Accenture plc (NYSE:ACN) CFO Sells $242,750.30 in Stock

Accenture plc (NYSE:ACN) CFO Angie Y. Park sold 685 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction on Friday, January 17th. The stock was sold at an average price of $354.38, for a total value of $242,750.30. Following the completion of the sale, the chief financial officer now directly owns 8,674 shares in the company, valued at $3,073,892.12. This represents a 7.32 % decrease in their position. The transaction was disclosed in a filing with the SEC, which is available at this link.

Accenture Price Performance

Shares of ACN opened at $362.76 on Friday. The firm has a market cap of $227.01 billion, a PE ratio of 30.43, a PEG ratio of 3.17 and a beta of 1.24. The firm’s 50 day moving average price is $357.18 and its 200 day moving average price is $346.75. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.17, a quick ratio of 1.47 and a current ratio of 1.47. Accenture plc has a twelve month low of $278.69 and a twelve month high of $387.51.

Accenture (NYSE:ACN) last released its quarterly earnings results on Thursday, December 19th. The information technology services provider reported $3.59 EPS for the quarter, beating analysts’ consensus estimates of $3.43 by $0.16. Accenture had a net margin of 11.41% and a return on equity of 26.91%. The company had revenue of $17.69 billion for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $17.15 billion. During the same quarter last year, the firm posted $3.27 earnings per share. The company’s quarterly revenue was up 9.0% compared to the same quarter last year. As a group, research analysts expect that Accenture plc will post 12.69 EPS for the current fiscal year.

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

Accenture Announces Dividend

The company also recently declared a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Friday, February 14th. Stockholders of record on Thursday, January 16th will be given a $1.48 dividend. This represents a $5.92 dividend on an annualized basis and a dividend yield of 1.63%. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Thursday, January 16th. Accenture’s dividend payout ratio is 49.66%.

Hedge Funds Weigh In On Accenture

Institutional investors have recently modified their holdings of the company. State Street Corp increased its position in Accenture by 1.8% during the third quarter. State Street Corp now owns 27,400,836 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock worth $9,685,648,000 after acquiring an additional 471,792 shares during the period. Legal & General Group Plc increased its position in Accenture by 1.4% during the second quarter. Legal & General Group Plc now owns 5,887,266 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock worth $1,786,256,000 after acquiring an additional 80,514 shares during the period. UBS AM a distinct business unit of UBS ASSET MANAGEMENT AMERICAS LLC increased its position in Accenture by 378.9% during the third quarter. UBS AM a distinct business unit of UBS ASSET MANAGEMENT AMERICAS LLC now owns 5,491,736 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock worth $1,941,219,000 after acquiring an additional 4,345,039 shares during the period. Charles Schwab Investment Management Inc. increased its position in Accenture by 1.2% during the third quarter. Charles Schwab Investment Management Inc. now owns 4,823,754 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock worth $1,705,100,000 after acquiring an additional 56,937 shares during the period. Finally, Swedbank AB increased its position in Accenture by 47.5% during the fourth quarter. Swedbank AB now owns 3,763,690 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock worth $1,324,029,000 after acquiring an additional 1,212,011 shares during the period. Institutional investors own 75.14% of the company’s stock.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

Several research firms have issued reports on ACN. BNP Paribas downgraded Accenture from an “outperform” rating to a “neutral” rating and set a $375.00 price objective on the stock. in a report on Wednesday, October 30th. Bank of America raised their target price on shares of Accenture from $365.00 to $388.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a report on Friday, September 27th. Robert W. Baird reiterated a “neutral” rating and issued a $370.00 target price on shares of Accenture in a report on Tuesday, December 3rd. Susquehanna raised their target price on shares of Accenture from $350.00 to $360.00 and gave the stock a “neutral” rating in a report on Friday, September 27th. Finally, Barclays raised their target price on shares of Accenture from $350.00 to $415.00 and gave the stock an “overweight” rating in a report on Monday, September 30th. Eight equities research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and sixteen have given a buy rating to the company. According to data from MarketBeat, the company presently has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus target price of $383.74.

About Accenture

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.