Castleark Management LLC Buys Shares of 19,550 F5, Inc. $FFIV

Castleark Management LLC bought a new position in shares of F5, Inc. (NASDAQ:FFIV) in the second quarter, HoldingsChannel reports. The firm bought 19,550 shares of the network technology company’s stock, valued at approximately $8,132,000.

Several other large investors have also modified their holdings of the business. Vanguard Group Inc. lifted its stake in F5 by 1.6% in the 4th quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. now owns 7,357,293 shares of the network technology company’s stock valued at $1,878,023,000 after buying an additional 114,533 shares in the last quarter. BlackRock Inc. purchased a new position in F5 during the second quarter worth $2,611,637,000. State Street Corp increased its position in F5 by 1.7% during the third quarter. State Street Corp now owns 3,226,326 shares of the network technology company’s stock worth $1,042,716,000 after buying an additional 53,712 shares in the last quarter. First Trust Advisors LP raised its holdings in shares of F5 by 68.5% in the fourth quarter. First Trust Advisors LP now owns 2,753,652 shares of the network technology company’s stock worth $702,897,000 after acquiring an additional 1,119,291 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Jericho Capital Asset Management L.P. acquired a new position in shares of F5 in the fourth quarter worth $579,699,000. 90.66% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors and hedge funds.

Analyst Ratings Changes

A number of analysts recently commented on the company. Zacks Research lowered F5 from a “strong-buy” rating to a “hold” rating in a research note on Monday, July 27th. Royal Bank Of Canada reissued an “outperform” rating on shares of F5 in a research note on Thursday, July 16th. Bank of America upped their target price on shares of F5 from $250.00 to $300.00 and gave the company an “underperform” rating in a report on Tuesday, May 26th. Weiss Ratings raised shares of F5 from a “buy (b-)” rating to a “buy (b)” rating in a research note on Tuesday, August 11th. Finally, Morgan Stanley lifted their price target on shares of F5 from $380.00 to $415.00 and gave the stock an “equal weight” rating in a report on Tuesday, July 28th. Five research analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating, five have given a Hold rating and one has given a Sell rating to the stock. According to MarketBeat, the company presently has an average rating of “Hold” and an average target price of $416.62.

F5 Stock Up 1.0%

Shares of NASDAQ:FFIV opened at $382.75 on Wednesday. The company has a market cap of $21.68 billion, a P/E ratio of 30.47, a P/E/G ratio of 3.70 and a beta of 1.03. F5, Inc. has a 52 week low of $223.76 and a 52 week high of $435.00. The business has a fifty day simple moving average of $403.35 and a 200-day simple moving average of $349.82.

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

Insider Activity at F5

In other news, Director Nikhil Ramesh Mehta sold 4,000 shares of the stock in a transaction dated Thursday, July 30th. The shares were sold at an average price of $388.95, for a total transaction of $1,555,800.00. Following the transaction, the director directly owned 7,043 shares in the company, valued at $2,739,374.85. This represents a 36.22% decrease in their position. The sale was disclosed in a legal filing with the SEC, which is available at this link. Also, EVP Thomas Dean Fountain sold 1,208 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Wednesday, August 5th. The stock was sold at an average price of $414.63, for a total transaction of $500,873.04. Following the completion of the sale, the executive vice president directly owned 8,060 shares in the company, valued at $3,341,917.80. This represents a 13.03% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The SEC filing for this sale provides additional information. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Over the last 90 days, insiders have sold 15,699 shares of company stock worth $6,316,411. Corporate insiders own 0.48% of the company’s stock.

F5 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.