Accenture (NYSE:ACN) Stock Price Expected to Rise, BMO Capital Markets Analyst Says

Accenture (NYSE:ACN) had its price target upped by BMO Capital Markets to $355.00 in a research note published on Wednesday, Marketbeat Ratings reports. They currently have a hold rating on the information technology services provider’s stock.

A number of other equities research analysts have also recently weighed in on the company. Royal Bank of Canada lowered their price target on Accenture from $399.00 to $392.00 and set an “outperform” rating on the stock in a report on Friday, March 21st. Baird R W upgraded Accenture from a “hold” rating to a “strong-buy” rating in a research report on Monday, March 17th. Barclays decreased their price objective on shares of Accenture from $415.00 to $390.00 and set an “overweight” rating on the stock in a research report on Monday, March 24th. Robert W. Baird upgraded shares of Accenture from a “neutral” rating to an “outperform” rating and set a $390.00 target price for the company in a report on Monday, March 17th. Finally, The Goldman Sachs Group raised shares of Accenture from a “neutral” rating to a “buy” rating and upped their price target for the company from $370.00 to $420.00 in a report on Friday, December 6th. Eight 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 stock. According to MarketBeat, Accenture currently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus price target of $378.23.

Accenture Trading Down 1.4 %

Shares of ACN stock opened at $304.32 on Wednesday. Accenture has a twelve month low of $278.69 and a twelve month 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 business’s 50 day moving average is $354.96 and its two-hundred day moving average is $355.97. The company has a market capitalization of $190.44 billion, a P/E ratio of 25.53, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 3.23 and a beta of 1.24.

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 analysts’ consensus estimates of $2.81 by $0.01. The company had revenue of $16.70 billion for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $16.64 billion. Accenture had a return on equity of 26.91% and a net margin of 11.41%. The firm’s revenue for the quarter was up 5.7% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same quarter in the previous year, the company earned $2.77 EPS. Equities analysts forecast that Accenture will post 12.73 EPS for the current year.

Accenture Dividend Announcement

The company 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. This represents a $5.92 dividend on an annualized basis and a dividend yield of 1.95%. The ex-dividend date is Thursday, April 10th. Accenture’s dividend payout ratio is presently 48.89%.

Insiders Place Their Bets

In other Accenture news, CAO Melissa A. Burgum sold 1,487 shares of the stock in a transaction on Tuesday, January 21st. The stock was sold at an average price of $354.54, for a total transaction of $527,200.98. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief accounting officer now directly owns 9,247 shares in the company, valued at $3,278,431.38. This represents a 13.85 % decrease in their ownership of the stock. The transaction was disclosed in a legal filing with the SEC, which can be accessed through this link. Also, insider Angela Beatty sold 961 shares of Accenture stock in a transaction dated Friday, January 17th. The shares were sold at an average price of $354.47, for a total transaction of $340,645.67. Following the transaction, the insider now directly owns 5,484 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $1,943,913.48. This represents a 14.91 % 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 over the last 90 days. Corporate insiders own 0.02% of the company’s stock.

Institutional Investors Weigh In On Accenture

Several hedge funds and other institutional investors have recently made changes to their positions in ACN. Vanguard Group Inc. increased its holdings in Accenture by 0.7% in the fourth quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. now owns 60,394,657 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock valued at $21,246,236,000 after purchasing an additional 392,183 shares during the last quarter. State Street Corp increased its stake in shares of Accenture by 1.8% in the 3rd quarter. State Street Corp now owns 27,400,836 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock valued at $9,685,648,000 after acquiring an additional 471,792 shares during the last quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC raised its position in shares of Accenture by 1.0% in the 4th quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC now owns 13,528,348 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock valued at $4,750,021,000 after acquiring an additional 136,665 shares during the period. Capital Research Global Investors grew its holdings in Accenture by 16.8% during the fourth quarter. Capital Research Global Investors now owns 12,295,748 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock valued at $4,325,526,000 after purchasing an additional 1,770,024 shares during the period. Finally, Wellington Management Group LLP increased its stake in Accenture by 22.8% in the fourth quarter. Wellington Management Group LLP now owns 12,175,518 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock valued at $4,283,225,000 after purchasing an additional 2,260,740 shares in the last quarter. 75.14% of the stock is owned by institutional investors and hedge funds.

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.