Accenture (NYSE:ACN) Price Target Lowered to $396.00 at Piper Sandler

Accenture (NYSE:ACN) had its target price lowered by Piper Sandler from $429.00 to $396.00 in a report issued on Friday,Benzinga reports. Piper Sandler currently has an overweight rating on the information technology services provider’s stock.

Several other research firms have also weighed in on ACN. Stifel Nicolaus reduced their price objective on Accenture from $390.00 to $380.00 and set a “buy” rating for the company in a research note on Wednesday, February 26th. The Goldman Sachs Group raised Accenture from a “neutral” rating to a “buy” rating and raised their price objective for the stock from $370.00 to $420.00 in a research note on Friday, December 6th. Morgan Stanley raised their price objective on Accenture from $335.00 to $380.00 and gave the stock an “equal weight” rating in a research note on Friday, January 31st. UBS Group raised their price objective on Accenture from $450.00 to $455.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a research note on Friday, December 20th. Finally, Wolfe Research raised Accenture from a “peer perform” rating to an “outperform” rating and set a $425.00 price objective for the company in a research note on Wednesday, January 8th. Nine equities research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and fifteen have given a buy rating to the company’s stock. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, Accenture has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus target price of $387.52.

Accenture Stock Performance

Shares of NYSE ACN opened at $318.28 on Friday. The stock has a fifty day moving average price of $363.01 and a two-hundred day moving average price of $357.97. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.17, a quick ratio of 1.47 and a current ratio of 1.47. The firm has a market cap of $199.17 billion, a P/E ratio of 26.70, a PEG ratio of 3.23 and a beta of 1.24. Accenture has a 1 year low of $278.69 and a 1 year high of $398.35.

Accenture (NYSE:ACN) last issued its quarterly earnings results on Thursday, December 19th. The information technology services provider reported $3.59 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, beating analysts’ consensus estimates of $3.43 by $0.16. The firm had revenue of $17.69 billion during the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $17.15 billion. Accenture had a return on equity of 26.91% and a net margin of 11.41%. The firm’s quarterly revenue was up 9.0% on a year-over-year basis. During the same period last year, the company posted $3.27 EPS. Research analysts forecast that Accenture will post 12.73 EPS for the current fiscal year.

Insider Buying and Selling

In other Accenture news, CAO Melissa A. Burgum sold 232 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction dated Wednesday, February 5th. The stock was sold at an average price of $394.46, for a total transaction of $91,514.72. Following the transaction, the chief accounting officer now directly owns 8,915 shares in the company, valued at $3,516,610.90. This trade 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 available at the SEC website. Also, insider Angela Beatty sold 375 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction dated Monday, December 23rd. The shares were sold at an average price of $358.50, for a total value of $134,437.50. Following the transaction, the insider now owns 5,149 shares in the company, valued at approximately $1,845,916.50. This trade represents a 6.79 % decrease in their ownership of the stock. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Over the last ninety days, insiders sold 22,280 shares of company stock worth $8,316,190. Corporate insiders own 0.02% of the company’s stock.

Hedge Funds Weigh In On Accenture

Several institutional investors have recently bought and sold shares of ACN. Morse Asset Management Inc bought a new position in Accenture during the third quarter valued at about $25,000. FPC Investment Advisory Inc. grew its position in shares of Accenture by 62.2% in the fourth quarter. FPC Investment Advisory Inc. now owns 73 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock valued at $28,000 after purchasing an additional 28 shares during the last quarter. MidAtlantic Capital Management Inc. acquired a new stake in shares of Accenture in the third quarter valued at about $30,000. Kohmann Bosshard Financial Services LLC acquired a new stake in shares of Accenture in the fourth quarter valued at about $30,000. Finally, Mpwm Advisory Solutions LLC acquired a new stake in shares of Accenture in the fourth quarter valued at about $30,000. 75.14% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors.

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.