Accenture (NYSE:ACN) Announces Quarterly Earnings Results

Accenture (NYSE:ACN) released its earnings results on Thursday. The information technology services provider reported $2.82 earnings per share for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $2.81 by $0.01, Zacks reports. The company had revenue of $16.70 billion during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $16.64 billion. Accenture had a return on equity of 26.91% and a net margin of 11.41%. Accenture’s revenue was up 5.7% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same period in the previous year, the company posted $2.77 EPS.

Accenture Stock Performance

Shares of ACN stock opened at $305.17 on Friday. The company has a quick ratio of 1.47, a current ratio of 1.47 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.17. The business has a 50 day moving average of $359.16 and a two-hundred day moving average of $357.13. Accenture has a 52 week low of $278.69 and a 52 week high of $398.35. The company has a market cap of $190.97 billion, a P/E ratio of 25.60, a PEG ratio of 3.23 and a beta of 1.24.

Accenture Announces Dividend

The company also recently declared a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Thursday, May 15th. Investors of record on Thursday, April 10th will be paid a $1.48 dividend. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Thursday, April 10th. This represents a $5.92 dividend on an annualized basis and a yield of 1.94%. Accenture’s dividend payout ratio (DPR) is 49.66%.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

Several brokerages have recently issued reports on ACN. Guggenheim decreased their price objective on Accenture from $400.00 to $395.00 and set a “buy” rating for the company in a research note on Friday. Baird R W upgraded Accenture from a “hold” rating to a “strong-buy” rating in a research note on Monday, March 17th. The Goldman Sachs Group upgraded Accenture from a “neutral” rating to a “buy” rating and lifted their price objective for the company from $370.00 to $420.00 in a research note on Friday, December 6th. Wolfe Research upgraded Accenture from a “peer perform” rating to an “outperform” rating and set a $425.00 price objective for the company in a research note on Wednesday, January 8th. Finally, UBS Group decreased their price objective on Accenture from $455.00 to $387.00 and set a “buy” rating for the company in a research note on Friday. Eight analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating, fifteen have given a buy rating and one has assigned a strong buy rating to the company’s stock. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, the company presently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus target price of $380.05.

Insider Buying and Selling at Accenture

In other news, CEO Julie Spellman Sweet sold 8,793 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Wednesday, February 5th. The stock was sold at an average price of $394.47, for a total transaction of $3,468,574.71. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief executive officer now directly owns 11,858 shares in the company, valued at approximately $4,677,625.26. The trade was a 42.58 % decrease in their ownership of the stock. The sale was disclosed in a filing with the SEC, which is accessible through the SEC website. Also, CFO Angie Y. Park sold 685 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Friday, January 17th. The stock was sold at an average price of $354.38, for a total value of $242,750.30. Following the transaction, the chief financial officer now owns 8,674 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $3,073,892.12. This represents a 7.32 % decrease in their ownership of the stock. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Insiders sold a total of 22,280 shares of company stock worth $8,316,190 over the last ninety days. Company insiders own 0.02% of the company’s stock.

Institutional Investors Weigh In On Accenture

A hedge fund recently raised its stake in Accenture stock. Brighton Jones LLC grew its stake in shares of Accenture plc (NYSE:ACN) by 36.2% in the fourth quarter, according to its most recent filing with the SEC. The fund owned 18,438 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock after acquiring an additional 4,905 shares during the period. Brighton Jones LLC’s holdings in Accenture were worth $6,486,000 at the end of the most recent reporting period. 75.14% of the stock is owned by hedge funds and other institutional investors.

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.