Virtus Advisers LLC Invests $582,000 in F5, Inc. $FFIV

Virtus Advisers LLC bought a new position in F5, Inc. (NASDAQ:FFIV) during the second quarter, HoldingsChannel reports. The fund bought 1,400 shares of the network technology company’s stock, valued at approximately $582,000.

Several other hedge funds have also bought and sold shares of the stock. Norges Bank purchased a new stake in F5 in the 4th quarter worth approximately $205,706,000. Jefferies Financial Group Inc. lifted its holdings in F5 by 127.0% during the fourth quarter. Jefferies Financial Group Inc. now owns 34,529 shares of the network technology company’s stock valued at $8,814,000 after purchasing an additional 19,315 shares in the last quarter. iA Global Asset Management Inc. purchased a new position in F5 during the first quarter valued at approximately $6,469,000. William Blair Investment Management LLC purchased a new position in F5 during the fourth quarter valued at approximately $140,460,000. Finally, Tredje AP fonden boosted its position in shares of F5 by 98.2% in the fourth quarter. Tredje AP fonden now owns 7,683 shares of the network technology company’s stock worth $1,961,000 after purchasing an additional 3,807 shares during the period. Institutional investors own 90.66% of the company’s stock.

Analyst Ratings Changes

FFIV has been the subject of a number of analyst reports. Weiss Ratings upgraded F5 from a “buy (b-)” rating to a “buy (b)” rating in a research note on Tuesday, August 11th. Needham & Company LLC reaffirmed a “hold” rating on shares of F5 in a report on Tuesday, July 28th. Royal Bank Of Canada restated an “outperform” rating on shares of F5 in a research report on Thursday, July 16th. Zacks Research cut shares of F5 from a “strong-buy” rating to a “hold” rating in a research report on Monday, July 27th. Finally, Barclays upped their price objective on F5 from $386.00 to $397.00 and gave the company an “equal weight” rating in a research report on Tuesday, July 28th. Five research analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating, five have given a Hold rating and one has given a Sell rating to the stock. Based on data from MarketBeat, the stock has an average rating of “Hold” and a consensus price target of $416.62.

Insider Buying and Selling

In other news, CTO Kunal Anand sold 392 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction dated Monday, August 3rd. The shares were sold at an average price of $404.63, for a total value of $158,614.96. Following the completion of the sale, the chief technology officer owned 12,586 shares in the company, valued at approximately $5,092,673.18. The trade was a 3.02% decrease in their position. The transaction was disclosed in a document filed with the SEC, which can be accessed through this hyperlink. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Also, CEO Francois Locoh-Donou sold 3,782 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Wednesday, August 5th. The stock was sold at an average price of $412.44, for a total transaction of $1,559,848.08. Following the completion of the sale, the chief executive officer directly owned 146,989 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $60,624,143.16. The trade was a 2.51% decrease in their position. Additional details regarding this sale are available in the official SEC disclosure. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Insiders sold 15,699 shares of company stock valued at $6,316,411 over the last quarter. 0.48% of the stock is owned by company insiders.

F5 Stock Down 1.3%

Shares of NASDAQ FFIV opened at $377.79 on Friday. F5, Inc. has a twelve month low of $223.76 and a twelve month high of $435.00. The firm has a market cap of $21.39 billion, a PE ratio of 30.08, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 3.74 and a beta of 1.03. The business has a fifty day simple moving average of $404.06 and a two-hundred day simple moving average of $347.60.

F5 (NASDAQ:FFIV) last posted its quarterly earnings results on Monday, July 27th. The network technology company reported $4.73 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, topping analysts’ consensus estimates of $4.00 by $0.73. The business had revenue of $865.08 million for the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $834.60 million. F5 had a return on equity of 21.54% and a net margin of 21.95%.The business’s revenue was up 10.9% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same quarter in the prior year, the company earned $4.16 EPS. F5 has set its Q4 2026 guidance at 4.140-4.260 EPS and its FY 2026 guidance at 17.210-17.330 EPS. On average, research analysts expect that F5, Inc. will post 13.65 earnings per share for the current year.

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.