F5, Inc. (NASDAQ:FFIV) Stock Has Consensus Target Price of $416.62

F5, Inc. (NASDAQ:FFIV) has earned an average recommendation of “Hold” from the eleven research firms that are presently covering the company, MarketBeat.com reports. One investment analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, five have assigned a hold rating and five have assigned a buy rating to the company. The average 1-year price target among brokers that have issued a report on the stock in the last year is $416.62.

Several brokerages have recently commented on FFIV. Barclays upped their price objective on shares of F5 from $386.00 to $397.00 and gave the stock an “equal weight” rating in a report on Tuesday, July 28th. Piper Sandler reiterated an “overweight” rating and issued a $461.00 target price (up from $423.00) on shares of F5 in a report on Tuesday, July 28th. Royal Bank Of Canada reiterated an “outperform” rating on shares of F5 in a report on Thursday, July 16th. Needham & Company LLC reissued a “hold” rating on shares of F5 in a research report on Tuesday, July 28th. Finally, Weiss Ratings upgraded F5 from a “buy (b-)” rating to a “buy (b)” rating in a research note on Friday.

Insiders Place Their Bets

In related news, insider John Maddison sold 204 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction on Monday, September 14th. The stock was sold at an average price of $406.24, for a total value of $82,872.96. Following the sale, the insider owned 1,149 shares in the company, valued at approximately $466,769.76. The trade was a 15.08% decrease in their position. The transaction was disclosed in a filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which can be accessed 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 stock in a transaction dated Monday, September 14th. The stock was sold at an average price of $410.16, for a total value of $1,815,368.16. Following the transaction, the chief technology officer directly owned 1,309 shares in the company, valued at approximately $536,899.44. The trade was a 77.18% decrease in their position. The disclosure for this sale is available in the SEC filing. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. In the last three months, insiders sold 16,829 shares of company stock valued at $6,815,302. Insiders own 0.48% of the company’s stock.

Hedge Funds Weigh In On F5

Institutional investors have recently bought and sold shares of the company. BlackRock Inc. acquired a new stake in shares of F5 during the second quarter worth about $2,611,637,000. Jericho Capital Asset Management L.P. purchased a new position in shares of F5 in the fourth quarter valued at approximately $579,699,000. UBS AM a distinct business unit of UBS ASSET MANAGEMENT AMERICAS LLC boosted its stake in shares of F5 by 24.8% in the second quarter. UBS AM a distinct business unit of UBS ASSET MANAGEMENT AMERICAS LLC now owns 726,844 shares of the network technology company’s stock valued at $302,338,000 after purchasing an additional 144,534 shares during the period. William Blair Investment Management LLC acquired a new position in shares of F5 in the second quarter valued at approximately $243,865,000. Finally, Amundi grew its holdings in shares of F5 by 96.0% in the second quarter. Amundi now owns 555,809 shares of the network technology company’s stock valued at $231,194,000 after purchasing an additional 272,273 shares in the last quarter. 90.66% of the stock is owned by institutional investors and hedge funds.

F5 Price Performance

NASDAQ FFIV opened at $479.83 on Tuesday. The firm’s 50-day moving average is $418.31 and its two-hundred day moving average is $383.45. F5 has a 12 month low of $223.76 and a 12 month high of $482.47. The stock has a market capitalization of $27.17 billion, a P/E ratio of 38.20, a PEG ratio of 4.55 and a beta of 1.03.

F5 (NASDAQ:FFIV) last announced its earnings results on Monday, July 27th. The network technology company reported $4.73 earnings per share for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of $4.00 by $0.73. F5 had a net margin of 21.95% and a return on equity of 21.54%. The company had revenue of $865.08 million during the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $834.60 million. During the same quarter last year, the firm posted $4.16 earnings per share. F5’s 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. As a group, analysts anticipate that F5 will post 13.65 EPS for the current year.

About F5

F5, Inc develops application delivery, security and management technologies that help organizations deploy, protect and optimize applications across data centers, public clouds, edge environments and distributed networks. Its offerings are designed to support application availability, performance, scalability and security across hybrid and multi-cloud architectures.

The company’s portfolio includes BIG-IP application delivery and security solutions, NGINX web and application delivery technologies, and F5 Distributed Cloud services.