412.43 and last traded at $408.2960, with a volume of 72120 shares. The stock had previously closed at $394.53.

FFIV has been the subject of several other research reports. Royal Bank Of Canada increased their price objective on shares of F5 from $425.00 to $450.00 and gave the stock an “outperform” rating in a research report on Tuesday, June 9th. Morgan Stanley upped their target price on shares of F5 from $340.00 to $380.00 and gave the stock an “equal weight” rating in a research note on Wednesday, May 20th. Weiss Ratings reissued a “buy (b-)” rating on shares of F5 in a research note on Friday. Evercore raised F5 from an “in-line” rating to an “outperform” rating and set a $475.00 price objective for the company in a research report on Monday, May 18th. Finally, Bank of America increased their price objective on F5 from $250.00 to $300.00 and gave the stock an “underperform” rating in a report on Tuesday, May 26th. One equities research analyst has rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, six have assigned a Buy rating, four have issued a Hold rating and one has issued a Sell rating to the company’s stock. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, the company presently has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus target price of $382.67.

Insider Activity

In related news, CFO Edward Cooper Werner sold 2,500 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction dated Tuesday, June 2nd. The stock was sold at an average price of $400.00, for a total transaction of $1,000,000.00. Following the sale, the chief financial officer owned 406 shares in the company, valued at approximately $162,400. This represents a 86.03% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The transaction was disclosed in a legal filing with the SEC, which is accessible through this hyperlink. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Also, EVP Chad Michael Whalen sold 6,200 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction dated Friday, May 8th. The stock was sold at an average price of $350.19, for a total value of $2,171,178.00. Following the sale, the executive vice president owned 20,832 shares in the company, valued at $7,295,158.08. The trade was a 22.94% decrease in their position. 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 sold 22,579 shares of company stock worth $7,836,860. 0.48% of the stock is currently owned by company insiders.

Institutional Investors Weigh In On F5

Several large investors have recently made changes to their positions in the stock. Millennium Management LLC raised its position in F5 by 166.5% during the first quarter. Millennium Management LLC now owns 62,906 shares of the network technology company’s stock worth $16,750,000 after acquiring an additional 39,305 shares in the last quarter. NewEdge Advisors LLC grew its position in shares of F5 by 1,281.4% in the 1st quarter. NewEdge Advisors LLC now owns 967 shares of the network technology company’s stock valued at $257,000 after acquiring an additional 897 shares during the period. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. increased its stake in shares of F5 by 38.4% during the 1st quarter. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. now owns 298,297 shares of the network technology company’s stock worth $79,428,000 after purchasing an additional 82,835 shares during the last quarter. Focus Partners Wealth acquired a new position in shares of F5 during the 1st quarter worth about $257,000. Finally, Geneos Wealth Management Inc. grew its holdings in F5 by 288.1% during the first quarter. Geneos Wealth Management Inc. now owns 163 shares of the network technology company’s stock worth $43,000 after purchasing an additional 121 shares during the period. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 90.66% of the company’s stock.

F5 Price Performance

The business has a 50-day simple moving average of $370.86 and a two-hundred day simple moving average of $310.42. The stock has a market cap of $23.47 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 34.12, a P/E/G ratio of 4.82 and a beta of 1.04.

F5 (NASDAQ:FFIV) last released its quarterly earnings data 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 during 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 business’s revenue was up 11.0% on a year-over-year basis. During the same period last year, the firm 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, equities analysts anticipate that F5, Inc. will post 12.78 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

F5 Company 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.