Kathleen R. Mcclure Sells 4,500 Shares of Accenture plc (NYSE:ACN) Stock

Accenture plc (NYSE:ACN) CFO Kathleen R. Mcclure sold 4,500 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction on Friday, April 12th. The stock was sold at an average price of $316.00, for a total value of $1,422,000.00. Following the sale, the chief financial officer now owns 42,781 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $13,518,796. The sale was disclosed in a filing with the SEC, which is available through this hyperlink.

Accenture Trading Up 0.5 %

Shares of ACN stock opened at $316.00 on Friday. The stock has a 50 day moving average of $356.30 and a 200 day moving average of $341.77. The stock has a market cap of $211.95 billion, a P/E ratio of 28.65, a P/E/G ratio of 2.98 and a beta of 1.19. Accenture plc has a twelve month low of $261.68 and a twelve month high of $387.51.

Accenture (NYSE:ACN) last announced its quarterly earnings results on Thursday, March 21st. The information technology services provider reported $2.77 earnings per share for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $2.66 by $0.11. The company had revenue of $15.80 billion during the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $15.85 billion. Accenture had a return on equity of 28.30% and a net margin of 10.89%. Accenture’s quarterly revenue was down .1% on a year-over-year basis. During the same period last year, the business earned $2.69 earnings per share. On average, research analysts predict that Accenture plc will post 12.09 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Accenture Dividend Announcement

The firm also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Wednesday, May 15th. Stockholders of record on Thursday, April 11th will be given a $1.29 dividend. This represents a $5.16 dividend on an annualized basis and a dividend yield of 1.63%. The ex-dividend date is Wednesday, April 10th. Accenture’s dividend payout ratio (DPR) is presently 46.78%.

Analysts Set New Price Targets

ACN has been the subject of a number of research analyst reports. Royal Bank of Canada increased their price target on Accenture from $374.00 to $381.00 and gave the company an “outperform” rating in a research note on Friday, March 22nd. Robert W. Baird raised their price target on Accenture from $364.00 to $375.00 and gave the stock a “neutral” rating in a report on Thursday, March 7th. BMO Capital Markets lowered their price target on Accenture from $385.00 to $375.00 and set a “market perform” rating for the company in a report on Friday, March 22nd. UBS Group raised their price target on Accenture from $365.00 to $400.00 and gave the stock a “neutral” rating in a report on Thursday, January 25th. Finally, Morgan Stanley raised their price target on Accenture from $400.00 to $417.00 and gave the stock an “overweight” rating in a report on Monday, March 18th. Eight investment analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and thirteen have issued a buy rating to the company. According to MarketBeat.com, the stock has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average price target of $387.00.

Institutional Trading of Accenture

A number of institutional investors and hedge funds have recently made changes to their positions in ACN. Norges Bank purchased a new stake in shares of Accenture in the fourth quarter valued at approximately $1,850,765,000. Moneta Group Investment Advisors LLC increased its position in shares of Accenture by 101,214.0% in the fourth quarter. Moneta Group Investment Advisors LLC now owns 4,040,402 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock valued at $1,078,141,000 after buying an additional 4,036,414 shares in the last quarter. Morgan Stanley increased its position in shares of Accenture by 14.9% in the fourth quarter. Morgan Stanley now owns 16,642,841 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock valued at $4,440,976,000 after buying an additional 2,163,582 shares in the last quarter. Legal & General Group Plc increased its position in shares of Accenture by 20.2% in the fourth quarter. Legal & General Group Plc now owns 5,879,123 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock valued at $2,063,048,000 after buying an additional 989,157 shares in the last quarter. Finally, DZ BANK AG Deutsche Zentral Genossenschafts Bank Frankfurt am Main increased its position in shares of Accenture by 100.0% in the fourth quarter. DZ BANK AG Deutsche Zentral Genossenschafts Bank Frankfurt am Main now owns 1,751,531 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock valued at $614,615,000 after buying an additional 875,723 shares in the last quarter. 75.14% of the stock is currently owned by hedge funds and other institutional investors.

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.