Accenture plc Plans Quarterly Dividend of $1.48 (NYSE:ACN)

Accenture plc (NYSE:ACN) announced a quarterly dividend on Thursday, December 19th,RTT News reports. Investors of record on Thursday, January 16th will be given a dividend of 1.48 per share by the information technology services provider on Friday, February 14th. This represents a $5.92 annualized dividend and a yield of 1.59%.

Accenture has raised its dividend payment by an average of 12.3% annually over the last three years and has raised its dividend annually for the last 20 consecutive years. Accenture has a payout ratio of 46.3% meaning its dividend is sufficiently covered by earnings. Analysts expect Accenture to earn $13.76 per share next year, which means the company should continue to be able to cover its $5.92 annual dividend with an expected future payout ratio of 43.0%.

Accenture Stock Performance

ACN stock opened at $372.16 on Friday. The company has a market capitalization of $232.66 billion, a PE ratio of 32.56, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 3.23 and a beta of 1.24. Accenture has a 52 week low of $278.69 and a 52 week high of $387.51. The company’s 50-day simple moving average is $360.36 and its 200 day simple moving average is $336.56.

Accenture (NYSE:ACN) last released its earnings results on Thursday, December 19th. The information technology services provider reported $3.59 earnings per share for the quarter, beating analysts’ consensus estimates of $3.43 by $0.16. The firm had revenue of $17.69 billion during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $17.15 billion. Accenture had a return on equity of 26.83% and a net margin of 11.20%. The company’s revenue was up 9.0% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same period in the prior year, the company posted $3.27 EPS. On average, analysts forecast that Accenture will post 12.74 EPS for the current year.

Accenture announced that its Board of Directors has authorized a share buyback program on Thursday, September 26th that permits the company to buyback $4.00 billion in shares. This buyback authorization permits the information technology services provider to reacquire up to 1.8% of its shares through open market purchases. Shares buyback programs are generally an indication that the company’s management believes its stock is undervalued.

Insiders Place Their Bets

In other news, CEO Ryoji Sekido sold 3,191 shares of Accenture stock in a transaction on Monday, November 4th. The stock was sold at an average price of $343.70, for a total transaction of $1,096,746.70. Following the sale, the chief executive officer now directly owns 6 shares in the company, valued at $2,062.20. The trade was a 99.81 % decrease in their position. The transaction was disclosed in a document filed with the SEC, which is available at this hyperlink. Also, insider Angela Beatty sold 673 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction dated Tuesday, October 22nd. The stock was sold at an average price of $372.18, for a total transaction of $250,477.14. Following the sale, the insider now owns 5,650 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $2,102,817. This trade represents a 10.64 % decrease in their position. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Insiders have sold 36,298 shares of company stock valued at $13,372,661 in the last three months. 0.07% of the stock is currently owned by insiders.

Analysts Set New Price Targets

ACN has been the subject of several research analyst reports. Robert W. Baird restated a “neutral” rating and set a $370.00 price objective on shares of Accenture in a research report on Tuesday, December 3rd. TD Cowen raised Accenture from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating and raised their price objective for the company from $321.00 to $400.00 in a research note on Monday, September 30th. JPMorgan Chase & Co. boosted their target price on Accenture from $370.00 to $396.00 and gave the stock an “overweight” rating in a research note on Monday. Royal Bank of Canada raised their price target on shares of Accenture from $377.00 to $389.00 and gave the company an “outperform” rating in a research note on Friday, September 27th. Finally, Citigroup boosted their price objective on Accenture from $350.00 to $405.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a research report on Tuesday, September 17th. Eight investment analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and fifteen have assigned a buy rating to the company’s stock. According to data from MarketBeat.com, the stock presently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average target price of $374.82.

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.