Investors interested in Internet - Software stocks are likely familiar with BILL Holdings (BILL - Free Report) and F5 Networks (FFIV - Free Report) . But which of these two stocks presents investors with the better value opportunity right now? Let's take a closer look.
We have found that the best way to discover great value opportunities is to pair a strong Zacks Rank with a great grade in the Value category of our Style Scores system. The proven Zacks Rank puts an emphasis on earnings estimates and estimate revisions, while our Style Scores work to identify stocks with specific traits.
Currently, BILL Holdings has a Zacks Rank of #1 (Strong Buy), while F5 Networks has a Zacks Rank of #3 (Hold). This means that BILL's earnings estimate revision activity has been more impressive, so investors should feel comfortable with its improving analyst outlook. But this is only part of the picture for value investors.
Value investors also try to analyze a wide range of traditional figures and metrics to help determine whether a company is undervalued at its current share price levels.
Our Value category grades stocks based on a number of key metrics, including the tried-and-true P/E ratio, the P/S ratio, earnings yield, and cash flow per share, as well as a variety of other fundamentals that value investors frequently use.
BILL currently has a forward P/E ratio of 13.36, while FFIV has a forward P/E of 22.55. We also note that BILL has a PEG ratio of 0.45. This figure is similar to the commonly-used P/E ratio, with the PEG ratio also factoring in a company's expected earnings growth rate. FFIV currently has a PEG ratio of 3.01.
Another notable valuation metric for BILL is its P/B ratio of 1.39. The P/B ratio is used to compare a stock's market value with its book value, which is defined as total assets minus total liabilities. For comparison, FFIV has a P/B of 5.71.
Based on these metrics and many more, BILL holds a Value grade of B, while FFIV has a Value grade of D.
BILL stands above FFIV thanks to its solid earnings outlook, and based on these valuation figures, we also feel that BILL is the superior value option right now.
Joint integration featuring F5 AI Security Platform and Agent Fabric embeds AI runtime security directly into agentic AI workflows, blocking threats like prompt injection and sensitive data exposure
SEATTLE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--F5 (NASDAQ: FFIV), the global leader in delivering and securing every app and API, today announced a technology integration with MuleSoft, a Salesforce company, bringing F5 AI Guardrails—part of the F5 AI Security Platform—directly into Agent Fabric. As enterprises rapidly scale AI agents and large language model (LLM) applications, this native integration provides security and platform engineering teams with centralized policy enforcement, real-time protection against malicious prompts, and enhanced auditability without re-architecting or replacing the systems already in use.
As organizations scale agentic AI capabilities, security teams face a growing governance gap and frequently lack visibility into agentic traffic. They risk exposure from prompt injection, harmful outputs, and sensitive data leakage. The joint integration federates F5’s runtime AI security into Agent Fabric's Omni Gateway, enabling enterprises to enforce unified guardrail policies across all prompts and outputs moving through their agentic workflows.
Eliminating the governance gap for agentic AI
Until now, organizations deploying Agent Fabric and seeking to leverage F5 AI Guardrails have faced a trade-off: either route LLM traffic through a separate F5 inspection layer, creating additional operational complexity and fragmented telemetry, or rely solely on native gateway controls without extending F5 AI Guardrails policies directly into their MuleSoft-managed workflows.
By federating F5 AI Guardrails into Agent Fabric, enterprises gain:
Unified governance and zero double-proxy overhead: Policy management for AI traffic lives in a single control plane. Agent Fabric's Omni Gateway routes LLM calls directly to the F5 AI Guardrails Scan API, inspecting inbound prompts and outbound completions inline before models are invoked or responses returned. Support for Agentforce ecosystems: Organizations can apply consistent runtime security controls across Agentforce-powered agents, Agent Fabric workflows, and custom AI applications. Proactive threat mitigation: The solution is designed to block prompt injection, jailbreaks, toxicity, and unauthorized topics while reducing personally identifiable information (PII) and protected data exposure at runtime. Data residency and sovereign control: Flexible dual-deployment topology allows self-hosted Kubernetes deployments including private VPCs, allowing sensitive prompt and completion data to remain within customer boundaries. Low-touch policy tuning: Security teams author and version scanners, blocklists, and sensitivity thresholds within the F5 console, which Omni Gateway picks up dynamically without requiring policy or code changes. SOC back-correlation and compliance auditability: Decisions carry detailed telemetry and shared scan IDs for seamless correlation in the F5 console, simplifying compliance with regulations such as the EU AI Act, GDPR, and HIPAA. “AI agents are moving from experiments into the critical path of the enterprise,” said Kunal Anand, Chief Product Officer at F5. “The biggest risk in agentic AI is that agents will move faster than enterprise security and governance models can keep up. By integrating the F5 AI Security Platform directly into Agent Fabric, we are putting protection in the path of every prompt and response, where it can operate in real time. That lets organizations move faster with AI while preserving the control, visibility, and accountability their most important business processes demand.”
“We built Agent Fabric as the neutral solution to support enterprises running agents across a mix of models and platforms,” said Andrew Comstock, SVP & GM at MuleSoft. “By extending Agent Fabric’s existing LLM API and AI services to support F5 AI Guardrails as a first-class provider, we’re making it even easier for customers to scale their agentic enterprise on the security tooling they know and trust.”
Availability and Dreamforce demonstration
F5 AI Guardrails for Agent Fabric is now generally available. At Dreamforce (September 15–17, 2026, San Francisco), organizations can engage with the Agent Fabric team to learn more about the integration and explore how to apply AI security and governance controls across agentic AI deployments.
To learn more about how F5 and MuleSoft are securing the future of agentic AI, visit https://www.f5.com/solutions/ai-security.
About F5
F5, Inc. (NASDAQ: FFIV) is the global leader that delivers and secures every app. Backed by three decades of expertise, F5 has built the industry’s premier platform—F5 Application Delivery and Security Platform (ADSP)—to deliver and secure every app, every API, anywhere: on-premises, in the cloud, at the edge, and across hybrid, multicloud environments. F5 is committed to innovating and partnering with the world’s largest and most advanced organizations to deliver fast, available, and secure digital experiences. Together, we help each other thrive and bring a better digital world to life.
For more information visit f5.com
Explore F5 Labs threat research at f5.com/labs
Follow to learn more about F5, our partners, and technologies: Blog | LinkedIn | X | YouTube | Instagram | Facebook
F5 is a trademark, service mark, or tradename of F5, Inc. or its affiliates in the U.S. and other countries. All other product and company names herein may be trademarks of their respective owners. The integration described herein does not create a partnership, joint venture, or agency relationship between the parties.
Frontier AI turns vulnerabilities into exploits in hours; F5 enables security teams to maintain availability, governance, and operational stability by blocking threats in minutes
SEATTLE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--F5 (NASDAQ: FFIV), the global leader in delivering and securing every app and API, today announced innovations to block frontier AI-driven threats in the data path and enable faster virtual patching, giving security leaders time to make intelligent risk-based decisions rather than reactive operational compromises. With new features such as anomaly detection and agentic threat intelligence, F5’s AI-powered web application firewall (WAF) is uniquely capable in delivering real-time protections because of its strategic position in customers’ infrastructure. Enhancements to F5 WAF for Distributed Cloud and virtual patching provide the precision needed to confidently block active exploits at the request level.
“Frontier AI has collapsed the time between vulnerability discovery and active exploitation,” said Kunal Anand, Chief Product Officer at F5. “The old model of waiting for code to be rewritten, tested, and redeployed cannot keep pace. F5 puts protection directly into the data path, where we can identify and block exploits in minutes. Virtual patching gives organizations something increasingly scarce in cybersecurity: time. Time to understand the risk, protect the business, and fix the underlying vulnerability without forcing teams into a permanent state of crisis.”
F5 blocks exploits with runtime security, enabling customers to quickly deploy virtual patches. Introduced earlier this year, F5’s AI-powered WAF has already seen strong customer adoption. In internal F5 testing, the solution delivered 98% threat detection efficacy while reducing false positives to 1%, extending the F5 Application Delivery and Security Platform (ADSP) and giving teams confidence to convert scanner findings into enforced protection in minutes rather than weeks.
F5 has enhanced its capabilities, adding anomaly detection and agentic threat intelligence to a WAF solution that evaluates requests inline using real-time machine learning classification and a neural network risk engine to assign a risk score to each request as it arrives. Scoring risk dynamically, rather than matching known signatures, allows the WAF to help defend against zero-day attempts, injection attacks, and polymorphic exploit chains that change shape on every attempt.
In tailoring infrastructures for a post-Mythos world, F5 helps customers evolve their AI cybersecurity capabilities:
Continually analyze traffic for attack signals
Built directly into F5 WAF for Distributed Cloud, innovative anomaly detection is an intelligent, self-learning capability that continuously analyzes each application’s unique traffic patterns, establishing traffic norms and flagging meaningful deviations that could signal a pending attack. It builds per-application statistical baselines and, in real time, scores incoming requests against baselines to identify attacks and false positives. Anomaly detection provides security teams with more accurate protection for their apps without adding complexity.
Prioritize potential exploits with agentic threat intelligence
Security teams do not lack alerts. They lack context. New agentic threat intelligence capabilities, built on technology from the acquisition of Fletch, combine external intelligence on emerging and actively exploited threats with what F5 sees reaching customer applications. Teams get one view of which threats are real, which are relevant to their environment, and what to do about each one, with recommended mitigations that can be applied immediately as virtual patches.
Enforce virtual patches in minutes
Protection cannot wait for a code release. F5 also delivers automated virtual patching with F5 Distributed Cloud Web App Scanning (WAS). The solution identifies exposed vulnerabilities, unprotected APIs, and business logic flaws to trigger targeted virtual patches at runtime. For hybrid environments, these timely virtual patching capabilities also extend to F5 WAF for BIG-IP. Customers can apply existing signatures or write custom rules scoped to a specific CVE, attack path, method, header, or parameter across environments.
Balance business risk with emerging threats
False positives are the reason most WAFs sit in passive monitoring mode. F5 WAF for Distributed Cloud, through AI-powered risk-based scoring, reduces false positives to 1%, giving SecOps the confidence to start blocking risky traffic sooner without affecting application availability. Virtual patching using F5 WAF for Distributed Cloud then acts as a safety valve, holding protection in place while developers build, test, and release a permanent fix inside standard change controls.
Extend remediation to the F5 estate
While virtual patching holds the line in the request path, F5 Insight for ADSP accelerates patching of the underlying infrastructure. F5 Insight gives operations teams supported update and patching workflows across F5 hardware and software environments with readiness checks, taking advantage of F5’s updated hardened release cadence. Together, these capabilities mitigate exposure in minutes and remediate the fleet on a preferred schedule.
New AI-powered WAF capabilities are available now on Distributed Cloud as part of the F5 ADSP. Virtual patching capabilities, along with the integration between F5 Distributed Cloud WAS and F5 WAF for BIG-IP, are also available today. Agentic threat intelligence and anomaly detection are rolling out to F5 WAF for Distributed Cloud customers, with broader availability continuing over the coming months.
Supporting resources
Blog: F5’s AI-powered WAF advances virtual patching for the post-Mythos era Blog: Four reasons not to miss the F5 post-Mythos security summit F5 virtual security summit: Security for the post-Mythos world Use case: Virtual patching is your first line of defense About F5
F5, Inc. (NASDAQ: FFIV) is the global leader that delivers and secures every app. Backed by three decades of expertise, F5 has built the industry’s premier platform—F5 Application Delivery and Security Platform (ADSP)—to deliver and secure every app, every API, anywhere: on-premises, in the cloud, at the edge, and across hybrid, multicloud environments. F5 is committed to innovating and partnering with the world’s largest and most advanced organizations to deliver fast, available, and secure digital experiences. Together, we help each other thrive and bring a better digital world to life.
For more information visit f5.com
Explore F5 Labs threat research at f5.com/labs
Follow to learn more about F5, our partners, and technologies: Blog | LinkedIn | X | YouTube | Instagram | Facebook
F5, F5 ADSP, BIG-IP, and Distributed Cloud Web App Scanning are trademarks, service marks, or tradenames of F5, Inc. or its affiliates in the U.S. and other countries. All other product and company names herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.
SEATTLE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--F5, Inc. (NASDAQ: FFIV), the global leader in delivering and securing every app and API, today announced that it will participate in the Goldman Sachs Communacopia + Technology Conference 2026. F5's presentation will be webcast live on Wednesday, September 9, 2026, at 1:10 p.m. ET. Interested attendees can access the live webcast via the Events & Presentations tab within the Investor Relations section of f5.com or via this link. An archived version of the webcast w.
F5 (NASDAQ: FFIV), the global leader in delivering and securing every app and API, today announced innovations to block frontier AI-driven threats in the data p
It has been about a month since the last earnings report for F5 Networks (FFIV - Free Report) . Shares have lost about 5.1% in that time frame, underperforming the S&P 500.
But investors have to be wondering, will the recent negative trend continue leading up to its next earnings release, or is F5 due for a breakout? Before we dive into how investors and analysts have reacted as of late, let's take a quick look at the most recent earnings report in order to get a better handle on the important catalysts.
F5 Q3 Earnings and Revenues Beat EstimatesF5 delivered better-than-expected third-quarter fiscal 2026 results. The company reported third-quarter fiscal 2026 non-GAAP earnings of $4.73 per share, which increased 14% year over year. The figure surpassed the Zacks Consensus Estimate by 18.8%.
Revenues increased 11% year over year to $865 million and beat the consensus mark by 3.96%. Results benefited from 32% systems revenue growth, sustained hybrid multicloud demand and growing application security requirements. Product revenues advanced 19%, marking the eighth consecutive quarter of double-digit growth.
FFIV's Q3 Segment Revenue DetailsProduct revenues, representing 54% of total revenues, increased 19% year over year to $463 million. Systems revenues jumped 32% to $240 million as customers invested in higher-performance infrastructure, expanded data-center capacity and modernized environments for resiliency, digital sovereignty and AI workloads.
Software revenues rose 7% to $223 million. Subscription-based software revenues increased 9% to $201 million and represented 90% of software revenues. Perpetual license revenues declined 4% to $22 million. Services revenues, accounting for 46% of total revenues, grew 3% to $402 million.
F5 Benefits From Hybrid Multicloud DemandManagement highlighted expansion opportunities tied to hybrid multicloud adoption, including competitive displacements, platform consolidation and data-center buildouts. An energy and utilities provider expanded its BIG-IP footprint after moving workloads from an unstable cloud environment back to on-premises infrastructure.
F5 also secured a competitive win at a Fortune 100 technology provider seeking to strengthen delivery and security for a storage service spanning 45 data centers. The customer selected BIG-IP to support the availability, resilience and security requirements of AI and data-intensive workloads.
F5 Maintains Solid Margins and Cash FlowNon-GAAP gross margin expanded 110 basis points year over year to 84.2%, while non-GAAP operating margin increased 70 basis points to 35%.
