F5 Networks Building a Backbone
F5 Networks not down for the count.
In an article by Ted Stamas on Seeking Alpha, Stamas looks closely at F5 Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ:FFIV) and its place in the market. Currently trading at $94.50, in early January it was selling at $146/share, and on a valuation basis, traded at a forward P/E Ratio of 40 with an earnings growth rate of approximately 45 percent. Stamas warns that although it may appear F5 is disabled, it is building the backbone for Internet 2.0 and has the growth to show for it. F5's largest competitor is Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO). Fifteen years ago Cisco, EMC (NYSE: EMC) and Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL) were doing all of the behind the scenes heavy lifting that made our lives so much easier, as F5 Networks is doing now.
"According to its most recent 10-K: ‘F5 Networks is a leading provider of technology that optimizes the delivery of network-based applications and the security, performance and availability of servers, data storage devices and other network resources.’ This basically means it is in cloud computing. How big of a leading provider it is? The latest Standard & Poor's analysis reports: ‘Through constant share gains over the past five years, FFIV has garnered a dominant (number one) position in the market - about 50% as of the third quarter of 2010.’"
