Guggenheim Cuts Accenture (NYSE:ACN) Price Target to $395.00

Accenture (NYSE:ACN) had its price target lowered by equities research analysts at Guggenheim from $400.00 to $395.00 in a research report issued on Friday,Benzinga reports. The brokerage presently has a “buy” rating on the information technology services provider’s stock. Guggenheim’s price target suggests a potential upside of 29.44% from the stock’s current price.

Several other equities research analysts also recently commented on the company. Baird R W raised Accenture from a “hold” rating to a “strong-buy” rating in a report on Monday, March 17th. StockNews.com downgraded Accenture from a “buy” rating to a “hold” rating in a report on Tuesday, March 11th. Stifel Nicolaus reduced their target price on Accenture from $390.00 to $380.00 and set a “buy” rating for the company in a report on Wednesday, February 26th. UBS Group upped their target price on Accenture from $450.00 to $455.00 and gave the company a “buy” rating in a report on Friday, December 20th. Finally, Jefferies Financial Group dropped their price target on Accenture from $385.00 to $355.00 and set a “hold” rating on the stock in a research report on Tuesday, January 21st. Eight investment analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating, fifteen have given a buy rating and one has issued a strong buy rating to the company’s stock. According to data from MarketBeat, the stock currently has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus price target of $380.05.

Accenture Trading Up 1.4 %

Shares of Accenture stock 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 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 business has a fifty day simple moving average of $359.16 and a 200-day simple moving average of $357.24. Accenture has a fifty-two week low of $278.69 and a fifty-two week high of $398.35.

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

Insider Transactions at Accenture

In other news, CAO Melissa A. Burgum sold 1,487 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction dated Tuesday, January 21st. The stock was sold at an average price of $354.54, for a total transaction of $527,200.98. Following the completion of the sale, the chief accounting officer now owns 9,247 shares in the company, valued at approximately $3,278,431.38. This represents a 13.85 % decrease in their position. The transaction was disclosed in a legal filing with the SEC, which can be accessed through this hyperlink. Also, insider Angela Beatty sold 375 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction dated Monday, December 23rd. The stock was sold at an average price of $358.50, for a total value of $134,437.50. Following the sale, the insider now owns 5,149 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $1,845,916.50. This trade represents a 6.79 % decrease in their position. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. In the last quarter, insiders sold 22,280 shares of company stock worth $8,316,190. 0.02% of the stock is owned by corporate insiders.

Institutional Trading of Accenture

Several hedge funds have recently added to or reduced their stakes in the business. Vanguard Group Inc. boosted its stake in Accenture by 0.7% during the 4th quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. now owns 60,394,657 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock valued at $21,246,236,000 after purchasing an additional 392,183 shares during the period. State Street Corp boosted its stake in Accenture by 1.8% during the 3rd quarter. State Street Corp now owns 27,400,836 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock valued at $9,685,648,000 after purchasing an additional 471,792 shares during the period. Geode Capital Management LLC boosted its stake in Accenture by 1.0% during the 4th quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC now owns 13,528,348 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock valued at $4,750,021,000 after purchasing an additional 136,665 shares during the period. Capital Research Global Investors lifted its position in shares of Accenture by 16.8% in the 4th quarter. Capital Research Global Investors now owns 12,295,748 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock worth $4,325,526,000 after acquiring an additional 1,770,024 shares during the period. Finally, Wellington Management Group LLP lifted its position in shares of Accenture by 22.8% in the 4th quarter. Wellington Management Group LLP now owns 12,175,518 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock worth $4,283,225,000 after acquiring an additional 2,260,740 shares during the period. Institutional investors own 75.14% 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.