VIRGINIA RETIREMENT SYSTEMS ET Al Makes New Investment in Accenture PLC $ACN

VIRGINIA RETIREMENT SYSTEMS ET Al purchased a new stake in Accenture PLC (NYSE:ACN) in the 2nd quarter, Holdings Channel.com reports. The fund purchased 153,228 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock, valued at approximately $45,798,000.

A number of other hedge funds and other institutional investors have also made changes to their positions in the business. Truist Financial Corp boosted its position in shares of Accenture by 7.0% in the second quarter. Truist Financial Corp now owns 436,202 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock worth $130,376,000 after acquiring an additional 28,685 shares during the last quarter. Redwood Investments LLC grew its stake in shares of Accenture by 6.2% during the 1st quarter. Redwood Investments LLC now owns 22,087 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock valued at $6,892,000 after buying an additional 1,287 shares during the period. Lipe & Dalton increased its holdings in shares of Accenture by 2,087.4% during the 1st quarter. Lipe & Dalton now owns 5,031 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock worth $1,570,000 after buying an additional 4,801 shares during the last quarter. PDS Planning Inc raised its position in shares of Accenture by 34.7% in the 2nd quarter. PDS Planning Inc now owns 4,055 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock worth $1,212,000 after buying an additional 1,044 shares during the period. Finally, Mirae Asset Global Investments Co. Ltd. grew its position in Accenture by 6.4% during the second quarter. Mirae Asset Global Investments Co. Ltd. now owns 70,887 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock valued at $21,187,000 after acquiring an additional 4,281 shares during the period. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 75.14% of the company’s stock.

Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth

A number of brokerages have recently issued reports on ACN. Robert W. Baird decreased their target price on Accenture from $350.00 to $330.00 and set an “outperform” rating for the company in a report on Friday, September 26th. Argus set a $370.00 price objective on shares of Accenture in a research report on Tuesday, June 24th. Rothschild Redb lowered shares of Accenture from a “strong-buy” rating to a “hold” rating in a report on Wednesday, September 3rd. UBS Group lowered their price target on Accenture from $363.00 to $315.00 and set a “buy” rating for the company in a report on Wednesday, September 24th. Finally, Cowen restated a “buy” rating on shares of Accenture in a research note on Friday, September 26th. One research analyst has rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, fourteen have assigned a Buy rating, ten have assigned a Hold rating and one has given a Sell rating to the company. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, the stock currently has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus price target of $300.22.

Accenture Stock Up 1.9%

NYSE:ACN opened at $238.46 on Friday. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.16, a quick ratio of 1.46 and a current ratio of 1.42. The company has a market capitalization of $157.02 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 19.63, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 2.08 and a beta of 1.28. Accenture PLC has a one year low of $229.40 and a one year high of $398.35. The stock has a 50-day simple moving average of $246.78 and a 200 day simple moving average of $278.90.

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

Accenture Increases Dividend

The firm also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Friday, November 14th. Shareholders of record on Friday, October 10th will be paid a dividend of $1.63 per share. This represents a $6.52 annualized dividend and a yield of 2.7%. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Friday, October 10th. This is an increase from Accenture’s previous quarterly dividend of $1.48. Accenture’s dividend payout ratio (DPR) is presently 53.66%.

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.