F5 (NASDAQ:FFIV) Receives “Outperform” Rating from Royal Bank Of Canada

Royal Bank Of Canada restated their outperform rating on shares of F5 (NASDAQ:FFIV) in a report issued on Friday morning,Benzinga reports. They currently have a $425.00 price objective on the network technology company’s stock.

FFIV has been the subject of a number of other reports. Morgan Stanley boosted their price target on F5 from $340.00 to $380.00 and gave the company an “equal weight” rating in a report on Wednesday, May 20th. Weiss Ratings upgraded F5 from a “hold (c+)” rating to a “buy (b-)” rating in a report on Monday, March 30th. Barclays reiterated an “overweight” rating on shares of F5 in a report on Tuesday. Needham & Company LLC reiterated a “hold” rating on shares of F5 in a report on Wednesday, April 29th. Finally, JPMorgan Chase & Co. increased their target price on F5 from $355.00 to $365.00 and gave the stock an “overweight” rating in a research note on Wednesday, April 29th. Six equities research analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating, five have issued a Hold rating and one has given a Sell rating to the company. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, the stock currently has a consensus rating of “Hold” and an average target price of $379.89.

F5 Stock Performance

Shares of FFIV stock opened at $383.45 on Friday. The stock’s 50-day simple moving average is $327.19 and its 200-day simple moving average is $285.86. The firm has a market capitalization of $21.63 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 31.46, a PEG ratio of 8.82 and a beta of 1.00. F5 has a fifty-two week low of $223.76 and a fifty-two week high of $399.59.

F5 (NASDAQ:FFIV) last issued its earnings results on Tuesday, April 28th. The network technology company reported $3.90 EPS for the quarter, beating 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 for the quarter was up 11.0% on a year-over-year basis. During the same quarter in the prior year, the firm 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. As a group, equities analysts forecast that F5 will post 12.79 earnings per share for the current year.

Insider Activity

In other news, EVP Thomas Dean Fountain sold 1,328 shares of the business’s 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 transaction, the executive vice president directly owned 8,060 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $2,664,474.80. The trade was a 14.15% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The transaction was disclosed in a legal filing with the SEC, which is available through the SEC website. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Also, CTO Kunal Anand sold 3,123 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction on Monday, May 4th. The stock was sold at an average price of $322.33, for a total value of $1,006,636.59. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief technology officer directly owned 12,194 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $3,930,492.02. This trade represents a 20.39% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The SEC filing for this sale provides additional information. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Insiders sold a total of 24,491 shares of company stock valued at $7,966,227 in the last 90 days. Insiders own 0.48% of the company’s stock.

Hedge Funds Weigh In On F5

A number of institutional investors have recently made changes to their positions in FFIV. Jericho Capital Asset Management L.P. acquired a new position in shares of F5 in the fourth quarter worth $579,699,000. Northwestern Mutual Wealth Management Co. raised its holdings in shares of F5 by 15,103.5% in the fourth quarter. Northwestern Mutual Wealth Management Co. now owns 1,170,216 shares of the network technology company’s stock worth $298,709,000 after acquiring an additional 1,162,519 shares during the last quarter. First Trust Advisors LP grew its position in shares of F5 by 68.5% in the fourth quarter. First Trust Advisors LP now owns 2,753,652 shares of the network technology company’s stock valued at $702,897,000 after purchasing an additional 1,119,291 shares during the period. Norges Bank purchased a new stake in shares of F5 in the fourth quarter valued at $205,706,000. Finally, Deutsche Bank AG grew its position in shares of F5 by 175.2% in the fourth quarter. Deutsche Bank AG now owns 958,947 shares of the network technology company’s stock valued at $244,781,000 after purchasing an additional 610,437 shares during the period. 90.66% of the stock is owned by institutional investors and hedge funds.

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.