F5, Inc. (NASDAQ:FFIV) Short Interest Down 6.0% in March

F5, Inc. (NASDAQ:FFIV) was the recipient of a significant decline in short interest during the month of March. As of March 31st, there was short interest totalling 1,710,000 shares, a decline of 6.0% from the March 15th total of 1,820,000 shares. Currently, 2.9% of the company’s stock are sold short. Based on an average daily trading volume, of 445,000 shares, the days-to-cover ratio is currently 3.8 days.

Insider Activity at F5

In related news, CFO Francis J. Pelzer sold 500 shares of the stock in a transaction that occurred on Monday, January 22nd. The stock was sold at an average price of $180.09, for a total value of $90,045.00. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief financial officer now directly owns 31,508 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $5,674,275.72. The sale was disclosed in a filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is accessible through this link. In other F5 news, CFO Francis J. Pelzer sold 500 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Monday, January 22nd. The stock was sold at an average price of $180.09, for a total value of $90,045.00. Following the completion of the sale, the chief financial officer now directly owns 31,508 shares in the company, valued at $5,674,275.72. The transaction was disclosed in a legal filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is accessible through the SEC website. Also, CEO Francois Locoh-Donou sold 6,400 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Friday, March 1st. The stock was sold at an average price of $188.02, for a total value of $1,203,328.00. Following the completion of the sale, the chief executive officer now owns 123,251 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $23,173,653.02. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Insiders sold a total of 10,201 shares of company stock valued at $1,908,705 over the last three months. 0.58% of the stock is owned by insiders.

Institutional Inflows and Outflows

A number of hedge funds and other institutional investors have recently added to or reduced their stakes in FFIV. MetLife Investment Management LLC lifted its stake in F5 by 23.9% during the first quarter. MetLife Investment Management LLC now owns 16,515 shares of the network technology company’s stock worth $3,451,000 after purchasing an additional 3,190 shares during the period. Panagora Asset Management Inc. lifted its stake in F5 by 140.0% during the first quarter. Panagora Asset Management Inc. now owns 4,503 shares of the network technology company’s stock worth $941,000 after purchasing an additional 2,627 shares during the period. Dimensional Fund Advisors LP lifted its stake in F5 by 1.3% during the first quarter. Dimensional Fund Advisors LP now owns 394,157 shares of the network technology company’s stock worth $82,367,000 after purchasing an additional 5,214 shares during the period. Sei Investments Co. lifted its stake in F5 by 16.2% during the first quarter. Sei Investments Co. now owns 67,717 shares of the network technology company’s stock worth $14,067,000 after purchasing an additional 9,454 shares during the period. Finally, Prudential PLC bought a new position in F5 during the first quarter worth about $327,000. Institutional investors own 90.66% of the company’s stock.

F5 Price Performance

Shares of NASDAQ FFIV traded down $0.80 during mid-day trading on Wednesday, hitting $182.26. The company had a trading volume of 84,967 shares, compared to its average volume of 430,765. The business’s 50-day simple moving average is $188.27 and its 200-day simple moving average is $175.23. F5 has a 12 month low of $127.05 and a 12 month high of $199.49. The firm has a market cap of $10.72 billion, a P/E ratio of 23.80, a PEG ratio of 2.71 and a beta of 1.11.

F5 (NASDAQ:FFIV) last released its earnings results on Monday, January 29th. The network technology company reported $3.43 earnings per share for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $3.04 by $0.39. F5 had a net margin of 16.43% and a return on equity of 20.81%. The business had revenue of $693.00 million during the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $684.77 million. During the same quarter last year, the company earned $1.65 earnings per share. The firm’s revenue was down 1.0% on a year-over-year basis. As a group, sell-side analysts predict that F5 will post 9.58 EPS for the current year.

Analysts Set New Price Targets

A number of equities research analysts have weighed in on FFIV shares. JPMorgan Chase & Co. upped their target price on F5 from $197.00 to $205.00 and gave the stock a “neutral” rating in a research report on Thursday, April 11th. Barclays increased their price objective on F5 from $163.00 to $206.00 and gave the company an “equal weight” rating in a research report on Tuesday, January 30th. The Goldman Sachs Group increased their price objective on F5 from $156.00 to $179.00 and gave the company a “neutral” rating in a research report on Tuesday, January 30th. Royal Bank of Canada reiterated a “sector perform” rating and set a $204.00 price objective on shares of F5 in a research report on Friday, February 9th. Finally, KeyCorp increased their price objective on F5 from $186.00 to $204.00 and gave the company an “overweight” rating in a research report on Thursday, January 18th. One analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, seven have assigned a hold rating, three have issued a buy rating and one has given a strong buy rating to the stock. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, the company currently has a consensus rating of “Hold” and a consensus target price of $186.82.

About F5

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.