Harel Insurance Investments & Financial Services Ltd. Purchases Shares of 118 Accenture plc (NYSE:ACN)

Harel Insurance Investments & Financial Services Ltd. acquired a new stake in Accenture plc (NYSE:ACN) during the 4th quarter, Holdings Channel reports. The institutional investor acquired 118 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock, valued at approximately $42,000.

A number of other institutional investors have also modified their holdings of the company. Schrum Private Wealth Management LLC increased its position in shares of Accenture by 78.6% in the third quarter. Schrum Private Wealth Management LLC now owns 11,448 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock worth $4,047,000 after acquiring an additional 5,038 shares in the last quarter. MQS Management LLC acquired a new stake in Accenture in the 3rd quarter valued at $1,040,000. Concurrent Investment Advisors LLC lifted its stake in shares of Accenture by 70.6% during the third quarter. Concurrent Investment Advisors LLC now owns 35,591 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock worth $12,581,000 after purchasing an additional 14,724 shares in the last quarter. M&G PLC boosted its position in shares of Accenture by 34.1% in the third quarter. M&G PLC now owns 292,808 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock worth $103,361,000 after buying an additional 74,438 shares during the period. Finally, Radnor Capital Management LLC grew its stake in shares of Accenture by 21.6% in the third quarter. Radnor Capital Management LLC now owns 22,131 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock valued at $7,823,000 after buying an additional 3,930 shares in the last quarter. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 75.14% of the company’s stock.

Analysts Set New Price Targets

Several analysts have issued reports on the stock. StockNews.com raised shares of Accenture from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating in a research report on Monday, January 13th. Robert W. Baird reaffirmed a “neutral” rating and set a $370.00 price target on shares of Accenture in a research note on Tuesday, December 3rd. UBS Group upped their price objective on shares of Accenture from $450.00 to $455.00 and gave the company a “buy” rating in a research report on Friday, December 20th. Wolfe Research upgraded Accenture from a “peer perform” rating to an “outperform” rating and set a $425.00 price target on the stock in a research note on Wednesday, January 8th. Finally, TD Cowen upgraded 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. Eight equities research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and sixteen have assigned a buy rating to the stock. Based on data from MarketBeat, Accenture has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average price target of $383.74.

Insider Buying and Selling

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 transaction, the chief executive officer now directly owns 6 shares in the company, valued at approximately $2,062.20. This trade represents a 99.81 % decrease in their position. The sale was disclosed in a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which can be accessed through this link. Also, CAO Melissa A. Burgum sold 1,487 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction on Tuesday, January 21st. The shares were sold at an average price of $354.54, for a total value of $527,200.98. Following the completion of the sale, the chief accounting officer now owns 9,247 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $3,278,431.38. This trade represents a 13.85 % decrease in their position. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Insiders sold 9,196 shares of company stock valued at $3,226,918 over the last 90 days. 0.02% of the stock is currently owned by company insiders.

Accenture Stock Down 0.2 %

Accenture stock opened at $362.65 on Monday. The firm has a market capitalization of $226.94 billion, a P/E ratio of 30.42, a P/E/G ratio of 3.20 and a beta of 1.24. The company has a 50-day simple moving average of $357.37 and a 200-day simple moving average of $347.64. Accenture plc has a one year low of $278.69 and a one year high of $387.51. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.17, a quick ratio of 1.47 and a current ratio of 1.47.

Accenture (NYSE:ACN) last announced its quarterly earnings results on Thursday, December 19th. The information technology services provider reported $3.59 EPS for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $3.43 by $0.16. Accenture had a net margin of 11.41% and a return on equity of 26.91%. The company had revenue of $17.69 billion for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $17.15 billion. During the same quarter last year, the business earned $3.27 earnings per share. Accenture’s revenue was up 9.0% compared to the same quarter last year. As a group, equities analysts expect that Accenture plc will post 12.69 earnings per share for the current year.

Accenture Dividend Announcement

The business also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Friday, February 14th. Investors of record on Thursday, January 16th will be paid a dividend of $1.48 per share. This represents a $5.92 dividend on an annualized basis and a dividend yield of 1.63%. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Thursday, January 16th. Accenture’s dividend payout ratio is currently 49.66%.

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.