Potentia Wealth Acquires Shares of 1,049 Accenture plc (NYSE:ACN)

Potentia Wealth purchased a new position in shares of Accenture plc (NYSE:ACN) in the fourth quarter, HoldingsChannel.com reports. The institutional investor purchased 1,049 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock, valued at approximately $369,000.

Several other hedge funds also recently added to or reduced their stakes in the company. Newbridge Financial Services Group Inc. raised its holdings in shares of Accenture by 5.7% in the fourth quarter. Newbridge Financial Services Group Inc. now owns 518 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock worth $182,000 after buying an additional 28 shares during the period. FPC Investment Advisory Inc. boosted its stake in shares of Accenture by 62.2% during the fourth quarter. FPC Investment Advisory Inc. now owns 73 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock valued at $28,000 after purchasing an additional 28 shares during the period. Tradition Wealth Management LLC grew its holdings in shares of Accenture by 0.3% in the third quarter. Tradition Wealth Management LLC now owns 10,951 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock worth $3,871,000 after purchasing an additional 29 shares during the last quarter. New England Professional Planning Group Inc. lifted its holdings in Accenture by 4.6% during the 4th quarter. New England Professional Planning Group Inc. now owns 655 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock valued at $230,000 after buying an additional 29 shares in the last quarter. Finally, TCW Group Inc. grew its stake in Accenture by 0.3% in the 3rd quarter. TCW Group Inc. now owns 11,501 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock worth $4,065,000 after acquiring an additional 30 shares in the last quarter. 75.14% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors.

Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth

ACN has been the topic of several research reports. Morgan Stanley reduced their price objective on Accenture from $380.00 to $372.00 and set an “equal weight” rating on the stock in a report on Monday, March 17th. 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, March 17th. Royal Bank of Canada dropped their price objective on shares of Accenture from $399.00 to $392.00 and set an “outperform” rating on the stock in a research note on Friday. Stifel Nicolaus reduced their price objective on shares of Accenture from $390.00 to $380.00 and set a “buy” rating for the company in a research note on Wednesday, February 26th. Finally, Mizuho cut their price target on Accenture from $428.00 to $398.00 and set an “outperform” rating on the stock in a report on Wednesday, March 19th. Eight analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating, fifteen have assigned a buy rating and one has given a strong buy rating to the company’s stock. Based on data from MarketBeat, Accenture has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus price target of $378.91.

Insider Transactions at Accenture

In other news, CAO Melissa A. Burgum sold 232 shares of the stock in a transaction dated Wednesday, February 5th. The shares were sold at an average price of $394.46, for a total transaction of $91,514.72. Following the sale, the chief accounting officer now directly owns 8,915 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $3,516,610.90. This represents a 2.54 % decrease in their position. The transaction was disclosed in a legal filing with the SEC, which is available through this link. Also, CEO Julie Spellman Sweet sold 2,497 shares of Accenture stock in a transaction dated Friday, January 17th. The shares were sold at an average price of $354.48, for a total value of $885,136.56. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief executive officer now owns 28,866 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $10,232,419.68. This represents a 7.96 % decrease in their position. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Insiders have sold 21,905 shares of company stock worth $8,181,753 over the last quarter. 0.02% of the stock is currently owned by insiders.

Accenture Trading Up 0.6 %

Shares of NYSE:ACN opened at $307.24 on Tuesday. The business has a 50-day moving average price of $358.32 and a 200-day moving average price of $357.10. The stock has a market cap of $192.27 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 25.78, a PEG ratio of 3.23 and a beta of 1.24. Accenture plc has a 52-week low of $278.69 and a 52-week high of $398.35. 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 (NYSE:ACN) last released its quarterly earnings data on Thursday, March 20th. The information technology services provider reported $2.82 EPS for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate 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 for the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $16.64 billion. During the same period in the prior year, the firm earned $2.77 EPS. The business’s revenue for the quarter was up 5.7% on a year-over-year basis. Equities analysts predict that Accenture plc will post 12.73 EPS for the current year.

Accenture Announces Dividend

The business also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Thursday, May 15th. Stockholders of record on Thursday, April 10th will be issued a $1.48 dividend. The ex-dividend date is Thursday, April 10th. This represents a $5.92 annualized dividend and a dividend yield of 1.93%. Accenture’s dividend payout ratio (DPR) is presently 48.89%.

Accenture 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.