F5 (NASDAQ:FFIV) Stock: Insider Edward Cooper Werner Sells 599 Shares

F5, Inc. (NASDAQ:FFIV) CFO Edward Werner sold 599 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction dated Tuesday, November 3rd. The stock was sold at an average price of $324.06, for a total transaction of $194,111.94. Following the completion of the sale, the chief financial officer owned 2,851 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $923,895.06. This trade represents a 17.36% decrease in their position. The transaction was disclosed in a legal filing with the SEC, which is accessible through this hyperlink. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan.

F5 Trading Down 5.5%

Shares of FFIV stock traded down $17.98 on Thursday, reaching $311.74. 1,380,704 shares of the company’s stock were exchanged, compared to its average volume of 751,325. F5, Inc. has a 52 week low of $223.76 and a 52 week 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 capitalization of $17.65 billion, a PE ratio of 24.88, a P/E/G ratio of 2.94 and a beta of 1.07. The company’s fifty day simple moving average is $425.41 and its 200 day simple moving average is $363.56.

F5 (NASDAQ:FFIV) last issued its earnings results on Tuesday, October 27th. The network technology company reported $4.42 EPS for the quarter, topping analysts’ consensus estimates of $4.26 by $0.16. The business had revenue of $917.43 million for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $884.03 million. F5 had a net margin of 21.14% and a return on equity of 21.00%. The company’s quarterly revenue was up 13.2% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same period last year, the company posted $4.39 earnings per share. As a group, analysts forecast that F5, Inc. will post 14.19 EPS for the current year.

F5 declared that its board has approved a stock buyback program on Tuesday, October 27th that authorizes the company to repurchase $1.50 billion in shares. This repurchase authorization authorizes the network technology company to buy shares of its stock through open market purchases. Share repurchase programs are often an indication that the company’s board believes its stock is undervalued.

Institutional Trading of F5

Several large investors have recently made changes to their positions in FFIV. Persistent Asset Partners Ltd purchased a new stake in F5 in the second quarter valued at $36,000. Bell Investment Advisors Inc purchased a new position in shares of F5 during the 2nd quarter valued at about $49,000. Jacobi Capital Management LLC purchased a new position in shares of F5 during the 3rd quarter valued at about $53,000. Elevation Wealth Partners LLC lifted its holdings in shares of F5 by 373.1% in the 2nd quarter. Elevation Wealth Partners LLC now owns 123 shares of the network technology company’s stock valued at $51,000 after buying an additional 97 shares during the period. Finally, Root Financial Partners LLC lifted its holdings in shares of F5 by 91.4% in the 1st quarter. Root Financial Partners LLC now owns 201 shares of the network technology company’s stock valued at $58,000 after buying an additional 96 shares during the period. 90.66% of the stock is owned by hedge funds and other institutional investors.

Key Headlines Impacting F5

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..

Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth

A number of equities research analysts recently commented on the stock. JPMorgan Chase & Co. increased their target price on shares of F5 from $500.00 to $515.00 and gave the company an “overweight” rating in a research report on Tuesday, July 28th. Wall Street Zen raised F5 from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating in a research report on Saturday, August 1st. Morgan Stanley upped their price target on F5 from $415.00 to $448.00 and gave the stock an “equal weight” rating in a research report on Wednesday, October 28th. Needham & Company LLC reiterated a “hold” rating on shares of F5 in a report on Tuesday, July 28th. Finally, Evercore reissued an “outperform” rating on shares of F5 in a research report on Wednesday, October 28th. Four analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating, seven have given a Hold rating and one has given a Sell rating to the company. Based on data from MarketBeat, the stock presently has an average rating of “Hold” and an average price target of $443.00.

About F5

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.