Accenture (NYSE:ACN) Releases Earnings Results, Beats Estimates By $0.16 EPS

Accenture (NYSE:ACN) announced its quarterly earnings data on Thursday. The information technology services provider reported $3.59 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $3.43 by $0.16, RTT News reports. The business had revenue of $17.69 billion for the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $17.15 billion. Accenture had a net margin of 11.20% and a return on equity of 26.83%. The company’s quarterly revenue was up 9.0% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same quarter in the prior year, the firm posted $3.27 earnings per share.

Accenture Trading Down 2.7 %

Shares of NYSE:ACN opened at $347.61 on Thursday. The firm has a market cap of $217.31 billion, a PE ratio of 30.41, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 3.23 and a beta of 1.24. The company has a fifty day simple moving average of $360.14 and a 200 day simple moving average of $336.31. Accenture has a 12-month low of $278.69 and a 12-month high of $387.51.

Accenture Announces Dividend

The company also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Friday, February 14th. Shareholders of record on Thursday, January 16th will be issued a $1.48 dividend. This represents a $5.92 dividend on an annualized basis and a yield of 1.70%. Accenture’s dividend payout ratio is currently 51.79%.

Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth

Several equities research analysts have recently issued reports on the company. Robert W. Baird restated a “neutral” rating and set a $370.00 price objective on shares of Accenture in a report on Tuesday, December 3rd. BNP Paribas lowered Accenture from an “outperform” rating to a “neutral” rating and set a $375.00 price target on the stock. in a research note on Wednesday, October 30th. BMO Capital Markets upped their price objective on shares of Accenture from $380.00 to $390.00 and gave the company a “market perform” rating in a research note on Friday, September 27th. Mizuho boosted their target price on shares of Accenture from $352.00 to $365.00 and gave the company an “outperform” rating in a report on Wednesday, September 18th. Finally, TD Cowen raised shares of Accenture from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating and increased their price target for the stock from $321.00 to $400.00 in a research note on Monday, September 30th. Eight research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and fifteen have issued a buy rating to the company’s stock. According to data from MarketBeat.com, Accenture currently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average target price of $374.50.

Insider Buying and Selling at Accenture

In other Accenture news, CEO Julie Spellman Sweet sold 9,000 shares of the stock in a transaction that occurred on Monday, October 21st. The stock was sold at an average price of $376.16, for a total transaction of $3,385,440.00. Following the transaction, the chief executive officer now owns 20,324 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $7,645,075.84. This trade represents a 30.69 % decrease in their position. The transaction was disclosed in a filing with the SEC, which is available at the SEC website. Also, insider Angela Beatty sold 673 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Tuesday, October 22nd. The shares were sold at an average price of $372.18, for a total value of $250,477.14. Following the completion of the sale, the insider now owns 5,650 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $2,102,817. This trade represents a 10.64 % decrease in their ownership of the stock. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Insiders have sold 36,298 shares of company stock worth $13,372,661 in the last ninety days. 0.07% of the stock is owned by insiders.

Accenture declared that its board has approved a stock buyback plan on Thursday, September 26th that allows the company to buyback $4.00 billion in shares. This buyback authorization allows the information technology services provider to repurchase up to 1.8% of its stock through open market purchases. Stock buyback plans are generally an indication that the company’s management believes its stock is undervalued.

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.