Alan Higginson Sells 825 Shares of F5, Inc. (NASDAQ:FFIV) Stock

F5, Inc. (NASDAQ:FFIV) Director Alan Higginson sold 825 shares of F5 stock in a transaction that occurred on Tuesday, November 19th. The shares were sold at an average price of $239.77, for a total transaction of $197,810.25. Following the sale, the director now owns 9,882 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $2,369,407.14. The trade was a 7.71 % decrease in their ownership of the stock. The sale was disclosed in a legal filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available through the SEC website.

Alan Higginson also recently made the following trade(s):

• On Monday, September 9th, Alan Higginson sold 1,000 shares of F5 stock. The shares were sold at an average price of $201.65, for a total transaction of $201,650.00.

F5 Stock Up 1.1 %

Shares of FFIV opened at $246.98 on Friday. The stock has a market capitalization of $14.48 billion, a P/E ratio of 25.83, a PEG ratio of 3.24 and a beta of 1.05. The firm has a fifty day simple moving average of $226.58 and a two-hundred day simple moving average of $196.71. F5, Inc. has a twelve month low of $159.01 and a twelve month high of $250.46.

F5 (NASDAQ:FFIV) last issued its quarterly earnings data on Monday, October 28th. The network technology company reported $3.67 EPS for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of $3.45 by $0.22. F5 had a net margin of 20.13% and a return on equity of 20.80%. The business had revenue of $747.00 million during the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $730.43 million. During the same period in the prior year, the business earned $2.76 EPS. The company’s revenue for the quarter was up 5.7% on a year-over-year basis. Sell-side analysts expect that F5, Inc. will post 11.01 EPS for the current fiscal year.

F5 declared that its Board of Directors has approved a stock buyback program on Monday, October 28th that authorizes the company to repurchase $1.00 billion in shares. This repurchase authorization authorizes the network technology company to purchase up to 7.9% of its stock through open market purchases. Stock repurchase programs are often a sign that the company’s management believes its shares are undervalued.

Institutional Inflows and Outflows

Institutional investors have recently added to or reduced their stakes in the stock. Pacer Advisors Inc. increased its stake in shares of F5 by 6,700.2% in the 2nd quarter. Pacer Advisors Inc. now owns 848,388 shares of the network technology company’s stock worth $146,118,000 after acquiring an additional 835,912 shares in the last quarter. Wedge Capital Management L L P NC bought a new position in shares of F5 in the 3rd quarter worth about $61,386,000. Los Angeles Capital Management LLC increased its stake in shares of F5 by 1,681.1% in the 3rd quarter. Los Angeles Capital Management LLC now owns 285,639 shares of the network technology company’s stock worth $62,898,000 after acquiring an additional 269,602 shares in the last quarter. AQR Capital Management LLC increased its stake in shares of F5 by 48.9% in the 2nd quarter. AQR Capital Management LLC now owns 652,972 shares of the network technology company’s stock worth $111,932,000 after acquiring an additional 214,351 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Hotchkis & Wiley Capital Management LLC grew its position in F5 by 3.6% during the 3rd quarter. Hotchkis & Wiley Capital Management LLC now owns 5,489,388 shares of the network technology company’s stock valued at $1,208,763,000 after purchasing an additional 191,020 shares during the last quarter. 90.66% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors.

Analysts Set New Price Targets

A number of brokerages have recently weighed in on FFIV. StockNews.com upgraded shares of F5 from a “buy” rating to a “strong-buy” rating in a report on Tuesday, October 29th. Needham & Company LLC boosted their price objective on shares of F5 from $220.00 to $235.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a report on Tuesday, July 30th. The Goldman Sachs Group boosted their price objective on shares of F5 from $212.00 to $241.00 and gave the stock a “neutral” rating in a report on Tuesday, October 29th. Morgan Stanley boosted their price objective on shares of F5 from $215.00 to $230.00 and gave the stock an “equal weight” rating in a report on Tuesday, October 29th. Finally, Barclays upped their price target on shares of F5 from $214.00 to $246.00 and gave the company an “equal weight” rating in a report on Tuesday, October 29th. Seven research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating, two have issued a buy rating and one has assigned a strong buy rating to the company’s stock. According to data from MarketBeat.com, the company presently has a consensus rating of “Hold” and an average target price of $233.56.

F5 Company Profile

F5, Inc provides multi-cloud application security and delivery solutions in the United States, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and the Asia Pacific region. The company’s distributed cloud services enable its customers to deploy, secure, and operate applications in any architecture, from on-premises to the public cloud.