In the third quarter of fiscal 2026, FFIV generated $316 million in operating cash flow and $281 million in free cash flow.
Cash and investments totaled $1.63 billion, up from $1.44 billion in the previous quarter. The company repurchased $100 million of shares and had $422 million remaining under its authorization.
FFIV Raises Fiscal 2026 OutlookF5 expects fourth-quarter fiscal 2026 revenues between $870 million and $890 million, implying growth of nearly 9% at the midpoint. Non-GAAP earnings are projected in the range of $4.14-$4.26 per share. Non-GAAP gross margin is expected between 83% and 84%, reflecting a favorable mix of higher-performance systems and lower component-cost increases than initially anticipated.
For fiscal 2026, management raised its revenue growth forecast to approximately 9-10% from 7-8%. The company continues to expect mid-single-digit software growth, double-digit systems growth and low-single-digit services growth. Non-GAAP earnings guidance was increased to $17.21-$17.33 per share from $16.25-$16.55.
How Have Estimates Been Moving Since Then?In the past month, investors have witnessed a upward trend in estimates revision.
VGM ScoresCurrently, F5 has a nice Growth Score of B, a score with the same score on the momentum front. However, the stock was allocated a grade of D on the value side, putting it in the bottom 40% for this investment strategy.
Overall, the stock has an aggregate VGM Score of C. If you aren't focused on one strategy, this score is the one you should be interested in.
OutlookEstimates have been trending upward for the stock, and the magnitude of these revisions looks promising. Interestingly, F5 has a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). We expect an in-line return from the stock in the next few months.
Performance of an Industry PlayerF5 is part of the Zacks Internet - Software industry. Over the past month, Calix (CALX - Free Report) , a stock from the same industry, has gained 7.4%. The company reported its results for the quarter ended June 2026 more than a month ago.
Calix reported revenues of $293.33 million in the last reported quarter, representing a year-over-year change of +21.3%. EPS of $0.47 for the same period compares with $0.33 a year ago.
For the current quarter, Calix is expected to post earnings of $0.42 per share, indicating a change of -4.6% from the year-ago quarter. The Zacks Consensus Estimate remained unchanged over the last 30 days.
The overall direction and magnitude of estimate revisions translate into a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) for Calix. Also, the stock has a VGM Score of C.
Investors interested in stocks from the Internet - Software sector have probably already heard of DoubleVerify Holdings (DV) and F5 Networks (FFIV). But which of these two stocks offers value investors a better bang for their buck right now?
BlackRock Inc. bought a new stake in F5, Inc. (NASDAQ:FFIV – Free Report) in the second quarter, according to its most recent 13F filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission. The fund bought 6,278,577 shares of the network technology company’s stock, valued at approximately $2,611,637,000. BlackRock Inc. owned 11.13% of F5 as of its most recent filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission.
Several other institutional investors and hedge funds have also recently bought and sold shares of FFIV. Persistent Asset Partners Ltd acquired a new position in shares of F5 in the 2nd quarter valued at $36,000. Hazlett Burt & Watson Inc. acquired a new stake in shares of F5 during the 4th quarter worth $26,000. Hantz Financial Services Inc. grew its position in F5 by 109.8% during the fourth quarter. Hantz Financial Services Inc. now owns 107 shares of the network technology company’s stock valued at $27,000 after acquiring an additional 56 shares during the period. Elyxium Wealth LLC purchased a new stake in F5 during the fourth quarter valued at about $28,000. Finally, SJS Investment Consulting Inc. increased its stake in F5 by 963.6% during the first quarter. SJS Investment Consulting Inc. now owns 117 shares of the network technology company’s stock worth $34,000 after acquiring an additional 106 shares during the last quarter. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 90.66% of the company’s stock.
F5 Price Performance Shares of FFIV opened at $382.63 on Thursday. F5, Inc. has a 12 month low of $223.76 and a 12 month high of $435.00. The stock’s 50-day moving average is $404.38 and its two-hundred day moving average is $346.88. The stock has a market cap of $21.67 billion, a PE ratio of 30.46, a P/E/G ratio of 3.85 and a beta of 1.03.
F5 (NASDAQ:FFIV – Get Free Report) last announced its earnings results on Monday, July 27th. The network technology company reported $4.73 EPS for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $4.00 by $0.73. The business had revenue of $865.08 million for the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $834.60 million. F5 had a return on equity of 21.54% and a net margin of 21.95%.The company’s revenue was up 10.9% on a year-over-year basis. During the same period last year, the business posted $4.16 EPS. F5 has set its Q4 2026 guidance at 4.140-4.260 EPS and its FY 2026 guidance at 17.210-17.330 EPS. On average, research analysts anticipate that F5, Inc. will post 13.65 earnings per share for the current year. Insider Activity at F5 In related news, CTO Kunal Anand sold 392 shares of F5 stock in a transaction on Monday, August 3rd. The shares were sold at an average price of $404.63, for a total value of $158,614.96. Following the completion of the sale, the chief technology officer owned 12,586 shares in the company, valued at approximately $5,092,673.18. The trade was a 3.02% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The sale was disclosed in a filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is accessible through this link. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Also, insider John Anthony Maddison sold 1,000 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction dated Monday, August 3rd. The shares were sold at an average price of $405.85, for a total transaction of $405,850.00. Following the completion of the sale, the insider owned 1,353 shares in the company, valued at approximately $549,115.05. This trade represents a 42.50% decrease in their position. Additional details regarding this sale are available in the official SEC disclosure. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Over the last ninety days, insiders sold 15,699 shares of company stock valued at $6,316,411. 0.48% of the stock is currently owned by insiders.
Wall Street Analyst Weigh In A number of equities analysts have recently commented on the company. Zacks Research downgraded F5 from a “strong-buy” rating to a “hold” rating in a report on Monday, July 27th. Needham & Company LLC reissued a “hold” rating on shares of F5 in a research report on Tuesday, July 28th. Morgan Stanley raised their price target on shares of F5 from $380.00 to $415.00 and gave the company an “equal weight” rating in a report on Tuesday, July 28th. Piper Sandler reaffirmed an “overweight” rating and set a $461.00 price target (up from $423.00) on shares of F5 in a research report on Tuesday, July 28th. Finally, Barclays boosted their price objective on shares of F5 from $386.00 to $397.00 and gave the stock an “equal weight” rating in a research note on Tuesday, July 28th. Five investment analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating, five have issued a Hold rating and one has given a Sell rating to the company. Based on data from MarketBeat, F5 currently has a consensus rating of “Hold” and a consensus target price of $416.62.
Get Our Latest Research Report on FFIV
F5 Profile (Free Report)
F5 Inc (NASDAQ:FFIV) specializes in application services and delivery networking, helping organizations ensure the availability, performance and security of their applications. The company’s core offerings include advanced load balancing, traffic management and application security solutions designed to optimize user experiences and protect against threats such as distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks and web application exploits.
At the heart of F5’s product portfolio is the BIG-IP platform, which provides a suite of software modules for local and global traffic management, secure web application firewalling and DNS service delivery.
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Abacus FCF Advisors LLC purchased a new stake in shares of F5, Inc. (NASDAQ:FFIV – Free Report) in the 2nd quarter, according to its most recent 13F filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission. The firm purchased 27,940 shares of the network technology company’s stock, valued at approximately $11,622,000. F5 makes up approximately 2.1% of Abacus FCF Advisors LLC’s portfolio, making the stock its 18th biggest position.
Other large investors have also recently modified their holdings of the company. Persistent Asset Partners Ltd purchased a new position in shares of F5 in the second quarter worth $36,000. Hazlett Burt & Watson Inc. bought a new position in F5 during the 4th quarter valued at about $26,000. Hantz Financial Services Inc. lifted its stake in F5 by 109.8% during the 4th quarter. Hantz Financial Services Inc. now owns 107 shares of the network technology company’s stock valued at $27,000 after acquiring an additional 56 shares during the period. Elyxium Wealth LLC purchased a new stake in shares of F5 during the 4th quarter valued at about $28,000. Finally, SJS Investment Consulting Inc. boosted its holdings in shares of F5 by 963.6% during the 1st quarter. SJS Investment Consulting Inc. now owns 117 shares of the network technology company’s stock valued at $34,000 after acquiring an additional 106 shares during the last quarter. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 90.66% of the company’s stock.
F5 Stock Down 2.8% Shares of FFIV opened at $382.63 on Thursday. The business has a 50-day simple moving average of $404.38 and a two-hundred day simple moving average of $346.88. F5, Inc. has a 52 week low of $223.76 and a 52 week high of $435.00. The stock has a market cap of $21.67 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 30.46, a PEG ratio of 3.85 and a beta of 1.03.
F5 (NASDAQ:FFIV – Get Free Report) last posted its quarterly earnings data on Monday, July 27th. The network technology company reported $4.73 earnings per share for the quarter, beating analysts’ consensus estimates of $4.00 by $0.73. The firm had revenue of $865.08 million for the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $834.60 million. F5 had a return on equity of 21.54% and a net margin of 21.95%.The business’s quarterly revenue was up 10.9% on a year-over-year basis. During the same period in the previous year, the firm earned $4.16 EPS. F5 has set its Q4 2026 guidance at 4.140-4.260 EPS and its FY 2026 guidance at 17.210-17.330 EPS. On average, equities analysts anticipate that F5, Inc. will post 13.65 earnings per share for the current fiscal year. Analysts Set New Price Targets Several research analysts have recently weighed in on FFIV shares. Barclays boosted their price objective on shares of F5 from $386.00 to $397.00 and gave the company an “equal weight” rating in a report on Tuesday, July 28th. Bank of America raised their target price on shares of F5 from $250.00 to $300.00 and gave the stock an “underperform” rating in a report on Tuesday, May 26th. Wall Street Zen upgraded shares of F5 from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating in a research note on Saturday, August 1st. Piper Sandler reissued an “overweight” rating and set a $461.00 price target (up from $423.00) on shares of F5 in a report on Tuesday, July 28th. Finally, Evercore upgraded F5 from an “in-line” rating to an “outperform” rating and set a $475.00 price target on the stock in a research note on Monday, May 18th. Five investment analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating, five have issued a Hold rating and one has given a Sell rating to the company’s stock. According to MarketBeat, the stock has a consensus rating of “Hold” and a consensus target price of $416.62.
Read Our Latest Research Report on F5
Insider Activity at F5 In other news, CEO Francois Locoh-Donou sold 3,782 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction dated Wednesday, August 5th. The stock was sold at an average price of $412.44, for a total value of $1,559,848.08. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief executive officer owned 146,989 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $60,624,143.16. This represents a 2.51% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The transaction was disclosed in a legal filing with the SEC, which is available at this hyperlink. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Also, insider John Anthony Maddison sold 1,000 shares of the stock in a transaction dated Monday, August 3rd. The stock was sold at an average price of $405.85, for a total value of $405,850.00. Following the sale, the insider owned 1,353 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $549,115.05. This represents a 42.50% decrease in their position. The SEC filing for this sale provides additional information. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Insiders have sold 15,699 shares of company stock worth $6,316,411 in the last 90 days. Company insiders own 0.48% of the company’s stock.
F5 Profile (Free Report)
F5 Inc (NASDAQ:FFIV) specializes in application services and delivery networking, helping organizations ensure the availability, performance and security of their applications. The company’s core offerings include advanced load balancing, traffic management and application security solutions designed to optimize user experiences and protect against threats such as distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks and web application exploits.
At the heart of F5’s product portfolio is the BIG-IP platform, which provides a suite of software modules for local and global traffic management, secure web application firewalling and DNS service delivery.
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Now part of the F5 AI Security Platform, new capabilities provide a unified control point for AI tokenomics, policy enforcement, and security across models, agents, and tools
SEATTLE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--F5 (NASDAQ: FFIV), the global leader in delivering and securing every app and API, today introduced significant enhancements to the F5 AI Gateway and integrated the solution into the F5 AI Security Platform. The enhanced F5 AI Gateway seamlessly enforces policies on every AI request, giving enterprises a unified control plane to govern how AI models, agents, and tools are accessed and used, while optimizing the economics of AI at scale.
Enterprises have moved past AI experimentation, but governance has not kept pace. AI traffic still moves through a patchwork of standalone proxies and monitoring tools that were never built for AI, with no guardrails in between. According to F5’s 2026 State of Application Strategy Report, 77% of organizations say inference, rather than model training or tuning, is now their dominant AI activity, and organizations are managing an average of seven AI models.
As inference scales, tokenomics is becoming an increasingly important consideration, with every model request carrying implications for cost, performance, and security. Yet the piecemeal approach to standalone tools to secure AI traffic leaves enterprises without consistent control over how models and agents are accessed and used.
"We're watching enterprises race to deploy AI while struggling to control it," said Kunal Anand, Chief Product Officer at F5. "Every AI request carries economic, security, and governance implications, yet most organizations are relying on fragmented tools that address only part of the problem. The result is rising costs, increased risk, and operational complexity. F5 AI Gateway, integrated into the F5 AI Security Platform, provides a single control point for managing AI across models, clouds, agents, and applications. We believe every enterprise will need an intelligent control layer for AI. F5 is building that foundation, helping customers accelerate innovation while maintaining visibility, security, and control."
F5 AI Gateway brings three critical functions together in a single integrated solution:
Model Gateway for model access and cost optimization MCP Gateway for agent-to-tool governance AI Guardrails for prompt and response protection Budgets, model routing policies and agent access controls are set once centrally and enforced across distributed environments wherever the models, agents and AI apps run, providing a single operations pane for AI platform ops, AI Security ops and finance teams.
Rapid adoption of AI is fueling the need for AI gateways. According to a recent Gartner® report, "AI gateways have emerged as a critical part of AI infrastructure, as enterprises need tools to support safe, efficient and controlled access to AI models and MCP servers. Adoption of AI gateways will continue to accelerate among large enterprises."1
Bringing AI costs under control
Organizations that cannot see which teams, models, and providers are consuming tokens cannot assess the value and costs of using AI. F5 AI Gateway puts tokenomics under control: the Model Gateway function attributes every token by provider, model, team, and user, per-team budgets enforce limits as spend occurs rather than after the invoice arrives; and automated optimization — smart routing and model tiering, semantic caching, and GPU-aware load balancing — routes each request to the right model at the right cost. The solution is designed to reduce token spend by up to 60 percent, with no application changes.
Governing agents and controlling tool access
As agents multiply, so do the MCP servers they call, usually with no central registry, no per-tool authorization, and no record of what agents are doing. The MCP Gateway function of F5 AI Gateway provides fine-grained access controls that limit agents to the resources they are explicitly authorized to use, including APIs, data sources, and RAG systems. A complete audit trail captures what was accessed, when, by which agent, and on whose behalf. MCP server registry gives teams a single source of truth for approved MCP servers, thereby removing friction for developers who would otherwise find it challenging to discover which servers and tools exist.
