Kathleen R. Mcclure Sells 4,500 Shares of Accenture plc (NYSE:ACN) Stock

Accenture plc (NYSE:ACN) CFO Kathleen R. Mcclure sold 4,500 shares of the stock in a transaction dated Friday, April 12th. The stock was sold at an average price of $316.00, for a total transaction of $1,422,000.00. Following the completion of the sale, the chief financial officer now directly owns 42,781 shares in the company, valued at $13,518,796. The sale was disclosed in a filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available at this link.

Accenture Stock Performance

NYSE:ACN opened at $316.00 on Friday. The firm has a market cap of $211.95 billion, a PE ratio of 28.65, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 2.98 and a beta of 1.19. Accenture plc has a fifty-two week low of $261.68 and a fifty-two week high of $387.51. The business has a 50 day moving average price of $356.30 and a 200-day moving average price of $341.77.

Accenture (NYSE:ACN) last released its quarterly earnings data on Thursday, March 21st. The information technology services provider reported $2.77 earnings per share for the quarter, beating analysts’ consensus estimates of $2.66 by $0.11. Accenture had a return on equity of 28.30% and a net margin of 10.89%. The firm had revenue of $15.80 billion during the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $15.85 billion. During the same quarter in the prior year, the firm posted $2.69 earnings per share. The business’s quarterly revenue was down .1% compared to the same quarter last year. Research analysts predict that Accenture plc will post 12.09 EPS for the current year.

Accenture Announces Dividend

The firm also recently declared a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Wednesday, May 15th. Investors of record on Thursday, April 11th will be paid a $1.29 dividend. This represents a $5.16 dividend on an annualized basis and a yield of 1.63%. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Wednesday, April 10th. Accenture’s payout ratio is 46.78%.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

ACN has been the topic of several research analyst reports. Guggenheim initiated coverage on shares of Accenture in a research report on Tuesday, March 19th. They issued a “buy” rating and a $425.00 price objective on the stock. Redburn Atlantic upped their price objective on shares of Accenture from $410.00 to $445.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a research report on Tuesday, March 19th. TD Cowen decreased their price objective 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. StockNews.com cut shares of Accenture from a “buy” rating to a “hold” rating in a research report on Friday, March 22nd. Finally, UBS Group upped their price objective on shares of Accenture from $365.00 to $400.00 and gave the stock a “neutral” rating in a research report on Thursday, January 25th. Eight research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and thirteen have given a buy rating to the company. According to MarketBeat.com, Accenture presently has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average target price of $387.00.

Institutional Trading of Accenture

A number of institutional investors and hedge funds have recently added to or reduced their stakes in the business. Vanguard Group Inc. lifted its stake in Accenture by 1.1% in the fourth quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. now owns 59,083,383 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock worth $20,732,950,000 after acquiring an additional 649,358 shares during the period. State Street Corp lifted its stake in Accenture by 2.7% in the first quarter. State Street Corp now owns 26,453,884 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock worth $7,560,765,000 after acquiring an additional 704,657 shares during the period. Morgan Stanley lifted its position in Accenture by 14.9% during the fourth quarter. Morgan Stanley now owns 16,642,841 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock valued at $4,440,976,000 after buying an additional 2,163,582 shares during the period. FMR LLC lifted its position in Accenture by 4.4% during the third quarter. FMR LLC now owns 13,316,028 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock valued at $4,089,485,000 after buying an additional 565,505 shares during the period. Finally, Wellington Management Group LLP lifted its position in Accenture by 7.0% during the third quarter. Wellington Management Group LLP now owns 11,034,666 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock valued at $3,388,856,000 after buying an additional 720,647 shares during the period. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 75.14% 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.