F5 (NASDAQ:FFIV) CTO Kunal Anand Sells 1,989 Shares of Company Stock

F5, Inc. (NASDAQ:FFIV) CTO Kunal Anand sold 1,989 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction on Tuesday, November 3rd. The stock was sold at an average price of $324.06, for a total transaction of $644,555.34. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief technology officer owned 14,578 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $4,724,146.68. This trade represents a 12.01% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The sale was disclosed in a filing with the SEC, which is available at the SEC website. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan.

F5 Trading Down 5.5%

NASDAQ:FFIV opened at $311.74 on Friday. The company has a 50-day moving average price of $423.65 and a 200-day moving average price of $363.77. F5, Inc. has a 12 month low of $223.76 and a 12 month high of $483.30. The company has a current ratio of 1.73, a quick ratio of 1.59 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.23. The stock has a market cap of $17.65 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 24.88, a P/E/G ratio of 2.92 and a beta of 1.07.

F5 (NASDAQ:FFIV) last announced its quarterly earnings results on Tuesday, October 27th. The network technology company reported $4.42 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $4.26 by $0.16. F5 had a net margin of 21.14% and a return on equity of 21.00%. The company had revenue of $917.43 million for the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $884.03 million. During the same quarter in the previous year, the company earned $4.39 earnings per share. F5’s quarterly revenue was up 13.2% on a year-over-year basis. Equities analysts predict that F5, Inc. will post 14.19 EPS for the current year.

F5 declared that its board has authorized a share repurchase program on Tuesday, October 27th that permits the company to buy back $1.50 billion in outstanding shares. This buyback authorization permits the network technology company to repurchase shares of its stock through open market purchases. Stock buyback programs are generally a sign that the company’s board believes its stock is undervalued.

Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth

FFIV has been the subject of a number of research analyst reports. Zacks Research cut F5 from a “strong-buy” rating to a “hold” rating in a research note on Monday, July 27th. Wall Street Zen raised F5 from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating in a research note on Saturday, August 1st. Evercore reiterated an “outperform” rating on shares of F5 in a report on Wednesday, October 28th. Barclays reiterated a “mixed” rating on shares of F5 in a report on Wednesday, October 28th. Finally, Morgan Stanley raised their price objective on F5 from $415.00 to $448.00 and gave the company an “equal weight” rating in a research report on Wednesday, October 28th. Four analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating, seven have issued a Hold rating and one has assigned a Sell rating to the company. According to data from MarketBeat, the stock has an average rating of “Hold” and an average price target of $443.00.

Key F5 News

Here are the key news stories impacting F5 this week:

• Negative Sentiment: Seven insiders, including F5’s CFO, CTOs and EVPs, sold shares in transactions dated November 3–4. The sales totaled about $7.2 million; several executives reduced their individual holdings substantially. The cluster of sales may weigh on sentiment, although the pre-arranged plans temper the signal. See the SEC filings: Read More., Read More., Read More., Read More., Read More., Read More. and Read More..

Institutional Trading of F5

Hedge funds have recently made changes to their positions in the stock. Persistent Asset Partners Ltd purchased a new position in shares of F5 in the 2nd quarter worth $36,000. Bell Investment Advisors Inc bought a new stake in shares of F5 in the second quarter worth $49,000. Elevation Wealth Partners LLC grew its holdings in shares of F5 by 373.1% in the second quarter. Elevation Wealth Partners LLC now owns 123 shares of the network technology company’s stock worth $51,000 after acquiring an additional 97 shares during the period. Jacobi Capital Management LLC purchased a new stake in F5 during the third quarter valued at $53,000. Finally, Root Financial Partners LLC increased its position in F5 by 91.4% during the first quarter. Root Financial Partners LLC now owns 201 shares of the network technology company’s stock valued at $58,000 after acquiring an additional 96 shares during the last quarter. 90.66% of the stock is owned by institutional investors.

F5 Company Profile

F5, Inc (NASDAQ: FFIV) provides application delivery, security and traffic management solutions for enterprises, service providers and public-sector organizations. Its offerings are designed to help customers secure, optimize and manage applications and application programming interfaces (APIs) across data centers, private and public clouds, and edge environments.

The company’s portfolio includes BIG-IP software and appliances, NGINX application delivery and web server technologies, and F5 Distributed Cloud services.