North Dakota State Investment Board Takes Position in F5, Inc. $FFIV

North Dakota State Investment Board bought a new stake in F5, Inc. (NASDAQ:FFIV) during the fourth quarter, according to the company in its most recent 13F filing with the SEC. The institutional investor bought 1,982 shares of the network technology company’s stock, valued at approximately $506,000.

A number of other institutional investors have also modified their holdings of the stock. Pacific Sage Partners LLC raised its stake in shares of F5 by 0.6% in the 4th quarter. Pacific Sage Partners LLC now owns 7,122 shares of the network technology company’s stock valued at $1,818,000 after purchasing an additional 40 shares in the last quarter. Coldstream Capital Management Inc. raised its stake in shares of F5 by 4.5% in the 3rd quarter. Coldstream Capital Management Inc. now owns 1,047 shares of the network technology company’s stock valued at $338,000 after purchasing an additional 45 shares in the last quarter. Alps Advisors Inc. raised its stake in shares of F5 by 3.8% in the 3rd quarter. Alps Advisors Inc. now owns 1,414 shares of the network technology company’s stock valued at $457,000 after purchasing an additional 52 shares in the last quarter. Oregon Public Employees Retirement Fund raised its stake in shares of F5 by 0.8% in the 4th quarter. Oregon Public Employees Retirement Fund now owns 6,569 shares of the network technology company’s stock valued at $1,677,000 after purchasing an additional 52 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Laird Norton Wetherby Wealth Management LLC raised its stake in shares of F5 by 5.0% in the 3rd quarter. Laird Norton Wetherby Wealth Management LLC now owns 1,180 shares of the network technology company’s stock valued at $381,000 after purchasing an additional 56 shares in the last quarter. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 90.66% of the company’s stock.

Insider Activity

In related news, CTO Kunal Anand sold 3,123 shares of the stock in a transaction that occurred on Monday, May 4th. The shares were sold at an average price of $322.33, for a total transaction of $1,006,636.59. Following the completion of 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. The transaction was disclosed in a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available at the SEC website. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Also, EVP Thomas Dean Fountain sold 1,328 shares of the 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 sale, the executive vice president directly owned 8,060 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $2,664,474.80. This represents a 14.15% 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. Insiders sold 24,491 shares of company stock valued at $7,966,227 over the last quarter. Insiders own 0.48% of the company’s stock.

Analyst Ratings Changes

A number of brokerages have recently issued reports on FFIV. Morgan Stanley upped their target price on shares of F5 from $340.00 to $380.00 and gave the company an “equal weight” rating in a research note on Wednesday. Evercore raised shares of F5 from an “in-line” rating to an “outperform” rating and set a $475.00 price objective for the company in a research report on Monday. The Goldman Sachs Group boosted their price objective on shares of F5 from $285.00 to $320.00 and gave the company a “neutral” rating in a research report on Wednesday, January 28th. Piper Sandler reaffirmed an “overweight” rating on shares of F5 in a research report on Wednesday, April 29th. Finally, Needham & Company LLC reaffirmed a “hold” rating on shares of F5 in a research report on Wednesday, April 29th. Six research analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating, five have assigned a Hold rating and one has assigned a Sell rating to the company’s stock. According to MarketBeat.com, the company presently has a consensus rating of “Hold” and a consensus target price of $353.00.

F5 Price Performance

F5 stock opened at $383.70 on Friday. The firm has a 50 day simple moving average of $314.67 and a 200-day simple moving average of $280.07. The stock has a market capitalization of $21.65 billion, a PE ratio of 31.48, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 8.79 and a beta of 1.00. F5, Inc. has a 12-month low of $223.76 and a 12-month high of $391.25.

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 analysts’ consensus estimates of $3.47 by $0.43. The firm had revenue of $811.70 million for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $783.82 million. F5 had a return on equity of 21.50% and a net margin of 21.96%.F5’s revenue was up 11.0% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same period in the previous year, the company earned $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, analysts forecast that F5, Inc. will post 12.79 earnings per share for the current fiscal 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.