Accenture (NYSE:ACN) Price Target Cut to $364.00 by Analysts at Piper Sandler

Accenture (NYSE:ACN) had its target price decreased by Piper Sandler from $396.00 to $364.00 in a report issued on Thursday morning,Benzinga reports. Piper Sandler currently has an overweight rating on the information technology services provider’s stock.

A number of other equities analysts also recently issued reports on ACN. Robert W. Baird raised shares of Accenture from a “neutral” rating to an “outperform” rating and set a $390.00 price objective on the stock in a report on Monday, March 17th. Stifel Nicolaus dropped their price target on shares of Accenture from $390.00 to $380.00 and set a “buy” rating on the stock in a research note on Wednesday, February 26th. UBS Group raised their target price on Accenture from $450.00 to $455.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a report on Friday, December 20th. Wolfe Research raised Accenture from a “peer perform” rating to an “outperform” rating and set a $425.00 price target for the company in a report on Wednesday, January 8th. Finally, JPMorgan Chase & Co. raised their price objective on Accenture from $370.00 to $396.00 and gave the stock an “overweight” rating in a research note on Monday, December 16th. Eight analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating, fifteen have issued a buy rating and one has assigned a strong buy rating to the company. According to MarketBeat.com, the company presently has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average price target of $380.05.

Accenture Stock Up 1.4 %

Shares of Accenture stock opened at $305.17 on Thursday. The company has a quick ratio of 1.47, a current ratio of 1.47 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.17. Accenture has a twelve month low of $278.69 and a twelve month high of $398.35. The company has a market cap of $190.97 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 25.60, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 3.23 and a beta of 1.24. The company’s 50 day moving average is $359.16 and its 200 day moving average is $357.24.

Accenture (NYSE:ACN) last issued its quarterly earnings data on Thursday, March 20th. The information technology services provider reported $2.82 EPS 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 during the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $16.64 billion. During the same quarter in the previous year, the company posted $2.77 earnings per share. Accenture’s revenue was up 5.7% compared to the same quarter last year. Research analysts anticipate that Accenture will post 12.73 EPS for the current year.

Accenture Announces Dividend

The company also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Thursday, May 15th. Stockholders 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 dividend on an annualized basis and a dividend yield of 1.94%. Accenture’s payout ratio is 49.66%.

Insider Transactions at Accenture

In other Accenture news, insider Angela Beatty sold 375 shares of the stock in a transaction on 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 owns 5,149 shares in the company, valued at $1,845,916.50. This trade represents a 6.79 % decrease in their ownership of the stock. The transaction was disclosed in a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available through this link. Also, CFO Angie Y. Park sold 685 shares of Accenture stock in a transaction dated Friday, January 17th. The stock was sold at an average price of $354.38, for a total value of $242,750.30. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief financial officer now owns 8,674 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $3,073,892.12. This represents a 7.32 % decrease in their position. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Over the last three months, insiders have sold 22,280 shares of company stock valued at $8,316,190. 0.02% of the stock is currently owned by insiders.

Institutional Inflows and Outflows

Hedge funds have recently modified their holdings of the business. DSG Capital Advisors LLC bought a new stake in Accenture during the 4th quarter valued at about $269,000. Chancellor Financial Group WB LP bought a new stake in shares of Accenture in the 4th quarter valued at about $381,000. 111 Capital bought a new position in Accenture in the fourth quarter worth approximately $1,796,000. Members Wealth LLC bought a new stake in Accenture during the 4th quarter valued at $261,000. Finally, Lansforsakringar Fondforvaltning AB publ purchased a new position in shares of Accenture in the 4th quarter valued at $72,926,000. Institutional investors own 75.14% of the company’s stock.

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.