Protecting AI data flows and proving compliance
Personal data, health records, and intellectual property move through AI applications every day, and that data usually reaches external models uninspected while injection and jailbreak attempts go undetected. F5 AI Guardrails inspect every prompt and response, redacting sensitive data before it reaches the model, blocking injection and jailbreak attempts, and failing closed when a request cannot be evaluated. Full audit trails, SIEM export, data residency controls, and alignment with SOC 2, ISO, and HIPAA frameworks give regulated industries the evidence they need before putting AI into production.
The enforcement point for the F5 AI Security Platform
F5 introduced the F5 AI Security Platform earlier this year to give teams continuous visibility, governance, and protection across enterprise AI applications, models, agents, and the APIs connecting them. Four integrated pillars — AI governance, AI usage control, AI security testing, and AI runtime protection — plus an overarching observability layer, create a persistent security lifecycle rather than a one-time compliance exercise. F5 AI Gateway is where those pillars meet live traffic, putting policy into force at the point of interaction and controlling what AI can access, what it can expose, and, crucially, what it can cost the business. F5 AI Gateway is deployable across SaaS, hybrid SaaS, and hybrid multicloud environments, with air-gapped support planned for regulated and sovereign use cases.
Supporting resources
Blog: F5 AI Gateway: A single control point for all enterprise AI Product page: F5 AI Gateway F5 AI Gateway Early Access About F5
F5, Inc. (NASDAQ: FFIV) is the global leader that delivers and secures every app. Backed by three decades of expertise, F5 has built the industry’s premier platform—F5 Application Delivery and Security Platform (ADSP)—to deliver and secure every app, every API, anywhere: on-premises, in the cloud, at the edge, and across hybrid, multicloud environments. F5 is committed to innovating and partnering with the world’s largest and most advanced organizations to deliver fast, available, and secure digital experiences. Together, we help each other thrive and bring a better digital world to life.
For more information visit f5.com
Explore F5 Labs threat research at f5.com/labs
Follow to learn more about F5, our partners, and technologies: Blog | LinkedIn | X | YouTube | Instagram | Facebook
Forward-Looking Statements. This press release contains forward-looking statements, including regarding the expected availability, timing, functionality, and benefits of the F5 AI Gateway and F5 AI Security Platform, made under the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results could differ materially due to the risks described in F5's SEC filings, including its most recent Forms 10-K and 10-Q. F5 undertakes no obligation to update these statements.
F5 is a trademark, service mark, or tradename of F5, Inc. or its affiliates in the U.S. and other countries. All other product and company names herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.
Source: F5, Inc.
1 Gartner, Market Overview for AI Gateways, Keith Guttridge, Andrew Humphreys, Shiva Varma, 13 May 2026.
GARTNER is a trademark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates.
Did you analyze how F5 Networks (FFIV - Free Report) fared in its international operations for the quarter ending June 2026? Given the widespread global presence of this computer networking company, scrutinizing the trends in international revenues becomes imperative to assess its financial strength and future growth possibilities.
In the current era of a tightly interconnected global economy, the proficiency of a company to penetrate international markets significantly influences its financial health and trajectory of growth. For investors, the key is to grasp how reliant a company is on overseas markets, as this provides insights into the durability of its earnings, its ability to exploit different economic cycles, and its overall growth capabilities.
Being present in foreign markets serves as protection against local economic declines and helps benefit from more rapidly expanding economies. Yet, such expansion also introduces challenges related to currency fluctuations, geopolitical uncertainties and varied market behaviors.
Our review of FFIV's last quarterly performance uncovered some notable trends in the revenue contributions from its international markets, which are commonly analyzed and tracked by Wall Street experts.
The company's total revenue for the quarter amounted to $865.08 million, marking an increase of 10.9% from the year-ago quarter. We will next turn our attention to dissecting FFIV's international revenue to get a clearer picture of how significant its operations are outside its main base.
A Dive into FFIV's International Revenue TrendsAsia Pacific accounted for 15.1% of the company's total revenue during the quarter, translating to $130.48 million. Revenues from this region represented a surprise of -9.43%, with Wall Street analysts collectively expecting $144.07 million. When compared to the preceding quarter and the same quarter in the previous year, Asia Pacific contributed $143.97 million (17.7%) and $147.33 million (18.9%) to the total revenue, respectively.
Other generated $24.58 million in revenues for the company in the last quarter, constituting 2.8% of the total. This represented a surprise of +0.36% compared to the $24.49 million projected by Wall Street analysts. Comparatively, in the previous quarter, Other accounted for $22.55 million (2.8%), and in the year-ago quarter, it contributed $19.88 million (2.6%) to the total revenue.
Of the total revenue, $256.03 million came from Europe, Middle East and Africa during the last fiscal quarter, accounting for 29.6%. This represented a surprise of +7.77% as analysts had expected the region to contribute $237.58 million to the total revenue. In comparison, the region contributed $260.86 million, or 32.1%, and $202.07 million, or 25.9%, to total revenue in the previous and year-ago quarters, respectively.
Anticipated Revenues in Overseas MarketsWall Street analysts expect F5 to report a total revenue of $884.46 million in the current fiscal quarter, which suggests an increase of 9.2% from the prior-year quarter. Revenue shares from Asia Pacific, Other and Europe, Middle East and Africa are predicted to be 16.3%, 2.9%, and 28.1%, corresponding to amounts of $144.13 million, $25.88 million, and $248.8 million, respectively.
For the entire year, the company's total revenue is forecasted to be $3.36 billion, which is an improvement of 9% from the previous year. The revenue contributions from different regions are expected as follows: Asia Pacific will contribute 16.7% ($561.14 million), Other 3% ($99.51 million) and Europe, Middle East and Africa 29.8% ($1 billion) to the total revenue.
Concluding RemarksF5's reliance on international markets for revenues offers both opportunities and risks. Hence, keeping an eye on its international revenue trends could significantly help forecast the company's prospects.
In an era of growing international interdependencies and escalating geopolitical disputes, Wall Street analysts are vigilant in tracking these trends for businesses with a global reach, in order to refine their predictions of earnings. It should be noted, however, that a multitude of other elements, such as a company's domestic position, also play a significant role in shaping the earnings forecasts.
Here at Zacks, we put a great deal of emphasis on a company's changing earnings outlook, as empirical research has shown that's a powerful force driving a stock's near-term price performance. Quite naturally, the correlation is positive here -- an upward revision in earnings estimates drives the stock price higher.
With an impressive externally audited track record, our proprietary stock rating tool - the Zacks Rank - harnesses the power of earnings estimate revisions and serves as an effective indicator of a stock's near-term price performance.
At present, F5 holds a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). This ranking implies that its near-term performance might mirror the overall market movement. You can see the complete list of today's Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy) stocks here >>>> .
F5 Networks' Recent Stock Market PerformanceThe stock has witnessed a decline of 7% over the past month versus the Zacks S&P 500 composite's an increase of 3.4%. In the same interval, the Zacks Computer and Technology sector, to which F5 belongs, has registered an increase of 2.8%. Over the past three months, the company's shares saw an increase of 10.4%, while the S&P 500 increased by 6%. In comparison, the sector experienced an increase of 3% during this timeframe.
For the quarter ended June 2026, F5 Networks (FFIV - Free Report) reported revenue of $865.08 million, up 10.9% over the same period last year. EPS came in at $4.73, compared to $4.16 in the year-ago quarter.
The reported revenue represents a surprise of +3.96% over the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $832.12 million. With the consensus EPS estimate being $3.98, the EPS surprise was +18.84%.
While investors scrutinize revenue and earnings changes year-over-year and how they compare with Wall Street expectations to determine their next move, some key metrics always offer a more accurate picture of a company's financial health.
Since these metrics play a crucial role in driving the top- and bottom-line numbers, comparing them with the year-ago numbers and what analysts estimated about them helps investors better project a stock's price performance.
Here is how F5 performed in the just reported quarter in terms of the metrics most widely monitored and projected by Wall Street analysts:
Net revenues- Services: $402.25 million versus the six-analyst average estimate of $402.31 million. The reported number represents a year-over-year change of +2.7%.Net revenues- Products: $462.83 million versus $429.8 million estimated by six analysts on average. Compared to the year-ago quarter, this number represents a +19% change.Net product revenues- Software: $223.31 million versus $219.37 million estimated by five analysts on average. Compared to the year-ago quarter, this number represents a +7.4% change.Net product revenues- Systems: $239.52 million compared to the $210.59 million average estimate based on five analysts. The reported number represents a change of +32.4% year over year.View all Key Company Metrics for F5 here>>>
Shares of F5 have returned -4% over the past month versus the Zacks S&P 500 composite's +2.3% change. The stock currently has a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold), indicating that it could perform in line with the broader market in the near term.
F5 (NASDAQ: FFIV), the global leader in delivering and securing every app and API, announced that [url="]F5 Distributed Cloud Web App and API Protection[/url] (
SEATTLE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--F5 (NASDAQ: FFIV), the global leader in delivering and securing every app and API, announced that F5 Distributed Cloud Web App and API Protection (WAAP), part of the F5 Application Delivery and Security Platform (ADSP), was placed in the Leader tier of SecureIQLab's 2026 Cloud WAAP v5.0 CyberRisk Validation Comparative Report. F5 was one of a select few evaluated vendors to earn both the Secure-by-Design and Secure-by-Default certifications. Enterprises buying applicat.
SEATTLE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--F5 (NASDAQ: FFIV), the global leader in delivering and securing every app and API, today introduced F5 AI Guardrails integrated with NVIDIA NeMo Guardrails, an AI-native solution that brings F5's enterprise-grade AI security capabilities to production AI applications. Security remains a primary reason enterprises struggle to move AI from pilot to production. Organizations adopting multiple AI models and frameworks across hybrid multicloud infrastructures face fragmente.
Investors interested in Internet - Software stocks are likely familiar with PagerDuty (PD - Free Report) and F5 Networks (FFIV - Free Report) . But which of these two stocks is more attractive to value investors? We'll need to take a closer look to find out.
We have found that the best way to discover great value opportunities is to pair a strong Zacks Rank with a great grade in the Value category of our Style Scores system. The Zacks Rank is a proven strategy that targets companies with positive earnings estimate revision trends, while our Style Scores work to grade companies based on specific traits.
PagerDuty has a Zacks Rank of #2 (Buy), while F5 Networks has a Zacks Rank of #4 (Sell) right now. The Zacks Rank favors stocks that have recently seen positive revisions to their earnings estimates, so investors should rest assured that PD has an improving earnings outlook. But this is just one factor that value investors are interested in.
Value investors are also interested in a number of tried-and-true valuation metrics that help show when a company is undervalued at its current share price levels.
The Value category of the Style Scores system identifies undervalued companies by looking at a number of key metrics. These include the long-favored P/E ratio, P/S ratio, earnings yield, cash flow per share, and a variety of other fundamentals that help us determine a company's fair value.
PD currently has a forward P/E ratio of 7.93, while FFIV has a forward P/E of 24.53. We also note that PD has a PEG ratio of 1.18. This popular figure is similar to the widely-used P/E ratio, but the PEG ratio also considers a company's expected EPS growth rate. FFIV currently has a PEG ratio of 3.68.
Another notable valuation metric for PD is its P/B ratio of 3.67. The P/B is a method of comparing a stock's market value to its book value, which is defined as total assets minus total liabilities. By comparison, FFIV has a P/B of 5.9.
Based on these metrics and many more, PD holds a Value grade of A, while FFIV has a Value grade of D.
PD sticks out from FFIV in both our Zacks Rank and Style Scores models, so value investors will likely feel that PD is the better option right now.
F5, Inc. (FFIV) shares rise 1,595% since first outlier inflow signal in 2005.
FFIV delivers cloud computing solutions, including automation, security, networking, and management services, for businesses, service providers, and governments. In its third-quarter fiscal 2026 earnings report, F5 showed $865 million in revenue (an 11% year-over-year gain), non-GAAP net income of $4.73 (a 14% gain), and offered growth and EPS guidance of up to 10% and $17.33, respectively.
It’s no wonder FFIV shares are up 58% so far this year – and they could rise more. MoneyFlows data shows how Big Money investors are again betting heavily on the stock.
F5 Draws Big Money Investment Institutional volumes reveal plenty. In the last year, FFIV has enjoyed strong investor demand, which we believe to be institutional support.
Each green bar signals unusually large volumes in FFIV shares. They reflect our proprietary inflow signal, pushing the stock higher:
After suffering from outflows to end 2025, FFIV has rebounded due to institutional support to gain 58% so far in 2026. Source: www.moneyflows.com Plenty of technology names are under accumulation right now. But there’s a powerful fundamental story happening with F5.
F5 Fundamental Analysis Institutional support and a healthy fundamental backdrop make this company worth investigating. As you can see, FFIV has had strong sales and earnings growth:
Also, EPS is estimated to ramp higher this year by +4%.
Now it makes sense why the stock has been generating Big Money interest. FFIV has a track record of strong financial performance.
Marrying great fundamentals with MoneyFlows software has found some big winning stocks over the long term.
F5 has been a top-rated stock at MoneyFlows for years. That means the stock has unusual buy pressure and growing fundamentals. We have a ranking process that showcases stocks like this on a weekly basis.
It’s garnered 87 outlier inflow signals since January 2005 and is up 1,567% in that time. The blue bars below show when FFIV was a top pick on the Outlier 20 report in the last decade… Big Money remains a buyer:
FFIV gained 84.6% since the outlier inflow signal on Oct. 1, 2024. Source: www.moneyflows.com Tracking unusual volumes reveals the power of money flows.
This is a trait that most outlier stocks exhibit…the best of the best. Big Money demand drives stocks upward.
F5 Price Prediction The FFIV action isn’t new at all. Big Money buying in the shares is signaling to take notice. Given the historical gains in share price and strong fundamentals, this stock could be worth a spot in a diversified portfolio.
Disclosure: the author holds no position in FFIV at the time of publication.
If you are a Registered Investment Advisor (RIA) or are a serious investor, take your investing to the next level and follow our free weekly MoneyFlows insights.
Bank of Nova Scotia trimmed its holdings in F5, Inc. (NASDAQ:FFIV – Free Report) by 94.0% in the first quarter, according to the company in its most recent Form 13F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The firm owned 9,595 shares of the network technology company’s stock after selling 151,160 shares during the period. Bank of Nova Scotia’s holdings in F5 were worth $2,776,000 as of its most recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Several other large investors also recently modified their holdings of the business. Norges Bank bought a new position in F5 in the fourth quarter valued at approximately $205,706,000. Jefferies Financial Group Inc. increased its position in shares of F5 by 127.0% during the fourth quarter. Jefferies Financial Group Inc. now owns 34,529 shares of the network technology company’s stock worth $8,814,000 after acquiring an additional 19,315 shares in the last quarter. iA Global Asset Management Inc. bought a new stake in shares of F5 during the first quarter worth $6,469,000. William Blair Investment Management LLC acquired a new stake in shares of F5 during the fourth quarter worth $140,460,000. Finally, Tredje AP fonden raised its holdings in shares of F5 by 98.2% during the fourth quarter. Tredje AP fonden now owns 7,683 shares of the network technology company’s stock worth $1,961,000 after acquiring an additional 3,807 shares during the period. 90.66% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors.
Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth A number of brokerages recently weighed in on FFIV. Bank of America upped their target price on shares of F5 from $250.00 to $300.00 and gave the stock an “underperform” rating in a research note on Tuesday, May 26th. Piper Sandler reissued an “overweight” rating and issued a $461.00 price target (up from $423.00) on shares of F5 in a research note on Tuesday. Morgan Stanley boosted their price target on F5 from $380.00 to $415.00 and gave the company an “equal weight” rating in a report on Tuesday. Weiss Ratings reaffirmed a “buy (b-)” rating on shares of F5 in a research report on Friday, June 26th. Finally, Evercore upgraded F5 from an “in-line” rating to an “outperform” rating and set a $475.00 price objective for the company in a report on Monday, May 18th. One analyst has rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, five have assigned a Buy rating, four have issued a Hold rating and one has issued a Sell rating to the company. According to MarketBeat.com, F5 presently has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus target price of $408.67.
Read Our Latest Stock Report on FFIV
F5 Stock Down 1.1% Shares of FFIV stock opened at $403.46 on Wednesday. F5, Inc. has a 12 month low of $223.76 and a 12 month high of $435.00. The company’s fifty day simple moving average is $401.20 and its 200-day simple moving average is $331.76. The firm has a market cap of $22.76 billion, a PE ratio of 32.12, a P/E/G ratio of 4.78 and a beta of 1.03.
F5 (NASDAQ:FFIV – Get Free Report) last released its earnings results on Monday, July 27th. The network technology company reported $4.73 earnings per share for the quarter, beating analysts’ consensus estimates of $4.00 by $0.73. F5 had a net margin of 21.95% and a return on equity of 21.94%. The business had revenue of $865.08 million during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $834.60 million. During the same quarter last year, the firm earned $4.16 earnings per share. The firm’s revenue for the quarter was up 10.9% compared to the same quarter last year. F5 has set its Q4 2026 guidance at 4.140-4.260 EPS and its FY 2026 guidance at 17.210-17.330 EPS. On average, equities analysts predict that F5, Inc. will post 12.78 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.
Insider Buying and Selling In related news, CTO Kunal Anand sold 3,123 shares of F5 stock in a transaction dated Monday, May 4th. The stock was sold at an average price of $322.33, for a total value of $1,006,636.59. Following the sale, the chief technology officer owned 12,194 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $3,930,492.02. The trade was a 20.39% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The transaction was disclosed in a legal filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which can be accessed through the SEC website. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Also, CEO Francois Locoh-Donou sold 3,783 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction dated Tuesday, May 5th. The stock was sold at an average price of $337.39, for a total value of $1,276,346.37. Following the sale, the chief executive officer owned 146,989 shares in the company, valued at $49,592,618.71. The trade was a 2.51% decrease in their position. Additional details regarding this sale are available in the official SEC disclosure. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Insiders have sold 22,579 shares of company stock worth $7,836,860 over the last three months. Company insiders own 0.48% of the company’s stock.
F5 News Summary Here are the key news stories impacting F5 this week:
Positive Sentiment: Strong Q3 results: F5 reported adjusted EPS of $4.73, well above the roughly $4.00 consensus, while revenue rose 10.9% year over year to $865.1 million versus expectations of $834.6 million. Product revenue grew 19%, marking the eighth consecutive quarter of double-digit product growth. F5 Reports Third Quarter Results with 19% Product Revenue Growth Positive Sentiment: Guidance was raised: F5 forecast fourth-quarter EPS of $4.14-$4.26 and revenue of $870 million-$890 million, above analyst estimates of $3.95 EPS and $858 million revenue. Full-year fiscal 2026 EPS guidance of $17.21-$17.33 also exceeded the prior consensus estimate of $15.75. F5 raises annual revenue growth forecast again on strong cybersecurity demand Positive Sentiment: Demand trends remain favorable: Management cited strong cybersecurity demand, hybrid multicloud adoption, application-security growth and increasing AI-related network requirements. The performance prompted some analysts to raise estimates. F5’s Systems revenue surges during Q3 Neutral Sentiment: Analyst views are mixed: JPMorgan raised its price target to $515 and maintained an overweight rating, while Morgan Stanley raised its target to $415 but kept an equal-weight rating. Barclays lifted its target to $397 but also retained an equal-weight rating. Analysts increase forecasts on F5 Negative Sentiment: Valuation and margin concerns may limit enthusiasm: A recent analysis highlighted a cautious margin outlook despite AI and hybrid-cloud tailwinds, while the reported average analyst price target of $382.67 remains below the stock’s recent trading level. FFIV Q2 deep dive F5 Profile (Free Report)
F5 Inc (NASDAQ:FFIV) specializes in application services and delivery networking, helping organizations ensure the availability, performance and security of their applications. The company’s core offerings include advanced load balancing, traffic management and application security solutions designed to optimize user experiences and protect against threats such as distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks and web application exploits.
At the heart of F5’s product portfolio is the BIG-IP platform, which provides a suite of software modules for local and global traffic management, secure web application firewalling and DNS service delivery.
Further Reading Five stocks we like better than F5 These 3 Stocks Have Soared in 2026—Can They Keep Climbing? Hasbro’s Earnings Beat Shows Why This Is No Longer Just a Toy Story Rambus: Another AI Phoenix Ready to Rise From the Ashes of Correction Chips & Clips: Memory Tariffs Rewire Tech Supply Chains
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Key Takeaways F5 beat third-quarter earnings and revenue estimates on strong systems and product revenue growth.F5 benefited from growing application security needs and continued demand for AI-ready infrastructure. FFIV raised fiscal 2026 revenue and earnings guidance following strong hybrid multicloud demand. F5, Inc. (FFIV - Free Report) delivered better-than-expected third-quarter fiscal 2026 results. The company reported third-quarter fiscal 2026 non-GAAP earnings of $4.73 per share, which increased 14% year over year. The figure surpassed the Zacks Consensus Estimate by 18.8%.
Revenues increased 11% year over year to $865 million and beat the consensus mark by 3.96%. Results benefited from 32% systems revenue growth, sustained hybrid multicloud demand and growing application security requirements. Product revenues advanced 19%, marking the eighth consecutive quarter of double-digit growth.
FFIV's Q3 Segment Revenue DetailsProduct revenues, representing 54% of total revenues, increased 19% year over year to $463 million. Systems revenues jumped 32% to $240 million as customers invested in higher-performance infrastructure, expanded data-center capacity and modernized environments for resiliency, digital sovereignty and AI workloads.
Software revenues rose 7% to $223 million. Subscription-based software revenues increased 9% to $201 million and represented 90% of software revenues. Perpetual license revenues declined 4% to $22 million. Services revenues, accounting for 46% of total revenues, grew 3% to $402 million.
F5 Benefits From Hybrid Multicloud DemandManagement highlighted expansion opportunities tied to hybrid multicloud adoption, including competitive displacements, platform consolidation and data-center buildouts. An energy and utilities provider expanded its BIG-IP footprint after moving workloads from an unstable cloud environment back to on-premises infrastructure.
F5 also secured a competitive win at a Fortune 100 technology provider seeking to strengthen delivery and security for a storage service spanning 45 data centers. The customer selected BIG-IP to support the availability, resilience and security requirements of AI and data-intensive workloads.
F5 Maintains Solid Margins and Cash FlowNon-GAAP gross margin expanded 110 basis points year over year to 84.2%, while non-GAAP operating margin increased 70 basis points to 35%.
In the third quarter of fiscal 2026, FFIV generated $316 million in operating cash flow and $281 million in free cash flow.
Cash and investments totaled $1.63 billion, up from $1.44 billion in the previous quarter. The company repurchased $100 million of shares and had $422 million remaining under its authorization.
FFIV Raises Fiscal 2026 OutlookF5 expects fourth-quarter fiscal 2026 revenues between $870 million and $890 million, implying growth of nearly 9% at the midpoint. Non-GAAP earnings are projected in the range of $4.14-$4.26 per share. Non-GAAP gross margin is expected between 83% and 84%, reflecting a favorable mix of higher-performance systems and lower component-cost increases than initially anticipated.
The Zacks Consensus Estimate for fourth-quarter fiscal 2026 revenues and earnings is currently pegged at $854.33 million and $4.12 per share, respectively.
For fiscal 2026, management raised its revenue growth forecast to approximately 9-10% from 7-8%. The company continues to expect mid-single-digit software growth, double-digit systems growth and low-single-digit services growth. Non-GAAP earnings guidance was increased to $17.21-$17.33 per share from $16.25-$16.55.
The Zacks Consensus Estimate for fiscal 2026 revenues and earnings is currently pegged at $3.32 billion and $16.45 per share, respectively.
FFIV’s Zacks Rank and Stocks to ConsiderCurrently, F5 carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold).
Some better-ranked stocks in the broader Zacks Computer and Technology sector are Analog Devices (ADI - Free Report) , Applied Materials (AMAT - Free Report) and Cisco Systems (CSCO - Free Report) , each carrying a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy) at present. You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.
Shares of Analog Devices have rallied 37.1% year to date. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for ADI’s fiscal 2026 earnings is pegged at $12.42 per share, up by 10 cents over the past 30 days, indicating an increase of 59.4% year over year.
Shares of Applied Materials have skyrocketed 101.1% year to date. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for AMAT’s fiscal 2026 earnings is pegged at $12.14 per share, up by 4 cents over the past 30 days, indicating a rise of 28.9% year over year.
Cisco Systems shares have surged 48.7% year to date. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for CSCO’s fiscal 2026 earnings is pegged at $4.28 per share, unchanged over the past 30 days, indicating an increase of 12.3% year over year.
F5 Inc (NASDAQ:FFIV) reported better-than-expected third-quarter earnings on Monday.
The company posted quarterly earnings of $4.73 per share which beat the analyst consensus estimate of $4.00 per share. The company reported quarterly sales of $865.007 million which beat the analyst consensus estimate of $832.547 million.
F5 said it sees fourth-quarter adjusted EPS of $4.14-$4.26, versus market estimates of $4.14. The company said it expects sales of $870.000 million-$890.000 million, versus projections of $856.872 million.
“Q3 was another outstanding quarter with 19% product revenue growth driving 11% total revenue growth year over year,” said François Locoh-Donou, F5’s Chairman, President, and CEO. “Eight consecutive quarters of double-digit product growth reflect the mission-critical role F5 plays at the application delivery and security layer of today’s hybrid multicloud and AI-driven enterprise infrastructure.”
F5 shares fell 8.3% to trade at $374.02 on Monday.
These analysts made changes to their price targets on F5 following earnings announcement.
Barclays analyst Tim Long maintained the stock with an Equal-Weight rating and raised the price target from $386 to $397. JP Morgan analyst Samik Chatterjee maintained the stock with an Overweight rating and raised the price target from $500 to $515. Considering buying FFIV stock? Here’s what analysts think:
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F5, Inc. (FFIV) Q3 2026 Earnings Call July 27, 2026 4:30 PM EDT
Company Participants
Suzanne DuLong - Vice President of Investor Relations
François Locoh-Donou - President, CEO & Chairman
Cooper Werner - Executive VP & Chief Financial Officer
Kunal Anand - Executive VP & Chief Product Officer
Conference Call Participants
Timothy Long - Barclays Bank PLC, Research Division
Joseph Cardoso - JPMorgan Chase & Co, Research Division
George Notter - Wolfe Research, LLC
Matthew Hedberg - RBC Capital Markets, Research Division
Simon Leopold - Raymond James & Associates, Inc., Research Division
James Fish - Piper Sandler & Co., Research Division
Meta Marshall - Morgan Stanley, Research Division
Tomer Zilberman - BofA Securities, Research Division
Michael Ng - Goldman Sachs Group, Inc., Research Division
John Jeffrey Hopson - Needham & Company, LLC, Research Division
Amit Daryanani - Evercore ISI Institutional Equities, Research Division
Presentation
Operator
Good afternoon, and welcome to the F5, Inc. Third Quarter Fiscal 2026 Financial Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Also, today's conference is being recorded. If anyone has any objections, please disconnect at this time. I'll now turn the call over to Ms. Suzanne DuLong. Ma'am, you may begin.
Suzanne DuLong
Vice President of Investor Relations
Hello, and welcome. I'm Suzanne DuLong, F5's Vice President of Investor Relations. We are here to discuss our third quarter fiscal year 2026 financial results. Francois Locoh-Donou, F5's Chairman, President and CEO; and Cooper Werner, F5's Executive Vice President and CFO, will be making prepared remarks on today's call. Other members of the F5 executive team are also here to answer questions during the Q&A session. Today's press release is available on our website at f5.com, where an archived version of today's audio will be available through October 26, 2026.
We will post the slide deck accompanying today's webcast to our IR site following this call. To access the replay of today's
SEATTLE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--F5, Inc. (NASDAQ: FFIV), the global leader in delivering and securing every app and API, today announced financial results for its third quarter fiscal year 2026 ended June 30, 2026. “Q3 was another outstanding quarter with 19% product revenue growth driving 11% total revenue growth year over year,” said François Locoh-Donou, F5's Chairman, President, and CEO. “Eight consecutive quarters of double-digit product growth reflect the mission-critical role F5 plays at the a.
F5 Inc (FFIV) released its 8-K filing on July 27, 2026, detailing robust third-quarter results for fiscal year 2026. The company, a market leader in application
July 27 (Reuters) - F5 (FFIV.O), opens new tab on Monday raised its annual revenue growth forecast for the third time this year, betting on robust demand for its secure network and application delivery solutions as businesses navigate heightened cybersecurity risks tied to the AI boom.
Grappling with a surge in AI-driven cyberattacks and ransomware, businesses worldwide are racing to overhaul their digital infrastructure and tighten security operations.
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Here are some details:
Shares of the company rose 4% in extended trading.
F5, which provides products that help customers direct, manage and filter internet traffic, raised its annual revenue growth forecast to about 9% to 10%, compared with its earlier expectation of a 7% to 8% increase.
The company also lifted its fiscal year 2026 adjusted earnings per share guidance to a range of $17.21 to $17.33, up from $16.25 to $16.55 per share.
F5 reported third-quarter revenue of $865 million, beating analysts' estimates of $832.6 million, according to data compiled by LSEG.
Adjusted earnings per share came in at $4.73, compared with analysts' estimates of $4.
Reporting by Nithyashree R B in Bengaluru; Editing by Shilpi Majumdar
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab
3 Stocks to Buy While Others Stay on the SidelinesF5 NASDAQ: FFIV reported third-quarter fiscal 2026 revenue of $865 million, up 11% from a year earlier and above the high end of its guidance, as product revenue rose 19% and demand remained strong for application delivery, security and AI-related infrastructure.
