Relyea Zuckerberg Hanson LLC Acquires 4,057 Shares of Accenture plc (NYSE:ACN)

Relyea Zuckerberg Hanson LLC increased its stake in shares of Accenture plc (NYSE:ACN) by 76.9% in the fourth quarter, according to the company in its most recent Form 13F filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission. The firm owned 9,333 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock after purchasing an additional 4,057 shares during the period. Relyea Zuckerberg Hanson LLC’s holdings in Accenture were worth $3,283,000 as of its most recent SEC filing.

Other hedge funds have also recently added to or reduced their stakes in the company. Edgestream Partners L.P. acquired a new position in shares of Accenture in the 2nd quarter valued at $1,524,000. Sienna Gestion increased its holdings in shares of Accenture by 0.5% in the second quarter. Sienna Gestion now owns 54,528 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock worth $16,537,000 after acquiring an additional 293 shares in the last quarter. AllGen Financial Advisors Inc. raised its position in shares of Accenture by 20.6% during the second quarter. AllGen Financial Advisors Inc. now owns 9,520 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock worth $2,888,000 after purchasing an additional 1,629 shares during the period. XTX Topco Ltd acquired a new position in shares of Accenture in the 2nd quarter valued at approximately $1,999,000. Finally, Intech Investment Management LLC increased its stake in Accenture by 13.8% during the 2nd quarter. Intech Investment Management LLC now owns 41,701 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock worth $12,652,000 after purchasing an additional 5,045 shares in the last quarter. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 75.14% of the company’s stock.

Accenture Trading Up 0.8 %

Shares of Accenture stock traded up $2.90 during trading on Friday, hitting $353.46. The company’s stock had a trading volume of 567,968 shares, compared to its average volume of 2,369,508. The stock has a market cap of $221.19 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 29.64, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 3.11 and a beta of 1.24. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.17, a current ratio of 1.47 and a quick ratio of 1.47. Accenture plc has a 52 week low of $278.69 and a 52 week high of $387.51. The stock has a 50-day moving average price of $357.85 and a two-hundred day moving average price of $344.97.

Accenture (NYSE:ACN) last issued its quarterly earnings results on Thursday, December 19th. The information technology services provider reported $3.59 earnings per share for the quarter, topping analysts’ consensus estimates of $3.43 by $0.16. The firm had revenue of $17.69 billion during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $17.15 billion. Accenture had a return on equity of 26.91% and a net margin of 11.41%. The business’s revenue was up 9.0% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same period last year, the business posted $3.27 EPS. Equities research analysts anticipate that Accenture plc will post 12.69 EPS for the current fiscal year.

Accenture announced that its Board of Directors has initiated a share repurchase program 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 purchase up to 1.8% of its shares through open market purchases. Shares repurchase programs are usually an indication that the company’s management believes its stock is undervalued.

Accenture Announces Dividend

The firm also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Friday, February 14th. Shareholders of record on Thursday, January 16th will be issued a dividend of $1.48 per share. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Thursday, January 16th. This represents a $5.92 annualized dividend and a yield of 1.67%. Accenture’s payout ratio is 49.66%.

Insider Activity at Accenture

In other Accenture news, CEO Ryoji Sekido sold 3,191 shares of the stock in a transaction on Monday, November 4th. The stock was sold at an average price of $343.70, for a total transaction of $1,096,746.70. Following the sale, the chief executive officer now owns 6 shares in the company, valued at $2,062.20. This represents a 99.81 % decrease in their ownership of the stock. The transaction was disclosed in a legal filing with the SEC, which is available at this link. Also, CEO Julie Spellman Sweet sold 9,000 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction on Monday, October 21st. The shares were sold at an average price of $376.16, for a total value of $3,385,440.00. Following the sale, the chief executive officer now owns 20,324 shares in the company, valued at approximately $7,645,075.84. The trade was a 30.69 % decrease in their ownership of the stock. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. In the last quarter, insiders have sold 26,125 shares of company stock valued at $9,570,260. 0.02% of the stock is owned by corporate insiders.

Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth

Several research firms have recently weighed in on ACN. Piper Sandler upped their price target on shares of Accenture from $422.00 to $429.00 and gave the company an “overweight” rating in a report on Thursday, December 19th. BNP Paribas lowered Accenture from an “outperform” rating to a “neutral” rating and set a $375.00 price target on the stock. in a report on Wednesday, October 30th. The Goldman Sachs Group raised Accenture from a “neutral” rating to a “buy” rating and lifted their target price for the company from $370.00 to $420.00 in a research report on Friday, December 6th. TD Cowen upgraded shares of Accenture from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating and boosted their target price for the stock from $321.00 to $400.00 in a report on Monday, September 30th. Finally, StockNews.com upgraded Accenture from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating in a research note on Monday. Eight analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and sixteen have given a buy rating to the stock. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, the stock has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average price target of $385.04.

Accenture 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.