Granite Harbor Advisors Inc. Has $272,000 Position in Accenture PLC $ACN

Granite Harbor Advisors Inc. grew its stake in Accenture PLC (NYSE:ACN) by 14.2% in the 2nd quarter, HoldingsChannel reports. The institutional investor owned 911 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock after buying an additional 113 shares during the period. Granite Harbor Advisors Inc.’s holdings in Accenture were worth $272,000 at the end of the most recent quarter.

Several other institutional investors and hedge funds also recently made changes to their positions in the stock. Price T Rowe Associates Inc. MD boosted its holdings in Accenture by 63.9% in the first 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 acquiring an additional 3,490,569 shares in the last quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. raised its stake in shares of Accenture by 5.7% in the first quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. now owns 63,814,234 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock valued at $19,912,594,000 after buying an additional 3,419,577 shares during the period. Pacer Advisors Inc. grew its position in shares of Accenture by 2,782.1% in the first quarter. Pacer Advisors Inc. now owns 1,445,281 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock valued at $450,985,000 after purchasing an additional 1,395,135 shares in the last quarter. McElhenny Sheffield Capital Management LLC purchased a new position in Accenture during the second quarter worth about $308,000. Finally, Invesco Ltd. grew its position in Accenture by 23.5% during the first 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 in the last quarter. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 75.14% of the company’s stock.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

A number of equities research analysts have recently weighed in on ACN shares. Stifel Nicolaus lowered their target price on Accenture from $355.00 to $315.00 and set a “buy” rating for the company in a research note on Tuesday, September 16th. Deutsche Bank Aktiengesellschaft cut their target price on Accenture from $260.00 to $235.00 and set a “hold” rating on the stock in a research note on Friday, September 26th. The Goldman Sachs Group cut their target price on Accenture from $370.00 to $330.00 and set a “buy” rating on the stock in a research note on Friday, September 26th. Morgan Stanley lowered their price target on Accenture from $325.00 to $271.00 and set an “equal weight” rating on the stock in a report on Tuesday, September 9th. Finally, BMO Capital Markets decreased their target price on Accenture from $325.00 to $270.00 and set a “market perform” rating on the stock in a report on Friday, September 26th. One research analyst has rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, fourteen have given a Buy rating, twelve have assigned a Hold rating and one has issued a Sell rating to the company’s stock. Based on data from MarketBeat, Accenture currently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average price target of $297.48.

Accenture Stock Performance

Shares of NYSE:ACN opened at $249.14 on Thursday. The company has a market capitalization of $164.05 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 20.51, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 2.18 and a beta of 1.28. Accenture PLC has a 52 week low of $229.40 and a 52 week high of $398.35. The company has a quick ratio of 1.42, a current ratio of 1.42 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.16. The firm has a 50 day moving average of $247.18 and a 200 day moving average of $278.05.

Accenture (NYSE:ACN) last released its quarterly earnings results on Thursday, September 25th. The information technology services provider reported $3.03 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of $2.98 by $0.05. Accenture had a net margin of 11.02% and a return on equity of 26.45%. The business 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 company earned $2.66 earnings per share. The business’s revenue for the quarter was up 7.3% on a year-over-year basis. Accenture has set its FY 2026 guidance at 13.190-13.570 EPS. Q1 2026 guidance at EPS. On average, sell-side analysts predict that Accenture PLC will post 12.73 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Accenture Increases Dividend

The company also recently declared a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Friday, November 14th. Shareholders of record on Friday, October 10th will be issued a $1.63 dividend. This is an increase from Accenture’s previous quarterly dividend of $1.48. This represents a $6.52 annualized dividend and a yield of 2.6%. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Friday, October 10th. Accenture’s dividend payout ratio is presently 53.66%.

Accenture 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.