Gateway Investment Advisers LLC Boosts Holdings in Accenture plc (NYSE:ACN)

Gateway Investment Advisers LLC boosted its stake in Accenture plc (NYSE:ACN) by 6.4% in the fourth quarter, according to the company in its most recent disclosure with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The fund owned 119,242 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock after acquiring an additional 7,207 shares during the period. Gateway Investment Advisers LLC’s holdings in Accenture were worth $41,948,000 as of its most recent SEC filing.

Several other hedge funds also recently made changes to their positions in ACN. Edgestream Partners L.P. acquired a new position in Accenture during the second quarter worth approximately $1,524,000. Wealth Alliance grew its position in shares of Accenture by 10.4% during the second quarter. Wealth Alliance now owns 5,409 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock worth $1,641,000 after acquiring an additional 511 shares during the last quarter. E Fund Management Co. Ltd. increased its holdings in shares of Accenture by 32.7% in the 2nd quarter. E Fund Management Co. Ltd. now owns 10,256 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock valued at $3,112,000 after acquiring an additional 2,526 shares during the period. Mercer Global Advisors Inc. ADV boosted its stake in Accenture by 59.0% during the 2nd quarter. Mercer Global Advisors Inc. ADV now owns 312,741 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock worth $94,889,000 after purchasing an additional 116,005 shares during the period. Finally, Argent Trust Co grew its position in Accenture by 4.1% during the 2nd quarter. Argent Trust Co now owns 15,644 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock worth $4,747,000 after purchasing an additional 610 shares during the last quarter. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 75.14% of the company’s stock.

Wall Street Analyst Weigh In

ACN has been the subject of a number of research reports. Barclays upped their target price on shares of Accenture from $350.00 to $415.00 and gave the company an “overweight” rating in a report on Monday, September 30th. BNP Paribas cut Accenture from an “outperform” rating to a “neutral” rating and set a $375.00 price objective for the company. in a research report on Wednesday, October 30th. Susquehanna upped their price target on Accenture from $350.00 to $360.00 and gave the stock a “neutral” rating in a research note on Friday, September 27th. TD Cowen upgraded shares of Accenture from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating and lifted their price objective for the company from $321.00 to $400.00 in a research report on Monday, September 30th. Finally, Piper Sandler Companies restated a “neutral” rating and set a $329.00 price objective on shares of Accenture in a research report on Friday, September 20th. Eight equities research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and sixteen have assigned a buy rating to the stock. According to MarketBeat, Accenture presently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average price target of $385.04.

Insider Activity

In other news, CEO Ryoji Sekido sold 3,191 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction on Monday, November 4th. The shares were sold at an average price of $343.70, for a total transaction of $1,096,746.70. Following the completion of the sale, the chief executive officer now directly owns 6 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $2,062.20. The trade was a 99.81 % decrease in their position. The sale was disclosed in a filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available at this link. Also, insider Angela Beatty sold 673 shares of the stock in a transaction on Tuesday, October 22nd. The stock was 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 in the company, valued at $2,102,817. This trade represents a 10.64 % decrease in their ownership of the stock. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Insiders sold a total of 26,125 shares of company stock valued at $9,570,260 in the last 90 days. 0.02% of the stock is currently owned by insiders.

Accenture Trading Down 0.2 %

Shares of NYSE:ACN traded down $0.77 during trading on Thursday, reaching $347.48. The stock had a trading volume of 115,638 shares, compared to its average volume of 2,360,517. 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 stock has a market cap of $217.45 billion, a P/E ratio of 29.15, a PEG ratio of 3.11 and a beta of 1.24. The business has a fifty day moving average price of $357.98 and a 200-day moving average price of $344.94. Accenture plc has a fifty-two week low of $278.69 and a fifty-two week high of $387.51.

Accenture (NYSE:ACN) last issued its quarterly earnings results on Thursday, December 19th. The information technology services provider reported $3.59 earnings per share for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $3.43 by $0.16. Accenture had a return on equity of 26.91% and a net margin of 11.41%. The company had revenue of $17.69 billion during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $17.15 billion. During the same period in the previous year, the firm posted $3.27 EPS. Accenture’s revenue was up 9.0% on a year-over-year basis. As a group, analysts anticipate that Accenture plc will post 12.69 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Accenture Dividend Announcement

The firm also recently declared a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Friday, February 14th. Shareholders of record on Thursday, January 16th will be issued a $1.48 dividend. This represents a $5.92 annualized dividend and a yield of 1.70%. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Thursday, January 16th. Accenture’s dividend payout ratio (DPR) is 49.66%.

Accenture declared that its board has approved a share repurchase program on Thursday, September 26th that permits the company to repurchase $4.00 billion in outstanding shares. This repurchase authorization permits the information technology services provider to repurchase up to 1.8% of its stock through open market purchases. Stock repurchase programs are generally an indication that the company’s board of directors believes its stock is undervalued.

Accenture 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.