Accenture (NYSE:ACN) Posts Quarterly Earnings Results, Beats Expectations By $0.16 EPS

Accenture (NYSE:ACN) announced its earnings results on Thursday. The information technology services provider reported $3.59 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, beating analysts’ consensus estimates of $3.43 by $0.16, RTT News reports. Accenture had a return on equity of 26.83% and a net margin of 11.20%. The firm had revenue of $17.69 billion during the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $17.15 billion. During the same period in the prior year, the firm earned $3.27 EPS. The business’s revenue was up 9.0% on a year-over-year basis.

Accenture Stock Performance

Shares of NYSE:ACN opened at $347.61 on Thursday. Accenture has a one year low of $278.69 and a one year high of $387.51. The stock has a market cap of $217.31 billion, a PE ratio of 30.41, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 3.23 and a beta of 1.24. The business’s fifty day moving average price is $360.14 and its two-hundred day moving average price is $336.31.

Accenture Dividend Announcement

The firm also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Friday, February 14th. Stockholders of record on Thursday, January 16th will be paid a dividend of $1.48 per share. This represents a $5.92 dividend on an annualized basis and a dividend yield of 1.70%. Accenture’s dividend payout ratio (DPR) is 51.79%.

Insider Activity

In other news, CAO Melissa A. Burgum sold 458 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Thursday, October 17th. The shares were sold at an average price of $373.25, for a total value of $170,948.50. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief accounting officer now owns 9,777 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $3,649,265.25. The trade was a 4.47 % decrease in their ownership of the stock. The transaction was disclosed in a filing with the SEC, which is available at the SEC website. Also, insider Angela Beatty sold 673 shares of Accenture stock in a transaction that occurred on Tuesday, October 22nd. The stock was sold at an average price of $372.18, for a total transaction of $250,477.14. Following the completion of the sale, the insider now directly owns 5,650 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $2,102,817. The trade was a 10.64 % decrease in their ownership of the stock. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Insiders have sold 36,298 shares of company stock worth $13,372,661 over the last three months. 0.07% of the stock is currently owned by corporate insiders.

Accenture announced that its board has initiated a share repurchase plan on Thursday, September 26th that authorizes the company to repurchase $4.00 billion in outstanding shares. This repurchase authorization authorizes the information technology services provider to reacquire up to 1.8% of its shares through open market purchases. Shares repurchase plans are often an indication that the company’s board believes its shares are undervalued.

Analysts Set New Price Targets

A number of brokerages have recently issued reports on ACN. Royal Bank of Canada raised their target price on shares of Accenture from $377.00 to $389.00 and gave the stock an “outperform” rating in a research report on Friday, September 27th. UBS Group raised their price objective on shares of Accenture from $400.00 to $415.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a research report on Friday, September 27th. JPMorgan Chase & Co. upped their target price on shares of Accenture from $370.00 to $396.00 and gave the company an “overweight” rating in a report on Monday. Citigroup boosted their price target on Accenture from $350.00 to $405.00 and gave the company a “buy” rating in a research report on Tuesday, September 17th. Finally, StockNews.com raised Accenture from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating in a research report on Monday, December 9th. Eight research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and fifteen have given a buy rating to the company. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, the company has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus target price of $374.50.

About Accenture

Accenture plc, a professional services company, provides strategy and consulting, industry X, song, and technology and operation services worldwide. The company offers application services, including agile transformation, DevOps, application modernization, enterprise architecture, software and quality engineering, data management; intelligent automation comprising robotic process automation, natural language processing, and virtual agents; and application management services, as well as software engineering services; strategy and consulting services; data and analytics strategy, data discovery and augmentation, data management and beyond, data democratization, and industrialized solutions comprising turnkey analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) solutions; metaverse; and sustainability services.