F5 (NASDAQ:FFIV) Posts Quarterly Earnings Results, Beats Expectations By $0.16 EPS

F5 (NASDAQ:FFIV) announced its quarterly earnings data on Tuesday. The network technology company reported $4.42 EPS for the quarter, beating analysts’ consensus estimates of $4.26 by $0.16, FiscalAI reports. The company had revenue of $917.43 million for the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $884.03 million. F5 had a net margin of 21.95% and a return on equity of 21.54%.

F5 Price Performance

Shares of NASDAQ FFIV traded down $2.24 during midday trading on Tuesday, hitting $459.36. 1,557,367 shares of the company’s stock were exchanged, compared to its average volume of 709,928. F5 has a twelve month low of $223.76 and a twelve month high of $483.30. The firm has a market cap of $26.01 billion, a P/E ratio of 36.57, a PEG ratio of 4.31 and a beta of 1.03. The stock’s 50 day moving average price is $429.09 and its 200-day moving average price is $360.44.

Analysts Set New Price Targets

Several equities analysts have issued reports on FFIV shares. Needham & Company LLC restated a “hold” rating on shares of F5 in a research note on Tuesday, July 28th. JPMorgan Chase & Co. upped their price target 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. Barclays upped their price target on F5 from $386.00 to $397.00 and gave the stock an “equal weight” rating in a research note on Tuesday, July 28th. Royal Bank Of Canada increased their price objective on F5 from $508.00 to $525.00 and gave the stock an “outperform” rating in a research report on Monday, October 12th. Finally, Zacks Research downgraded F5 from a “strong-buy” rating to a “hold” rating in a research note on Monday, July 27th. Five research analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating, five have issued a Hold rating and one has issued a Sell rating to the stock. Based on data from MarketBeat, F5 has an average rating of “Hold” and an average price target of $426.00.

Insiders Place Their Bets

In related news, Director Nikhil Mehta sold 4,000 shares of F5 stock in a transaction dated Thursday, July 30th. The stock was sold at an average price of $388.95, for a total value of $1,555,800.00. Following the transaction, the director owned 7,043 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $2,739,374.85. This trade represents a 36.22% decrease in their position. The sale was disclosed in a document filed with the SEC, which can be accessed through this hyperlink. Also, EVP Thomas Fountain sold 1,208 shares of F5 stock in a transaction on Wednesday, August 5th. The shares were sold at an average price of $414.63, for a total value of $500,873.04. Following the transaction, the executive vice president owned 8,060 shares in the company, valued at $3,341,917.80. This represents a 13.03% decrease in their position. 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 ninety days, insiders sold 16,829 shares of company stock worth $6,815,302. Corporate insiders own 0.48% of the company’s stock.

F5 Company Profile

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.