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

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

Accenture has raised its dividend payment by an average of 12.3% annually over the last three years and has increased its dividend annually for the last 20 consecutive years. Accenture has a dividend payout ratio of 46.3% indicating that its dividend is sufficiently covered by earnings. Equities research 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 Price Performance

Shares of ACN stock opened at $372.16 on Friday. Accenture has a 1 year low of $278.69 and a 1 year high of $387.51. The company’s fifty day simple moving average is $360.36 and its two-hundred day simple moving average is $336.56. The stock has a market capitalization of $232.66 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 32.56, a PEG ratio of 3.23 and a beta of 1.24.

Accenture (NYSE:ACN) last issued its earnings results on Thursday, December 19th. The information technology services provider reported $3.59 EPS for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of $3.43 by $0.16. Accenture had a return on equity of 26.83% and a net margin of 11.20%. The business had revenue of $17.69 billion during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $17.15 billion. During the same quarter last year, the company earned $3.27 EPS. The firm’s revenue was up 9.0% compared to the same quarter last year. Equities research analysts anticipate that Accenture will post 12.74 EPS for the current year.

Insider Buying and Selling

In related news, insider Angela Beatty sold 673 shares of the stock in a transaction dated Tuesday, October 22nd. The shares were sold at an average price of $372.18, for a total value of $250,477.14. Following the completion of the transaction, the insider now directly owns 5,650 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $2,102,817. This represents a 10.64 % decrease in their ownership of the stock. The transaction was disclosed in a filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available at this link. Also, CEO Ryoji Sekido sold 3,191 shares of Accenture stock in a transaction that occurred on Monday, November 4th. The shares were sold at an average price of $343.70, for a total value of $1,096,746.70. Following the sale, the chief executive officer now directly owns 6 shares in the company, valued at approximately $2,062.20. The trade was a 99.81 % decrease in their ownership of the stock. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Insiders have sold 36,298 shares of company stock valued at $13,372,661 over the last ninety days. 0.07% of the stock is owned by insiders.

Wall Street Analyst Weigh In

Several research firms have recently weighed in on ACN. StockNews.com raised shares of Accenture from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating in a report on Monday, December 9th. Robert W. Baird reissued a “neutral” rating and set a $370.00 price objective on shares of Accenture in a report on Tuesday, December 3rd. Royal Bank of Canada raised their target price 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. JPMorgan Chase & Co. increased their price target on shares of Accenture from $370.00 to $396.00 and gave the stock an “overweight” rating in a report on Monday. Finally, Piper Sandler lifted their price objective on shares of Accenture from $422.00 to $429.00 and gave the stock an “overweight” rating in a report on Thursday. Eight investment analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and fifteen have given a buy rating to the stock. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, the company has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus target price of $374.82.

Accenture declared that its Board of Directors has approved a stock buyback plan on Thursday, September 26th that permits the company to repurchase $4.00 billion in shares. This repurchase authorization permits the information technology services provider to repurchase up to 1.8% of its shares through open market purchases. Shares repurchase plans are often an indication that the company’s board of directors believes its shares are undervalued.

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.