Accenture plc (NYSE:ACN) Declares Quarterly Dividend of $1.48

Accenture plc (NYSE:ACN) announced a quarterly dividend on Tuesday, November 19th,RTT News reports. Investors of record on Thursday, January 16th will be given a dividend of 1.48 per share by the information technology services provider on Friday, February 14th. This represents a $5.92 annualized dividend and a dividend yield of 1.70%. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Thursday, January 16th.

Accenture has raised its dividend by an average of 14.0% per year over the last three years and has raised its dividend annually for the last 20 consecutive years. Accenture has a dividend payout ratio of 42.6% indicating that its dividend is sufficiently covered by earnings. Equities analysts expect Accenture to earn $13.76 per share next year, which means the company should continue to be able to cover its $5.92 annual dividend with an expected future payout ratio of 43.0%.

Accenture Stock Down 0.2 %

NYSE ACN opened at $349.14 on Tuesday. Accenture has a twelve month low of $278.69 and a twelve month high of $387.51. The firm has a market capitalization of $218.49 billion, a PE ratio of 30.55, a P/E/G ratio of 3.23 and a beta of 1.24. The stock’s 50 day moving average is $357.93 and its 200 day moving average is $344.63.

Accenture (NYSE:ACN) last released its quarterly 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 return on equity of 26.83% and a net margin of 11.20%. The company had revenue of $17.69 billion for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $17.15 billion. During the same period in the previous year, the company posted $3.27 earnings per share. The firm’s revenue was up 9.0% on a year-over-year basis. On average, research analysts anticipate that Accenture will post 12.74 earnings per share for the current year.

Accenture announced that its board has approved a share repurchase program on Thursday, September 26th that authorizes the company to repurchase $4.00 billion in outstanding shares. This repurchase authorization authorizes the information technology services provider to repurchase up to 1.8% of its shares through open market purchases. Shares repurchase programs are usually an indication that the company’s management believes its stock is undervalued.

Insider Transactions at Accenture

In related news, CFO Kathleen R. Mcclure sold 5,090 shares of the stock in a transaction dated Thursday, October 17th. The stock was sold at an average price of $373.22, for a total transaction of $1,899,689.80. Following the completion of the sale, the chief financial officer now owns 38,825 shares in the company, valued at approximately $14,490,266.50. This trade represents a 11.59 % decrease in their ownership of the stock. The transaction was disclosed in a document filed with the SEC, which can be accessed through this hyperlink. Also, insider Angela Beatty sold 673 shares of the stock in a transaction dated Tuesday, October 22nd. The stock was sold at an average price of $372.18, for a total value of $250,477.14. Following the sale, the insider now owns 5,650 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $2,102,817. This represents a 10.64 % decrease in their position. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Insiders have sold 36,673 shares of company stock valued at $13,507,099 over the last quarter. 0.02% of the stock is currently owned by company insiders.

Analysts Set New Price Targets

A number of research firms have recently commented on ACN. Barclays increased their target price on Accenture from $350.00 to $415.00 and gave the stock an “overweight” rating in a research note on Monday, September 30th. BMO Capital Markets increased their target price on Accenture from $390.00 to $425.00 and gave the stock a “market perform” rating in a research note on Friday, December 20th. Bank of America increased their target price on Accenture from $365.00 to $388.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a research note on Friday, September 27th. Susquehanna upped their price target on Accenture from $350.00 to $360.00 and gave the company a “neutral” rating in a report on Friday, September 27th. Finally, Piper Sandler upped their price target on Accenture from $422.00 to $429.00 and gave the company an “overweight” rating in a report on Thursday, December 19th. Eight research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and sixteen have assigned a buy rating to the company’s stock. According to data from MarketBeat, the company presently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus target price of $385.04.

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.