SG Americas Securities LLC Purchases 9,726 Shares of F5, Inc. (NASDAQ:FFIV)

SG Americas Securities LLC raised its position in F5, Inc. (NASDAQ:FFIV) by 47.8% during the 4th quarter, according to the company in its most recent Form 13F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The firm owned 30,087 shares of the network technology company’s stock after buying an additional 9,726 shares during the quarter. SG Americas Securities LLC’s holdings in F5 were worth $7,566,000 at the end of the most recent reporting period.

A number of other institutional investors have also recently made changes to their positions in FFIV. Empirical Finance LLC increased its holdings in F5 by 2.3% in the 3rd quarter. Empirical Finance LLC now owns 2,049 shares of the network technology company’s stock worth $451,000 after acquiring an additional 46 shares during the last quarter. Captrust Financial Advisors raised its position in shares of F5 by 2.0% in the third quarter. Captrust Financial Advisors now owns 2,598 shares of the network technology company’s stock valued at $572,000 after purchasing an additional 50 shares during the period. First Trust Direct Indexing L.P. lifted its stake in shares of F5 by 2.9% during the 3rd quarter. First Trust Direct Indexing L.P. now owns 2,030 shares of the network technology company’s stock valued at $447,000 after buying an additional 58 shares in the last quarter. Profund Advisors LLC lifted its stake in shares of F5 by 6.3% during the 2nd quarter. Profund Advisors LLC now owns 1,185 shares of the network technology company’s stock valued at $204,000 after buying an additional 70 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Commerce Bank boosted its holdings in F5 by 3.2% in the 3rd quarter. Commerce Bank now owns 2,485 shares of the network technology company’s stock worth $547,000 after buying an additional 78 shares during the period. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 90.66% of the company’s stock.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

Several equities research analysts have issued reports on the company. Morgan Stanley increased their target price on F5 from $230.00 to $262.00 and gave the stock an “equal weight” rating in a research report on Tuesday, December 17th. StockNews.com raised F5 from a “buy” rating to a “strong-buy” rating in a report on Tuesday, October 29th. The Goldman Sachs Group upped their price target on F5 from $212.00 to $241.00 and gave the company a “neutral” rating in a research report on Tuesday, October 29th. Barclays raised their price objective on shares of F5 from $214.00 to $246.00 and gave the company an “equal weight” rating in a research report on Tuesday, October 29th. Finally, Evercore ISI upped their target price on shares of F5 from $240.00 to $270.00 and gave the stock an “in-line” rating in a report on Friday, January 17th. Seven analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating, one has issued a buy rating and one has assigned a strong buy rating to the company’s stock. According to MarketBeat, the company currently has a consensus rating of “Hold” and a consensus price target of $251.25.

Insider Transactions at F5

In other F5 news, Director Alan Higginson sold 825 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction that occurred on 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 owns 9,882 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $2,369,407.14. This represents a 7.71 % decrease in their ownership of the stock. The sale was disclosed in a filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available through the SEC website. Company insiders own 0.58% of the company’s stock.

F5 Price Performance

Shares of F5 stock opened at $272.91 on Friday. F5, Inc. has a 1 year low of $159.01 and a 1 year high of $273.09. The firm has a market cap of $16.00 billion, a PE ratio of 28.55, a PEG ratio of 3.62 and a beta of 1.06. The company has a 50 day simple moving average of $255.19 and a two-hundred day simple moving average of $223.32.

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

F5 declared that its board has approved a stock buyback plan on Monday, October 28th that allows the company to buyback $1.00 billion in outstanding shares. This buyback authorization allows the network technology company to reacquire up to 7.9% of its shares through open market purchases. Shares buyback plans are often an indication that the company’s board believes its shares are undervalued.

F5 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.