F5 (NASDAQ:FFIV) Price Target Raised to $270.00 at Evercore ISI

F5 (NASDAQ:FFIV) had its price target boosted by analysts at Evercore ISI from $240.00 to $270.00 in a report issued on Friday,Benzinga reports. The brokerage currently has an “in-line” rating on the network technology company’s stock. Evercore ISI’s price objective points to a potential upside of 1.59% from the company’s current price.

A number of other equities analysts have also issued reports on FFIV. JPMorgan Chase & Co. boosted their target price on shares of F5 from $225.00 to $250.00 and gave the stock a “neutral” rating in a research report on Tuesday, October 29th. StockNews.com raised shares of F5 from a “buy” rating to a “strong-buy” rating in a research report on Tuesday, October 29th. Piper Sandler increased their target price on shares of F5 from $186.00 to $246.00 and gave the company a “neutral” rating in a research note on Tuesday, October 29th. The Goldman Sachs Group boosted their price target on F5 from $212.00 to $241.00 and gave the company a “neutral” rating in a research note on Tuesday, October 29th. Finally, Morgan Stanley raised their price objective on F5 from $230.00 to $262.00 and gave the stock an “equal weight” rating in a research report on Tuesday, December 17th. Seven investment analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating, two have issued a buy rating and one has assigned a strong buy rating to the stock. According to MarketBeat.com, the company presently has a consensus rating of “Hold” and an average price target of $246.00.

F5 Stock Performance

Shares of NASDAQ FFIV opened at $265.78 on Friday. F5 has a 52 week low of $159.01 and a 52 week high of $267.74. The business has a 50 day simple moving average of $252.71 and a 200 day simple moving average of $219.96. The stock has a market cap of $15.58 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 27.85, a PEG ratio of 3.44 and a beta of 1.06.

F5 (NASDAQ:FFIV) last posted its quarterly earnings data on Monday, October 28th. The network technology company reported $3.67 earnings per share for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of $3.45 by $0.22. The business had revenue of $747.00 million during the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $730.43 million. F5 had a return on equity of 20.80% and a net margin of 20.13%. The firm’s revenue was up 5.7% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same quarter in the previous year, the firm earned $2.76 EPS. On average, analysts predict that F5 will post 11.01 EPS for the current year.

F5 declared that its Board of Directors has initiated a share buyback program on Monday, October 28th that authorizes the company to repurchase $1.00 billion in shares. This repurchase authorization authorizes the network technology company to purchase up to 7.9% of its shares through open market purchases. Shares repurchase programs are often an indication that the company’s management believes its stock is undervalued.

Insider Buying and Selling

In other F5 news, Director Alan Higginson sold 825 shares of the stock in a transaction on Tuesday, November 19th. The stock was sold at an average price of $239.77, for a total transaction of $197,810.25. Following the completion of the transaction, the director now directly owns 9,882 shares in the company, valued at $2,369,407.14. This represents a 7.71 % decrease in their ownership of the stock. The transaction was disclosed in a legal filing with the SEC, which can be accessed through this link. Also, CFO Francis J. Pelzer sold 600 shares of F5 stock in a transaction on Monday, October 21st. The shares were sold at an average price of $217.67, for a total value of $130,602.00. Following the transaction, the chief financial officer now directly owns 29,825 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $6,492,007.75. The trade was a 1.97 % decrease in their ownership of the stock. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. 0.58% of the stock is owned by corporate insiders.

Institutional Trading of F5

Several large investors have recently added to or reduced their stakes in FFIV. Chase Investment Counsel Corp bought a new stake in F5 during the 3rd quarter worth approximately $4,726,000. JPMorgan Chase & Co. boosted its stake in F5 by 24.7% in the third quarter. JPMorgan Chase & Co. now owns 409,130 shares of the network technology company’s stock worth $90,090,000 after purchasing an additional 81,005 shares in the last quarter. Bank of Montreal Can grew its holdings in shares of F5 by 3.9% during the second quarter. Bank of Montreal Can now owns 308,159 shares of the network technology company’s stock worth $53,247,000 after purchasing an additional 11,525 shares during the last quarter. New York State Common Retirement Fund increased its stake in shares of F5 by 14.3% in the third quarter. New York State Common Retirement Fund now owns 70,536 shares of the network technology company’s stock valued at $15,532,000 after buying an additional 8,800 shares in the last quarter. Finally, GAMMA Investing LLC raised its holdings in shares of F5 by 36.3% in the fourth quarter. GAMMA Investing LLC now owns 2,144 shares of the network technology company’s stock valued at $539,000 after buying an additional 571 shares during the last quarter. 90.66% of the stock is owned by institutional investors.

About F5

F5, Inc provides multi-cloud application security and delivery solutions in the United States, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and the Asia Pacific region. The company’s distributed cloud services enable its customers to deploy, secure, and operate applications in any architecture, from on-premises to the public cloud.