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

Accenture (NYSE:ACN) had its price objective dropped by stock analysts at BMO Capital Markets from $425.00 to $370.00 in a research note issued on Tuesday,Benzinga reports. The brokerage 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 current price.

Several other equities analysts also recently weighed in on ACN. UBS Group raised their target price on shares of Accenture from $450.00 to $455.00 and gave the company a “buy” rating in a report on Friday, December 20th. Baird R W upgraded shares of Accenture from a “hold” rating to a “strong-buy” rating in a report on Monday. StockNews.com downgraded shares of Accenture from a “buy” rating to a “hold” rating in a report on Tuesday, March 11th. Robert W. Baird upgraded shares of Accenture from a “neutral” rating to an “outperform” rating and set a $390.00 price target for the company in a report on Monday. Finally, Jefferies Financial Group lowered their target price on shares of Accenture from $385.00 to $355.00 and set a “hold” rating for the company in a report on Tuesday, January 21st. Eight analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating, fifteen have issued a buy rating and one has issued a strong buy rating to the company’s stock. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, the stock currently has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average target price of $384.45.

Accenture Stock Up 0.1 %

Shares of NYSE ACN opened at $324.52 on Tuesday. The company has a quick ratio of 1.47, a current ratio of 1.47 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.17. Accenture has a 52 week low of $278.69 and a 52 week high of $398.35. The firm has a 50-day moving average price of $361.19 and a 200 day moving average price of $357.78. The stock has a market capitalization of $203.08 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 27.22, a price-to-earnings-growth 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 earnings per share 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 firm had revenue of $17.69 billion during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $17.15 billion. During the same period last year, the firm posted $3.27 EPS. The firm’s revenue for the quarter was up 9.0% on a year-over-year basis. Equities research analysts anticipate that Accenture will post 12.73 EPS for the current fiscal year.

Insider Buying and Selling

In other news, CAO Melissa A. Burgum sold 1,487 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction dated Tuesday, January 21st. The shares were sold at an average price of $354.54, for a total transaction of $527,200.98. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief accounting officer now 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 transaction was disclosed in a legal filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is accessible through the SEC website. Also, insider Angela Beatty sold 375 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction dated Monday, December 23rd. The stock was sold at an average price of $358.50, for a total transaction of $134,437.50. Following the transaction, the insider now owns 5,149 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $1,845,916.50. This represents a 6.79 % decrease in their position. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Over the last quarter, insiders sold 22,280 shares of company stock worth $8,316,190. Insiders own 0.02% of the company’s stock.

Institutional Investors Weigh In On Accenture

Institutional investors have recently bought and sold shares of the stock. Morse Asset Management Inc acquired a new stake in Accenture in the 3rd quarter valued at about $25,000. FPC Investment Advisory Inc. boosted its position in Accenture by 62.2% during the fourth quarter. FPC Investment Advisory Inc. now owns 73 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock worth $28,000 after purchasing an additional 28 shares during the period. MidAtlantic Capital Management Inc. bought a new stake in shares of Accenture in the third quarter valued at approximately $30,000. Kohmann Bosshard Financial Services LLC bought a new stake in shares of Accenture in the fourth quarter valued at approximately $30,000. Finally, Mpwm Advisory Solutions LLC bought a new position in Accenture in the fourth quarter worth $30,000. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 75.14% 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.