Accenture (NYSE:ACN) Given New $364.00 Price Target at Piper Sandler

Accenture (NYSE:ACN) had its target price cut by Piper Sandler from $396.00 to $364.00 in a report published on Thursday morning,Benzinga reports. They currently have an overweight rating on the information technology services provider’s stock.

Several other brokerages also recently commented on ACN. Robert W. Baird raised shares of Accenture from a “neutral” rating to an “outperform” rating and set a $390.00 target price for the company in a research note on Monday. Morgan Stanley lowered their target price on shares of Accenture from $380.00 to $372.00 and set an “equal weight” rating for the company in a research note on Monday. Stifel Nicolaus lowered their target price on shares of Accenture from $390.00 to $380.00 and set a “buy” rating for the company in a research note on Wednesday, February 26th. StockNews.com downgraded shares of Accenture from a “buy” rating to a “hold” rating in a research note on Tuesday, March 11th. Finally, BMO Capital Markets lowered their price objective on shares of Accenture from $425.00 to $370.00 and set a “market perform” rating for the company in a research report on Tuesday. Eight research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating, fifteen have issued a buy rating and one has given a strong buy rating to the company. Based on data from MarketBeat, the stock presently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average target price of $383.00.

Accenture Price Performance

NYSE:ACN opened at $300.86 on Thursday. The company’s 50-day moving average price is $360.05 and its two-hundred day moving average price is $357.39. Accenture has a 12 month low of $278.69 and a 12 month high of $398.35. The firm has a market cap of $188.28 billion, a PE ratio of 25.24, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 3.23 and a beta of 1.24. The company has a quick ratio of 1.47, a current ratio of 1.47 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.17.

Accenture (NYSE:ACN) last announced its quarterly earnings data on Thursday, March 20th. The information technology services provider reported $2.82 earnings per share for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $2.81 by $0.01. Accenture had a net margin of 11.41% and a return on equity of 26.91%. The business had revenue of $16.70 billion for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $16.64 billion. During the same period in the prior year, the business posted $2.77 earnings per share. Accenture’s revenue was up 5.7% compared to the same quarter last year. On average, equities analysts anticipate that Accenture will post 12.73 EPS for the current fiscal year.

Accenture Announces Dividend

The company also recently declared a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Thursday, May 15th. Shareholders of record on Thursday, April 10th will be paid a $1.48 dividend. This represents a $5.92 dividend on an annualized basis and a yield of 1.97%. Accenture’s dividend payout ratio is currently 49.66%.

Insider Buying and Selling at Accenture

In other Accenture news, CEO Julie Spellman Sweet sold 8,793 shares of the stock in a transaction on Wednesday, February 5th. The shares were 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. This trade represents a 42.58 % decrease in their ownership of the stock. The sale was disclosed in a legal filing with the SEC, which is available through this link. Also, insider Angela Beatty sold 375 shares of the stock in a transaction on Monday, December 23rd. The shares were sold at an average price of $358.50, for a total transaction of $134,437.50. Following the completion of the sale, the insider now owns 5,149 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $1,845,916.50. This represents a 6.79 % decrease in their position. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Insiders sold a total of 22,280 shares of company stock worth $8,316,190 over the last quarter. 0.02% of the stock is currently owned by insiders.

Institutional Trading of Accenture

A number of hedge funds have recently modified their holdings of ACN. Morse Asset Management Inc acquired a new stake in shares of Accenture during the 3rd quarter worth about $25,000. FPC Investment Advisory Inc. lifted its stake in shares of Accenture by 62.2% during the 4th 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 shares of Accenture during the 4th quarter worth about $30,000. Mpwm Advisory Solutions LLC acquired a new stake in shares of Accenture during the 4th quarter worth about $30,000. Finally, POM Investment Strategies LLC lifted its stake 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 worth $31,000 after buying an additional 34 shares during the last quarter. 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.