F5 (NASDAQ:FFIV) Board of Directors Approves Share Repurchase Program

F5 (NASDAQ:FFIV) declared that its Board of Directors has initiated a share buyback plan on Monday, October 28th, RTT News reports. The company plans to buyback $1.00 billion in shares. This buyback authorization permits 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 believes its shares are undervalued.

Analysts Set New Price Targets

A number of brokerages have recently weighed in on FFIV. Piper Sandler lifted their price target on shares of F5 from $186.00 to $246.00 and gave the stock a “neutral” rating in a research report on Tuesday. Evercore ISI lifted their target price on F5 from $180.00 to $210.00 and gave the stock an “in-line” rating in a report on Tuesday, July 30th. StockNews.com upgraded F5 from a “buy” rating to a “strong-buy” rating in a report on Tuesday. Royal Bank of Canada lifted their price objective on F5 from $205.00 to $240.00 and gave the company a “sector perform” rating in a report on Tuesday. Finally, Needham & Company LLC boosted their price objective on F5 from $220.00 to $235.00 and gave the company a “buy” rating in a research report on Tuesday, July 30th. Seven research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating, two have given a buy rating and one has given a strong buy rating to the company’s stock. Based on data from MarketBeat, the company presently has a consensus rating of “Hold” and an average target price of $233.56.

F5 Stock Performance

Shares of F5 stock opened at $238.95 on Thursday. The firm has a market cap of $14.01 billion, a PE ratio of 28.62, a P/E/G ratio of 2.54 and a beta of 1.06. The business’s 50 day simple moving average is $213.36 and its 200 day simple moving average is $189.31. F5 has a 52-week low of $149.40 and a 52-week high of $250.46.

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, beating analysts’ consensus estimates of $3.45 by $0.22. F5 had a net margin of 19.94% and a return on equity of 21.03%. The company had revenue of $747.00 million for the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $730.43 million. During the same period last year, the company earned $2.76 earnings per share. The firm’s revenue was up 5.7% compared to the same quarter last year. As a group, equities research analysts predict that F5 will post 10.17 EPS for the current year.

Insiders Place Their Bets

In other news, Director Alan Higginson sold 1,000 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction dated Monday, September 9th. The stock was sold at an average price of $201.65, for a total value of $201,650.00. Following the completion of the transaction, the director now owns 10,707 shares in the company, valued at $2,159,066.55. This trade represents a 0.00 % decrease in their position. The sale was disclosed in a legal filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available at the SEC website. In other news, CEO Francois Locoh-Donou sold 1,450 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction dated Monday, August 5th. The shares were sold at an average price of $188.35, for a total transaction of $273,107.50. Following the transaction, the chief executive officer now directly owns 124,022 shares in the company, valued at $23,359,543.70. The trade was a 0.00 % decrease in their position. The transaction was disclosed in a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available at this link. Also, Director Alan Higginson sold 1,000 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction dated Monday, September 9th. The shares were sold at an average price of $201.65, for a total transaction of $201,650.00. Following the completion of the sale, the director now owns 10,707 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $2,159,066.55. This trade represents a 0.00 % decrease in their ownership of the stock. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Insiders have sold 6,551 shares of company stock valued at $1,334,698 in the last three months. 0.58% of the stock is currently owned by corporate insiders.

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.