F5, Inc. $FFIV Shares Acquired by VIRGINIA RETIREMENT SYSTEMS ET Al

VIRGINIA RETIREMENT SYSTEMS ET Al increased its holdings in F5, Inc. (NASDAQ:FFIV) by 342.3% in the third quarter, HoldingsChannel reports. The firm owned 13,800 shares of the network technology company’s stock after purchasing an additional 10,680 shares during the period. VIRGINIA RETIREMENT SYSTEMS ET Al’s holdings in F5 were worth $6,143,000 as of its most recent SEC filing.

Several other hedge funds have also recently bought and sold shares of FFIV. Persistent Asset Partners Ltd bought a new stake in shares of F5 during the 2nd quarter worth about $36,000. Bell Investment Advisors Inc bought a new position in shares of F5 in the 2nd quarter valued at approximately $49,000. Elevation Wealth Partners LLC lifted its holdings in F5 by 373.1% in the 2nd quarter. Elevation Wealth Partners LLC now owns 123 shares of the network technology company’s stock worth $51,000 after purchasing an additional 97 shares during the last quarter. Root Financial Partners LLC lifted its holdings in F5 by 91.4% in the 1st quarter. Root Financial Partners LLC now owns 201 shares of the network technology company’s stock worth $58,000 after purchasing an additional 96 shares during the last quarter. Finally, CoreCap Advisors LLC boosted its position in F5 by 2,800.0% during the second quarter. CoreCap Advisors LLC now owns 203 shares of the network technology company’s stock worth $84,000 after purchasing an additional 196 shares during the period. 90.66% of the stock is owned by institutional investors and hedge funds.

Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth

FFIV has been the topic of several analyst reports. Morgan Stanley increased their price target on F5 from $415.00 to $448.00 and gave the company an “equal weight” rating in a report on Wednesday, October 28th. Weiss Ratings upgraded shares of F5 from a “buy (b-)” rating to a “buy (b)” rating in a research note on Friday, October 9th. Barclays reaffirmed a “mixed” rating on shares of F5 in a report on Wednesday. Wolfe Research lowered shares of F5 from a “strong-buy” rating to a “hold” rating in a research note on Thursday. Finally, Evercore reissued an “outperform” rating on shares of F5 in a research report on Wednesday. Four research analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating, seven have given a Hold rating and one has issued a Sell rating to the company’s stock. According to data from MarketBeat, the company has a consensus rating of “Hold” and an average target price of $443.00.

Insider Activity at F5

In related news, EVP Thomas Fountain sold 1,208 shares of F5 stock in a transaction dated Wednesday, August 5th. The stock was sold at an average price of $414.63, for a total transaction of $500,873.04. Following the sale, the executive vice president directly owned 8,060 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $3,341,917.80. This trade represents a 13.03% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The transaction was disclosed in a filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available through this hyperlink. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Also, CTO Michael Montoya sold 4,426 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction dated Monday, September 14th. The shares were sold at an average price of $410.16, for a total value of $1,815,368.16. Following the transaction, the chief technology officer owned 1,309 shares in the company, valued at $536,899.44. This represents a 77.18% 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. Insiders have sold a total of 9,620 shares of company stock worth $3,958,962 in the last three months. Corporate insiders own 0.48% of the company’s stock.

F5 News Summary

Here are the key news stories impacting F5 this week:

• Positive Sentiment: F5 authorized an additional $1.5 billion share repurchase program, bringing total available buyback capacity to approximately $1.8 billion, or about 9% of its market value. The authorization could support earnings per share and provide demand for the stock following its sell-off. Share Buyback Program Announced by F5
• Positive Sentiment: F5 reported fiscal fourth-quarter revenue of approximately $917 million and adjusted earnings of $4.42 per share, exceeding analyst expectations. AI-related bookings surpassed $100 million and increased roughly 300% year over year, indicating continued demand for AI data-delivery solutions. F5 Beat on Revenue and Still Dropped
• Positive Sentiment: Technical analysts say the stock is now oversold after its recent decline, while upward earnings-estimate revisions could support a potential trend reversal. Morgan Stanley, Barclays and RBC also raised their price targets or maintained a constructive outlook. F5 May See a Trend Reversal
• Positive Sentiment: F5 and Oracle announced a collaboration focused on strengthening application security for AI-era workloads, potentially improving F5’s enterprise and cloud-security opportunities. F5 and Oracle Collaborate

F5 Price Performance

NASDAQ:FFIV opened at $338.34 on Monday. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.23, a current ratio of 1.73 and a quick ratio of 1.59. F5, Inc. has a one year low of $223.76 and a one year high of $483.30. The company has a fifty day moving average price of $428.63 and a 200 day moving average price of $362.68. The stock has a market cap of $19.16 billion, a P/E ratio of 27.00, a PEG ratio of 3.00 and a beta of 1.08.

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

F5 declared that its Board of Directors has approved a stock repurchase program on Tuesday, October 27th that permits the company to repurchase $1.50 billion in shares. This repurchase authorization permits the network technology company to reacquire shares of its stock through open market purchases. Share repurchase programs are usually a sign that the company’s board of directors believes its shares are undervalued.

F5 Profile

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.