John F. Walsh Sells 8,000 Shares of Accenture plc (NYSE:ACN) Stock

Accenture plc (NYSE:ACN) COO John F. Walsh sold 8,000 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction on Monday, March 25th. The stock was sold at an average price of $332.13, for a total transaction of $2,657,040.00. Following the completion of the sale, the chief operating officer now owns 17,877 shares in the company, valued at approximately $5,937,488.01. The sale was disclosed in a legal filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is accessible through this hyperlink.

Accenture Price Performance

NYSE:ACN opened at $340.96 on Thursday. Accenture plc has a 1-year low of $261.68 and a 1-year high of $387.51. The company has a 50-day moving average of $369.38 and a 200 day moving average of $340.37. The firm has a market cap of $213.89 billion, a PE ratio of 30.91, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 3.16 and a beta of 1.20.

Accenture (NYSE:ACN) last announced its earnings results on Thursday, March 21st. The information technology services provider reported $2.77 EPS for the quarter, topping analysts’ consensus estimates of $2.66 by $0.11. The business had revenue of $15.80 billion during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $15.85 billion. Accenture had a net margin of 10.89% and a return on equity of 28.30%. The firm’s revenue was down .1% on a year-over-year basis. During the same period in the previous year, the company posted $2.69 earnings per share. Sell-side analysts anticipate that Accenture plc will post 12.1 EPS for the current fiscal year.

Accenture Announces Dividend

The firm also recently declared a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Wednesday, May 15th. Shareholders of record on Thursday, April 11th will be given a dividend of $1.29 per share. This represents a $5.16 dividend on an annualized basis and a yield of 1.51%. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Wednesday, April 10th. Accenture’s dividend payout ratio is presently 46.78%.

Hedge Funds Weigh In On Accenture

Institutional investors have recently bought and sold shares of the business. Norges Bank acquired a new stake in shares of Accenture during the 4th quarter worth approximately $1,850,765,000. Moneta Group Investment Advisors LLC grew its stake in shares of Accenture by 101,214.0% during the 4th quarter. Moneta Group Investment Advisors LLC now owns 4,040,402 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock worth $1,078,141,000 after purchasing an additional 4,036,414 shares during the period. Morgan Stanley grew its stake in shares of Accenture by 14.9% during the 4th quarter. Morgan Stanley now owns 16,642,841 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock worth $4,440,976,000 after purchasing an additional 2,163,582 shares during the period. Legal & General Group Plc grew its stake in shares of Accenture by 20.2% during the 4th quarter. Legal & General Group Plc now owns 5,879,123 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock worth $2,063,048,000 after purchasing an additional 989,157 shares during the period. Finally, DZ BANK AG Deutsche Zentral Genossenschafts Bank Frankfurt am Main grew its stake in shares of Accenture by 100.0% during the 4th quarter. DZ BANK AG Deutsche Zentral Genossenschafts Bank Frankfurt am Main now owns 1,751,531 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock worth $614,615,000 after purchasing an additional 875,723 shares during the period. 75.14% of the stock is owned by hedge funds and other institutional investors.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

Several equities research analysts recently weighed in on ACN shares. BNP Paribas upgraded shares of Accenture from a “neutral” rating to an “outperform” rating and set a $440.00 price target on the stock in a research report on Wednesday, January 17th. TD Cowen reduced their price target on shares of Accenture from $363.00 to $350.00 and set a “market perform” rating on the stock in a research report on Friday, March 22nd. Bank of America boosted their price objective on shares of Accenture from $379.00 to $419.00 and gave the company a “buy” rating in a research report on Thursday, March 7th. UBS Group boosted their price objective on shares of Accenture from $365.00 to $400.00 and gave the company a “neutral” rating in a research report on Thursday, January 25th. Finally, Susquehanna reiterated a “neutral” rating and set a $360.00 price objective (down previously from $400.00) on shares of Accenture in a research report on Thursday, March 21st. Eight research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and fourteen have issued a buy rating to the company’s stock. According to data from MarketBeat, Accenture presently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus target price of $387.00.

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.