Chairman, President and CEO François Locoh-Donou said the company has now posted eight consecutive quarters of double-digit product growth. He attributed the performance to hybrid multi-cloud adoption, an expanding application-layer threat landscape and growing AI inference workloads.
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As the Magnificent 7 Stalls, These 3 Stocks Are Gaining Momentum“Q3 was another outstanding quarter,” Locoh-Donou said, adding that customers are seeking to simplify and secure application delivery across on-premises, cloud and edge environments.
Revenue and Earnings Results Product revenue totaled $463 million in the quarter, while services revenue was $402 million, up 3% year over year. Systems revenue increased 32% to $240 million, while software revenue grew 7% to $223 million. Subscription-based software revenue rose 9% to $201 million and represented 90% of total software revenue.
Texas Instruments' tepid revenue view drags down techsRecurring revenue sources accounted for 69% of total quarterly revenue. By geography, revenue in the Americas increased 11% and represented 55% of total revenue. EMEA revenue grew 27%, representing 30% of the total, while APAC revenue declined 11% against what Chief Financial Officer Cooper Werner described as a strong year-earlier comparison.
Enterprise customers accounted for 71% of product bookings, government customers represented 19%, including 7% from U.S. federal customers, and service providers accounted for 11%.
GAAP net income was $208 million, or $3.62 per share. Non-GAAP net income was $272 million, or $4.73 per share, up 14% from the prior-year period. GAAP operating margin was 24.7%, while non-GAAP operating margin was 35%. GAAP gross margin was 82.2%, and non-GAAP gross margin was 84.2%. Cash flow from operations totaled $316 million and free cash flow was $281 million. F5 ended the quarter with $1.63 billion in cash and investments and $2.19 billion in deferred revenue, up 12% year over year. The company repurchased $100 million of shares at an average price of $299 per share and had $422 million remaining under its authorization at quarter-end.
AI, Security and Systems Demand Locoh-Donou said the company’s direct AI-use-case customer count increased 50% during the quarter. F5 identifies three direct AI opportunities: data delivery, runtime security and AI factory load balancing. He said the number of AI security customers doubled in the quarter.
The CEO cited customer deployments involving AI data pipelines, protection for AI applications and models, and traffic management for sovereign AI factories. He also said AI-driven traffic is contributing indirectly to demand for the company’s application delivery controller systems, including higher-capacity hardware.
F5 said 15% of its Distributed Cloud web application firewall customers have adopted its AI-powered WAF capability since its second-quarter launch. Of those adopters, 75% are using the capability in blocking mode rather than monitoring mode, according to Locoh-Donou.
The company also moved to a monthly cadence for hardened software releases, from a prior quarterly cadence, and introduced fleet-management capabilities in F5 Insight intended to help customers assess software versions, security posture and update readiness across BIG-IP deployments.
During the question-and-answer session, Werner said the company’s stronger near-term gross-margin outlook reflected increased adoption of higher-performance appliances and lower-than-expected component costs from certain suppliers. However, he said F5 was not changing its fiscal 2027 gross-margin outlook because pricing for memory and storage components remains dynamic.
Updated Outlook For the fourth quarter, F5 expects revenue of $870 million to $890 million, representing just under 9% year-over-year growth at the midpoint. The company projected non-GAAP gross margin of 83% to 84%, non-GAAP operating expenses of $430 million to $442 million, and non-GAAP earnings per share of $4.14 to $4.26.
Based on its third-quarter performance and fourth-quarter outlook, F5 raised its full-year fiscal 2026 revenue-growth expectation to approximately 9% to 10%, from a prior outlook of 7% to 8%.
Full-year non-GAAP gross margin is expected to be 83.5% to 84%. Full-year non-GAAP operating margin is expected to be 34.5% to 35.5%. Full-year non-GAAP EPS is expected to be $17.21 to $17.33, up from prior guidance of $16.25 to $16.55. F5 expects mid-single-digit software revenue growth, double-digit systems revenue growth and low-single-digit services revenue growth for fiscal 2026. Werner said the company expects full-year share repurchases to equal at least 50% of free cash flow. Looking beyond the current fiscal year, management said it sees continued demand from infrastructure refresh activity, data-center modernization, digital sovereignty initiatives, competitive displacements, platform consolidation and AI-related workloads.
About F5 (NASDAQ:FFIV)F5 Inc NASDAQ: FFIV specializes in application services and delivery networking, helping organizations ensure the availability, performance and security of their applications. The company's core offerings include advanced load balancing, traffic management and application security solutions designed to optimize user experiences and protect against threats such as distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks and web application exploits.
At the heart of F5's product portfolio is the BIG-IP platform, which provides a suite of software modules for local and global traffic management, secure web application firewalling and DNS service delivery.
This instant news alert was generated by narrative science technology and financial data from MarketBeat in order to provide readers with the fastest reporting and unbiased coverage. Please send any questions or comments about this story to [email protected].
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F5 Networks (FFIV - Free Report) came out with quarterly earnings of $4.73 per share, beating the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $3.98 per share. This compares to earnings of $4.16 per share a year ago. These figures are adjusted for non-recurring items.
This quarterly report represents an earnings surprise of +18.84%. A quarter ago, it was expected that this computer networking company would post earnings of $3.47 per share when it actually produced earnings of $3.9, delivering a surprise of +12.39%.
Over the last four quarters, the company has surpassed consensus EPS estimates four times.
F5, which belongs to the Zacks Internet - Software industry, posted revenues of $865.08 million for the quarter ended June 2026, surpassing the Zacks Consensus Estimate by 3.96%. This compares to year-ago revenues of $780.37 million. The company has topped consensus revenue estimates four times over the last four quarters.
The sustainability of the stock's immediate price movement based on the recently-released numbers and future earnings expectations will mostly depend on management's commentary on the earnings call.
F5 shares have added about 53.7% since the beginning of the year versus the S&P 500's gain of 8.3%.
What's Next for F5?While F5 has outperformed the market so far this year, the question that comes to investors' minds is: what's next for the stock?
There are no easy answers to this key question, but one reliable measure that can help investors address this is the company's earnings outlook. Not only does this include current consensus earnings expectations for the coming quarter(s), but also how these expectations have changed lately.
Empirical research shows a strong correlation between near-term stock movements and trends in earnings estimate revisions. Investors can track such revisions by themselves or rely on a tried-and-tested rating tool like the Zacks Rank, which has an impressive track record of harnessing the power of earnings estimate revisions.
Ahead of this earnings release, the estimate revisions trend for F5 was mixed. While the magnitude and direction of estimate revisions could change following the company's just-released earnings report, the current status translates into a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) for the stock. So, the shares are expected to perform in line with the market in the near future. You can see the complete list of today's Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.
It will be interesting to see how estimates for the coming quarters and the current fiscal year change in the days ahead. The current consensus EPS estimate is $4.12 on $854.33 million in revenues for the coming quarter and $16.45 on $3.32 billion in revenues for the current fiscal year.
Investors should be mindful of the fact that the outlook for the industry can have a material impact on the performance of the stock as well. In terms of the Zacks Industry Rank, Internet - Software is currently in the bottom 40% of the 250 plus Zacks industries. Our research shows that the top 50% of the Zacks-ranked industries outperform the bottom 50% by a factor of more than 2 to 1.
Another stock from the same industry, Consensus Cloud Solutions, Inc. (CCSI - Free Report) , has yet to report results for the quarter ended June 2026. The results are expected to be released on August 6.
This company is expected to post quarterly earnings of $1.49 per share in its upcoming report, which represents a year-over-year change of +2.1%. The consensus EPS estimate for the quarter has remained unchanged over the last 30 days.
Consensus Cloud Solutions, Inc.'s revenues are expected to be $90 million, up 2.6% from the year-ago quarter.
F5, Inc. (NASDAQ:FFIV) will release its third quarter earnings report after the closing bell on Monday, July 27.
Analysts expect the Seattle, Washington-based company to report quarterly earnings of $4.00 per share, down from $4.16 per share in the year-ago period. The consensus estimate for F5’s quarterly revenue is $833.62 million. It reported $780.37 million last year, according to Benzinga Pro.
On July 13, F5 named Cathy Peterman as chief people officer.
F5 shares rose 1.1% to close at $392.21 on Friday.
Benzinga readers can access the latest analyst ratings on the Analyst Stock Ratings page. Readers can sort by stock ticker, company name, analyst firm, rating change or other variables.
Let’s have a look at how Benzinga’s most-accurate analysts have rated the company in the recent period.
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Shares of F5, Inc. (NASDAQ:FFIV – Get Free Report) have received an average rating of “Moderate Buy” from the eleven research firms that are currently covering the stock, MarketBeat.com reports. One investment analyst has rated the stock with a sell recommendation, four have issued a hold recommendation, five have given a buy recommendation and one has given a strong buy recommendation to the company. The average 1-year price target among analysts that have covered the stock in the last year is $382.6667.
FFIV has been the subject of a number of research reports. Piper Sandler raised their target price on F5 from $356.00 to $423.00 and gave the company an “overweight” rating in a research note on Friday, May 29th. Royal Bank Of Canada reiterated an “outperform” rating on shares of F5 in a research report on Thursday, July 16th. Barclays increased their price objective on shares of F5 from $292.00 to $386.00 and gave the stock an “equal weight” rating in a report on Friday, May 29th. Evercore upgraded shares of F5 from an “in-line” rating to an “outperform” rating and set a $475.00 price objective for the company in a research report on Monday, May 18th. Finally, Bank of America boosted their target price on shares of F5 from $250.00 to $300.00 and gave the stock an “underperform” rating in a research note on Tuesday, May 26th.
Check Out Our Latest Analysis on FFIV
Insider Buying and Selling at F5 In other F5 news, Director Elizabeth Buse sold 1,000 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction on Wednesday, June 10th. The stock was sold at an average price of $399.35, for a total transaction of $399,350.00. Following the transaction, the director owned 4,947 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $1,975,584.45. This represents a 16.82% decrease in their position. The transaction was disclosed in a filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which can be accessed through the SEC website. Also, CEO Francois Locoh-Donou sold 3,783 shares of the stock in a transaction on Tuesday, May 5th. The shares were sold at an average price of $337.39, for a total value of $1,276,346.37. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief executive officer owned 146,989 shares in the company, valued at $49,592,618.71. The trade was a 2.51% decrease in their ownership of the stock. Additional details regarding this sale are available in the official SEC disclosure. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Insiders sold 22,579 shares of company stock valued at $7,836,860 over the last three months. Insiders own 0.48% of the company’s stock.
Institutional Investors Weigh In On F5 A number of institutional investors and hedge funds have recently made changes to their positions in FFIV. Millennium Management LLC boosted its holdings in F5 by 166.5% in the first quarter. Millennium Management LLC now owns 62,906 shares of the network technology company’s stock valued at $16,750,000 after acquiring an additional 39,305 shares during the last quarter. NewEdge Advisors LLC raised its holdings in F5 by 1,281.4% during the 1st quarter. NewEdge Advisors LLC now owns 967 shares of the network technology company’s stock worth $257,000 after purchasing an additional 897 shares during the last quarter. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. lifted its position in F5 by 38.4% during the 1st quarter. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. now owns 298,297 shares of the network technology company’s stock valued at $79,428,000 after purchasing an additional 82,835 shares during the period. Focus Partners Wealth acquired a new position in F5 during the 1st quarter valued at about $257,000. Finally, Geneos Wealth Management Inc. lifted its position in F5 by 288.1% during the 1st quarter. Geneos Wealth Management Inc. now owns 163 shares of the network technology company’s stock valued at $43,000 after purchasing an additional 121 shares during the period. Institutional investors own 90.66% of the company’s stock.
F5 Price Performance NASDAQ FFIV opened at $392.21 on Thursday. The stock’s 50 day simple moving average is $400.23 and its 200 day simple moving average is $329.44. F5 has a one year low of $223.76 and a one year high of $435.00. The firm has a market cap of $22.13 billion, a PE ratio of 32.17, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 4.60 and a beta of 1.03.
F5 (NASDAQ:FFIV – Get Free Report) last issued its quarterly earnings data on Tuesday, April 28th. The network technology company reported $3.90 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $3.47 by $0.43. The firm had revenue of $811.70 million during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $783.82 million. F5 had a return on equity of 21.50% and a net margin of 21.96%.The business’s revenue for the quarter was up 11.0% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same quarter in the previous year, the company posted $3.42 EPS. F5 has set its Q3 2026 guidance at 3.910-4.030 EPS and its FY 2026 guidance at 16.250-16.550 EPS. As a group, equities analysts expect that F5 will post 12.78 earnings per share for the current year.
F5 Company Profile (Get Free Report)
F5 Inc (NASDAQ:FFIV) specializes in application services and delivery networking, helping organizations ensure the availability, performance and security of their applications. The company’s core offerings include advanced load balancing, traffic management and application security solutions designed to optimize user experiences and protect against threats such as distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks and web application exploits.
At the heart of F5’s product portfolio is the BIG-IP platform, which provides a suite of software modules for local and global traffic management, secure web application firewalling and DNS service delivery.
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Key Takeaways FFIV expects Q3 revenues of $820-$840M, with consensus at $832M and projected 6.63% year-over-year growth.F5 is seeing demand for hybrid multicloud, AI infrastructure and unified app delivery and security platforms.FFIV expects software and systems growth as BIG-IP, AI offerings and refresh cycles support demand. F5 Inc. (FFIV - Free Report) is scheduled to report third-quarter fiscal 2026 results on July 27, 2026, after market close.
For the third quarter of fiscal 2026, F5 projects non-GAAP earnings per share (EPS) in the range of $3.91 to $4.03. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for the same is pegged at $3.98, suggesting a year-over-year decrease of 4.33%. The figure has remained unchanged for the past 60 days.
FFIV’s earnings surpassed the Zacks Consensus Estimate in each of the trailing four quarters, delivering an average earnings surprise of 16.18%.
FFIV projects its third-quarter fiscal 2026 non-GAAP revenues between $820 million and $840 million. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for the same is pegged at $832 million, suggesting a year-over-year increase of 6.63%.
Factors Likely to Influence FFIV’s Q3 ResultsF5 is benefiting from robust demand for hybrid multicloud solutions as enterprises are ramping up their infrastructure modernization to improve resiliency, comply with digital sovereignty regulations and prepare for AI-driven workloads. Hybrid multicloud has become the standard enterprise architecture, with FFIV noting that more than 90% of enterprises now operate across hybrid environments. This trend is expected to have converted into strong product demand, particularly across systems and software in the to-be-reported quarter.
The ongoing AI infrastructure build-out is emerging as another major catalyst. Enterprises increasingly require high-performance traffic management, AI data delivery, runtime security and AI factory load balancing as AI inference moves into production. F5 has secured several AI-related customer wins, including deployments supporting AI data delivery, AI runtime security and GPU-based AI infrastructure and is likely to have gained more of such deals in the to-be-reported quarter.
