Allstate Corp Boosts Stake in F5, Inc. $FFIV

Allstate Corp grew its stake in F5, Inc. (NASDAQ:FFIV) by 96.2% in the fourth quarter, according to the company in its most recent Form 13F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The fund owned 4,216 shares of the network technology company’s stock after buying an additional 2,067 shares during the period. Allstate Corp’s holdings in F5 were worth $1,076,000 at the end of the most recent quarter.

Other hedge funds and other institutional investors have also made changes to their positions in the company. Barclays PLC raised 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 last quarter. Convergence Investment Partners LLC raised 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 last quarter. Alberta Investment Management Corp raised 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 last quarter. JPMorgan Chase & Co. raised its holdings in shares of F5 by 11.5% in the third quarter. JPMorgan Chase & Co. now owns 381,350 shares of the network technology company’s stock worth $123,249,000 after buying an additional 39,445 shares during the last quarter. Finally, HighTower Advisors LLC purchased a new position in shares of F5 in the third quarter worth $1,571,000. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 90.66% of the company’s stock.

Insider Buying and Selling at F5

In related news, CFO Edward Cooper Werner sold 1,500 shares of the stock in a transaction dated Friday, May 8th. The shares were sold at an average price of $350.00, for a total value of $525,000.00. Following the sale, the chief financial officer directly owned 2,906 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $1,017,100. This represents a 34.04% decrease in their position. The sale was disclosed in a legal filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available at this hyperlink. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Also, CEO Francois Locoh-Donou sold 3,783 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction dated Tuesday, May 5th. The stock was sold at an average price of $337.39, for a total transaction of $1,276,346.37. Following the sale, the chief executive officer directly owned 146,989 shares in the company, valued at $49,592,618.71. This represents a 2.51% 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. Over the last 90 days, insiders sold 24,491 shares of company stock worth $7,966,227. Company insiders own 0.48% of the company’s stock.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

A number of analysts have recently weighed in on FFIV shares. Evercore upgraded shares of F5 from an “in-line” rating to an “outperform” rating and set a $475.00 price objective on the stock in a research note on Monday, May 18th. Barclays increased their price objective on shares of F5 from $292.00 to $386.00 and gave the stock an “equal weight” rating in a research note on Friday. JPMorgan Chase & Co. increased their price objective on shares of F5 from $355.00 to $365.00 and gave the stock an “overweight” rating in a research note on Wednesday, April 29th. Bank of America increased their price objective on shares of F5 from $250.00 to $300.00 and gave the stock an “underperform” rating in a research note on Tuesday. Finally, Weiss Ratings upgraded shares of F5 from a “hold (c+)” rating to a “buy (b-)” rating in a research report on Monday, March 30th. Six investment analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating, five have assigned a Hold rating and one has issued a Sell rating to the stock. Based on data from MarketBeat, the company currently has a consensus rating of “Hold” and a consensus target price of $379.89.

F5 Stock Up 0.0%

NASDAQ FFIV opened at $383.45 on Friday. F5, Inc. has a 52 week low of $223.76 and a 52 week high of $399.59. The stock has a market capitalization of $21.63 billion, a PE ratio of 31.46, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 8.82 and a beta of 1.00. The firm has a 50 day moving average of $327.19 and a two-hundred day moving average of $285.86.

F5 (NASDAQ:FFIV) last released its quarterly earnings results 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. F5 had a net margin of 21.96% and a return on equity of 21.50%. The firm had revenue of $811.70 million during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $783.82 million. During the same quarter in the prior year, the firm earned $3.42 EPS. F5’s revenue for the quarter 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. On average, equities research analysts expect 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.