Accenture (NYSE:ACN) Price Target Lowered to $396.00 at Piper Sandler

Accenture (NYSE:ACN) had its price target dropped by equities researchers at Piper Sandler from $429.00 to $396.00 in a report issued on Friday,Benzinga reports. The firm presently has an “overweight” rating on the information technology services provider’s stock. Piper Sandler’s price objective would indicate a potential upside of 25.12% from the stock’s current price.

A number of other research analysts have also recently weighed in on the stock. The Goldman Sachs Group upgraded shares of Accenture from a “neutral” rating to a “buy” rating and boosted their target price for the company from $370.00 to $420.00 in a research note on Friday, December 6th. Stifel Nicolaus decreased their target price on Accenture from $390.00 to $380.00 and set a “buy” rating for the company in a research report on Wednesday, February 26th. JPMorgan Chase & Co. upped their price target on Accenture from $370.00 to $396.00 and gave the company an “overweight” rating in a research report on Monday, December 16th. Wolfe Research raised Accenture from a “peer perform” rating to an “outperform” rating and set a $425.00 price objective for the company in a report on Wednesday, January 8th. Finally, StockNews.com lowered shares of Accenture from a “buy” rating to a “hold” rating in a research report on Tuesday. Nine equities research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and fifteen have issued a buy rating to the company’s stock. According to data from MarketBeat.com, the stock currently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average target price of $387.52.

Accenture Price Performance

ACN opened at $316.48 on Friday. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.17, a current ratio of 1.47 and a quick ratio of 1.47. The firm’s fifty day moving average price is $363.72 and its two-hundred day moving average price is $358.10. Accenture has a 1 year low of $278.69 and a 1 year high of $398.35. The company has a market capitalization of $198.05 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 26.55, a P/E/G ratio of 3.23 and a beta of 1.24.

Accenture (NYSE:ACN) last issued its quarterly earnings results on Thursday, December 19th. The information technology services provider reported $3.59 EPS for the quarter, topping analysts’ consensus estimates of $3.43 by $0.16. Accenture had a return on equity of 26.91% and a net margin of 11.41%. The business had revenue of $17.69 billion for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $17.15 billion. During the same period last year, the company posted $3.27 earnings per share. Accenture’s quarterly revenue was up 9.0% compared to the same quarter last year. As a group, analysts anticipate that Accenture will post 12.73 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Insiders Place Their Bets

In related 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 value of $3,468,574.71. Following the completion of the sale, the chief executive officer now owns 11,858 shares in the company, valued at $4,677,625.26. The trade was a 42.58 % decrease in their position. The transaction was disclosed in a filing with the SEC, which is available through the SEC website. Also, CAO Melissa A. Burgum sold 232 shares of the stock in a transaction that occurred on Wednesday, February 5th. The shares were sold at an average price of $394.46, for a total transaction of $91,514.72. Following the transaction, the chief accounting officer now owns 8,915 shares in the company, valued at $3,516,610.90. The trade was a 2.54 % 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 valued at $8,316,190 in the last quarter. Corporate insiders own 0.02% of the company’s stock.

Hedge Funds Weigh In On Accenture

Institutional investors and hedge funds have recently bought and sold shares of the stock. Capstone Triton Financial Group LLC increased its position in shares of Accenture by 43.0% in the fourth quarter. Capstone Triton Financial Group LLC now owns 2,732 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock valued at $961,000 after acquiring an additional 822 shares during the period. TFR Capital LLC. bought a new position in Accenture during the 4th quarter valued at approximately $1,792,000. Park Square Financial Group LLC bought a new position in shares of Accenture during the fourth quarter valued at approximately $31,000. Menard Financial Group LLC bought a new position in Accenture in the 4th quarter worth $125,000. Finally, Universal Beteiligungs und Servicegesellschaft mbH bought a new position in Accenture in the fourth quarter worth about $225,217,000. 75.14% of the stock is currently owned by 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.