Piper Sandler Companies Reaffirms “Neutral” Rating for Accenture (NYSE:ACN)

Piper Sandler Companies reiterated their neutral rating on shares of Accenture (NYSE:ACN) in a research note released on Friday morning, Stock Target Advisor reports. The firm currently has a $329.00 price target on the information technology services provider’s stock.

Other analysts also recently issued research reports about the company. The Goldman Sachs Group initiated coverage on Accenture in a research report on Monday, June 24th. They issued a neutral rating and a $335.00 price objective for the company. Piper Sandler reduced their price objective on shares of Accenture from $379.00 to $320.00 and set a neutral rating for the company in a report on Monday, June 17th. Wedbush cut their price target on shares of Accenture from $400.00 to $350.00 and set an outperform rating for the company in a research note on Wednesday, June 12th. Jefferies Financial Group dropped their target price on Accenture from $340.00 to $275.00 and set a hold rating for the company in a report on Wednesday, June 5th. Finally, UBS Group upgraded Accenture from a neutral rating to a buy rating and set a $400.00 price target on the stock in a research report on Friday, July 19th. Eleven analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and twelve have assigned a buy rating to the company’s stock. According to data from MarketBeat.com, the stock currently has an average rating of Moderate Buy and a consensus price target of $356.41.

Accenture Stock Up 0.3 %

ACN opened at $336.22 on Friday. The stock’s 50 day moving average price is $332.01 and its two-hundred day moving average price is $321.64. The firm has a market capitalization of $210.71 billion, a P/E ratio of 30.79, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 3.82 and a beta of 1.24. Accenture has a 12-month low of $278.69 and a 12-month high of $387.51.

Accenture (NYSE:ACN) last released its earnings results on Thursday, June 20th. The information technology services provider reported $3.13 EPS for the quarter, missing the consensus estimate of $3.15 by ($0.02). Accenture had a net margin of 10.79% and a return on equity of 27.48%. The company had revenue of $16.47 billion for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $16.55 billion. During the same quarter in the previous year, the company earned $3.19 earnings per share. Accenture’s revenue for the quarter was down .6% compared to the same quarter last year. As a group, analysts anticipate that Accenture will post 11.95 earnings per share for the current year.

Insiders Place Their Bets

In other news, CFO Kathleen R. Mcclure sold 1,500 shares of Accenture stock in a transaction that occurred on Monday, July 15th. The shares were sold at an average price of $315.00, for a total transaction of $472,500.00. Following the completion of the sale, the chief financial officer now owns 38,570 shares in the company, valued at approximately $12,149,550. The sale was disclosed in a filing with the SEC, which can be accessed through this link. In other Accenture news, CFO Kathleen R. Mcclure sold 1,500 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Monday, July 15th. The shares were sold at an average price of $315.00, for a total value of $472,500.00. Following the transaction, the chief financial officer now directly owns 38,570 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $12,149,550. The sale was disclosed in a legal filing with the SEC, which is available through this hyperlink. Also, CEO Julie Spellman Sweet sold 3,776 shares of the stock in a transaction on Friday, July 12th. The shares were sold at an average price of $309.05, for a total value of $1,166,972.80. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief executive officer now directly owns 11,819 shares in the company, valued at approximately $3,652,661.95. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. In the last three months, insiders sold 21,421 shares of company stock valued at $6,912,635. 0.07% of the stock is currently owned by insiders.

Institutional Trading of Accenture

A number of hedge funds have recently modified their holdings of the company. Swedbank AB bought a new position in shares of Accenture during the first quarter worth $820,912,000. DZ BANK AG Deutsche Zentral Genossenschafts Bank Frankfurt am Main grew its stake in Accenture by 100.0% in the fourth quarter. DZ BANK AG Deutsche Zentral Genossenschafts Bank Frankfurt am Main now owns 1,751,531 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock valued at $614,615,000 after acquiring an additional 875,723 shares during the period. Clearbridge Investments LLC increased its holdings in shares of Accenture by 44.7% in the second quarter. Clearbridge Investments LLC now owns 2,709,989 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock worth $822,238,000 after acquiring an additional 837,677 shares in the last quarter. Winslow Capital Management LLC acquired a new stake in shares of Accenture during the fourth quarter worth about $288,168,000. Finally, Generation Investment Management LLP bought a new position in shares of Accenture during the 4th quarter valued at about $286,220,000. 75.14% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors and hedge funds.

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.