F5 (NASDAQ:FFIV) Hits New 12-Month High Following Analyst Upgrade

F5, Inc. (NASDAQ:FFIV)’s stock price hit a new 52-week high during trading on Monday after Royal Bank Of Canada raised their price target on the stock from $508.00 to $525.00. Royal Bank Of Canada currently has an outperform rating on the stock. F5 traded as high as $484.49 and last traded at $480.9850, with a volume of 992 shares trading hands. The stock had previously closed at $479.83.

Several other brokerages also recently issued reports on FFIV. Piper Sandler reiterated an “overweight” rating and set a $461.00 price objective (up from $423.00) on shares of F5 in a research report on Tuesday, July 28th. Morgan Stanley raised their target price on F5 from $380.00 to $415.00 and gave the company an “equal weight” rating in a research report on Tuesday, July 28th. Zacks Research cut F5 from a “strong-buy” rating to a “hold” rating in a research report on Monday, July 27th. JPMorgan Chase & Co. lifted their target price on F5 from $500.00 to $515.00 and gave the company an “overweight” rating in a research note on Tuesday, July 28th. Finally, Wall Street Zen upgraded F5 from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating in a research report on Saturday, August 1st. Five investment analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating, five have issued a Hold rating and one has given a Sell rating to the company’s stock. Based on data from MarketBeat, F5 currently has a consensus rating of “Hold” and a consensus price target of $426.00.

Insider Activity

In other news, EVP Thomas Fountain sold 1,208 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Wednesday, August 5th. The shares were sold at an average price of $414.63, for a total value of $500,873.04. Following the completion of the sale, the executive vice president directly owned 8,060 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $3,341,917.80. This represents a 13.03% decrease in their position. The sale was disclosed in a legal filing with the SEC, which is accessible through this link. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Also, Director Nikhil Mehta sold 4,000 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Thursday, July 30th. The stock was sold at an average price of $388.95, for a total transaction of $1,555,800.00. Following the completion of the sale, the director directly owned 7,043 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $2,739,374.85. This represents a 36.22% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The disclosure for this sale is available in the SEC filing. Insiders have sold 16,829 shares of company stock worth $6,815,302 in the last 90 days. 0.48% of the stock is currently owned by corporate insiders.

Institutional Investors Weigh In On F5

Hedge funds and other institutional investors have recently added to or reduced their stakes in the company. SJS Investment Consulting Inc. grew its position in F5 by 963.6% during the 1st quarter. SJS Investment Consulting Inc. now owns 117 shares of the network technology company’s stock worth $34,000 after purchasing an additional 106 shares in the last quarter. Capital Advisors Ltd. LLC lifted its holdings in shares of F5 by 113.8% in the first quarter. Capital Advisors Ltd. LLC now owns 124 shares of the network technology company’s stock valued at $36,000 after purchasing an additional 66 shares in the last quarter. Persistent Asset Partners Ltd purchased a new stake in shares of F5 in the second quarter valued at $36,000. Bell Investment Advisors Inc purchased a new stake in shares of F5 in the second quarter valued at $49,000. Finally, Elevation Wealth Partners LLC boosted its position in shares of F5 by 373.1% in the second quarter. Elevation Wealth Partners LLC now owns 123 shares of the network technology company’s stock worth $51,000 after buying an additional 97 shares during the period. Institutional investors own 90.66% of the company’s stock.

F5 Stock Up 0.6%

The firm has a market cap of $26.97 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 37.92, a PEG ratio of 4.49 and a beta of 1.03. The company has a 50-day moving average price of $420.93 and a 200 day moving average price of $386.66.

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

F5 Company Profile

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.