Brokerages Set F5, Inc. (NASDAQ:FFIV) PT at $251.25

Shares of F5, Inc. (NASDAQ:FFIV) have earned an average rating of “Hold” from the eight analysts that are currently covering the stock, MarketBeat reports. Seven investment analysts have rated the stock with a hold recommendation and one has given a buy recommendation to the company. The average twelve-month target price among analysts that have issued a report on the stock in the last year is $251.25.

A number of analysts have commented on FFIV shares. Morgan Stanley increased their price objective on shares of F5 from $230.00 to $262.00 and gave the company an “equal weight” rating in a report on Tuesday, December 17th. The Goldman Sachs Group increased their price target on F5 from $212.00 to $241.00 and gave the company a “neutral” rating in a report on Tuesday, October 29th. Royal Bank of Canada lifted their price objective on F5 from $240.00 to $260.00 and gave the stock a “sector perform” rating in a research report on Friday, January 3rd. Evercore ISI upped their target price on F5 from $240.00 to $270.00 and gave the company an “in-line” rating in a report on Friday, January 17th. Finally, JPMorgan Chase & Co. lifted their price target on F5 from $225.00 to $250.00 and gave the stock a “neutral” rating in a report on Tuesday, October 29th.

Insider Buying and Selling at F5

In other F5 news, Director Alan Higginson sold 825 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction on Tuesday, November 19th. The stock was sold at an average price of $239.77, for a total transaction of $197,810.25. Following the transaction, the director now directly owns 9,882 shares in the company, valued at $2,369,407.14. This represents a 7.71 % decrease in their ownership of the stock. The transaction was disclosed in a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available at the SEC website. 0.58% of the stock is currently owned by corporate insiders.

Institutional Inflows and Outflows

Several hedge funds and other institutional investors have recently made changes to their positions in FFIV. Chase Investment Counsel Corp purchased a new position in shares of F5 in the 3rd quarter valued at about $4,726,000. JPMorgan Chase & Co. lifted its stake in F5 by 24.7% in the third quarter. JPMorgan Chase & Co. now owns 409,130 shares of the network technology company’s stock worth $90,090,000 after acquiring an additional 81,005 shares during the last quarter. Bank of Montreal Can grew its holdings in F5 by 3.9% during the 2nd quarter. Bank of Montreal Can now owns 308,159 shares of the network technology company’s stock worth $53,247,000 after acquiring an additional 11,525 shares in the last quarter. New York State Common Retirement Fund grew its holdings in F5 by 14.3% during the 3rd quarter. New York State Common Retirement Fund now owns 70,536 shares of the network technology company’s stock worth $15,532,000 after acquiring an additional 8,800 shares in the last quarter. Finally, GAMMA Investing LLC increased its position in shares of F5 by 36.3% in the 4th quarter. GAMMA Investing LLC now owns 2,144 shares of the network technology company’s stock valued at $539,000 after purchasing an additional 571 shares during the last quarter. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 90.66% of the company’s stock.

F5 Price Performance

Shares of F5 stock opened at $267.74 on Friday. The business has a 50 day simple moving average of $254.06 and a two-hundred day simple moving average of $222.63. The stock has a market capitalization of $15.69 billion, a P/E ratio of 28.01, a PEG ratio of 3.57 and a beta of 1.06. F5 has a 12 month low of $159.01 and a 12 month high of $267.96.

F5 (NASDAQ:FFIV) last posted its quarterly earnings data on Monday, October 28th. The network technology company reported $3.67 EPS for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $3.45 by $0.22. F5 had a return on equity of 20.80% and a net margin of 20.13%. The firm had revenue of $747.00 million during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $730.43 million. During the same period in the prior year, the company earned $2.76 EPS. The firm’s revenue was up 5.7% compared to the same quarter last year. As a group, research analysts anticipate that F5 will post 11.01 EPS for the current fiscal year.

F5 announced that its Board of Directors has initiated a share repurchase program on Monday, October 28th that allows the company to buyback $1.00 billion in shares. This buyback authorization allows the network technology company to purchase up to 7.9% of its shares through open market purchases. Shares buyback programs are generally a sign that the company’s management believes its shares are undervalued.

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.