(By Mayur Pahilajani - iStockAnalyst Writer)
New York, NY - F5 Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ: FFIV) shares of the firm dropped early Friday trading session as the market analysts expect the firm to post weak earnings results, which is expected to be released on Jan. 21.
UBS AG analyst Nikos Theodosopoulos reaffirmed the price target for $25 on its stock, but downgraded the company's rating to "Neutral" from "Buy", citing spending on enterprise networking to be down by 10 percent in the current year.
While, RBC Capital Markets lowered its price target on F5 Networks to $27 from $28 following the company's lowered expectations on its revenue for the first quarter. Barclays Capital also cut its price target on the stock to $27 from $29. Barclays Capital also downgraded its fiscal 2009 earnings projection on the shares to $1.50 from $1.68.
The stock of the vendor of network application products has moved down after the company said its said last week that it expects lower revenue on slow sales and lowered its earnings for the first quarter of fiscal 2009, ended Dec. 31.
The company adjusted its quarterly profit in the range of $0.26 to $0.27 per share, consistent with original guidance with revenue to be $165.6 million, below the company's previous guidance of up to $174 million.
The market analysts expect the company to post profit of 41 cents per share on revenue of $172.2 million in the quarter.
F5 President and Chief Executive Officer John McAdam said in a statement that the revenue shortfall resulted primarily from a fall-off in North American sales at quarter-end.
McAdam added, "International revenue was in line with our expectations for the quarter, and total revenue was generally on track until the last week of December, when a number of anticipated orders from certain customers in North America did not come through."
The stock of the company were moving down by 73 cents or 3.16 percent to $22.47 on NASDAQ market trading, after it closed at $23.20 in the previous session. The firm has traded as low as $17.70 to as high as $35.85 in the last 52-week period with average volume of 2.36 million.
