Clarendon Private LLC Takes $394,000 Position in Accenture plc (NYSE:ACN)

Clarendon Private LLC bought a new position in shares of Accenture plc (NYSE:ACN) during the 4th quarter, Holdings Channel reports. The institutional investor bought 1,121 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock, valued at approximately $394,000.

Other institutional investors have also recently bought and sold shares of the company. State Street Corp lifted its position in Accenture by 1.8% in 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 acquiring an additional 471,792 shares in the last quarter. UBS AM a distinct business unit of UBS ASSET MANAGEMENT AMERICAS LLC lifted its holdings in shares of Accenture by 378.9% in the third 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 purchasing an additional 4,345,039 shares in the last quarter. Charles Schwab Investment Management Inc. boosted its position in shares of Accenture by 1.2% during the third quarter. Charles Schwab Investment Management Inc. now owns 4,823,754 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock worth $1,705,100,000 after buying an additional 56,937 shares during the period. Clearbridge Investments LLC grew its holdings in shares of Accenture by 44.7% during the second quarter. Clearbridge Investments LLC now owns 2,709,989 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock worth $822,238,000 after buying an additional 837,677 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Swedbank AB lifted its stake in Accenture by 16.6% in the 3rd quarter. Swedbank AB now owns 2,551,679 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock valued at $901,967,000 after acquiring an additional 363,401 shares in the last quarter. Institutional investors own 75.14% of the company’s stock.

Wall Street Analyst Weigh In

ACN has been the topic of a number of recent research reports. Wolfe Research upgraded shares of Accenture from a “peer perform” rating to an “outperform” rating and set a $425.00 price objective on the stock in a report on Wednesday, January 8th. Robert W. Baird reissued a “neutral” rating and set a $370.00 price target on shares of Accenture in a research report on Tuesday, December 3rd. The Goldman Sachs Group raised Accenture from a “neutral” rating to a “buy” rating and lifted their target price for the company from $370.00 to $420.00 in a research report on Friday, December 6th. Piper Sandler increased their price target on Accenture from $422.00 to $429.00 and gave the company an “overweight” rating in a research report on Thursday, December 19th. Finally, UBS Group boosted their price target on Accenture from $450.00 to $455.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a research report on Friday, December 20th. Eight equities research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and sixteen have assigned a buy rating to the company’s stock. According to data from MarketBeat, the stock presently has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average price target of $383.74.

Accenture Stock Performance

ACN opened at $362.65 on Friday. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.17, a current ratio of 1.47 and a quick ratio of 1.47. The company has a market capitalization of $226.94 billion, a PE ratio of 30.42, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 3.20 and a beta of 1.24. The business has a fifty day simple moving average of $357.37 and a 200 day simple moving average of $347.30. Accenture plc has a 1 year low of $278.69 and a 1 year high of $387.51.

Accenture (NYSE:ACN) last released 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. The business had revenue of $17.69 billion for the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $17.15 billion. Accenture had a net margin of 11.41% and a return on equity of 26.91%. Accenture’s revenue was up 9.0% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same period in the prior year, the company posted $3.27 earnings per share. Research analysts expect that Accenture plc will post 12.69 EPS for the current year.

Accenture Dividend Announcement

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

Insider Buying and Selling at Accenture

In other news, CAO Melissa A. Burgum sold 1,487 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction that occurred 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. The trade was a 13.85 % decrease in their position. The sale was disclosed in a filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which can be accessed through this hyperlink. Also, CEO Ryoji Sekido sold 3,191 shares of the stock in a transaction that occurred 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 sale, the chief executive officer now owns 6 shares in the company, valued at $2,062.20. This represents a 99.81 % decrease in their position. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Insiders sold 17,332 shares of company stock valued at $6,172,719 in the last three months. Corporate insiders own 0.02% of the company’s stock.

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.