Since AI is driving greater demand for compute, secure data movement and application delivery, F5's application delivery and security platform is positioning it at the center of enterprise AI infrastructure. Demand for unified application delivery and security platforms remained another important growth driver as customers are consolidating multiple point products into integrated platforms that simplify operations while strengthening performance and security across on-premises, cloud and edge environments. These factors are likely to have driven F5’s top line in the to-be-reported quarter.
F5 also introduced several AI-enabled security innovations in the past quarters, including AI-powered Distributed Cloud WAF capabilities and Agentic Bot Defense, further strengthening its application security portfolio for AI-powered applications. These products are expected to have gained traction in the to-be-reported quarter. The ongoing systems refresh cycle provided another meaningful tailwind. Our estimate for Systems revenues is pegged at $212.7 million.
F5 is benefiting from strong software momentum as well. Accelerating adoption of BIG-IP subscriptions, Distributed Cloud Services and AI-related software offerings are expected to have supported software revenue growth and benefited F5 in the to-be-reported quarter. BIG-IP has been continuously winning large enterprise deployments owing to its traffic management capabilities, automation features and lower total cost of ownership. Our estimate for Software revenues is pegged at $219.1 million.
Although F5 experienced a cybersecurity incident earlier this year, management indicated that the company responded rapidly by identifying, containing and remediating the issue. The investigation concluded that only limited non-sensitive data might have been exposed, with customers reporting minimal operational impact and no compromise of production environments. The swift response helped preserve customer confidence while allowing the company to maintain business momentum throughout the quarter.
What Our Model Says for F5 StockOur proven model does not conclusively predict an earnings beat for F5 this time. The combination of a positive Earnings ESP and a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy), 2 (Buy) or 3 (Hold) increases the odds of an earnings beat, which is not the case here.
Though F5 currently carries a Zacks Rank #3, it has an Earnings ESP of -0.83%. You can uncover the best stocks to buy or sell before they are reported with our Earnings ESP Filter. You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.
Stocks to ConsiderHere are some stocks worth considering, as our model shows that these have the right combination of elements to beat on earnings this reporting cycle.
Amphenol (APH - Free Report) has an Earnings ESP of +1.12% and sports a Zacks Rank #1 at present.
Amphenol shares have gained 16.8% year to date. Amphenol is scheduled to report its second-quarter 2026 results on July 29.
ASE Technology (ASX - Free Report) has an Earnings ESP of +21.21% and a Zacks Rank #2.
ASE Technology shares have surged 148.5% year to date. ASE Technology is set to report its second-quarter 2026 results on July 30.
Fortive (FTV - Free Report) has an Earnings ESP of +2.82% and a Zacks Rank #2 at present.
Fortive shares have gained 9.9% in the year-to-date period. Fortive is set to report second-quarter 2026 results on July 29.
In its upcoming report, F5 Networks (FFIV - Free Report) is predicted by Wall Street analysts to post quarterly earnings of $3.98 per share, reflecting a decline of 4.3% compared to the same period last year. Revenues are forecasted to be $832.12 million, representing a year-over-year increase of 6.6%.
The consensus EPS estimate for the quarter has remained unchanged over the last 30 days. This reflects how the analysts covering the stock have collectively reevaluated their initial estimates during this timeframe.
Before a company reveals its earnings, it is vital to take into account any changes in earnings projections. These revisions play a pivotal role in predicting the possible reactions of investors toward the stock. Multiple empirical studies have consistently shown a strong association between trends in earnings estimates and the short-term price movements of a stock.
While investors typically use consensus earnings and revenue estimates as a yardstick to evaluate the company's quarterly performance, scrutinizing analysts' projections for some of the company's key metrics can offer a more comprehensive perspective.
Given this perspective, it's time to examine the average forecasts of specific F5 metrics that are routinely monitored and predicted by Wall Street analysts.
The combined assessment of analysts suggests that 'Net revenues- Services' will likely reach $402.31 million. The estimate indicates a year-over-year change of +2.8%.
Analysts forecast 'Net revenues- Products' to reach $429.80 million. The estimate indicates a year-over-year change of +10.5%.
Analysts predict that the 'Net product revenues- Software' will reach $219.37 million. The estimate indicates a year-over-year change of +5.5%.
Analysts expect 'Net product revenues- Systems' to come in at $210.59 million. The estimate points to a change of +16.4% from the year-ago quarter.
View all Key Company Metrics for F5 here>>>
Shares of F5 have experienced a change of +4.9% in the past month compared to the +0.3% move of the Zacks S&P 500 composite. With a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold), FFIV is expected to mirror the overall market performance in the near future. You can see the complete list of today's Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy) stocks here >>>> .
Bank of New York Mellon Corp trimmed its stake in F5, Inc. (NASDAQ:FFIV – Free Report) by 6.7% in the first quarter, according to its most recent disclosure with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The institutional investor owned 385,894 shares of the network technology company’s stock after selling 27,894 shares during the quarter. Bank of New York Mellon Corp owned 0.68% of F5 worth $111,651,000 as of its most recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
Several other institutional investors have also made changes to their positions in FFIV. Hazlett Burt & Watson Inc. acquired a new position in F5 in the 4th quarter valued at approximately $26,000. Hantz Financial Services Inc. boosted its stake in shares of F5 by 109.8% during the 4th quarter. Hantz Financial Services Inc. now owns 107 shares of the network technology company’s stock valued at $27,000 after buying an additional 56 shares during the period. Elyxium Wealth LLC acquired a new stake in shares of F5 during the 4th quarter valued at $28,000. SJS Investment Consulting Inc. grew its holdings in shares of F5 by 963.6% during the 1st quarter. SJS Investment Consulting Inc. now owns 117 shares of the network technology company’s stock valued at $34,000 after acquiring an additional 106 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Capital Advisors Ltd. LLC grew its holdings in shares of F5 by 113.8% during the 1st quarter. Capital Advisors Ltd. LLC now owns 124 shares of the network technology company’s stock valued at $36,000 after acquiring an additional 66 shares in the last quarter. 90.66% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors and hedge funds.
Insider Transactions at F5 In other F5 news, EVP Thomas Dean Fountain sold 1,328 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction on Tuesday, May 5th. The shares were sold at an average price of $330.58, for a total transaction of $439,010.24. Following the completion of the transaction, the executive vice president owned 8,060 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $2,664,474.80. The trade was a 14.15% decrease in their position. The transaction was disclosed in a legal filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available at the SEC website. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Also, EVP Chad Michael Whalen sold 6,200 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction dated Friday, May 8th. The shares were sold at an average price of $350.19, for a total transaction of $2,171,178.00. Following the sale, the executive vice president owned 20,832 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $7,295,158.08. This trade represents a 22.94% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The disclosure for this sale is available in the SEC filing. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Over the last ninety days, insiders have sold 22,579 shares of company stock worth $7,836,860. Corporate insiders own 0.48% of the company’s stock.
Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades Several analysts recently issued reports on the company. Evercore upgraded F5 from an “in-line” rating to an “outperform” rating and set a $475.00 price objective for the company in a report on Monday, May 18th. Royal Bank Of Canada restated an “outperform” rating on shares of F5 in a research note on Thursday. Bank of America upped their target price on F5 from $250.00 to $300.00 and gave the stock an “underperform” rating in a research report on Tuesday, May 26th. Weiss Ratings reaffirmed a “buy (b-)” rating on shares of F5 in a research note on Friday, June 26th. Finally, Barclays lifted their price target on F5 from $292.00 to $386.00 and gave the company an “equal weight” rating in a report on Friday, May 29th. One equities research analyst has rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, five have assigned a Buy rating, four have given a Hold rating and one has given a Sell rating to the stock. According to data from MarketBeat.com, F5 has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average price target of $382.67.
View Our Latest Analysis on F5
F5 Stock Up 0.7% Shares of F5 stock opened at $411.92 on Tuesday. The stock has a market capitalization of $23.24 billion, a P/E ratio of 33.79, a PEG ratio of 4.80 and a beta of 1.03. The stock has a 50 day moving average price of $397.23 and a two-hundred day moving average price of $325.96. F5, Inc. has a 12-month low of $223.76 and a 12-month high of $435.00.
F5 (NASDAQ:FFIV – Get Free Report) last announced its quarterly earnings results on Tuesday, April 28th. The network technology company reported $3.90 EPS for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $3.47 by $0.43. F5 had a return on equity of 21.50% and a net margin of 21.96%.The company had revenue of $811.70 million for the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $783.82 million. During the same quarter last year, the company posted $3.42 earnings per share. The company’s revenue for the quarter was up 11.0% compared to the same quarter last year. F5 has set its Q3 2026 guidance at 3.910-4.030 EPS and its FY 2026 guidance at 16.250-16.550 EPS. Sell-side analysts anticipate that F5, Inc. will post 12.78 earnings per share for the current year.
About F5 (Free Report)
F5 Inc (NASDAQ:FFIV) specializes in application services and delivery networking, helping organizations ensure the availability, performance and security of their applications. The company’s core offerings include advanced load balancing, traffic management and application security solutions designed to optimize user experiences and protect against threats such as distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks and web application exploits.
At the heart of F5’s product portfolio is the BIG-IP platform, which provides a suite of software modules for local and global traffic management, secure web application firewalling and DNS service delivery.
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Wall Street expects a year-over-year decline in earnings on higher revenues when F5 Networks (FFIV - Free Report) reports results for the quarter ended June 2026. While this widely-known consensus outlook is important in gauging the company's earnings picture, a powerful factor that could impact its near-term stock price is how the actual results compare to these estimates.
The earnings report, which is expected to be released on July 27, might help the stock move higher if these key numbers are better than expectations. On the other hand, if they miss, the stock may move lower.
While management's discussion of business conditions on the earnings call will mostly determine the sustainability of the immediate price change and future earnings expectations, it's worth having a handicapping insight into the odds of a positive EPS surprise.
Zacks Consensus EstimateThis computer networking company is expected to post quarterly earnings of $3.98 per share in its upcoming report, which represents a year-over-year change of -4.3%.
Revenues are expected to be $832.12 million, up 6.6% from the year-ago quarter.
Estimate Revisions TrendThe consensus EPS estimate for the quarter has remained unchanged over the last 30 days. This is essentially a reflection of how the covering analysts have collectively reassessed their initial estimates over this period.
Investors should keep in mind that an aggregate change may not always reflect the direction of estimate revisions by each of the covering analysts.
Price, Consensus and EPS Surprise
Earnings WhisperEstimate revisions ahead of a company's earnings release offer clues to the business conditions for the period whose results are coming out. Our proprietary surprise prediction model -- the Zacks Earnings ESP (Expected Surprise Prediction) -- has this insight at its core.
The Zacks Earnings ESP compares the Most Accurate Estimate to the Zacks Consensus Estimate for the quarter; the Most Accurate Estimate is a more recent version of the Zacks Consensus EPS estimate. The idea here is that analysts revising their estimates right before an earnings release have the latest information, which could potentially be more accurate than what they and others contributing to the consensus had predicted earlier.
Thus, a positive or negative Earnings ESP reading theoretically indicates the likely deviation of the actual earnings from the consensus estimate. However, the model's predictive power is significant for positive ESP readings only.
A positive Earnings ESP is a strong predictor of an earnings beat, particularly when combined with a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy), 2 (Buy) or 3 (Hold). Our research shows that stocks with this combination produce a positive surprise nearly 70% of the time, and a solid Zacks Rank actually increases the predictive power of Earnings ESP.
Please note that a negative Earnings ESP reading is not indicative of an earnings miss. Our research shows that it is difficult to predict an earnings beat with any degree of confidence for stocks with negative Earnings ESP readings and/or Zacks Rank of 4 (Sell) or 5 (Strong Sell).
How Have the Numbers Shaped Up for F5?For F5, the Most Accurate Estimate is lower than the Zacks Consensus Estimate, suggesting that analysts have recently become bearish on the company's earnings prospects. This has resulted in an Earnings ESP of -0.83%.
On the other hand, the stock currently carries a Zacks Rank of #3.
So, this combination makes it difficult to conclusively predict that F5 will beat the consensus EPS estimate.
Does Earnings Surprise History Hold Any Clue?While calculating estimates for a company's future earnings, analysts often consider to what extent it has been able to match past consensus estimates. So, it's worth taking a look at the surprise history for gauging its influence on the upcoming number.
For the last reported quarter, it was expected that F5 would post earnings of $3.47 per share when it actually produced earnings of $3.90, delivering a surprise of +12.39%.
Over the last four quarters, the company has beaten consensus EPS estimates four times.
Bottom LineAn earnings beat or miss may not be the sole basis for a stock moving higher or lower. Many stocks end up losing ground despite an earnings beat due to other factors that disappoint investors. Similarly, unforeseen catalysts help a number of stocks gain despite an earnings miss.
That said, betting on stocks that are expected to beat earnings expectations does increase the odds of success. This is why it's worth checking a company's Earnings ESP and Zacks Rank ahead of its quarterly release. Make sure to utilize our Earnings ESP Filter to uncover the best stocks to buy or sell before they've reported.
F5 doesn't appear a compelling earnings-beat candidate. However, investors should pay attention to other factors too for betting on this stock or staying away from it ahead of its earnings release.
Stay on top of upcoming earnings announcements with the Zacks Earnings Calendar.
New F5 Insight workflows help enterprises update BIG-IP fleets faster, more safely, and with greater accountability as AI accelerates vulnerability response timelines
SEATTLE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--F5 (NASDAQ: FFIV), the global leader in delivering and securing every app and API, today announced new fleet management capabilities for F5 Insight for ADSP that help enterprises reduce risk exposure across F5 BIG-IP environments as frontier AI compresses vulnerability response timelines. The new F5 Insight workflows give security and operations teams fleet-wide visibility, guided update management, enterprise authentication, role-based access controls, and a tamper-evident AI audit trail. This enables customers to move from identifying risk to taking accountable action across large, distributed application delivery and security fleets.
The new capabilities build on F5’s move to monthly hardened software releases and reflect a broader shift in how F5 helps customers respond to AI-accelerated threats. As vulnerability response timelines shrink, enterprises need more than faster fixes. They need the operational control to understand what is exposed, prioritize updates, execute changes safely, and maintain a clear record of action across complex environments.
“Frontier AI has fundamentally altered both sides of cybersecurity,” said Kunal Anand, Chief Product Officer at F5. “It gives defenders powerful new ways to harden software, and it gives attackers faster ways to find and exploit vulnerabilities. F5 is meeting that shift end-to-end. We are changing how we build, harden, and deliver software, and we are giving customers the operational control to move at the same speed. F5 Insight helps teams see what needs attention, update critical infrastructure safely at scale, and prove what changed, when, and by whom. That is what resilience looks like in the frontier AI era.”
