Accenture (NYSE:ACN) Issues Quarterly Earnings Results

Accenture (NYSE:ACN) issued its quarterly earnings results on Thursday. The information technology services provider reported $3.59 EPS for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate 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 previous year, the business earned $3.27 earnings per share. The firm’s revenue for the quarter was up 9.0% on a year-over-year basis.

Accenture Stock Down 1.6 %

Shares of Accenture stock opened at $366.37 on Friday. The firm has a market cap of $229.04 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 32.05, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 3.23 and a beta of 1.24. The company’s 50-day simple moving average is $360.47 and its 200-day simple moving average is $337.15. Accenture has a 52-week low of $278.69 and a 52-week high of $387.51.

Accenture Announces Dividend

The business also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Friday, February 14th. Shareholders of record on Thursday, January 16th will be paid a $1.48 dividend. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Thursday, January 16th. This represents a $5.92 annualized dividend and a dividend yield of 1.62%. Accenture’s dividend payout ratio (DPR) is currently 51.79%.

Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth

Several equities analysts have recently weighed in on ACN shares. Piper Sandler Companies reissued a “neutral” rating and issued a $329.00 price target on shares of Accenture in a research note on Friday, September 20th. BMO Capital Markets raised their target price on Accenture from $390.00 to $425.00 and gave the stock a “market perform” rating in a research note on Friday. The Goldman Sachs Group raised Accenture from a “neutral” rating to a “buy” rating and upped their price target for the company from $370.00 to $420.00 in a research note on Friday, December 6th. StockNews.com lowered shares of Accenture from a “buy” rating to a “hold” rating in a report on Friday. Finally, Guggenheim increased their target price on shares of Accenture from $380.00 to $395.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a research note on Friday, September 27th. Nine research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and fourteen have assigned a buy rating to the stock. According to MarketBeat, the company currently has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus price target of $383.23.

Insider Buying and Selling

In related news, insider Angela Beatty sold 673 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction 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 transaction, the insider now directly owns 5,650 shares in the company, valued at $2,102,817. This trade represents a 10.64 % decrease in their ownership of the stock. The sale was disclosed in a document filed with the SEC, which is available through this hyperlink. Also, 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 transaction, the chief accounting officer now owns 9,777 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $3,649,265.25. This represents a 4.47 % decrease in their position. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Insiders have sold 36,298 shares of company stock valued at $13,372,661 over the last quarter. Company insiders own 0.07% of the company’s stock.

Accenture announced that its Board of Directors has authorized a stock buyback plan on Thursday, September 26th that permits the company to repurchase $4.00 billion in outstanding shares. This repurchase authorization permits the information technology services provider to buy up to 1.8% of its shares through open market purchases. Shares repurchase plans are typically an indication that the company’s leadership believes its shares are undervalued.

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.