Accenture PLC $ACN Shares Purchased by Atwater Malick LLC

Atwater Malick LLC lifted its stake in shares of Accenture PLC (NYSE:ACN) by 0.8% in the second quarter, according to the company in its most recent filing with the SEC. The fund owned 39,326 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock after buying an additional 305 shares during the quarter. Accenture comprises about 3.7% of Atwater Malick LLC’s portfolio, making the stock its 9th largest holding. Atwater Malick LLC’s holdings in Accenture were worth $11,754,000 as of its most recent filing with the SEC.

A number of other hedge funds also recently modified their holdings of ACN. Price T Rowe Associates Inc. MD lifted its stake in shares of Accenture by 63.9% during the 1st quarter. Price T Rowe Associates Inc. MD now owns 8,953,621 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock worth $2,793,889,000 after buying an additional 3,490,569 shares during the last quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. lifted its stake in shares of Accenture by 5.7% during the 1st quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. now owns 63,814,234 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock worth $19,912,594,000 after buying an additional 3,419,577 shares during the last quarter. Pacer Advisors Inc. lifted its stake in shares of Accenture by 2,782.1% during the 1st quarter. Pacer Advisors Inc. now owns 1,445,281 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock worth $450,985,000 after buying an additional 1,395,135 shares during the last quarter. Invesco Ltd. lifted its stake in shares of Accenture by 23.5% during the 1st quarter. Invesco Ltd. now owns 2,823,228 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock worth $880,960,000 after buying an additional 537,223 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Jacobs Levy Equity Management Inc. lifted its stake in shares of Accenture by 340.7% during the 1st quarter. Jacobs Levy Equity Management Inc. now owns 464,864 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock worth $145,056,000 after buying an additional 359,389 shares during the last quarter. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 75.14% of the company’s stock.

Analyst Ratings Changes

A number of research firms have recently issued reports on ACN. BMO Capital Markets cut their target price on shares of Accenture from $325.00 to $270.00 and set a “market perform” rating for the company in a research note on Friday, September 26th. Rothschild & Co Redburn lifted their price objective on shares of Accenture from $250.00 to $255.00 in a research note on Friday, September 19th. Susquehanna dropped their price objective on shares of Accenture from $330.00 to $270.00 and set a “neutral” rating for the company in a research note on Thursday, September 18th. UBS Group dropped their price objective on shares of Accenture from $363.00 to $315.00 and set a “buy” rating for the company in a research note on Wednesday, September 24th. Finally, Benchmark reiterated a “mixed” rating on shares of Accenture in a research note on Friday, June 20th. One research analyst has rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, fourteen have assigned a Buy rating, nine have assigned a Hold rating and one has given a Sell rating to the stock. According to data from MarketBeat, the company has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus target price of $300.22.

Accenture Trading Up 0.4%

Shares of Accenture stock opened at $244.58 on Friday. The firm has a market capitalization of $153.19 billion, a PE ratio of 20.13, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 2.12 and a beta of 1.28. The company has a current ratio of 1.42, a quick ratio of 1.46 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.16. The firm’s 50 day moving average is $250.32 and its 200 day moving average is $284.19. Accenture PLC has a 1 year low of $229.40 and a 1 year high of $398.35.

Accenture (NYSE:ACN) last posted its earnings results on Thursday, September 25th. The information technology services provider reported $3.03 earnings per share for the quarter, topping analysts’ consensus estimates of $2.98 by $0.05. Accenture had a net margin of 11.02% and a return on equity of 26.45%. The firm had revenue of $17.60 billion for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $17.34 billion. During the same period in the previous year, the firm posted $2.66 EPS. The company’s revenue for the quarter was up 7.3% compared to the same quarter last year. Accenture has set its FY 2026 guidance at 13.190-13.570 EPS. Q1 2026 guidance at EPS. Equities research analysts forecast that Accenture PLC will post 12.73 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Accenture Increases Dividend

The company also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Friday, November 14th. Stockholders of record on Friday, October 10th will be paid a $1.63 dividend. This represents a $6.52 annualized dividend and a dividend yield of 2.7%. The ex-dividend date is Friday, October 10th. This is a positive change from Accenture’s previous quarterly dividend of $1.48. Accenture’s dividend payout ratio (DPR) is currently 48.72%.

Insider Transactions at Accenture

In other Accenture news, CEO Julie Spellman Sweet sold 2,251 shares of the stock in a transaction dated Friday, July 11th. The shares were sold at an average price of $282.45, for a total transaction of $635,794.95. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief executive officer owned 8,109 shares in the company, valued at $2,290,387.05. This trade represents a 21.73% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The sale was disclosed in a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available through this link. Also, insider Angela Beatty sold 203 shares of the stock in a transaction dated Friday, July 11th. The stock was sold at an average price of $282.34, for a total transaction of $57,315.02. Following the transaction, the insider owned 5,249 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $1,482,002.66. This represents a 3.72% decrease in their position. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Insiders sold a total of 2,954 shares of company stock worth $834,280 in the last quarter. 0.02% of the stock is currently owned by corporate insiders.

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.