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

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

Accenture Trading Up 7.1 %

NYSE ACN opened at $372.16 on Friday. The firm has a market cap of $232.66 billion, a PE ratio of 32.56, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 3.23 and a beta of 1.24. The stock has a 50-day moving average of $360.36 and a 200-day moving average of $336.56. Accenture has a 1-year low of $278.69 and a 1-year high of $387.51.

Accenture Announces Dividend

The firm also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Friday, February 14th. Stockholders of record on Thursday, January 16th will be issued a dividend of $1.48 per share. This represents a $5.92 annualized dividend and a dividend yield of 1.59%. Accenture’s payout ratio is 51.79%.

Wall Street Analyst Weigh In

A number of equities analysts recently weighed in on the stock. Susquehanna upped their target price on shares of Accenture from $350.00 to $360.00 and gave the stock a “neutral” rating in a research note on Friday, September 27th. The Goldman Sachs Group upgraded Accenture from a “neutral” rating to a “buy” rating and increased their price objective for the stock from $370.00 to $420.00 in a research report on Friday, December 6th. TD Cowen upgraded shares of Accenture from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating and boosted their target price for the company from $321.00 to $400.00 in a research report on Monday, September 30th. StockNews.com raised shares of Accenture from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating in a research note on Monday, December 9th. Finally, 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 report on Wednesday, October 30th. Eight research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and fifteen have given a buy rating to the company. According to data from MarketBeat, the company has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus target price of $374.82.

Accenture announced that its Board of Directors has authorized a share buyback program on Thursday, September 26th that allows the company to repurchase $4.00 billion in shares. This repurchase authorization allows the information technology services provider to purchase up to 1.8% of its stock through open market purchases. Stock repurchase programs are often an indication that the company’s board believes its stock is undervalued.

Insider Activity at Accenture

In other Accenture news, CEO Ryoji Sekido sold 3,191 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Monday, November 4th. The shares were sold at an average price of $343.70, for a total transaction of $1,096,746.70. Following the completion of the sale, the chief executive officer now directly owns 6 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $2,062.20. This represents a 99.81 % decrease in their ownership of the stock. The sale was disclosed in a filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is accessible through the SEC website. Also, COO John F. Walsh sold 5,000 shares of the stock in a transaction that occurred on Thursday, October 17th. The shares were sold at an average price of $373.24, for a total transaction of $1,866,200.00. Following the sale, the chief operating officer now directly owns 17,593 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $6,566,411.32. This trade represents a 22.13 % decrease in their ownership of the stock. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Insiders have sold a total of 36,298 shares of company stock worth $13,372,661 in the last 90 days. Company insiders own 0.07% of the company’s stock.

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.