Public Employees Retirement System of Ohio Has $5.03 Million Stake in F5, Inc. (NASDAQ:FFIV)

Public Employees Retirement System of Ohio trimmed its stake in F5, Inc. (NASDAQ:FFIV) by 8.6% during the third quarter, HoldingsChannel.com reports. The fund owned 22,857 shares of the network technology company’s stock after selling 2,149 shares during the quarter. Public Employees Retirement System of Ohio’s holdings in F5 were worth $5,033,000 at the end of the most recent reporting period.

Several other hedge funds have also recently bought and sold shares of FFIV. Hotchkis & Wiley Capital Management LLC grew its holdings 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 worth $1,208,763,000 after purchasing an additional 191,020 shares during the last quarter. State Street Corp grew its stake in F5 by 0.5% during the third quarter. State Street Corp now owns 3,187,222 shares of the network technology company’s stock worth $701,825,000 after buying an additional 16,663 shares during the last quarter. American Century Companies Inc. grew its stake in F5 by 10.5% during the second quarter. American Century Companies Inc. now owns 1,709,296 shares of the network technology company’s stock worth $294,392,000 after buying an additional 162,820 shares during the last quarter. Pacer Advisors Inc. raised its stake in shares of F5 by 6,700.2% in the second quarter. Pacer Advisors Inc. now owns 848,388 shares of the network technology company’s stock valued at $146,118,000 after acquiring an additional 835,912 shares during the last quarter. Finally, AQR Capital Management LLC raised its stake in shares of F5 by 48.9% in the second quarter. AQR Capital Management LLC now owns 652,972 shares of the network technology company’s stock valued at $111,932,000 after acquiring an additional 214,351 shares during the last quarter. 90.66% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors and hedge funds.

Insiders Place Their Bets

In other F5 news, Director Alan Higginson sold 825 shares of the stock in a transaction on Tuesday, November 19th. The shares were sold at an average price of $239.77, for a total value of $197,810.25. Following 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 document filed with the SEC, which is accessible through the SEC website. Also, CFO Francis J. Pelzer sold 600 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction on Friday, September 20th. The shares were sold at an average price of $217.50, for a total transaction of $130,500.00. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief financial officer now directly owns 30,425 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $6,617,437.50. This trade represents a 1.93 % decrease in their position. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Over the last quarter, insiders have sold 3,475 shares of company stock worth $775,389. Insiders own 0.58% of the company’s stock.

Analysts Set New Price Targets

A number of research firms recently commented on FFIV. JPMorgan Chase & Co. increased their price target on F5 from $225.00 to $250.00 and gave the stock a “neutral” rating in a research report on Tuesday, October 29th. Piper Sandler raised their target price on F5 from $186.00 to $246.00 and gave the company a “neutral” rating in a research note on Tuesday, October 29th. Barclays upped 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. StockNews.com upgraded shares of F5 from a “buy” rating to a “strong-buy” rating in a research report on Tuesday, October 29th. Finally, The Goldman Sachs Group upped their target price on shares of F5 from $212.00 to $241.00 and gave the stock a “neutral” rating in a research report on Tuesday, October 29th. Seven investment analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating, two have assigned a buy rating and one has given a strong buy rating to the company. Based on data from MarketBeat, the stock presently has a consensus rating of “Hold” and a consensus price target of $233.56.

F5 Price Performance

FFIV opened at $261.81 on Friday. F5, Inc. has a fifty-two week low of $159.01 and a fifty-two week high of $264.50. The company has a market cap of $15.35 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 27.39, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 3.52 and a beta of 1.06. The firm has a 50 day simple moving average of $237.40 and a 200 day simple moving average of $205.58.

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

F5 declared that its board has initiated a share repurchase plan on Monday, October 28th that allows the company to repurchase $1.00 billion in shares. This repurchase authorization allows the network technology company to purchase up to 7.9% of its shares through open market purchases. Shares repurchase plans are usually an indication that the company’s management 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.