Florida Financial Advisors LLC Raises Position in Accenture plc (NYSE:ACN)

Florida Financial Advisors LLC lifted its stake in shares of Accenture plc (NYSE:ACN) by 71.2% during the 4th quarter, according to the company in its most recent 13F filing with the SEC. The firm owned 1,868 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock after buying an additional 777 shares during the quarter. Florida Financial Advisors LLC’s holdings in Accenture were worth $657,000 as of its most recent filing with the SEC.

Other institutional investors and hedge funds have also recently bought and sold shares of the company. Morse Asset Management Inc purchased a new position in shares of Accenture in the third quarter valued at $25,000. FPC Investment Advisory Inc. boosted its position in Accenture by 62.2% in the 4th quarter. FPC Investment Advisory Inc. now owns 73 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock valued at $28,000 after buying an additional 28 shares during the last quarter. Kohmann Bosshard Financial Services LLC purchased a new stake in shares of Accenture during the fourth quarter worth about $30,000. POM Investment Strategies LLC lifted its stake in shares of Accenture by 64.2% in the fourth quarter. POM Investment Strategies LLC now owns 87 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock worth $31,000 after acquiring an additional 34 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Retirement Wealth Solutions LLC purchased a new position in Accenture in the fourth quarter valued at about $34,000. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 75.14% of the company’s stock.

Wall Street Analyst Weigh In

Several equities analysts have recently commented on ACN shares. Stifel Nicolaus reduced their target price on 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 lowered shares of Accenture from a “buy” rating to a “hold” rating in a report on Tuesday, March 11th. Barclays reduced their price target on shares of Accenture from $415.00 to $390.00 and set an “overweight” rating on the stock in a research report on Monday. Robert W. Baird raised Accenture from a “neutral” rating to an “outperform” rating and set a $390.00 price objective for the company in a report on Monday, March 17th. Finally, BMO Capital Markets decreased their target price on Accenture from $425.00 to $370.00 and set a “market perform” rating for the company in a research report on Tuesday, March 18th. Eight equities research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating, fifteen have assigned a buy rating and one has issued a strong buy rating to the company’s stock. According to MarketBeat.com, the stock presently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average target price of $378.91.

Accenture Stock Up 0.6 %

ACN stock opened at $307.24 on Tuesday. The firm’s 50-day moving average is $358.32 and its two-hundred day moving average is $357.10. The company has a market capitalization of $192.27 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 25.78, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 3.23 and a beta of 1.24. Accenture plc has a 52 week low of $278.69 and a 52 week 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.

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, topping 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 firm posted $2.77 earnings per share. The firm’s revenue for the quarter was up 5.7% compared to the same quarter last year. On average, analysts forecast that Accenture plc will post 12.73 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Accenture Dividend Announcement

The firm also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Thursday, May 15th. Stockholders of record on Thursday, April 10th will be given a dividend of $1.48 per share. The ex-dividend date is Thursday, April 10th. This represents a $5.92 annualized dividend and a dividend yield of 1.93%. Accenture’s dividend payout ratio (DPR) is 48.89%.

Insider Buying and Selling

In other Accenture news, CAO Melissa A. Burgum sold 232 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction on Wednesday, February 5th. The stock was sold at an average price of $394.46, for a total value of $91,514.72. Following the transaction, the chief accounting officer now owns 8,915 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $3,516,610.90. This represents a 2.54 % decrease in their ownership of the stock. The transaction was disclosed in a filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is accessible through this hyperlink. Also, CEO Julie Spellman Sweet sold 8,793 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction 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 sale, the chief executive officer now directly owns 11,858 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $4,677,625.26. This represents a 42.58 % decrease in their ownership of the stock. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Insiders have sold 21,905 shares of company stock worth $8,181,753 in the last ninety days. 0.02% of the stock is currently owned by corporate insiders.

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.