Stifel Financial Corp Buys 28,491 Shares of Accenture plc (NYSE:ACN)

Stifel Financial Corp grew its holdings in shares of Accenture plc (NYSE:ACN) by 1.5% during the third quarter, HoldingsChannel.com reports. The institutional investor owned 1,892,409 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock after buying an additional 28,491 shares during the period. Accenture makes up 0.7% of Stifel Financial Corp’s investment portfolio, making the stock its 22nd largest position. Stifel Financial Corp’s holdings in Accenture were worth $668,974,000 as of its most recent SEC filing.

A number of other hedge funds have also recently modified their holdings of ACN. Massachusetts Financial Services Co. MA raised its position 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 worth $3,311,102,000 after purchasing an additional 131,544 shares during the last quarter. Legal & General Group Plc raised its position in shares of Accenture by 1.4% in 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 purchasing an additional 80,514 shares during the last quarter. UBS AM a distinct business unit of UBS ASSET MANAGEMENT AMERICAS LLC raised its position in shares of Accenture by 378.9% in the 3rd 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 purchasing an additional 4,345,039 shares during the last quarter. 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 purchasing an additional 56,937 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Clearbridge Investments LLC raised its position in Accenture by 44.7% in the 2nd quarter. Clearbridge Investments LLC now owns 2,709,989 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock worth $822,238,000 after buying an additional 837,677 shares during the last quarter. Institutional investors own 75.14% of the company’s stock.

Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth

ACN has been the subject of a number of recent analyst reports. BNP Paribas lowered Accenture from an “outperform” rating to a “neutral” rating and set a $375.00 target price for the company. in a research report on Wednesday, October 30th. Piper Sandler raised Accenture from a “neutral” rating to an “overweight” rating and boosted their target price for the stock from $329.00 to $395.00 in a research report on Thursday, September 26th. TD Cowen raised shares of Accenture from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating and upped their price target for the company from $321.00 to $400.00 in a research report on Monday, September 30th. StockNews.com lowered shares of Accenture from a “buy” rating to a “hold” rating in a research report on Thursday, October 24th. Finally, UBS Group upped their price target on shares of Accenture from $400.00 to $415.00 and gave the company a “buy” rating in a research report on Friday, September 27th. Ten research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and thirteen have assigned a buy rating to the company. According to data from MarketBeat.com, the stock currently has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus price target of $368.23.

Insider Buying and Selling

In related news, insider Angela Beatty sold 673 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction on Tuesday, October 22nd. The stock was sold at an average price of $372.18, for a total transaction of $250,477.14. Following the completion of the transaction, the insider now owns 5,650 shares in the company, valued at $2,102,817. The trade was a 10.64 % decrease in their position. The transaction was disclosed in a legal filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available through this hyperlink. Also, CEO Ryoji Sekido sold 3,191 shares of Accenture stock in a transaction on Monday, November 4th. The stock was sold at an average price of $343.70, for a total value of $1,096,746.70. Following the sale, the chief executive officer now owns 6 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $2,062.20. This trade represents a 99.81 % decrease in their ownership of the stock. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Insiders sold a total of 36,298 shares of company stock worth $13,372,661 over the last three months. 0.07% of the stock is owned by insiders.

Accenture Price Performance

Shares of ACN opened at $359.90 on Thursday. The stock has a market capitalization of $225.00 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 31.49, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 3.16 and a beta of 1.24. Accenture plc has a 1 year low of $278.69 and a 1 year high of $387.51. The business’s 50 day simple moving average is $359.83 and its 200-day simple moving average is $332.08.

Accenture (NYSE:ACN) last issued its quarterly earnings data on Thursday, September 26th. The information technology services provider reported $2.79 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of $2.78 by $0.01. The business had revenue of $16.41 billion for the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $16.37 billion. Accenture had a return on equity of 26.83% and a net margin of 11.20%. The company’s revenue for the quarter was up 2.6% on a year-over-year basis. During the same period in the prior year, the firm earned $2.71 EPS. On average, sell-side analysts expect that Accenture plc will post 12.76 earnings per share for the current year.

Accenture Increases Dividend

The business also recently declared a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Friday, November 15th. Investors of record on Thursday, October 10th were issued a dividend of $1.48 per share. This represents a $5.92 annualized dividend and a yield of 1.64%. The ex-dividend date was Thursday, October 10th. This is a positive change from Accenture’s previous quarterly dividend of $1.29. Accenture’s dividend payout ratio is presently 51.79%.

Accenture declared that its board has approved a stock repurchase program on Thursday, September 26th that permits the company to buyback $4.00 billion in outstanding shares. This buyback authorization permits the information technology services provider to purchase up to 1.8% of its stock through open market purchases. Stock buyback programs are generally a sign that the company’s leadership believes its stock is undervalued.

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.