Analysts Set Accenture plc (NYSE:ACN) Price Target at $377.82

Accenture plc (NYSE:ACN) has received an average recommendation of “Moderate Buy” from the twenty-two ratings firms that are currently covering the company, MarketBeat reports. Six investment analysts have rated the stock with a hold recommendation, fifteen have issued a buy recommendation and one has given a strong buy recommendation to the company. The average 1-year target price among analysts that have covered the stock in the last year is $381.76.

ACN has been the subject of several recent analyst reports. Mizuho cut their price objective on shares of Accenture from $428.00 to $398.00 and set an “outperform” rating for the company in a research report on Wednesday, March 19th. StockNews.com lowered shares of Accenture from a “buy” rating to a “hold” rating in a research report on Tuesday, March 11th. Baird R W raised shares of Accenture from a “hold” rating to a “strong-buy” rating in a research note on Monday, March 17th. Piper Sandler cut their target price on Accenture from $364.00 to $355.00 and set an “overweight” rating for the company in a research note on Wednesday, April 16th. Finally, Guggenheim decreased their price target on Accenture from $400.00 to $395.00 and set a “buy” rating on the stock in a research note on Friday, March 21st.

Accenture Stock Up 0.1%

NYSE ACN opened at $319.70 on Wednesday. The company has a market cap of $200.24 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 26.82, a PEG ratio of 3.23 and a beta of 1.35. Accenture has a 1-year low of $275.01 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 $302.57 and a 200-day moving average of $340.82.

Accenture (NYSE:ACN) last released its earnings results on Thursday, March 20th. The information technology services provider reported $2.82 earnings per share for the quarter, beating 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 firm had revenue of $16.70 billion during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $16.64 billion. During the same period in the prior year, the company posted $2.77 EPS. The company’s revenue was up 5.7% compared to the same quarter last year. On average, equities research analysts expect that Accenture will post 12.73 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Accenture Announces Dividend

The firm also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Thursday, May 15th. Investors of record on Thursday, April 10th were issued a $1.48 dividend. The ex-dividend date of this dividend was Thursday, April 10th. This represents a $5.92 dividend on an annualized basis and a yield of 1.85%. Accenture’s dividend payout ratio (DPR) is presently 48.89%.

Insiders Place Their Bets

In other Accenture news, COO John F. Walsh sold 2,500 shares of Accenture stock in a transaction dated Tuesday, May 13th. The stock was sold at an average price of $325.00, for a total transaction of $812,500.00. Following the transaction, the chief operating officer now directly owns 15,882 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $5,161,650. The trade was a 13.60% decrease in their position. The sale was disclosed in a filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which can be accessed through this link. Also, insider Angela Beatty sold 169 shares of the stock in a transaction dated Friday, April 11th. The shares were sold at an average price of $281.90, for a total value of $47,641.10. Following the completion of the sale, the insider now directly owns 5,364 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $1,512,111.60. The trade was a 3.05% decrease in their position. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Insiders have sold 8,516 shares of company stock valued at $2,507,366 in the last ninety days. 0.02% of the stock is currently owned by insiders.

Institutional Inflows and Outflows

Hedge funds and other institutional investors have recently modified their holdings of the company. FPC Investment Advisory Inc. raised its stake in Accenture by 62.2% during the fourth quarter. FPC Investment Advisory Inc. now owns 73 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock worth $28,000 after buying an additional 28 shares during the last quarter. Kohmann Bosshard Financial Services LLC acquired a new stake in Accenture during the 4th quarter worth about $30,000. Mpwm Advisory Solutions LLC acquired a new position in shares of Accenture in the 4th quarter valued at about $30,000. POM Investment Strategies LLC boosted its position in shares of Accenture by 64.2% during the 4th quarter. POM Investment Strategies LLC now owns 87 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock valued at $31,000 after purchasing an additional 34 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Park Square Financial Group LLC acquired a new stake in Accenture during the fourth quarter worth approximately $31,000. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 75.14% of the company’s stock.

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.