Blair William & Co. IL Purchases 87,785 Shares of Accenture plc (NYSE:ACN)

Blair William & Co. IL raised its holdings in shares of Accenture plc (NYSE:ACN) by 13.6% during the fourth quarter, HoldingsChannel.com reports. The firm owned 731,875 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock after acquiring an additional 87,785 shares during the quarter. Accenture makes up 0.7% of Blair William & Co. IL’s portfolio, making the stock its 26th biggest position. Blair William & Co. IL’s holdings in Accenture were worth $257,466,000 as of its most recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Other institutional investors also recently modified their holdings of the company. Baldwin Wealth Partners LLC MA increased its stake in shares of Accenture by 6.5% in the 4th quarter. Baldwin Wealth Partners LLC MA now owns 63,429 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock valued at $22,314,000 after acquiring an additional 3,883 shares during the last quarter. Davidson Trust Co. increased its stake in Accenture by 7.4% during the 4th quarter. Davidson Trust Co. now owns 2,307 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock worth $812,000 after purchasing an additional 158 shares in the last quarter. Franklin Street Advisors Inc. NC lifted its stake in Accenture by 126.8% in the fourth quarter. Franklin Street Advisors Inc. NC now owns 40,051 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock valued at $14,090,000 after buying an additional 22,391 shares in the last quarter. China Universal Asset Management Co. Ltd. increased its position in shares of Accenture by 37.5% during the fourth quarter. China Universal Asset Management Co. Ltd. now owns 3,094 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock worth $1,088,000 after acquiring an additional 843 shares in the last quarter. Finally, SteelPeak Wealth LLC raised its holdings in shares of Accenture by 127.1% during the fourth quarter. SteelPeak Wealth LLC now owns 2,323 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock worth $817,000 after acquiring an additional 1,300 shares during the period. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 75.14% of the company’s stock.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

A number of equities analysts have issued reports on the company. Piper Sandler lowered their target price on Accenture from $396.00 to $364.00 and set an “overweight” rating for the company in a report on Thursday, March 20th. Baird R W upgraded shares of Accenture from a “hold” rating to a “strong-buy” rating in a report on Monday, March 17th. Stifel Nicolaus lowered their price target on shares of Accenture from $390.00 to $380.00 and set a “buy” rating on the stock in a research note on Wednesday, February 26th. Mizuho decreased their price objective on Accenture from $428.00 to $398.00 and set an “outperform” rating for the company in a report on Wednesday, March 19th. Finally, The Goldman Sachs Group raised Accenture from a “neutral” rating to a “buy” rating and increased their price target for the company from $370.00 to $420.00 in a research report on Friday, December 6th. Eight analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating, fifteen have assigned a buy rating and one has issued a strong buy rating to the company’s stock. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, the stock has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average price target of $378.23.

Accenture Stock Up 0.8 %

NYSE ACN opened at $311.38 on Thursday. The company has a market cap of $194.86 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 26.12, a PEG ratio of 3.23 and a beta of 1.24. Accenture plc has a 1-year low of $278.69 and a 1-year high of $398.35. The company has a current ratio of 1.47, a quick ratio of 1.47 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.17. The company has a 50 day moving average of $356.77 and a 200-day moving average of $356.56.

Accenture (NYSE:ACN) last issued its quarterly earnings results on Thursday, March 20th. The information technology services provider reported $2.82 EPS for the quarter, topping analysts’ consensus estimates of $2.81 by $0.01. Accenture had a return on equity of 26.91% and a net margin of 11.41%. The company had revenue of $16.70 billion for the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $16.64 billion. During the same quarter last year, the business earned $2.77 earnings per share. Accenture’s revenue was up 5.7% on a year-over-year basis. On average, equities research analysts expect that Accenture plc will post 12.73 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Accenture Announces Dividend

The company also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Thursday, May 15th. Shareholders of record on Thursday, April 10th will be given a dividend of $1.48 per share. The ex-dividend date is Thursday, April 10th. This represents a $5.92 annualized dividend and a yield of 1.90%. Accenture’s dividend payout ratio is currently 48.89%.

Insider Buying and Selling at Accenture

In other Accenture news, CEO Julie Spellman Sweet sold 2,497 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction dated Friday, January 17th. The stock was sold at an average price of $354.48, for a total transaction of $885,136.56. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief executive officer now owns 28,866 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $10,232,419.68. The trade was a 7.96 % decrease in their ownership of the stock. The sale was disclosed in a legal filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which can be accessed through the SEC website. Also, General Counsel Joel Unruch sold 4,750 shares of the stock in a transaction dated Friday, January 24th. The shares were sold at an average price of $362.78, for a total value of $1,723,205.00. Following the completion of the transaction, the general counsel now owns 20,526 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $7,446,422.28. This represents a 18.79 % decrease in their ownership of the stock. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. In the last quarter, insiders have sold 21,905 shares of company stock valued at $8,181,753. 0.02% of the stock is currently owned by corporate insiders.

Accenture Company Profile

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.