DAVENPORT & Co LLC Lowers Holdings in Accenture PLC $ACN

DAVENPORT & Co LLC reduced its stake in shares of Accenture PLC (NYSE:ACN) by 1.1% in the 2nd quarter, according to the company in its most recent disclosure with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The institutional investor owned 270,607 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock after selling 2,882 shares during the quarter. DAVENPORT & Co LLC’s holdings in Accenture were worth $80,702,000 at the end of the most recent reporting period.

Other hedge funds and other institutional investors have also made changes to their positions in the company. Price T Rowe Associates Inc. MD raised its position in shares of Accenture by 63.9% in the first quarter. Price T Rowe Associates Inc. MD now owns 8,953,621 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock worth $2,793,889,000 after acquiring an additional 3,490,569 shares during the period. Vanguard Group Inc. increased its stake in shares of Accenture by 5.7% in the 1st quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. now owns 63,814,234 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock valued at $19,912,594,000 after purchasing an additional 3,419,577 shares in the last quarter. Pacer Advisors Inc. raised its holdings in Accenture by 2,782.1% in the 1st quarter. Pacer Advisors Inc. now owns 1,445,281 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock worth $450,985,000 after purchasing an additional 1,395,135 shares during the period. Invesco Ltd. boosted its position in Accenture by 23.5% during the first quarter. Invesco Ltd. now owns 2,823,228 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock worth $880,960,000 after purchasing an additional 537,223 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Jacobs Levy Equity Management Inc. increased its position in shares of Accenture by 340.7% in the first quarter. Jacobs Levy Equity Management Inc. now owns 464,864 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock valued at $145,056,000 after buying an additional 359,389 shares in the last quarter. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 75.14% of the company’s stock.

Wall Street Analyst Weigh In

ACN has been the topic of a number of research analyst reports. Royal Bank Of Canada lowered their price target on Accenture from $372.00 to $285.00 and set an “outperform” rating on the stock in a research note on Friday, September 26th. Weiss Ratings restated a “hold (c-)” rating on shares of Accenture in a research report on Saturday, September 27th. BMO Capital Markets decreased their target price on shares of Accenture from $325.00 to $270.00 and set a “market perform” rating on the stock in a report on Friday, September 26th. Susquehanna cut their price target on shares of Accenture from $330.00 to $270.00 and set a “neutral” rating for the company in a report on Thursday, September 18th. Finally, Hsbc Global Res upgraded Accenture to a “moderate sell” rating in a report on Monday, July 28th. One equities research analyst has rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, fourteen have assigned a Buy rating, ten have given a Hold rating and one has assigned a Sell rating to the company. Based on data from MarketBeat, the company has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average target price of $300.22.

Insider Transactions at Accenture

In other news, CEO Mauro Macchi sold 500 shares of Accenture stock in a transaction on Friday, July 11th. The shares were sold at an average price of $282.34, for a total transaction of $141,170.00. Following the completion of the sale, the chief executive officer directly owned 2,283 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $644,582.22. The trade was a 17.97% decrease in their position. The transaction was disclosed in a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is accessible through the SEC website. Also, CEO Julie Spellman Sweet sold 2,251 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction on Friday, July 11th. The shares were sold at an average price of $282.45, for a total value of $635,794.95. Following the completion of the sale, the chief executive officer owned 8,109 shares in the company, valued at approximately $2,290,387.05. This represents a 21.73% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Over the last ninety days, insiders sold 2,954 shares of company stock valued at $834,280. 0.02% of the stock is currently owned by corporate insiders.

Accenture Stock Performance

Shares of Accenture stock opened at $245.39 on Monday. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.16, a current ratio of 1.42 and a quick ratio of 1.46. The stock has a market capitalization of $153.69 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 20.20, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 2.14 and a beta of 1.28. The business has a 50-day moving average of $249.57 and a 200 day moving average of $283.24. Accenture PLC has a 12 month low of $229.40 and a 12 month high of $398.35.

Accenture (NYSE:ACN) last issued its quarterly earnings results on Thursday, September 25th. The information technology services provider reported $3.03 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of $2.98 by $0.05. The business had revenue of $17.60 billion for the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $17.34 billion. Accenture had a net margin of 11.02% and a return on equity of 26.45%. The business’s quarterly revenue was up 7.3% on a year-over-year basis. During the same quarter in the prior year, the company earned $2.66 earnings per share. Accenture has set its FY 2026 guidance at 13.190-13.570 EPS. Q1 2026 guidance at EPS. As a group, sell-side analysts forecast that Accenture PLC will post 12.73 earnings per share for the current year.

Accenture Increases Dividend

The business also recently declared a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Friday, November 14th. Shareholders of record on Friday, October 10th will be given a $1.63 dividend. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Friday, October 10th. This represents a $6.52 dividend on an annualized basis and a yield of 2.7%. This is an increase from Accenture’s previous quarterly dividend of $1.48. Accenture’s dividend payout ratio is 48.72%.

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.