F5 (NASDAQ:FFIV) Sets New 52-Week High on Analyst Upgrade

F5, Inc. (NASDAQ:FFIV) shares reached 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.

Other research analysts have also issued reports about the stock. Evercore upgraded shares of F5 from an “in-line” rating to an “outperform” rating and set a $475.00 price target for the company in a research report on Monday, May 18th. Piper Sandler restated an “overweight” rating on shares of F5 in a research report on Wednesday, April 29th. Barclays restated an “overweight” rating on shares of F5 in a research report on Tuesday. JPMorgan Chase & Co. boosted their price target on shares of F5 from $355.00 to $365.00 and gave the company an “overweight” rating in a research report on Wednesday, April 29th. Finally, Needham & Company LLC restated a “hold” rating on shares of F5 in a research report on Wednesday, April 29th. Seven equities research analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating, four have given a Hold rating and one has assigned a Sell rating to the stock. According to MarketBeat, the company has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average target price of $358.56.

Insider Activity at F5

In other news, EVP Chad Michael Whalen sold 6,200 shares of F5 stock in a transaction on Friday, May 8th. The shares were sold at an average price of $350.19, for a total transaction of $2,171,178.00. Following the completion of the sale, the executive vice president directly owned 20,832 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $7,295,158.08. The trade was a 22.94% decrease in their position. The transaction 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, CTO Kunal Anand sold 3,123 shares of F5 stock in a transaction on Monday, May 4th. The stock was sold at an average price of $322.33, for a total transaction of $1,006,636.59. Following the sale, the chief technology officer directly owned 12,194 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $3,930,492.02. This represents a 20.39% 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. Insiders sold a total of 24,491 shares of company stock worth $7,966,227 in the last three months. 0.48% of the stock is owned by insiders.

Institutional Inflows and Outflows

Large investors have recently modified their holdings of the stock. Barclays PLC increased 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 worth $100,308,000 after buying an additional 105,738 shares during the period. Convergence Investment Partners LLC increased 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 worth $2,563,000 after buying an additional 4,454 shares during the period. Alberta Investment Management Corp increased 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 worth $2,650,000 after buying an additional 5,200 shares during the period. JPMorgan Chase & Co. raised its stake in shares of F5 by 11.5% during the third quarter. JPMorgan Chase & Co. now owns 381,350 shares of the network technology company’s stock valued at $123,249,000 after acquiring an additional 39,445 shares during the last quarter. Finally, HighTower Advisors LLC bought a new position in shares of F5 during the third quarter valued at about $1,571,000. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 90.66% of the company’s stock.

F5 Price Performance

The stock has a market capitalization of $21.90 billion, a P/E ratio of 31.84, a P/E/G ratio of 9.13 and a beta of 1.00. The firm’s 50 day moving average price is $323.21 and its 200 day moving average price is $284.21.

F5 (NASDAQ:FFIV) last issued its quarterly earnings data 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. The firm had revenue of $811.70 million during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $783.82 million. F5 had a net margin of 21.96% and a return on equity of 21.50%. The company’s quarterly revenue was up 11.0% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same period in the prior year, the firm posted $3.42 earnings per share. F5 has set its Q3 2026 guidance at 3.910-4.030 EPS and its FY 2026 guidance at 16.250-16.550 EPS. On average, equities research analysts forecast that F5, Inc. will post 12.79 earnings per share for the current year.

About F5

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.