F5 Networks Recovers From Recent Slump (NASDAQ:FFIV, CSCO, INTC)

F5 Networks, Inc.(NASDAQ:FFIV) shares are rebounding by over 2.50% after slumping over 9% in the past one week. The latest slump came after comments from investment bank William Blair that its checks with sales channels showed F5 sales staff made an aggressive push at the end of Q1, which has not typically been the case for the fast-growing company. William Blair commented its channel checks indicate F5 Networks aggressively pushed to close deals in North America at the end of the quarter, which is a change from the previous two quarters, where the firm's checks indicated backlog builds. William Blair attributes slower close cycles from the fragile economic recovery, and thinks F5 could report a lack of revenue upside in Q2, which the firm feels could disappoint many investors.However, William Blair added that its checks indicated F5 has generally strong pipelines and continued momentum in module sales. William Blair keeps an Outperform rating on shares of F5. The company is all set to report its quarterly earnings on Apr 18, 2012. Analysts are estimating the company to report $1.07 a share, compared to a year ago profit of $0.88 a share. Revenue is estimated to grow by 20.80% to $335.32 million, from a year ago revenue of $277.57 million.The company had reported better than estimated earnings in the past four consecutive quarters and as a result the stock has witnessed a gain of over 34% over the past one year. The stock is up 18.50% year-to-date.Earlier this week, the stock was downgraded by analyst at Stifel Nicolaus to Hold from Buy. On the other hand, last week, analyst at Merrill Lynch raised their price target on the stock by $9 to $145, citing Intel Corporation’s (NASDAQ:INTC) newest chip for server computers, “Romley,” should prompt a server upgrade that will pay dividends for F5 and competitor Cisco Systems, Inc.(NASDAQ:CSCO).Romley, which was formally introduced in early March, and for which the company hosted an East Coast discussion with analysts last week, “supports 10GbE interfaces on the motherboard and roughly doubles the theoretical number of virtual servers,” the firm added.