Accenture PLC $ACN Shares Sold by Bank OZK

Bank OZK cut its stake in Accenture PLC (NYSE:ACN) by 16.6% in the first quarter, according to its most recent 13F filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission. The fund owned 692 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock after selling 138 shares during the quarter. Bank OZK’s holdings in Accenture were worth $216,000 as of its most recent SEC filing.

A number of other hedge funds and other institutional investors have also modified their holdings of the stock. Cornerstone Select Advisors LLC increased its stake in shares of Accenture by 53.0% in the 1st quarter. Cornerstone Select Advisors LLC now owns 976 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock worth $305,000 after acquiring an additional 338 shares during the last quarter. Sand Hill Global Advisors LLC increased its stake in shares of Accenture by 0.6% in the 1st quarter. Sand Hill Global Advisors LLC now owns 19,862 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock worth $6,198,000 after acquiring an additional 120 shares during the last quarter. Aviso Financial Inc. increased its position in shares of Accenture by 9.2% during the 1st quarter. Aviso Financial Inc. now owns 17,529 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock worth $5,470,000 after purchasing an additional 1,470 shares during the last quarter. Granite Harbor Advisors Inc. raised its holdings in Accenture by 40.0% in the 1st quarter. Granite Harbor Advisors Inc. now owns 798 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock valued at $249,000 after buying an additional 228 shares during the period. Finally, Freestone Capital Holdings LLC raised its holdings in Accenture by 0.5% in the 1st quarter. Freestone Capital Holdings LLC now owns 40,910 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock valued at $12,766,000 after buying an additional 188 shares during the period. 75.14% of the stock is owned by institutional investors and hedge funds.

Analysts Set New Price Targets

ACN has been the topic of several research analyst reports. Guggenheim reduced their price objective on shares of Accenture from $360.00 to $335.00 and set a “buy” rating on the stock in a report on Monday, June 23rd. Hsbc Global Res upgraded shares of Accenture to a “moderate sell” rating in a report on Monday, July 28th. JPMorgan Chase & Co. boosted their price objective on shares of Accenture from $349.00 to $353.00 and gave the company an “overweight” rating in a report on Monday, June 16th. BMO Capital Markets reduced their price objective on shares of Accenture from $355.00 to $325.00 and set a “market perform” rating on the stock in a report on Monday, June 23rd. Finally, Morgan Stanley reduced their price objective on shares of Accenture from $340.00 to $325.00 and set an “equal weight” rating on the stock in a report on Tuesday, June 24th. One analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, eight have assigned a hold rating, fifteen have given a buy rating and one has assigned a strong buy rating to the company. According to MarketBeat, the company currently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus price target of $360.21.

Insider Buying and Selling

In other Accenture news, CEO Mauro Macchi sold 500 shares of Accenture stock in a transaction that occurred on Friday, July 11th. The stock was sold at an average price of $282.34, for a total transaction of $141,170.00. Following the transaction, the chief executive officer owned 2,283 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $644,582.22. The trade was a 17.97% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The transaction was disclosed in a filing with the SEC, which is available at this hyperlink. Also, insider Angela Beatty sold 203 shares of Accenture stock in a transaction that occurred on Friday, July 11th. The stock was sold at an average price of $282.34, for a total value of $57,315.02. Following the transaction, the insider directly owned 5,249 shares in the company, valued at approximately $1,482,002.66. This trade represents a 3.72% decrease in their position. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Insiders sold a total of 2,954 shares of company stock worth $834,280 over the last 90 days. 0.02% of the stock is owned by insiders.

Accenture Price Performance

ACN stock opened at $249.11 on Tuesday. The business has a 50 day moving average price of $282.57 and a 200 day moving average price of $309.73. The stock has a market cap of $156.03 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 19.83, a PEG ratio of 2.25 and a beta of 1.29. Accenture PLC has a fifty-two week low of $236.67 and a fifty-two week high of $398.35. The company has a quick ratio of 1.46, a current ratio of 1.46 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.16.

Accenture (NYSE:ACN) last posted its earnings results on Friday, June 20th. The information technology services provider reported $3.49 earnings per share for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of $3.32 by $0.17. The firm had revenue of $17.73 billion during the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $17.26 billion. Accenture had a return on equity of 26.55% and a net margin of 11.61%. The firm’s revenue was up 7.7% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same quarter in the previous year, the business earned $3.13 earnings per share. Equities research analysts anticipate that Accenture PLC will post 12.73 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Accenture Announces Dividend

The firm also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Friday, August 15th. Investors of record on Thursday, July 10th were paid a dividend of $1.48 per share. The ex-dividend date was Thursday, July 10th. This represents a $5.92 annualized dividend and a yield of 2.4%. Accenture’s payout ratio is presently 47.13%.

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.