Accenture (NYSE:ACN) Releases FY25 Earnings Guidance

Accenture (NYSE:ACN) issued an update on its FY25 earnings guidance on Thursday morning. The company provided earnings per share (EPS) guidance of $12.55-12.79 for the period, compared to the consensus estimate of $12.73. Accenture also updated its FY 2025 guidance to 12.550-12.790 EPS.

Analyst Ratings Changes

A number of research firms recently issued reports on ACN. StockNews.com downgraded shares of Accenture from a “buy” rating to a “hold” rating in a research report on Tuesday, March 11th. Jefferies Financial Group reduced their price objective on Accenture from $385.00 to $355.00 and set a “hold” rating for the company in a research note on Tuesday, January 21st. Stifel Nicolaus reduced their price target on shares of Accenture from $390.00 to $380.00 and set a “buy” rating for the company in a research report on Wednesday, February 26th. Royal Bank of Canada dropped their price objective on shares of Accenture from $399.00 to $392.00 and set an “outperform” rating on the stock in a research note on Friday. Finally, Robert W. Baird raised shares of Accenture from a “neutral” rating to an “outperform” rating and set a $390.00 target price for the company in a research report on Monday, March 17th. Eight equities research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating, fifteen have given a buy rating and one has assigned a strong buy rating to the company’s stock. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, the company presently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus price target of $380.05.

Accenture Stock Performance

NYSE:ACN opened at $305.17 on Friday. The company has a quick ratio of 1.47, a current ratio of 1.47 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.17. The firm’s fifty day simple moving average is $359.16 and its 200 day simple moving average is $357.13. Accenture has a twelve month low of $278.69 and a twelve month high of $398.35. The stock has a market cap of $190.97 billion, a P/E ratio of 25.60, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 3.23 and a beta of 1.24.

Accenture (NYSE:ACN) last released its quarterly earnings data on Thursday, March 20th. The information technology services provider reported $2.82 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $2.81 by $0.01. The business had revenue of $16.70 billion for the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $16.64 billion. Accenture had a return on equity of 26.91% and a net margin of 11.41%. The firm’s quarterly revenue was up 5.7% on a year-over-year basis. During the same period in the prior year, the firm posted $2.77 EPS. As a group, research analysts predict that Accenture will post 12.73 EPS for the current year.

Accenture Announces Dividend

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

Insider Activity

In related news, CAO Melissa A. Burgum sold 1,487 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction on Tuesday, January 21st. The shares were sold at an average price of $354.54, for a total value of $527,200.98. Following the sale, the chief accounting officer now owns 9,247 shares in the company, valued at approximately $3,278,431.38. The trade was a 13.85 % decrease in their ownership of the stock. The sale was disclosed in a document filed with the SEC, which is accessible through this hyperlink. Also, insider Angela Beatty sold 375 shares of the stock in a transaction dated Monday, December 23rd. The shares were sold at an average price of $358.50, for a total transaction of $134,437.50. Following the completion of the transaction, the insider now directly owns 5,149 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $1,845,916.50. The trade was a 6.79 % decrease in their position. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Insiders have sold 22,280 shares of company stock worth $8,316,190 over the last ninety days. Corporate insiders own 0.02% of the company’s stock.

Institutional Inflows and Outflows

A hedge fund recently raised its stake in Accenture stock. Brighton Jones LLC grew its stake in shares of Accenture plc (NYSE:ACN) by 36.2% in the 4th quarter, according to its most recent disclosure with the SEC. The institutional investor owned 18,438 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock after acquiring an additional 4,905 shares during the period. Brighton Jones LLC’s holdings in Accenture were worth $6,486,000 at the end of the most recent quarter. 75.14% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors and hedge funds.

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.