F5 Stock Plunges 13%, Wiping Out $3.5 Billion, As Growth Outlook Points To A Slowdown
Shares sank after management guided to slower growth and said a systems refresh cycle will fade in the second half.
F5, which makes software and hardware that deliver and secure applications, fell 13.44% to $397.62 in Wednesday trading as of 9:48 a.m. ET, erasing $3.5 billion in market value. The drop followed a fiscal 2027 forecast of slower growth as a hardware refresh cycle fades, even after fourth-quarter adjusted earnings of $4.42 per share.
A guide that signals deceleration
F5 projected fiscal 2027 revenue growth of 8% to 9%, with adjusted earnings of $18 to $18.30 per share.
On the earnings call, the chief financial officer said the wave of hardware upgrades that lifted systems sales fades after the first half. Growth after that, the CFO said, has to come from new use cases.
The stock was on pace for its biggest one-day drop in at least 275 trading sessions, since Sept. 24, 2025.
Management also said its specialist AI security sales team will double in fiscal 2027, a push that is squeezing margins.
Up 80% this year before the drop
F5 shares were up about 80% year to date at Tuesday's close, well ahead of the S&P 500's gain of about 13% over the same span. Market value stood at $22.5 billion after the move.
The company sells packaged software, cloud services and hardware under product families including BIG-IP, NGINX and Distributed Cloud Services, to enterprises, governments and service providers.
In the quarter ended June 30, revenue rose 10.9% to $865.1 million and net income reached $208.2 million. Fourth-quarter revenue came in at $917.43 million, up from $810.09 million a year earlier, according to Zacks.
After a year-to-date run of about 80%, the guide of 8% to 9% growth is what the stock traded on Wednesday.
Correction, Oct. 29, 2026: An earlier version of this story linked a statement from the company's earnings call to a page that did not contain it. The link has been removed.
Sources
- F5, Inc. (FFIV) Stock Forecasts — Yahoo Finance
- F5 projects FY 2027 revenue growth of 8% to 9% and non-GAAP EPS of $18 to $18.30 amid AI security push (NASDAQ:FFIV) — seekingalpha.com
- F5 dips as fiscal 2027 revenue guidance shows slight deceleration | Seeking Alpha — seekingalpha.com
- F5 (FFIV) Q4 Earnings: Taking a Look at Key Metrics Versus Estimates — Yahoo Finance
- F5 Networks (FFIV) Q4 Earnings and Revenues Top Estimates — Yahoo Finance
- F5 Will Double Its AI Security Sales Force As Spending Squeezes Margins — the Financial Times
- F5 Product Revenue Jumps 23% As Board Adds $1.5 Billion To Buyback — SEC filing
- F5 Networks (FFIV) Q4 Earnings and Revenues Top Estimates — Zacks Investment Research
- F5 Inc. — Form 10-Q for the quarter ended 2026-06-30 (quarterly results) — SEC EDGAR
