Investopedia: F5 - Is This The End Of The Beginning Or The Beginning Of The End?

If premarket indications are accurate, folks who bought shares of application delivery company F5 Networks (Nasdaq:FFIV) thinking that the mid-$90s would be a floor are going to see a decent return for stepping up to buy. That said, bears seem poised to portray this as more of a "less bad than feared" quarter, as opposed to real outperformance.


What's more, with weak sequential growth becoming more of a trend now, it is fair to wonder if the hot growth phase is over for F5. Clearly there is plenty of business yet to be won and the story is by no means over, but a shift to a less frenzied pace of growth will likely mean new multiples for this stock and perhaps a different shareholder base than before.

Fiscal Second Quarter Brings Growth and Relief  
F5's growth in its fiscal second quarter was either great or just okay, on the basis of which numbers an investor uses. Compared to last year, revenue jumped almost 35%. Sequential growth, though, was more on the order of 3% - suggesting that F5 has basically caught up with the IT capital equipment under-spend of the recession. Within the total revenue figure, product growth was 34% on an annual basis, while just a bit over 1% on a sequential comparison.

You can find the full piece at Investopedia:
http://stocks.investopedia.com/stock-analysis/2011/F5---Is-This-The-End-Of-The-Beginning-Or-The-Beginning-Of-The-End-FFIV-CSCO-RVBD-CTXS-BRCD0425.aspx