Accenture plc (NYSE:ACN) Declares $1.48 Quarterly Dividend

Accenture plc (NYSE:ACN) declared a quarterly dividend on Thursday, March 20th, RTT News reports. Shareholders of record on Thursday, April 10th will be given a dividend of 1.48 per share by the information technology services provider on Thursday, May 15th. This represents a $5.92 annualized dividend and a yield of 1.97%.

Accenture has raised its dividend by an average of 14.4% annually over the last three years and has raised its dividend annually for the last 20 consecutive years. Accenture has a payout ratio of 42.7% indicating that its dividend is sufficiently covered by earnings. Equities analysts expect Accenture to earn $13.73 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 43.1%.

Accenture Price Performance

Accenture stock opened at $300.86 on Friday. The company’s 50 day moving average is $360.05 and its two-hundred day moving average is $357.39. The firm has a market cap of $188.28 billion, a PE ratio of 25.24, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 3.23 and a beta of 1.24. 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 52-week low of $278.69 and a 52-week high of $398.35.

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

Analysts Set New Price Targets

Several equities analysts have issued reports on the stock. JPMorgan Chase & Co. upped their price objective on shares of Accenture from $370.00 to $396.00 and gave the company an “overweight” rating in a research note on Monday, December 16th. Mizuho dropped their price target on Accenture from $428.00 to $398.00 and set an “outperform” rating on the stock in a research note on Wednesday. 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. StockNews.com lowered shares of Accenture from a “buy” rating to a “hold” rating in a research report on Tuesday, March 11th. Finally, Wolfe Research upgraded shares of Accenture from a “peer perform” rating to an “outperform” rating and set a $425.00 price target for the company in a research note on Wednesday, January 8th. Eight equities research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating, fifteen have issued a buy rating and one has given a strong buy rating to the company. According to MarketBeat.com, the company has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average target price of $384.45.

Insider Activity

In other Accenture news, CEO Julie Spellman Sweet sold 8,793 shares of the stock in a transaction on Wednesday, February 5th. The shares were sold at an average price of $394.47, for a total value of $3,468,574.71. Following the completion of the sale, the chief executive officer now directly owns 11,858 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $4,677,625.26. This represents a 42.58 % decrease in their position. The sale was disclosed in a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available at this link. Also, CAO Melissa A. Burgum sold 232 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction dated Wednesday, February 5th. The stock was sold at an average price of $394.46, for a total transaction of $91,514.72. Following the transaction, the chief accounting officer now owns 8,915 shares in the company, valued at approximately $3,516,610.90. The trade was a 2.54 % decrease in their position. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Insiders have sold a total of 22,280 shares of company stock valued at $8,316,190 over the last 90 days. 0.02% of the stock is currently owned by company insiders.

Institutional Investors Weigh In On Accenture

A hedge fund recently raised its stake in Accenture stock. Brighton Jones LLC boosted its stake in shares of Accenture plc (NYSE:ACN) by 36.2% in the 4th quarter, according to its most recent Form 13F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (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 quarter. Brighton Jones LLC’s holdings in Accenture were worth $6,486,000 as of its most recent SEC filing. 75.14% of the stock is 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.