Fleet management: From shipped fix to reduced risk
F5 Insight for ADSP v1.2 introduces fleet management workflows for BIG-IP devices, streamlining and simplifying the software update and patching process. Operations teams can see the software version, update readiness, and security posture of every device in their estate, then stage and execute updates across standalone deployments, HA pairs, and fleet segments with guided workflows designed to minimize downtime risk. Key capabilities include:
Fleet-wide software lifecycle visibility: A single view of which devices are current, which are exposed, and which require action across the entire estate.Guided update workflows: Standardized processes to stage, validate, and execute TMOS updates.Pre-execution readiness checks: Validation aligned to fleet and HA architectures so teams can move fast without destabilizing production.Update status tracking: Fleet-wide visibility into update progress during maintenance windows, keeping teams and leadership aligned.With this solution, patching is no longer a scheduled maintenance activity. It is a security capability. F5 enables organizations to move from “fix available” to “risk reduced in production” faster, delivering a meaningful defensive advantage.
Governance controls for AI-assisted operations
As AI becomes part of day-to-day operations, organizations need to document what happens: what the AI accessed, what it recommended, who approved the action, and what the outcome was. F5 Insight now offers governance-grade controls for AI-assisted operations designed to support auditability and defensibility, including:
Enterprise authentication: Integration with existing identity providers through LDAP and SAML SSO eliminates separate credential stores and simplifies adoption across teams.Role-based access controls: Least-privilege access ensures the right people see the right data and can take the right actions without over-provisioning visibility or operational authority.Tamper-evident AI audit trail: Every interaction with the AI assistant is captured in a tamper-evident record with controlled access and 30-day retention.These controls are essential for organizations in regulated industries or under compliance mandates where accountability for every operational action, whether taken by a person or an AI, must be documented.
Operational intelligence that connects visibility to action
F5 Insight continues to deliver unified observability and AI-driven intelligence, now strengthened by fleet management context. Through MCP integration and support for popular large language models, operations teams can query their fleet data in natural language, surface which applications and policies are exposed by a given vulnerability, and receive prioritized action plans built from F5 domain expertise. Pre-configured queries from F5 experts are available alongside the ability to ask custom questions, giving teams operational guidance tailored to their environment.
F5 Insight for ADSP is available as self-managed software, with a SaaS model forthcoming. Fleet management capabilities are available now for BIG-IP environments.
Supporting resources
Blog: Announcing new fleet management capabilities within F5 Insight for ADSPBlog: A faster release cadence: What’s changing at F5, and what you need to doBlog: The operational reality of AI-era security and how we’re helping you meet itWebinar: How F5 Insight for ADSP updates transform BIG-IP operationsProduct trial: F5 Insight for ADSPAbout F5
F5, Inc. (NASDAQ: FFIV) is the global leader that delivers and secures every app. Backed by three decades of expertise, F5 has built the industry’s premier platform—F5 Application Delivery and Security Platform (ADSP)—to deliver and secure every app, every API, anywhere: on-premises, in the cloud, at the edge, and across hybrid, multicloud environments. F5 is committed to innovating and partnering with the world’s largest and most advanced organizations to deliver fast, available, and secure digital experiences. Together, we help each other thrive and bring a better digital world to life.
For more information visit f5.com
Explore F5 Labs threat research at f5.com/labs
Follow to learn more about F5, our partners, and technologies: Blog | LinkedIn | X | YouTube | Instagram | Facebook
F5 and BIG-IP are trademarks, service marks, or tradenames of F5, Inc. or its affiliates in the U.S. and other countries. All other product and company names herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.
F5 (NASDAQ: FFIV), the global leader in delivering and securing every app and API, today announced the appointment of Cathy Peterman as Executive Vice President
SEATTLE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--F5 (NASDAQ: FFIV), the global leader in delivering and securing every app and API, today announced the appointment of Cathy Peterman as Executive Vice President and Chief People Officer. Peterman joins F5’s executive leadership team reporting to Chairman, President and CEO, François Locoh-Donou. In this role, she will lead F5’s global people strategy, driving talent development, organizational design, and culture as the company continues to evolve and strengthen its leadership position in AI and cybersecurity.
“Cathy brings a rare combination of strategic depth and genuine humanity that will raise the bar for how we invest in our people,” said Locoh-Donou. “She and I share a reverence for culture and its impact on driving sustained results. That shared vision will be key as we seize the opportunity in front of us, both in how we work and how we serve our customers.”
Peterman brings 20 years of experience scaling complex technology organizations and guiding enterprises through transformative change. She joins F5 from Wayfair, where she served as Chief People Officer for the company’s technology organization. Additionally, she drove AI transformation and talent development for all 11,000 of the company’s global employees. Prior to Wayfair, Peterman spent six years at Amazon driving talent strategy across three distinct businesses supporting more than 40,000 employees. She held HR leadership roles spanning Amazon Advertising, Amazon Devices, Prime Video & Studios, and Physical Stores.
Her expertise spans enterprise talent development, organizational design, executive compensation strategy, and leveraging AI to accelerate both operational efficiency and human potential. Throughout her career, she has designed and executed large-scale workforce transformations, M&A integrations, and global expansion strategies.
“From my very first conversations, I recognized a company that treats talent and culture as a core strategy rather than a support function,” said Peterman. “It’s rare to find a mature technology company that has continually evolved while maintaining a fierce commitment to putting people first. It’s that powerful combination of growth ambition and human-first leadership that has me thrilled to join this exceptional team and partner with all F5ers to create an environment where everyone can do the best work of their career.”
Peterman holds a BA from Villanova University and an MA from the University of Denver. She is based in Seattle, F5’s corporate headquarters.
About F5
F5, Inc. (NASDAQ: FFIV) is the global leader that delivers and secures every app. Backed by three decades of expertise, F5 has built the industry’s premier platform—F5 Application Delivery and Security Platform (ADSP)—to deliver and secure every app, every API, anywhere: on-premises, in the cloud, at the edge, and across hybrid, multicloud environments. F5 is committed to innovating and partnering with the world’s largest and most advanced organizations to deliver fast, available, and secure digital experiences. Together, we help each other thrive and bring a better digital world to life.
For more information visit f5.com
Explore F5 Labs threat research at f5.com/labs
Follow to learn more about F5, our partners, and technologies:
Blog | LinkedIn | X | YouTube | Instagram | Facebook
F5 is a trademark, service mark, or tradename of F5, Inc. or its affiliates in the U.S. and other countries. All other product and company names herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.
Investors with an interest in Internet - Software stocks have likely encountered both PagerDuty (PD) and F5 Networks (FFIV). But which of these two stocks offers value investors a better bang for their buck right now?
F5, Inc. (NASDAQ: FFIV), the global leader in delivering and securing every app and API, announced it will report its third quarter fiscal year 2026 financial
SEATTLE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--F5, Inc. (NASDAQ: FFIV), the global leader in delivering and securing every app and API, announced it will report its third quarter fiscal year 2026 financial results on Monday, July 27, 2026, following the market close. F5 will host a live webcast to discuss its results with investors and analysts beginning at 4:30 p.m. ET on July 27, 2026. The live webcast link can be accessed from the events & presentations page of the investor relations portion of f5.com. Inter.
by Todd Bishop on Jun 27, 2026 at 7:45 amJune 27, 2026 at 7:49 am
F5 CEO François Locoh-Donou at the company’s Seattle headquarters for the GeekWire Podcast. (GeekWire Photo / Todd Bishop) F5 turns 30 years old this year, and the Seattle company has reinvented itself repeatedly to get here — starting, improbably, as a group of University of Washington students trying to build online video games.
On this week’s GeekWire Podcast, recorded on location at F5 Tower, the company’s chairman, president and CEO François Locoh-Donou joins us to trace that journey, from a 1990s internet load-balancing startup to a company that helps keep many of the world’s biggest apps running and secure.
Today F5 is a publicly traded company with about 6,500 employees and more than $3 billion in annual revenue, and it counts over 80% of the Fortune 500 among its customers.
The company is now in the midst of its latest reinvention, expanding further into the realm of AI security. Locoh-Donou discusses that strategy, including F5’s acquisition of SurePath AI this week, and the company’s broader approach to acquisitions.
On a personal note, he reflects on his path from Togo to Seattle, his leadership philosophy, and his message to high school students from underrepresented backgrounds who visited F5 Tower before the company took them to a World Cup match.
Plus: his World Cup predictions, and a GeekWire trivia question that stumps the room.
Listen below, or subscribe in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. Continue reading for highlights, edited for brevity and clarity.
On reinvention: “It’s not uncommon for technology companies to make a pretty substantial pivot in the early days. It’s a tough decision, but a lot of the successful companies we look at today had to make big pivots. In the case of F5, it was video games to load balancing — which is not an obvious one, but it paid off in big ways.”
On the AI visibility problem: “The more an enterprise adopts AI, the less visibility it has into what AI is crawling in the organization. It deploys more agents, and these agents call on tools; it deploys more models, and those models integrate with applications and fetch data in different places. Understanding which employee is using what AI, and what agent is using what tool, is quite complicated.”
On F5’s platform strategy: “Having four, five, six different tools to discover, test and secure your AI is a nightmare. So we’re building an AI security platform that includes all of these capabilities — discovery of AI models or agents, the governance and visibility around them, testing of these models, and the guardrails to protect them.”
On leadership: “I don’t believe much in what I call north-south pressure, the idea that you create a high-performance team by a boss putting pressure on their subordinates. I believe you create a high-performance team first by attracting the best possible talent, then instilling self-belief in each of these people, and letting the pressure come from themselves and from their peers.”
On his own start: “When I started in the technology industry, I didn’t think I belonged, let alone becoming a CEO, because I looked at the people around me and there was no one who looked like me. In the first few months of my first job, my hope was to not get fired. That was the dream. And it was quite lonely.”
On his message to the students: “It was important for me that they hear from a Black executive in this technology industry that the technology industry is also for them, and that they have a place here — even if they’re not coding on computers every day, even if they have no parent or sibling or anybody in their family who’s ever set foot in a technology company. And also that their voice matters.”
Investors interested in stocks from the Internet - Software sector have probably already heard of PagerDuty (PD - Free Report) and F5 Networks (FFIV - Free Report) . But which of these two stocks is more attractive to value investors? We'll need to take a closer look to find out.
The best way to find great value stocks is to pair a strong Zacks Rank with an impressive grade in the Value category of our Style Scores system. The Zacks Rank favors stocks with strong earnings estimate revision trends, and our Style Scores highlight companies with specific traits.
Currently, both PagerDuty and F5 Networks are holding a Zacks Rank of #2 (Buy). Investors should feel comfortable knowing that both of these stocks have an improving earnings outlook since the Zacks Rank favors companies that have witnessed positive analyst estimate revisions. But this is just one piece of the puzzle for value investors.
Value investors also try to analyze a wide range of traditional figures and metrics to help determine whether a company is undervalued at its current share price levels.
Our Value category grades stocks based on a number of key metrics, including the tried-and-true P/E ratio, the P/S ratio, earnings yield, and cash flow per share, as well as a variety of other fundamentals that value investors frequently use.
PD currently has a forward P/E ratio of 6.58, while FFIV has a forward P/E of 23.47. We also note that PD has a PEG ratio of 0.98. This popular metric is similar to the widely-known P/E ratio, with the difference being that the PEG ratio also takes into account the company's expected earnings growth rate. FFIV currently has a PEG ratio of 3.52.
Another notable valuation metric for PD is its P/B ratio of 3.05. The P/B ratio pits a stock's market value against its book value, which is defined as total assets minus total liabilities. For comparison, FFIV has a P/B of 5.98.
These are just a few of the metrics contributing to PD's Value grade of A and FFIV's Value grade of D.
Both PD and FFIV are impressive stocks with solid earnings outlooks, but based on these valuation figures, we feel that PD is the superior value option right now.
by Todd Bishop on Jun 26, 2026 at 10:45 amJune 26, 2026 at 11:05 am
François Locoh-Donou, F5’s chairman, president and CEO, at the company’s headquarters this week. (GeekWire Photo / Todd Bishop) F5’s acquisition this week of SurePath AI, a startup that detects artificial intelligence on corporate networks, is part of a broader effort by the Seattle company to cement itself in the booming market for securing AI for businesses.
“The more an enterprise adopts AI, the less visibility it has into what AI is operating in the organization,” said François Locoh-Donou, F5’s chairman, president and CEO, in an interview for this weekend’s GeekWire Podcast, conducted Thursday at the company’s downtown Seattle headquarters.
Denver-based SurePath, founded in 2023 and led by co-founder Casey Bleeker as CEO, had about 19 employees and had raised roughly $6 million in venture funding, according to PitchBook. Financial terms of F5’s acquisition weren’t disclosed.
SurePath monitors a company’s network to identify which AI tools and agents employees are using, including ones the company doesn’t know about, and tracks what they do.
F5 is incorporating SurePath into its broader AI security platform, announced this week, designed to discover the AI models and agents running inside a company, test them for vulnerabilities, and apply guardrails to keep them in check.
Locoh-Donou said customers have been forced to cobble that together from separate products. “Having four, five, six different tools to discover, test and secure your AI is a nightmare,” he said.
Kunal Anand, F5’s chief product officer, compared the problem to an earlier era, when employees adopted cloud software faster than their IT departments could track it. The big difference is that the AI version is moving faster and carries higher stakes.
“Shadow AI is shadow SaaS with a faster clock and a larger blast radius,” he wrote in a blog post.
F5, founded in Seattle in 1996, makes technology for securing and deploying applications across multiple platforms. The publicly traded company reported $3.1 billion in revenue in its most recent fiscal year and marked its 30th anniversary in May.
The SurePath deal is the latest in a string of acquisitions for the company, including its purchase last fall of CalypsoAI, now offered as F5 AI Red Team and F5 AI Guardrails.
Locoh-Donou said the company weighs three things in each acquisition: whether it can build the technology itself fast enough, whether the deal genuinely serves customers, and, above all, whether the team will fit F5’s culture.
“We have encountered companies in the industry that had great technology and brilliant people, but it was very clear to us that they would never be a great fit,” he said. “And so we walked away.”
Locoh-Donou discussed the acquisition, F5’s evolution, the rise of AI, the World Cup in Seattle and other topics in the GeekWire Podcast conversation. Look for the episode this weekend, and subscribe to GeekWire in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.
F5 Launches AI Security Platform to Put Security Leaders in Control of Enterprise AI Risk F5 (NASDAQ: FFIV), the global leader in delivering and securing every app and API, today introduced the F5 AI Security Platform to give CISOs continuous visibility, governance, and protection across enterprise AI applications, models, agents, and the APIs connecting them. F5 also announced the acquisition of SurePath AI, a pioneer in network-based AI discovery, intent classification, and shadow AI detection, as a key component in the launch of the new F5 AI Security Platform to safeguard enterprise AI deployments.
Through a continuous, adaptive loop approach to governing, discovering, testing, and protecting enterprise AI workloads, the new platform is designed to extend F5’s Application Delivery and Security Platform (ADSP) strategy to enterprise AI. As a global cybersecurity leader, F5 recognized the AI deployment realities of large enterprises, building the F5 AI Security Platform to support on-premises, air-gapped, private cloud, hybrid, and public cloud environments. This is intended to give organizations greater control over AI security where data residency, sovereignty, and operational requirements are non-negotiable.
