Welch & Forbes LLC Decreases Position in Accenture PLC $ACN

Welch & Forbes LLC lowered its stake in shares of Accenture PLC (NYSE:ACN) by 0.2% in the 2nd quarter, according to the company in its most recent 13F filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission. The fund owned 122,521 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock after selling 242 shares during the period. Welch & Forbes LLC’s holdings in Accenture were worth $36,620,000 at the end of the most recent quarter.

Several other large investors also recently modified their holdings of ACN. Price T Rowe Associates Inc. MD increased 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 purchasing an additional 3,490,569 shares during the last quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. increased 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 purchasing an additional 3,419,577 shares during the last quarter. Pacer Advisors Inc. increased 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 purchasing an additional 1,395,135 shares during the last quarter. McElhenny Sheffield Capital Management LLC purchased a new position in Accenture in the 2nd quarter valued at approximately $308,000. Finally, Invesco Ltd. grew its stake in Accenture by 23.5% in the 1st quarter. Invesco Ltd. now owns 2,823,228 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock valued at $880,960,000 after buying an additional 537,223 shares in the last quarter. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 75.14% of the company’s stock.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

ACN has been the subject of a number of recent research reports. Stifel Nicolaus reduced their price objective on shares of Accenture from $355.00 to $315.00 and set a “buy” rating for the company in a research note on Tuesday, September 16th. Rothschild Redb lowered shares of Accenture from a “strong-buy” rating to a “hold” rating in a research note on Wednesday, September 3rd. Cowen reiterated a “buy” rating on shares of Accenture in a research note on Friday, September 26th. Mizuho reduced their price objective on shares of Accenture from $348.00 to $309.00 and set an “outperform” rating for the company in a research note on Monday, September 29th. Finally, Wells Fargo & Company initiated coverage on shares of Accenture in a research report on Tuesday, October 21st. They set an “equal weight” rating and a $251.00 price target for the company. One investment analyst has rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, fifteen have assigned a Buy rating, eleven have issued a Hold rating and one has issued a Sell rating to the stock. Based on data from MarketBeat, the company currently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average price target of $294.25.

Accenture Stock Up 0.5%

ACN opened at $250.44 on Friday. Accenture PLC has a one year low of $229.40 and a one year high of $398.35. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.16, a current ratio of 1.42 and a quick ratio of 1.42. The firm has a market capitalization of $164.91 billion, a P/E ratio of 20.61, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 2.16 and a beta of 1.28. The company has a fifty day moving average price of $246.87 and a 200-day moving average price of $276.03.

Accenture (NYSE:ACN) last posted its quarterly earnings data on Thursday, September 25th. The information technology services provider reported $3.03 earnings per share (EPS) 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 company had revenue of $17.60 billion during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $17.34 billion. During the same period in the previous year, the firm posted $2.66 EPS. The firm’s revenue 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 expect that Accenture PLC will post 12.73 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Accenture Increases Dividend

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

Insider Buying and Selling at Accenture

In other Accenture news, insider Manish Sharma sold 6,902 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction dated Wednesday, October 22nd. The shares were sold at an average price of $250.01, for a total transaction of $1,725,569.02. Following the completion of the sale, the insider directly owned 1,860 shares in the company, valued at $465,018.60. This represents a 78.77% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The transaction was disclosed in a filing with the SEC, which is available at this hyperlink. Also, CEO Julie Spellman Sweet sold 9,000 shares of Accenture stock in a transaction dated Wednesday, October 22nd. The stock was sold at an average price of $249.57, for a total value of $2,246,130.00. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief executive officer owned 23,516 shares in the company, valued at approximately $5,868,888.12. This represents a 27.68% decrease in their position. Additional details regarding this sale are available in the official SEC disclosure. Insiders have sold 27,402 shares of company stock worth $6,875,974 over the last ninety days. Insiders own 0.02% of the company’s stock.

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.