Empirical Financial Services LLC d.b.a. Empirical Wealth Management Makes New $407,000 Investment in F5, Inc. $FFIV

Empirical Financial Services LLC d.b.a. Empirical Wealth Management bought a new stake in shares of F5, Inc. (NASDAQ:FFIV) during the 1st quarter, according to the company in its most recent 13F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The institutional investor bought 1,406 shares of the network technology company’s stock, valued at approximately $407,000.

Other institutional investors have also recently made changes to their positions in the company. Chicago Partners Investment Group LLC boosted its holdings in shares of F5 by 136.0% during the 1st quarter. Chicago Partners Investment Group LLC now owns 2,412 shares of the network technology company’s stock valued at $751,000 after acquiring an additional 1,390 shares during the last quarter. Lifeworks Advisors LLC raised its holdings in shares of F5 by 32.4% during the first quarter. Lifeworks Advisors LLC now owns 19,679 shares of the network technology company’s stock valued at $5,694,000 after purchasing an additional 4,812 shares during the last quarter. Procyon Advisors LLC lifted its position in F5 by 14.8% during the first quarter. Procyon Advisors LLC now owns 8,969 shares of the network technology company’s stock valued at $2,595,000 after purchasing an additional 1,159 shares during the period. Fifth Third Bancorp lifted its position in F5 by 246.4% during the first quarter. Fifth Third Bancorp now owns 9,917 shares of the network technology company’s stock valued at $2,869,000 after purchasing an additional 7,054 shares during the period. Finally, Lipe & Dalton lifted its position in F5 by 37.4% during the first quarter. Lipe & Dalton now owns 4,850 shares of the network technology company’s stock valued at $1,403,000 after purchasing an additional 1,320 shares during the period. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 90.66% of the company’s stock.

F5 Trading Up 1.4%

FFIV opened at $409.10 on Friday. The company has a market cap of $23.08 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 33.56, a PEG ratio of 4.80 and a beta of 1.03. The company’s 50 day moving average is $396.16 and its 200 day moving average is $324.43. F5, Inc. has a 12-month low of $223.76 and a 12-month high of $435.00.

F5 (NASDAQ:FFIV) last announced 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. F5 had a net margin of 21.96% and a return on equity of 21.50%. The business had revenue of $811.70 million during the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $783.82 million. During the same period in the prior year, the company earned $3.42 earnings per share. The firm’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. As a group, analysts predict that F5, Inc. will post 12.78 EPS for the current fiscal year.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

FFIV has been the subject of a number of research analyst reports. Barclays lifted their target price on shares of F5 from $292.00 to $386.00 and gave the stock an “equal weight” rating in a research report on Friday, May 29th. Evercore raised F5 from an “in-line” rating to an “outperform” rating and set a $475.00 price target on the stock in a report on Monday, May 18th. Bank of America raised their price target on F5 from $250.00 to $300.00 and gave the stock an “underperform” rating in a research note on Tuesday, May 26th. Royal Bank Of Canada reaffirmed an “outperform” rating on shares of F5 in a report on Thursday. Finally, Morgan Stanley upped their price objective on F5 from $340.00 to $380.00 and gave the company an “equal weight” rating in a research report on Wednesday, May 20th. One analyst has rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, five have assigned a Buy rating, four have assigned a Hold rating and one has issued a Sell rating to the company. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, the stock currently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus target price of $382.67.

Insider Activity

In other news, Director Elizabeth Buse sold 1,000 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction on Wednesday, June 10th. The shares were sold at an average price of $399.35, for a total transaction of $399,350.00. Following the completion of the sale, the director owned 4,947 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $1,975,584.45. The trade was a 16.82% decrease in their position. The sale was disclosed in a legal filing with the SEC, which is available at this link. Also, CEO Francois Locoh-Donou sold 3,783 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction on Tuesday, May 5th. The stock was 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 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. Over the last 90 days, insiders have sold 22,579 shares of company stock worth $7,836,860. Company insiders own 0.48% of the company’s stock.

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.