F5 (NASDAQ:FFIV) Sets New 1-Year High After Analyst Upgrade

F5, Inc. (NASDAQ:FFIV)’s stock price hit a new 52-week high during trading on Tuesday after Bank of America raised their price target on the stock from $250.00 to $300.00. Bank of America currently has an underperform rating on the stock. F5 traded as high as $395.94 and last traded at $391.94, with a volume of 17844 shares changing hands. The stock had previously closed at $393.63.

Several other equities research analysts also recently issued reports on FFIV. Weiss Ratings upgraded shares of F5 from a “hold (c+)” rating to a “buy (b-)” rating in a research note on Monday, March 30th. The Goldman Sachs Group boosted their price target on F5 from $285.00 to $320.00 and gave the stock a “neutral” rating in a research report on Wednesday, January 28th. Needham & Company LLC reaffirmed a “hold” rating on shares of F5 in a research report on Wednesday, April 29th. Piper Sandler reiterated an “overweight” rating on shares of F5 in a research note on Wednesday, April 29th. Finally, JPMorgan Chase & Co. boosted their target price on shares of F5 from $355.00 to $365.00 and gave the stock an “overweight” rating in a research report on Wednesday, April 29th. Seven research analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating, four have given a Hold rating and one has issued a Sell rating to the company. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, F5 presently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus price target of $358.56.

Insider Activity at F5

In other news, EVP Thomas Dean Fountain sold 1,328 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Tuesday, May 5th. The shares were sold at an average price of $330.58, for a total transaction of $439,010.24. Following the completion of the sale, the executive vice president owned 8,060 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $2,664,474.80. This trade represents a 14.15% decrease in their ownership of the stock. 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, CFO Edward Cooper Werner sold 1,500 shares of the stock in a transaction on Friday, May 8th. The shares were sold at an average price of $350.00, for a total transaction of $525,000.00. Following the transaction, the chief financial officer owned 2,906 shares in the company, valued at $1,017,100. This trade represents a 34.04% decrease in their ownership of the stock. Additional details regarding this sale are available in the official SEC disclosure. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. In the last 90 days, insiders sold 24,491 shares of company stock worth $7,966,227. 0.48% of the stock is currently owned by insiders.

Institutional Investors Weigh In On F5

A number of institutional investors have recently made changes to their positions in FFIV. Barclays PLC grew its position in shares of F5 by 51.7% during the third quarter. Barclays PLC now owns 310,368 shares of the network technology company’s stock worth $100,308,000 after acquiring an additional 105,738 shares during the last quarter. Convergence Investment Partners LLC boosted its stake in F5 by 128.1% during the 3rd quarter. Convergence Investment Partners LLC now owns 7,931 shares of the network technology company’s stock valued at $2,563,000 after purchasing an additional 4,454 shares during the period. Alberta Investment Management Corp grew its position in F5 by 173.3% in the 3rd quarter. Alberta Investment Management Corp now owns 8,200 shares of the network technology company’s stock worth $2,650,000 after purchasing an additional 5,200 shares during the last quarter. JPMorgan Chase & Co. increased its stake in shares of F5 by 11.5% in the third quarter. JPMorgan Chase & Co. now owns 381,350 shares of the network technology company’s stock valued at $123,249,000 after purchasing an additional 39,445 shares during the period. Finally, HighTower Advisors LLC bought a new stake in shares of F5 during the third quarter valued at approximately $1,571,000. 90.66% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors.

F5 Stock Down 2.2%

The firm has a market capitalization of $21.90 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 31.84, a P/E/G ratio of 9.13 and a beta of 1.00. The company has a 50-day moving average price of $323.21 and a 200-day moving average price of $284.21.

F5 (NASDAQ:FFIV) last posted its earnings results on Tuesday, April 28th. The network technology company reported $3.90 EPS for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $3.47 by $0.43. F5 had a return on equity of 21.50% and a net margin of 21.96%.The firm had revenue of $811.70 million for the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $783.82 million. During the same period last year, the firm earned $3.42 EPS. The firm’s revenue was up 11.0% compared to the same quarter last year. F5 has set its Q3 2026 guidance at 3.910-4.030 EPS and its FY 2026 guidance at 16.250-16.550 EPS. As a group, analysts forecast that F5, Inc. will post 12.79 earnings per share for the current year.

F5 Company 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.