Accenture plc (NYSE:ACN) Declares Dividend Increase - $1.48 Per Share

Accenture plc (NYSE:ACN - Get Free Report) declared a quarterly dividend on Thursday, September 26th, Zacks reports. Investors of record on Thursday, October 10th will be paid a dividend of 1.48 per share by the information technology services provider on Friday, November 15th. This represents a $5.92 annualized dividend and a yield of 1.69%. The ex-dividend date is Thursday, October 10th. This is a boost from Accenture's previous quarterly dividend of $1.29.

Accenture has increased its dividend payment by an average of 12.3% annually over the last three years and has raised its dividend every year for the last 19 years. Accenture has a dividend payout ratio of 40.3% indicating that its dividend is sufficiently covered by earnings. Equities analysts expect Accenture to earn $12.64 per share next year, which means the company should continue to be able to cover its $5.16 annual dividend with an expected future payout ratio of 40.8%.

Accenture Trading Down 1.7 %

NYSE ACN traded down $6.11 on Friday, hitting $349.70. 2,567,371 shares of the company were exchanged, compared to its average volume of 2,782,468. Accenture has a 1-year low of $278.69 and a 1-year high of $387.51. The company has a market cap of $219.15 billion, a P/E ratio of 32.02, a P/E/G ratio of 3.69 and a beta of 1.24. The firm has a 50 day moving average of $333.51 and a two-hundred day moving average of $321.39.

Accenture (NYSE:ACN - Get Free Report) last released its earnings results on Thursday, September 26th. The information technology services provider reported $2.79 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, beating analysts' consensus estimates of $2.78 by $0.01. Accenture had a net margin of 10.79% and a return on equity of 27.48%. The company had revenue of $16.41 billion for the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $16.37 billion. During the same period in the prior year, the company posted $2.71 EPS. The company's revenue was up 2.6% compared to the same quarter last year. Research analysts anticipate that Accenture will post 11.95 EPS for the current fiscal year.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

A number of research firms have issued reports on ACN. UBS Group upped their target price on shares of Accenture from $400.00 to $415.00 and gave the company a "buy" rating in a research report on Friday. Morgan Stanley cut Accenture from an "overweight" rating to an "equal weight" rating and lowered their price target for the company from $382.00 to $300.00 in a research note on Wednesday, June 26th. Mizuho upped their price target on Accenture from $352.00 to $365.00 and gave the company an "outperform" rating in a research note on Wednesday, September 18th. JPMorgan Chase & Co. lowered their price target on Accenture from $376.00 to $370.00 and set an "overweight" rating for the company in a research note on Tuesday. Finally, Royal Bank of Canada upped their price target on Accenture from $377.00 to $389.00 and gave the company an "outperform" rating in a research note on Friday. Ten investment analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and thirteen have issued a buy rating to the company. Based on data from MarketBeat, Accenture currently has an average rating of "Moderate Buy" and an average price target of $364.64.

Accenture declared that its board has initiated a share repurchase plan on Thursday, September 26th that allows the company to buyback $4.00 billion in outstanding shares. This buyback authorization allows the information technology services provider to repurchase up to 1.8% of its stock through open market purchases. Stock buyback plans are generally an indication that the company's management believes its stock is undervalued.

Insiders Place Their Bets

In other Accenture news, insider Ellyn Shook sold 5,000 shares of the company's stock in a transaction that occurred on Tuesday, July 23rd. The stock was sold at an average price of $329.82, for a total transaction of $1,649,100.00. Following the completion of the transaction, the insider now owns 8,989 shares of the company's stock, valued at approximately $2,964,751.98. The transaction was disclosed in a legal filing with the SEC, which is available at this hyperlink. In other news, insider Ellyn Shook sold 5,000 shares of the stock in a transaction that occurred on Tuesday, July 23rd. The stock was sold at an average price of $329.82, for a total value of $1,649,100.00. Following the completion of the sale, the insider now owns 8,989 shares of the company's stock, valued at approximately $2,964,751.98. The transaction was disclosed in a legal filing with the SEC, which is available at this link. Also, General Counsel Joel Unruch sold 8,145 shares of the stock in a transaction that occurred on Monday, July 22nd. The shares were sold at an average price of $331.05, for a total value of $2,696,402.25. Following the completion of the sale, the general counsel now directly owns 22,849 shares of the company's stock, valued at approximately $7,564,161.45. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Insiders sold a total of 21,421 shares of company stock valued at $6,912,635 in the last quarter. 0.07% of the stock is currently owned by insiders.

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.