BMO Capital Markets Lowers Accenture (NYSE:ACN) Price Target to $370.00

Accenture (NYSE:ACN) had its target price cut by investment analysts at BMO Capital Markets from $425.00 to $370.00 in a research note issued to investors on Tuesday,Benzinga reports. The firm presently has a “market perform” rating on the information technology services provider’s stock. BMO Capital Markets’ price target suggests a potential upside of 14.01% from the company’s previous close.

A number of other equities research analysts have also recently commented on ACN. Jefferies Financial Group decreased their target price on shares of Accenture from $385.00 to $355.00 and set a “hold” rating for the company in a research report on Tuesday, January 21st. Baird R W raised shares of Accenture from a “hold” rating to a “strong-buy” rating in a report on Monday. JPMorgan Chase & Co. raised 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, December 16th. StockNews.com downgraded shares of Accenture from a “buy” rating to a “hold” rating in a research report on Tuesday, March 11th. Finally, The Goldman Sachs Group upgraded shares of Accenture from a “neutral” rating to a “buy” rating and boosted their target price for the company from $370.00 to $420.00 in a research report on Friday, December 6th. Eight investment analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating, fifteen have assigned a buy rating and one has assigned a strong buy rating to the stock. According to data from MarketBeat, Accenture currently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average price target of $384.45.

Accenture Price Performance

NYSE ACN opened at $324.52 on Tuesday. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.17, a quick ratio of 1.47 and a current ratio of 1.47. The firm’s 50 day moving average price is $361.19 and its 200-day moving average price is $357.78. Accenture has a 52-week low of $278.69 and a 52-week high of $398.35. The company has a market cap of $203.08 billion, a PE ratio of 27.22, a P/E/G ratio of 3.23 and a beta of 1.24.

Accenture (NYSE:ACN) last posted its earnings results on Thursday, December 19th. The information technology services provider reported $3.59 EPS for the quarter, beating 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 company had revenue of $17.69 billion during the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $17.15 billion. During the same quarter in the prior year, the company posted $3.27 earnings per share. Accenture’s revenue for the quarter was up 9.0% compared to the same quarter last year. Sell-side analysts forecast that Accenture will post 12.73 EPS for the current fiscal year.

Insiders Place Their Bets

In other Accenture news, CEO Julie Spellman Sweet sold 8,793 shares of the stock in a transaction that occurred on Wednesday, February 5th. The shares were sold at an average price of $394.47, for a total value of $3,468,574.71. Following the sale, the chief executive officer now directly owns 11,858 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $4,677,625.26. This represents a 42.58 % decrease in their position. The sale was disclosed in a document filed with the SEC, which is available at this link. Also, CAO Melissa A. Burgum sold 232 shares of the stock in a transaction that occurred on Wednesday, February 5th. The shares were sold at an average price of $394.46, for a total transaction of $91,514.72. Following the completion of the sale, the chief accounting officer now directly owns 8,915 shares in the company, valued at approximately $3,516,610.90. This represents a 2.54 % decrease in their ownership of the stock. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Insiders have sold a total of 22,280 shares of company stock worth $8,316,190 in the last ninety days. 0.02% of the stock is owned by corporate insiders.

Institutional Inflows and Outflows

Hedge funds have recently modified their holdings of the stock. Baldwin Wealth Partners LLC MA grew its position in shares of Accenture by 6.5% in the 4th quarter. Baldwin Wealth Partners LLC MA now owns 63,429 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock valued at $22,314,000 after buying an additional 3,883 shares during the last quarter. Davidson Trust Co. boosted its stake in Accenture by 7.4% during the 4th quarter. Davidson Trust Co. now owns 2,307 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock worth $812,000 after purchasing an additional 158 shares during the period. Franklin Street Advisors Inc. NC boosted its stake in Accenture by 126.8% during the 4th quarter. Franklin Street Advisors Inc. NC now owns 40,051 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock worth $14,090,000 after purchasing an additional 22,391 shares during the period. Charles Schwab Investment Management Inc. boosted its stake in Accenture by 1.2% during the 3rd 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 purchasing an additional 56,937 shares during the period. Finally, China Universal Asset Management Co. Ltd. boosted its stake in Accenture by 37.5% during the 4th quarter. China Universal Asset Management Co. Ltd. now owns 3,094 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock worth $1,088,000 after purchasing an additional 843 shares during the period. 75.14% of the stock is owned by hedge funds and other institutional investors.

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.