Hillsdale Investment Management Inc. Increases Stake in Accenture plc (NYSE:ACN)

Hillsdale Investment Management Inc. lifted its stake in shares of Accenture plc (NYSE:ACN) by 99.5% during the 4th quarter, Holdings Channel.com reports. The institutional investor owned 2,105 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock after buying an additional 1,050 shares during the period. Hillsdale Investment Management Inc.’s holdings in Accenture were worth $741,000 at the end of the most recent quarter.

Several other hedge funds and other institutional investors also recently modified their holdings of the stock. Newbridge Financial Services Group Inc. increased its position in shares of Accenture by 5.7% during the fourth quarter. Newbridge Financial Services Group Inc. now owns 518 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock valued at $182,000 after buying an additional 28 shares during the period. FPC Investment Advisory Inc. grew its holdings in Accenture by 62.2% in the fourth quarter. FPC Investment Advisory Inc. now owns 73 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock worth $28,000 after purchasing an additional 28 shares during the period. Tradition Wealth Management LLC grew its holdings in Accenture by 0.3% in the third quarter. Tradition Wealth Management LLC now owns 10,951 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock worth $3,871,000 after purchasing an additional 29 shares during the period. New England Professional Planning Group Inc. grew its holdings in Accenture by 4.6% in the fourth quarter. New England Professional Planning Group Inc. now owns 655 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock worth $230,000 after purchasing an additional 29 shares during the period. Finally, TCW Group Inc. grew its holdings in Accenture by 0.3% in the third quarter. TCW Group Inc. now owns 11,501 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock worth $4,065,000 after purchasing an additional 30 shares during the period. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 75.14% of the company’s stock.

Wall Street Analyst Weigh In

A number of equities research analysts have weighed in on ACN shares. Piper Sandler cut their price objective on shares of Accenture from $396.00 to $364.00 and set an “overweight” rating on the stock in a report on Thursday. The Goldman Sachs Group upgraded shares of Accenture from a “neutral” rating to a “buy” rating and increased their price target for the company from $370.00 to $420.00 in a report on Friday, December 6th. Wolfe Research upgraded shares of Accenture from a “peer perform” rating to an “outperform” rating and set a $425.00 price target on the stock in a report on Wednesday, January 8th. BMO Capital Markets cut their price target on shares of Accenture from $425.00 to $370.00 and set a “market perform” rating on the stock in a report on Tuesday, March 18th. Finally, Baird R W upgraded shares of Accenture from a “hold” rating to a “strong-buy” rating in a report on Monday, March 17th. Eight investment analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating, fifteen have issued a buy rating and one has issued a strong buy rating to the company’s stock. According to data from MarketBeat, Accenture presently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus target price of $380.05.

Insider Transactions at Accenture

In other news, CAO Melissa A. Burgum sold 232 shares of the stock in a transaction on Wednesday, February 5th. The shares were sold at an average price of $394.46, for a total value of $91,514.72. Following the completion of the sale, the chief accounting officer now directly owns 8,915 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $3,516,610.90. This represents a 2.54 % decrease in their ownership of the stock. The sale was disclosed in a document filed with the SEC, which is available at this hyperlink. Also, CEO Julie Spellman Sweet sold 2,497 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction on Friday, January 17th. The shares were sold at an average price of $354.48, for a total transaction of $885,136.56. Following the transaction, the chief executive officer now directly owns 28,866 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $10,232,419.68. The trade was a 7.96 % decrease in their ownership of the stock. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Insiders sold a total of 21,905 shares of company stock valued at $8,181,753 over the last three months. Corporate insiders own 0.02% of the company’s stock.

Accenture Stock Up 1.4 %

ACN opened at $305.17 on Monday. The company has a current ratio of 1.47, a quick ratio of 1.47 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.17. Accenture plc has a 1-year low of $278.69 and a 1-year high of $398.35. The company has a market capitalization of $190.97 billion, a PE ratio of 25.60, a PEG ratio of 3.23 and a beta of 1.24. The firm’s 50 day simple moving average is $359.16 and its two-hundred day simple moving average is $357.33.

Accenture (NYSE:ACN) last released its quarterly earnings results on Thursday, March 20th. The information technology services provider reported $2.82 earnings per share for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of $2.81 by $0.01. Accenture had a net margin of 11.41% and a return on equity of 26.91%. The business had revenue of $16.70 billion for the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $16.64 billion. During the same period last year, the firm earned $2.77 earnings per share. The company’s quarterly revenue was up 5.7% on a year-over-year basis. As a group, equities analysts forecast that Accenture plc will post 12.73 EPS for the current year.

Accenture Dividend Announcement

The company also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Thursday, May 15th. Stockholders of record on Thursday, April 10th will be paid a $1.48 dividend. The ex-dividend date is Thursday, April 10th. This represents a $5.92 dividend on an annualized basis and a dividend yield of 1.94%. Accenture’s dividend payout ratio (DPR) is presently 49.66%.

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.