AI systems now operate with more access, autonomy, and speed than even the most over-privileged human users, creating new risks for security teams and business leaders. A prompt injection, data leak, or agent acting beyond its authorized scope can expose sensitive information, disrupt operations, and erode customer trust.
At the same time, employees are adopting unauthorized tools and unsanctioned integrations, creating shadow AI footprints that most security teams cannot see, let alone govern. According to F5’s 2026 State of Application Strategy (SOAS) Report, 88% of organizations report at least one AI-related operational or security challenge.
“Most AI security today is a wrapper around a chatbot. That is not security,” said Kunal Anand, Chief Product Officer, F5. “Enterprises run AI inside regulated networks, behind APIs, and across agents that authenticate and act on their own. The F5 AI Security Platform gives CISOs and security leaders what they have been missing: continuous control over every model, agent, and API, wherever the AI runs, delivered on the same F5 platform that has secured and delivered enterprise applications for three decades.”
SurePath AI: Closing the AI visibility gap
The addition of SurePath AI powers the F5 AI Security Platform’s approach to network-based AI discovery, identifying AI usage across the enterprise, including shadow AI, without requiring direct application integrations. With frictionless deployment through network redirects and out-of-band analysis, SurePath AI gives security teams a unified visibility layer that detects unauthorized AI activity, classifies the intent behind each workflow, and continuously traces agent tool calls and MCP server connections. This visibility feeds directly into the F5 AI Security Platform, informing the risks to be tested by F5 AI Red Team and mitigated by F5 AI Guardrails.
Delivering a continuous cycle of protection
The F5 AI Security Platform addresses AI risk through four integrated pillars and an overarching observability layer that creates a persistent security lifecycle rather than a one-time compliance exercise. Features include:
AI governance: Translate specific risk tolerances, privacy requirements, and regulatory obligations into enforceable boundaries for AI prompts, outputs, tool use, and data access.
AI discovery: Gain continuous visibility into every AI application, agent, and MCP tool call running across the enterprise, whether sanctioned or not. The platform classifies activity by use case and intent, so teams know not just what is running but why. SurePath AI’s network-based discovery does this passively, with no application-level integration required.
AI security testing: Stress-test AI systems against more than 140,000 attack patterns from the deepest AI threat database in the industry before those systems reach production, converting findings directly into enforceable defenses.
AI runtime protection: Define guardrails in plain language and deploy them at the point of interaction, where the platform has demonstrated up to 98.2% security efficacy in independent testing, blocking prompt injection, excessive agent autonomy, and data leakage.
AI observability: Provide a complete audit trail across every AI interaction on the platform, maintaining the accountability and traceability that regulated industries require.
The flexibility to deploy anywhere without compromise
With this new solution, F5 uniquely combines AI security capabilities with flexible deployment options, enabling enterprises to operate across on-premises, air-gapped, private cloud, hybrid, and public cloud deployments. This is especially valuable to CISOs in highly regulated industries with exacting data residency and sovereignty requirements. SurePath AI’s lightweight network-based deployment model reinforces this flexibility, requiring no changes to existing application architectures.
Heightened visibility is increasingly critical as AI agents proliferate. F5’s 2026 SOAS Report states 98% of organizations are preparing for agentic AI, but the speed of agent adoption is outpacing the controls designed to manage it. When agents can authenticate, call tools, access data, and take actions autonomously, the blast radius of a single misconfiguration or exploit grows exponentially.
Supporting resources
F5 AI Security Platform – Details
The F5 AI Security Platform: Eliminating the guesswork from AI security – F5 blog
AI Summit: Accelerate AI adoption – F5 virtual event
About F5
F5, Inc. (NASDAQ: FFIV) is the global leader that delivers and secures every app. Backed by three decades of expertise, F5 has built the industry’s premier platform—F5 Application Delivery and Security Platform (ADSP)—to deliver and secure every app, every API, anywhere: on-premises, in the cloud, at the edge, and across hybrid, multicloud environments. F5 is committed to innovating and partnering with the world’s largest and most advanced organizations to deliver fast, available, and secure digital experiences. Together, we help each other thrive and bring a better digital world to life.
For more information visit [url="]f5.com [/url]
Explore F5 Labs threat research at [url="]f5.com/labs [/url]
Follow to learn more about F5, our partners, and technologies:
Blog | LinkedIn | X | YouTube | Instagram | Facebook
F5 and SurePath AI are trademarks, service marks, or tradenames of F5, Inc. or its affiliates in the U.S. and other countries. All other product and company names herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.
View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260622960969/en/
Disclosures I/we have no positions in any stocks mentioned, and have no plans to buy any new positions in the stocks mentioned within the next 72 hours.
SEATTLE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--F5, Inc. (NASDAQ: FFIV), the global leader in delivering and securing every app and API, today announced the appointment of Gavin Munroe to its board of directors. Munroe’s extensive experience as a technology leader in the financial services space makes him a valuable addition to F5’s board. Mr. Munroe joined F5’s board effective June 17, 2026 and will serve as a member of the board’s Audit and Risk committees.
“Gavin has transformed some of the world’s most complex global financial institutions, modernizing technology, building operational resilience, and pioneering AI enablement at enterprise scale, all while managing risk across highly regulated environments,” said François Locoh-Donou, F5’s Chairman, President, and CEO. “We are thrilled to welcome Gavin’s expertise and his proven ability to deliver tangible outcomes, a perspective that will serve F5 well as we continue to grow.”
Mr. Munroe most recently served as Chief Information Officer and Transformation Head at Commonwealth Bank of Australia, where he led technology modernization, AI enablement, data and analytics, and operational resiliency. He brings more than 25 years of technology leadership experience, having served in leading technology roles at some of the world’s leading financial services firms.
With this appointment, F5’s board expands to 10 members, 9 of whom are independent.
Gavin Munroe Background
Mr. Munroe most recently served as Chief Information Officer and Transformation Head at Commonwealth Bank of Australia. Prior to this, he served as Global Chief Information Officer at HSBC – Wealth, Private and Retail Banking. He has also held technology leadership roles at Bank of America/Merrill Lynch, Synechron, and Saxon (a division of Morgan Stanley). Mr. Munroe earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science from The University of Port Elizabeth.
About F5
F5, Inc. (NASDAQ: FFIV) is the global leader that delivers and secures every app. Backed by three decades of expertise, F5 has built the industry’s premier platform—F5 Application Delivery and Security Platform (ADSP)—to deliver and secure every app, every API, anywhere: on-premises, in the cloud, at the edge, and across hybrid, multicloud environments. F5 is committed to innovating and partnering with the world’s largest and most advanced organizations to deliver fast, available, and secure digital experiences. Together, we help each other thrive and bring a better digital world to life.
For more information visit f5.com
Explore F5 Labs threat research at f5.com/labs
Follow to learn more about F5, our partners, and technologies: Blog | LinkedIn | X | YouTube | Instagram | Facebook
F5 is a trademark, service mark, or tradename of F5, Inc., in the U.S. and other countries.
F5 (FFIV +1.17%) stock is posting strong gains on Wednesday despite some moderate bearish momentum shaping trading in the broader tech space. The company's share price was up 7.3% as of 1:40 p.m. ET. At the same point in the daily session, the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq Composite were each down 0.3%.
Before the market opened this morning, F5 published results for the second quarter of its 2026 fiscal year -- which ended March 31. With the report, the business recorded sales and earnings that topped Wall Street's forecasts and issued forward guidance suggesting a promising growth outlook.
Image source: Getty Images.
F5's fiscal Q2 report handily topped expectations F5 posted non-GAAP (adjusted) earnings of $3.90 per share in the second quarter of its current fiscal year, far exceeding the average analyst estimate's call for adjusted per-share earnings of $3.46 in the period. Meanwhile, sales increased 11% year over year to come in at $811.7 million -- beating the average analyst forecast by roughly $29.4 million. Along with its beats last quarter, the company also raised its performance outlook for the full-year period.
Today's Change
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398.44
What's next for F5? On the heels of its strong fiscal Q2 report, F5 now expects annual revenue growth to come in between 7% and 8% for the year. Previously, management had targeted growth between 5% and 6% on the year. Meanwhile, adjusted earnings per share are projected to be between $16.25 and $16.55 -- beating the average analyst estimate's call for a profit of $15.97 this year. F5 seems to be seeing strong demand trends connected to artificial intelligence, and conditions could be in place for the business to see sustained benefits from the dynamic.
Keith Noonan has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
F5, Inc. delivered a strong Q2'26, with 11% revenue growth and robust product momentum, but I rate the stock a 'hold.' EMEA regulatory tailwinds, especially NIS2 and DORA, are fueling multi-year demand for FFIV's hybrid multi-cloud security solutions. Recurring revenue now comprises 70% of total, with software subscriptions driving margin expansion and operating leverage.
SEATTLE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--F5 (NASDAQ: FFIV), the global leader in delivering and securing every app and API, today released its annual State of Application Strategy (SOAS) Report, revealing that artificial intelligence has crossed a critical threshold: it is no longer an experimental initiative but a production workload demanding the same operational rigor as any mission-critical system. The research, based on responses from hundreds of enterprise IT and security leaders worldwide, shows that 7.
Have you assessed how the international operations of F5 Networks (FFIV - Free Report) performed in the quarter ended March 2026? For this computer networking company, possessing an expansive global footprint, parsing the trends of international revenues could be critical to gauge its financial resilience and growth prospects.
In the current global economy, which is more interconnected than ever, a company's success in penetrating international markets is crucial for its financial health and growth journey. Investors must understand a company's dependence on overseas markets, as this offers a window into the company's earnings stability, its ability to benefit from varied economic cycles and its potential for long-term growth.
Being present in international markets serves as a counterbalance to domestic economic challenges while offering chances to engage with more rapidly evolving economies. However, this kind of diversification introduces challenges like currency fluctuations, geopolitical uncertainties and varying market trends.
In our recent assessment of FFIV's quarterly performance, we discovered notable trends in its overseas revenue sections, which are typically modeled and scrutinized by Wall Street analysts.
The company's total revenue for the quarter amounted to $811.7 million, showing rise of 11%. We will now explore the breakdown of FFIV's overseas revenue to assess the impact of its international operations.
Decoding FFIV's International Revenue TrendsDuring the quarter, Asia Pacific contributed $143.97 million in revenue, making up 17.7% of the total revenue. When compared to the consensus estimate of $133.14 million, this meant a surprise of +8.13%. Looking back, Asia Pacific contributed $128.97 million, or 15.7%, in the previous quarter, and $121.03 million, or 16.6%, in the same quarter of the previous year.
Other generated $22.55 million in revenues for the company in the last quarter, constituting 2.8% of the total. This represented a surprise of -4.28% compared to the $23.56 million projected by Wall Street analysts. Comparatively, in the previous quarter, Other accounted for $26.59 million (3.2%), and in the year-ago quarter, it contributed $22.34 million (3.1%) to the total revenue.
Europe, Middle East and Africa accounted for 32.1% of the company's total revenue during the quarter, translating to $260.86 million. Revenues from this region represented a surprise of +19.8%, with Wall Street analysts collectively expecting $217.75 million. When compared to the preceding quarter and the same quarter in the previous year, Europe, Middle East and Africa contributed $253.71 million (30.9%) and $213.97 million (29.3%) to the total revenue, respectively.
Revenue Forecasts for the International MarketsIt is projected by analysts on Wall Street that F5 will post revenues of $832.6 million for the ongoing fiscal quarter, an increase of 6.7% from the year-ago quarter. The expected contributions from Asia Pacific, Other and Europe, Middle East and Africa to this revenue are 16.8%, 3.1%, and 28.1%, translating into $140.05 million, $26.1 million, and $233.75 million, respectively.
For the full year, the company is expected to generate $3.32 billion in total revenue, up 7.4% from the previous year. Revenues from Asia Pacific, Other and Europe, Middle East and Africa are expected to constitute 16.3% ($539.82 million), 3% ($100.35 million) and 27.9% ($925.95 million) of the total, respectively.
Closing RemarksF5's leaning on foreign markets for its revenue stream presents a mix of chances and challenges. Therefore, a vigilant watch on its international revenue movements can greatly aid in projecting the company's future direction.
In an era of growing international ties and escalating geopolitical disputes, financial analysts on Wall Street pay keen attention to these developments to fine-tune their earnings estimations for businesses operating across borders. It's important to note, however, that a range of additional variables, like a company's local market status, also play a crucial role in shaping these forecasts.
We at Zacks strongly focus on the dynamic earnings forecast of companies, given that empirical studies have demonstrated its potent impact on the immediate price movement of stocks. Invariably, there's a positive relationship -- upward earnings predictions often result in an increase in stock prices.
Our proprietary stock rating tool, the Zacks Rank, with its externally validated exceptional track record, harnesses the power of earnings estimate revisions to serve as a dependable measure for anticipating the short-term price trends of stocks.
At present, F5 holds a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). This ranking implies that its near-term performance might beat the overall market movement. You can see the complete list of today's Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy) stocks here >>>> .
Examining the Latest Trends in F5 Networks' Stock ValueOver the past month, the stock has seen an increase of 10% in its value, whereas the Zacks S&P 500 composite has posted an increase of 9.5%. The Zacks Computer and Technology sector, F5's industry group, remained unchanged over the identical span. In the past three months, there's been an increase of 20.4% in the company's stock price, against a rise of 4.9% in the S&P 500 index. The broader sector has remained unchanged during this interval.
For the quarter ended March 2026, F5 Networks (FFIV - Free Report) reported revenue of $811.7 million, up 11% over the same period last year. EPS came in at $3.90, compared to $3.42 in the year-ago quarter.
The reported revenue compares to the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $784.33 million, representing a surprise of +3.49%. The company delivered an EPS surprise of +12.44%, with the consensus EPS estimate being $3.47.
While investors scrutinize revenue and earnings changes year-over-year and how they compare with Wall Street expectations to determine their next move, some key metrics always offer a more accurate picture of a company's financial health.
As these metrics influence top- and bottom-line performance, comparing them to the year-ago numbers and what analysts estimated helps investors project a stock's price performance more accurately.
Here is how F5 performed in the just reported quarter in terms of the metrics most widely monitored and projected by Wall Street analysts:
Net revenues- Services: $401.19 million versus the six-analyst average estimate of $402.75 million. The reported number represents a year-over-year change of +1.8%.Net revenues- Products: $410.52 million versus the six-analyst average estimate of $381.6 million. The reported number represents a year-over-year change of +21.7%.Net product revenues- Software: $184.13 million versus $177.11 million estimated by five analysts on average. Compared to the year-ago quarter, this number represents a +16.7% change.Net product revenues- Systems: $226.39 million versus $206.39 million estimated by five analysts on average. Compared to the year-ago quarter, this number represents a +26.2% change.View all Key Company Metrics for F5 here>>>
Shares of F5 have returned +10% over the past month versus the Zacks S&P 500 composite's +10.3% change. The stock currently has a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy), indicating that it could outperform the broader market in the near term.
