Pallas Capital Advisors LLC Sells 351 Shares of Accenture plc (NYSE:ACN)

Pallas Capital Advisors LLC lowered its stake in shares of Accenture plc (NYSE:ACN) by 1.8% during the fourth quarter, Holdings Channel.com reports. The institutional investor owned 18,650 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock after selling 351 shares during the quarter. Pallas Capital Advisors LLC’s holdings in Accenture were worth $6,561,000 at the end of the most recent quarter.

A number of other large investors have also made changes to their positions in ACN. State Street Corp lifted its stake in Accenture by 1.8% in the 3rd quarter. State Street Corp now owns 27,400,836 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock valued at $9,685,648,000 after purchasing an additional 471,792 shares during the last quarter. Massachusetts Financial Services Co. MA lifted its stake in shares of Accenture by 1.2% in the 2nd quarter. Massachusetts Financial Services Co. MA now owns 10,912,962 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock valued at $3,311,102,000 after acquiring an additional 131,544 shares during the last quarter. Legal & General Group Plc boosted its position in Accenture by 1.4% during the 2nd quarter. Legal & General Group Plc now owns 5,887,266 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock worth $1,786,256,000 after buying an additional 80,514 shares during the period. UBS AM a distinct business unit of UBS ASSET MANAGEMENT AMERICAS LLC raised its position in shares of Accenture by 378.9% during the third quarter. UBS AM a distinct business unit of UBS ASSET MANAGEMENT AMERICAS LLC now owns 5,491,736 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock worth $1,941,219,000 after acquiring an additional 4,345,039 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Charles Schwab Investment Management Inc. raised its position in shares of Accenture by 1.2% in the 3rd quarter. Charles Schwab Investment Management Inc. now owns 4,823,754 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock worth $1,705,100,000 after acquiring an additional 56,937 shares in the last quarter. Institutional investors own 75.14% of the company’s stock.

Analyst Ratings Changes

Several equities analysts recently weighed in on ACN shares. Piper Sandler Companies reaffirmed a “neutral” rating and issued a $329.00 price target on shares of Accenture in a research report on Friday, September 20th. JPMorgan Chase & Co. boosted their price objective on Accenture from $370.00 to $396.00 and gave the company an “overweight” rating in a research note on Monday, December 16th. Bank of America boosted their price objective on Accenture from $365.00 to $388.00 and gave the company a “buy” rating in a research note on Friday, September 27th. Piper Sandler boosted their price objective on Accenture from $422.00 to $429.00 and gave the stock an “overweight” rating in a report on Thursday, December 19th. Finally, Citigroup upped their price objective on Accenture from $350.00 to $405.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a report on Tuesday, September 17th. Eight research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and sixteen have given a buy rating to the stock. According to MarketBeat, the company presently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average price target of $385.04.

Accenture Stock Performance

Accenture stock traded down $0.65 during midday trading on Monday, hitting $349.14. 2,710,892 shares of the company’s stock were exchanged, compared to its average volume of 2,694,241. Accenture plc has a 12 month low of $278.69 and a 12 month high of $387.51. The company has a market cap 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 firm has a 50-day moving average of $357.82 and a two-hundred day moving average of $344.30.

Accenture (NYSE:ACN) last announced its quarterly earnings data on Thursday, December 19th. The information technology services provider reported $3.59 earnings per share for the quarter, beating analysts’ consensus estimates of $3.43 by $0.16. The firm had revenue of $17.69 billion for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $17.15 billion. Accenture had a net margin of 11.20% and a return on equity of 26.83%. The business’s quarterly revenue was up 9.0% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same period in the previous year, the company earned $3.27 earnings per share. As a group, equities analysts expect that Accenture plc will post 12.74 earnings per share for the current year.

Accenture Announces Dividend

The firm also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Friday, February 14th. Investors of record on Thursday, January 16th will be paid a dividend of $1.48 per share. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Thursday, January 16th. This represents a $5.92 annualized dividend and a yield of 1.70%. Accenture’s dividend payout ratio is presently 49.66%.

Accenture announced that its Board of Directors has authorized a share repurchase plan on Thursday, September 26th that allows the company to buyback $4.00 billion in shares. This buyback authorization allows the information technology services provider to buy up to 1.8% of its shares through open market purchases. Shares buyback plans are often an indication that the company’s leadership believes its shares are undervalued.

Insider Buying and Selling at Accenture

In other news, CAO Melissa A. Burgum sold 458 shares of Accenture stock in a transaction dated Thursday, October 17th. The shares were sold at an average price of $373.25, for a total transaction of $170,948.50. Following the completion of the sale, the chief accounting officer now directly owns 9,777 shares in the company, valued at $3,649,265.25. The trade was a 4.47 % decrease in their ownership of the stock. The sale was disclosed in a filing with the SEC, which is available through the SEC website. Also, CEO Julie Spellman Sweet sold 9,000 shares of Accenture stock in a transaction dated Monday, October 21st. The shares were sold at an average price of $376.16, for a total value of $3,385,440.00. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief executive officer now directly owns 20,324 shares in the company, valued at $7,645,075.84. This represents a 30.69 % decrease in their ownership of the stock. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. In the last quarter, insiders sold 36,673 shares of company stock worth $13,507,099. Insiders own 0.02% of the company’s stock.

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.