Guggenheim Has Lowered Expectations for Accenture (NYSE:ACN) Stock Price

Accenture (NYSE:ACN) had its price objective reduced by Guggenheim from $400.00 to $395.00 in a report issued on Friday,Benzinga reports. They currently have a buy rating on the information technology services provider’s stock.

A number of other equities research analysts have also recently weighed in on the stock. Wolfe Research upgraded shares of Accenture from a “peer perform” rating to an “outperform” rating and set a $425.00 price objective on the stock in a report on Wednesday, January 8th. The Goldman Sachs Group upgraded Accenture from a “neutral” rating to a “buy” rating and upped their price target for the stock from $370.00 to $420.00 in a research note on Friday, December 6th. Stifel Nicolaus dropped their target price on Accenture from $390.00 to $380.00 and set a “buy” rating on the stock in a report on Wednesday, February 26th. Piper Sandler reduced their price target on Accenture from $396.00 to $364.00 and set an “overweight” rating for the company in a report on Thursday. Finally, StockNews.com cut shares of Accenture from a “buy” rating to a “hold” rating in a research note on Tuesday, March 11th. Eight investment analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating, fifteen have assigned a buy rating and one has issued a strong buy rating to the company’s stock. According to MarketBeat, the stock currently has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average target price of $380.05.

Accenture Price Performance

ACN stock opened at $305.17 on Friday. The firm has a 50-day moving average of $359.16 and a 200 day moving average of $357.13. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.17, a current ratio of 1.47 and a quick ratio of 1.47. The company has a market cap of $190.97 billion, a P/E ratio of 25.60, 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, March 20th. The information technology services provider reported $2.82 earnings per share for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of $2.81 by $0.01. Accenture had a return on equity of 26.91% and a net margin of 11.41%. The company had revenue of $16.70 billion for the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $16.64 billion. During the same period in the prior year, the firm earned $2.77 earnings per share. The firm’s revenue for the quarter was up 5.7% on a year-over-year basis. On average, sell-side analysts forecast that Accenture will post 12.73 EPS for the current year.

Accenture Dividend Announcement

The firm also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Thursday, May 15th. Investors of record on Thursday, April 10th will be given a dividend of $1.48 per share. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Thursday, April 10th. This represents a $5.92 annualized dividend and a yield of 1.94%. Accenture’s dividend payout ratio (DPR) is 49.66%.

Insiders Place Their Bets

In related news, CEO Julie Spellman Sweet sold 2,497 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Friday, January 17th. The stock was sold at an average price of $354.48, for a total transaction of $885,136.56. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief executive officer now directly owns 28,866 shares in the company, valued at approximately $10,232,419.68. The trade was a 7.96 % decrease in their position. The sale was disclosed in a legal filing with the SEC, which can be accessed through this link. Also, CAO Melissa A. Burgum sold 232 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Wednesday, February 5th. The stock was sold at an average price of $394.46, for a total transaction of $91,514.72. Following the sale, the chief accounting officer now owns 8,915 shares in the company, valued at approximately $3,516,610.90. The trade was a 2.54 % decrease in their position. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Over the last ninety days, insiders have sold 22,280 shares of company stock worth $8,316,190. Company insiders own 0.02% of the company’s stock.

Institutional Trading of Accenture

Institutional investors and hedge funds have recently modified their holdings of the company. Vanguard Group Inc. raised its holdings in Accenture by 0.7% during the fourth quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. now owns 60,394,657 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock valued at $21,246,236,000 after acquiring an additional 392,183 shares during the period. State Street Corp raised its stake in Accenture by 1.8% during the 3rd quarter. State Street Corp now owns 27,400,836 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock valued at $9,685,648,000 after purchasing an additional 471,792 shares during the period. Geode Capital Management LLC lifted its holdings in Accenture by 1.0% in the 4th quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC now owns 13,528,348 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock worth $4,750,021,000 after purchasing an additional 136,665 shares in the last quarter. Capital Research Global Investors grew its holdings in Accenture by 16.8% during the 4th quarter. Capital Research Global Investors now owns 12,295,748 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock valued at $4,325,526,000 after buying an additional 1,770,024 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Wellington Management Group LLP lifted its holdings in shares of Accenture by 22.8% in the fourth quarter. Wellington Management Group LLP now owns 12,175,518 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock worth $4,283,225,000 after buying an additional 2,260,740 shares in the last quarter. 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.