F5 (NASDAQ:FFIV) Price Target Raised to $310.00

F5 (NASDAQ:FFIV) had its target price hoisted by investment analysts at Morgan Stanley from $262.00 to $310.00 in a research note issued to investors on Wednesday,Benzinga reports. The brokerage presently has an “equal weight” rating on the network technology company’s stock. Morgan Stanley’s price objective points to a potential upside of 14.93% from the stock’s current price.

A number of other equities research analysts also recently issued reports on FFIV. Needham & Company LLC boosted their price target on F5 from $285.00 to $360.00 and gave the company a “buy” rating in a research note on Wednesday. StockNews.com upgraded shares of F5 from a “buy” rating to a “strong-buy” rating in a research report on Tuesday, October 29th. Barclays increased their price target on shares of F5 from $214.00 to $246.00 and gave the stock an “equal weight” rating in a research report on Tuesday, October 29th. Piper Sandler boosted their price objective on shares of F5 from $186.00 to $246.00 and gave the company a “neutral” rating in a research report on Tuesday, October 29th. Finally, JPMorgan Chase & Co. raised their target price on F5 from $225.00 to $250.00 and gave the stock a “neutral” rating in a report on Tuesday, October 29th. Seven research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating, one has given a buy rating and one has given a strong buy rating to the company. According to MarketBeat.com, F5 has a consensus rating of “Hold” and an average target price of $279.13.

F5 Stock Up 2.6 %

Shares of FFIV opened at $269.72 on Wednesday. F5 has a twelve month low of $159.01 and a twelve month high of $274.64. The company has a market capitalization of $15.81 billion, a P/E ratio of 28.21, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 3.68 and a beta of 1.06. The firm has a 50 day moving average of $256.94 and a 200 day moving average of $226.03.

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

F5 declared that its Board of Directors has approved a share buyback program on Monday, October 28th that permits the company to repurchase $1.00 billion in shares. This repurchase authorization permits the network technology company to purchase up to 7.9% of its stock through open market purchases. Stock repurchase programs are usually a sign that the company’s board 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 dated Tuesday, November 19th. The stock was sold at an average price of $239.77, for a total value of $197,810.25. Following the completion of the sale, the director now directly owns 9,882 shares in the company, valued at approximately $2,369,407.14. This trade represents a 7.71 % decrease in their ownership of the stock. The transaction was disclosed in a filing with the SEC, which can be accessed through the SEC website. 0.58% of the stock is currently owned by company insiders.

Institutional Inflows and Outflows

A number of hedge funds have recently modified their holdings of FFIV. Wedge Capital Management L L P NC acquired a new position in F5 in the third quarter valued at approximately $61,386,000. Los Angeles Capital Management LLC increased its holdings in shares of F5 by 1,681.1% during the 3rd quarter. Los Angeles Capital Management LLC now owns 285,639 shares of the network technology company’s stock valued at $62,898,000 after purchasing an additional 269,602 shares in the last quarter. Hotchkis & Wiley Capital Management LLC lifted its stake in shares of F5 by 3.6% in the 3rd quarter. Hotchkis & Wiley Capital Management LLC now owns 5,489,388 shares of the network technology company’s stock valued at $1,208,763,000 after purchasing an additional 191,020 shares during the period. Point72 Asset Management L.P. purchased a new stake in F5 during the third quarter worth $35,090,000. Finally, Geode Capital Management LLC boosted its holdings in F5 by 8.0% during the third quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC now owns 1,573,995 shares of the network technology company’s stock worth $345,560,000 after buying an additional 117,080 shares in the last quarter. 90.66% of the stock is owned by institutional investors and hedge funds.

F5 Company Profile

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.