Petredis Investment Advisors LLC Cuts Position in Accenture plc (NYSE:ACN)

Petredis Investment Advisors LLC reduced its stake in Accenture plc (NYSE:ACN) by 1.6% in the fourth quarter, Holdings Channel.com reports. The institutional investor owned 7,734 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock after selling 127 shares during the period. Petredis Investment Advisors LLC’s holdings in Accenture were worth $2,721,000 at the end of the most recent quarter.

A number of other hedge funds and other institutional investors have also bought and sold shares of ACN. State Street Corp raised its position in shares of Accenture by 1.8% during the 3rd quarter. State Street Corp now owns 27,400,836 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock valued at $9,685,648,000 after purchasing an additional 471,792 shares during the period. Legal & General Group Plc boosted its stake in shares of Accenture by 1.4% during the 2nd quarter. Legal & General Group Plc now owns 5,887,266 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock worth $1,786,256,000 after purchasing an additional 80,514 shares during the period. UBS AM a distinct business unit of UBS ASSET MANAGEMENT AMERICAS LLC boosted its position in Accenture by 378.9% in the 3rd quarter. UBS AM a distinct business unit of UBS ASSET MANAGEMENT AMERICAS LLC now owns 5,491,736 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock valued at $1,941,219,000 after buying an additional 4,345,039 shares during the period. Charles Schwab Investment Management Inc. boosted its position in Accenture by 1.2% in the 3rd quarter. Charles Schwab Investment Management Inc. now owns 4,823,754 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock valued at $1,705,100,000 after buying an additional 56,937 shares during the period. Finally, Clearbridge Investments LLC boosted its position in Accenture by 44.7% in the 2nd quarter. Clearbridge Investments LLC now owns 2,709,989 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock valued at $822,238,000 after buying an additional 837,677 shares during the period. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 75.14% of the company’s stock.

Analyst Ratings Changes

Several analysts recently commented on ACN shares. Wolfe Research upgraded shares of Accenture from a “peer perform” rating to an “outperform” rating and set a $425.00 price target on the stock in a research report on Wednesday, January 8th. StockNews.com raised shares of Accenture from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating in a report on Monday, January 13th. UBS Group increased their price objective on shares of Accenture from $450.00 to $455.00 and gave the company a “buy” rating in a report on Friday, December 20th. BNP Paribas downgraded shares of Accenture from an “outperform” rating to a “neutral” rating and set a $375.00 price objective on the stock. in a report on Wednesday, October 30th. Finally, Barclays raised their price target on shares of Accenture from $350.00 to $415.00 and gave the stock an “overweight” rating in a research note on Monday, September 30th. Eight analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and sixteen have given a buy rating to the company’s stock. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, the company presently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus price target of $383.74.

Accenture Trading Down 0.2 %

NYSE ACN opened at $362.65 on Friday. The company has a market capitalization of $226.94 billion, a PE ratio of 30.42, a P/E/G ratio of 3.20 and a beta of 1.24. The company has a fifty day moving average of $357.19 and a 200 day moving average of $346.86. Accenture plc has a 1 year low of $278.69 and a 1 year high of $387.51. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.17, a current ratio of 1.47 and a quick ratio of 1.47.

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

Accenture Announces Dividend

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

Insiders Place Their Bets

In other news, 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 transaction, the chief accounting officer now directly owns 9,247 shares in the company, valued at approximately $3,278,431.38. This represents a 13.85 % decrease in their ownership of the stock. The sale was disclosed in a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which can be accessed through this link. Also, CEO Ryoji Sekido sold 3,191 shares of the company’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 in the company, valued at $2,062.20. This represents a 99.81 % decrease in their ownership of the stock. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Over the last quarter, insiders sold 17,332 shares of company stock worth $6,172,719. Insiders own 0.02% of the company’s stock.

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.