Stifel Nicolaus Lowers Accenture (NYSE:ACN) Price Target to $380.00

Accenture (NYSE:ACN) had its target price dropped by analysts at Stifel Nicolaus from $390.00 to $380.00 in a report issued on Wednesday,Benzinga reports. The brokerage currently has a “buy” rating on the information technology services provider’s stock. Stifel Nicolaus’ target price would indicate a potential upside of 6.45% from the company’s previous close.

Several other research firms also recently issued reports on ACN. Wolfe Research upgraded shares of Accenture from a “peer perform” rating to an “outperform” rating and set a $425.00 price objective for the company in a research note on Wednesday, January 8th. UBS Group upped their target price on Accenture from $450.00 to $455.00 and gave the company a “buy” rating in a research report on Friday, December 20th. BNP Paribas lowered Accenture from an “outperform” rating to a “neutral” rating and set a $375.00 price target on the stock. in a research report on Wednesday, October 30th. Morgan Stanley increased their price objective on Accenture from $335.00 to $380.00 and gave the company an “equal weight” rating in a report on Friday, January 31st. Finally, Jefferies Financial Group lowered their price target on Accenture from $385.00 to $355.00 and set a “hold” rating on the stock in a report on Tuesday, January 21st. 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 an average target price of $388.96.

Accenture Trading Down 0.4 %

NYSE:ACN opened at $356.96 on Wednesday. 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 has a 1 year low of $278.69 and a 1 year high of $398.35. The stock has a market cap of $223.38 billion, a P/E ratio of 29.95, a P/E/G ratio of 3.23 and a beta of 1.24. The stock has a 50-day simple moving average of $367.64 and a 200-day simple moving average of $357.33.

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. The company had revenue of $17.69 billion for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $17.15 billion. Accenture had a net margin of 11.41% and a return on equity of 26.91%. The firm’s revenue was up 9.0% on a year-over-year basis. During the same period in the prior year, the firm posted $3.27 earnings per share. As a group, analysts anticipate that Accenture will post 12.73 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Insiders Place Their Bets

In other news, CAO Melissa A. Burgum sold 232 shares of the firm’s 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 transaction, the chief accounting officer now directly owns 8,915 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $3,516,610.90. This trade represents a 2.54 % decrease in their position. The sale was disclosed in a document filed with the SEC, which is available at this hyperlink. Also, CEO Julie Spellman Sweet sold 8,793 shares of the company’s 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 completion of the sale, the chief executive officer now directly owns 11,858 shares in the company, valued at approximately $4,677,625.26. The trade was a 42.58 % decrease in their position. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Over the last ninety days, insiders have sold 22,280 shares of company stock worth $8,316,190. 0.02% of the stock is owned by corporate insiders.

Institutional Inflows and Outflows

Several institutional investors have recently added to or reduced their stakes in the company. Fidelity D & D Bancorp Inc. grew its position in shares of Accenture by 6.4% in the fourth quarter. Fidelity D & D Bancorp Inc. now owns 745 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock valued at $262,000 after purchasing an additional 45 shares during the period. Brucke Financial Inc. purchased a new stake in Accenture during the 4th quarter worth $629,000. Azzad Asset Management Inc. ADV raised its holdings in shares of Accenture by 1.5% during the 4th quarter. Azzad Asset Management Inc. ADV now owns 6,380 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock valued at $2,244,000 after buying an additional 96 shares during the period. Omnia Family Wealth LLC purchased a new stake in shares of Accenture during the fourth quarter valued at approximately $240,000. Finally, Jefferies Financial Group Inc. increased its stake in Accenture by 348.5% during the 4th quarter. Jefferies Financial Group Inc. now owns 9,894 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock worth $3,481,000 after buying an additional 7,688 shares during the period. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 75.14% 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.