Short Interest in F5, Inc. (NASDAQ:FFIV) Grows By 5.4%

F5, Inc. (NASDAQ:FFIV) was the recipient of a significant growth in short interest during the month of December. As of December 31st, there was short interest totalling 1,560,000 shares, a growth of 5.4% from the December 15th total of 1,480,000 shares. Currently, 2.7% of the company’s shares are short sold. Based on an average trading volume of 564,900 shares, the days-to-cover ratio is presently 2.8 days.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

Several equities analysts recently weighed in on the stock. Barclays lifted their target price on shares of F5 from $214.00 to $246.00 and gave the company an “equal weight” rating in a report on Tuesday, October 29th. Royal Bank of Canada upped their target price on F5 from $240.00 to $260.00 and gave the stock a “sector perform” rating in a research report on Friday, January 3rd. JPMorgan Chase & Co. raised their target price on F5 from $225.00 to $250.00 and gave the company a “neutral” rating in a report on Tuesday, October 29th. Morgan Stanley boosted their price target on F5 from $230.00 to $262.00 and gave the stock an “equal weight” rating in a research report on Tuesday, December 17th. Finally, StockNews.com raised shares of F5 from a “buy” rating to a “strong-buy” rating in a research report on Tuesday, October 29th. Seven analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating, one has assigned a buy rating and one has given a strong buy rating to the company. According to MarketBeat, the stock has a consensus rating of “Hold” and a consensus target price of $251.25.

Insider Activity at F5

In other F5 news, Director Alan Higginson sold 825 shares of F5 stock in a transaction that occurred on Tuesday, November 19th. The shares were sold at an average price of $239.77, for a total transaction of $197,810.25. Following the transaction, the director now directly owns 9,882 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $2,369,407.14. The trade was a 7.71 % decrease in their ownership of the stock. The sale was disclosed in a filing with the SEC, which is accessible through this hyperlink. 0.58% of the stock is owned by insiders.

Institutional Trading of F5

A number of institutional investors and hedge funds have recently modified their holdings of FFIV. Hotchkis & Wiley Capital Management LLC raised its stake in F5 by 3.6% during the third quarter. Hotchkis & Wiley Capital Management LLC now owns 5,489,388 shares of the network technology company’s stock worth $1,208,763,000 after acquiring an additional 191,020 shares during the period. State Street Corp grew its holdings in shares of F5 by 0.5% during the third quarter. State Street Corp now owns 3,187,222 shares of the network technology company’s stock valued at $701,825,000 after purchasing an additional 16,663 shares during the last quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC raised its position in shares of F5 by 8.0% during the 3rd quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC now owns 1,573,995 shares of the network technology company’s stock worth $345,560,000 after purchasing an additional 117,080 shares during the period. Pacer Advisors Inc. lifted its holdings in shares of F5 by 6,700.2% in the 2nd quarter. Pacer Advisors Inc. now owns 848,388 shares of the network technology company’s stock worth $146,118,000 after purchasing an additional 835,912 shares during the last quarter. Finally, AQR Capital Management LLC lifted its holdings in shares of F5 by 48.9% in the 2nd quarter. AQR Capital Management LLC now owns 652,972 shares of the network technology company’s stock worth $111,932,000 after purchasing an additional 214,351 shares during the last quarter. 90.66% of the stock is owned by institutional investors and hedge funds.

F5 Price Performance

Shares of NASDAQ:FFIV traded up $0.09 during midday trading on Monday, reaching $263.95. The company had a trading volume of 384,592 shares, compared to its average volume of 364,589. The stock has a market capitalization of $15.47 billion, a P/E ratio of 27.61, a PEG ratio of 3.44 and a beta of 1.06. The stock’s fifty day moving average price is $253.16 and its 200-day moving average price is $221.29. F5 has a one year low of $159.01 and a one year high of $267.74.

F5 (NASDAQ:FFIV) last released its earnings results 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. F5 had a net margin of 20.13% and a return on equity of 20.80%. The company had revenue of $747.00 million during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $730.43 million. During the same quarter in the previous year, the firm earned $2.76 EPS. The company’s revenue was up 5.7% on a year-over-year basis. As a group, sell-side analysts forecast that F5 will post 11.01 earnings per share for the current year.

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

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.