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

F5, Inc. (NASDAQ:FFIV)’s share price reached a new 52-week high during trading on Tuesday after Morgan Stanley raised their price target on the stock from $340.00 to $380.00. Morgan Stanley currently has an equal weight rating on the stock. F5 traded as high as $385.00 and last traded at $379.74, with a volume of 827242 shares traded. The stock had previously closed at $362.58.

A number of other equities research analysts have also recently weighed in on the company. Weiss Ratings raised F5 from a “hold (c+)” rating to a “buy (b-)” rating in a report on Monday, March 30th. Evercore raised F5 from an “in-line” rating to an “outperform” rating and set a $475.00 price target for the company in a report on Monday. Needham & Company LLC reaffirmed a “hold” rating on shares of F5 in a report on Wednesday, April 29th. Barclays raised their price target on F5 from $283.00 to $292.00 and gave the company an “equal weight” rating in a report on Wednesday, April 29th. Finally, Piper Sandler reaffirmed an “overweight” rating on shares of F5 in a report on Wednesday, April 29th. Six investment analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating, five have given a Hold rating and one has given a Sell rating to the company. According to MarketBeat.com, F5 currently has a consensus rating of “Hold” and an average target price of $353.00.

Insider Buying and Selling

In other news, EVP Thomas Dean Fountain sold 1,328 shares of F5 stock in a transaction on Tuesday, May 5th. The stock was sold at an average price of $330.58, for a total value of $439,010.24. Following the completion of the sale, the executive vice president directly 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 position. The transaction was disclosed in a filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is accessible through this hyperlink. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Also, CEO Francois Locoh-Donou sold 3,783 shares of F5 stock in a transaction on Tuesday, May 5th. The shares were sold at an average price of $337.39, for a total value of $1,276,346.37. Following the completion of the sale, the chief executive officer directly owned 146,989 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $49,592,618.71. This trade represents a 2.51% decrease in their ownership of the stock. 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 27,558 shares of company stock worth $8,832,379. 0.48% of the stock is currently owned by company insiders.

Institutional Investors Weigh In On F5

Several hedge funds and other institutional investors have recently made changes to their positions in the company. Barclays PLC lifted its holdings in shares of F5 by 51.7% in the third quarter. Barclays PLC now owns 310,368 shares of the network technology company’s stock valued at $100,308,000 after purchasing an additional 105,738 shares in the last quarter. Convergence Investment Partners LLC lifted its holdings in shares of F5 by 128.1% in the third 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 in the last quarter. Alberta Investment Management Corp lifted its holdings in shares of F5 by 173.3% in the third quarter. Alberta Investment Management Corp now owns 8,200 shares of the network technology company’s stock valued at $2,650,000 after purchasing an additional 5,200 shares in the last quarter. JPMorgan Chase & Co. lifted its holdings 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 in the last quarter. Finally, HighTower Advisors LLC bought a new position in shares of F5 in the 3rd quarter valued at about $1,571,000. 90.66% of the stock is owned by institutional investors and hedge funds.

F5 Stock Performance

The company has a market cap of $21.58 billion, a P/E ratio of 31.37, a PEG ratio of 8.82 and a beta of 1.00. The company has a fifty day moving average price of $312.72 and a two-hundred day moving average price of $279.15.

F5 (NASDAQ:FFIV) last released its earnings results on Tuesday, April 28th. The network technology company reported $3.90 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, topping 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 business had revenue of $811.70 million for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $783.82 million. During the same quarter in the prior year, the company posted $3.42 earnings per share. F5’s revenue was up 11.0% on a year-over-year basis. F5 has set its Q3 2026 guidance at 3.910-4.030 EPS and its FY 2026 guidance at 16.250-16.550 EPS. Research analysts anticipate that F5, Inc. will post 12.79 EPS 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.