Piper Sandler Lowers Accenture (NYSE:ACN) Price Target to $364.00

Accenture (NYSE:ACN) had its price target decreased by analysts at Piper Sandler from $396.00 to $364.00 in a research note issued on Thursday,Benzinga reports. The brokerage currently has an “overweight” rating on the information technology services provider’s stock. Piper Sandler’s target price suggests a potential upside of 19.28% from the company’s previous close.

A number of other brokerages have also weighed in on ACN. Wolfe Research upgraded shares of Accenture from a “peer perform” rating to an “outperform” rating and set a $425.00 target price for the company in a research report on Wednesday, January 8th. BMO Capital Markets lowered their price objective on shares of Accenture from $425.00 to $370.00 and set a “market perform” rating for the company in a research report on Tuesday. Jefferies Financial Group lowered their price objective 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. 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 research report on Friday, December 20th. Finally, Baird R W upgraded shares of Accenture from a “hold” rating to a “strong-buy” rating in a research report on Monday, March 17th. Eight analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating, fifteen have assigned a buy rating and one has issued a strong buy rating to the company. According to data from MarketBeat, Accenture presently has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average target price of $380.05.

Accenture Stock Performance

ACN opened at $305.17 on Thursday. The firm has a market cap of $190.97 billion, a P/E ratio of 25.60, a PEG ratio of 3.23 and a beta of 1.24. Accenture has a 1-year low of $278.69 and a 1-year high of $398.35. The company has a 50 day simple moving average of $359.16 and a two-hundred day simple moving average of $357.13. 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 results on Thursday, March 20th. The information technology services provider reported $2.82 earnings per share for the quarter, topping analysts’ consensus estimates of $2.81 by $0.01. Accenture had a net margin of 11.41% and a return on equity of 26.91%. The business had revenue of $16.70 billion during the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $16.64 billion. During the same period in the prior year, the business posted $2.77 earnings per share. The company’s revenue was up 5.7% on a year-over-year basis. Equities analysts forecast that Accenture will post 12.73 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Insider Buying and Selling

In other Accenture news, CEO Julie Spellman Sweet sold 8,793 shares of the stock in a transaction dated Wednesday, February 5th. The shares were sold at an average price of $394.47, for a total transaction of $3,468,574.71. Following the transaction, the chief executive officer now directly owns 11,858 shares in the company, valued at $4,677,625.26. This represents a 42.58 % decrease in their position. The sale was disclosed in a legal filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available at the SEC website. Also, CFO Angie Y. Park sold 685 shares of the stock in a transaction dated Friday, January 17th. The stock was sold at an average price of $354.38, for a total transaction of $242,750.30. Following the transaction, the chief financial officer now owns 8,674 shares in the company, valued at approximately $3,073,892.12. The trade was a 7.32 % decrease in their ownership of the stock. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Insiders have sold 22,280 shares of company stock valued at $8,316,190 in the last 90 days. Company insiders own 0.02% of the company’s stock.

Institutional Inflows and Outflows

Several hedge funds and other institutional investors have recently added to or reduced their stakes in ACN. DSG Capital Advisors LLC bought a new stake in shares of Accenture in the 4th quarter valued at about $269,000. Chancellor Financial Group WB LP bought a new stake in shares of Accenture in the 4th quarter valued at about $381,000. 111 Capital bought a new stake in shares of Accenture in the 4th quarter valued at about $1,796,000. Members Wealth LLC bought a new stake in shares of Accenture in the 4th quarter valued at about $261,000. Finally, Lansforsakringar Fondforvaltning AB publ bought a new stake in shares of Accenture in the 4th quarter valued at about $72,926,000. 75.14% of the stock is currently owned by 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.