Patten & Patten Inc. TN Purchases Shares of 640 Accenture plc (NYSE:ACN)

Patten & Patten Inc. TN purchased a new stake in shares of Accenture plc (NYSE:ACN) in the fourth quarter, according to its most recent 13F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The fund purchased 640 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock, valued at approximately $225,000.

Other large investors have also made changes to their positions in the company. Baldwin Wealth Partners LLC MA grew its stake in shares of Accenture by 6.5% during the 4th quarter. Baldwin Wealth Partners LLC MA now owns 63,429 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock valued at $22,314,000 after purchasing an additional 3,883 shares during the period. Davidson Trust Co. grew its stake in shares of Accenture by 7.4% during the 4th quarter. Davidson Trust Co. now owns 2,307 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock valued at $812,000 after purchasing an additional 158 shares during the period. Franklin Street Advisors Inc. NC grew its stake in shares of Accenture by 126.8% during the 4th quarter. Franklin Street Advisors Inc. NC now owns 40,051 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock valued at $14,090,000 after purchasing an additional 22,391 shares during the period. Charles Schwab Investment Management Inc. grew its stake in shares of Accenture by 1.2% during the 3rd quarter. Charles Schwab Investment Management Inc. now owns 4,823,754 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock valued at $1,705,100,000 after acquiring an additional 56,937 shares during the period. Finally, China Universal Asset Management Co. Ltd. grew its stake in shares of Accenture by 37.5% during the 4th quarter. China Universal Asset Management Co. Ltd. now owns 3,094 shares of the information technology services provider’s stock valued at $1,088,000 after acquiring an additional 843 shares during the period. 75.14% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors.

Insider Transactions at Accenture

In related news, CAO Melissa A. Burgum sold 1,487 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction dated Tuesday, January 21st. The stock was sold at an average price of $354.54, for a total transaction of $527,200.98. Following the sale, the chief accounting officer now owns 9,247 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $3,278,431.38. This trade represents a 13.85 % decrease in their ownership of the stock. The sale was disclosed in a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available through this link. Also, CEO Julie Spellman Sweet sold 8,793 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction dated Wednesday, February 5th. The shares were sold at an average price of $394.47, for a total value of $3,468,574.71. Following the sale, the chief executive officer now directly owns 11,858 shares in the company, valued at approximately $4,677,625.26. The trade was a 42.58 % decrease in their position. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. In the last 90 days, insiders have sold 22,280 shares of company stock valued at $8,316,190. 0.02% of the stock is currently owned by corporate insiders.

Analyst Ratings Changes

A number of brokerages recently issued reports on ACN. JPMorgan Chase & Co. boosted their price objective on Accenture from $370.00 to $396.00 and gave the company an “overweight” rating in a research note on Monday, December 16th. StockNews.com downgraded Accenture from a “buy” rating to a “hold” rating in a research note on Tuesday, March 11th. Stifel Nicolaus cut their price objective on Accenture from $390.00 to $380.00 and set a “buy” rating for the company in a research note on Wednesday, February 26th. The Goldman Sachs Group raised Accenture from a “neutral” rating to a “buy” rating and boosted their price target for the stock from $370.00 to $420.00 in a report on Friday, December 6th. Finally, Robert W. Baird raised Accenture from a “neutral” rating to an “outperform” rating and set a $390.00 price target on the stock in a report on Monday. Eight equities research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and sixteen have given a buy rating to the company’s stock. According to data from MarketBeat, Accenture presently has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average price target of $388.04.

Accenture Stock Performance

Shares of Accenture stock opened at $326.25 on Tuesday. The stock’s fifty day moving average is $362.51 and its two-hundred day moving average is $358.14. The company has a market capitalization of $204.16 billion, a PE ratio of 27.37, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 3.23 and a beta of 1.24. The company has a quick ratio of 1.47, a current ratio of 1.47 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.17. Accenture plc has a 52 week low of $278.69 and a 52 week high of $398.35.

Accenture (NYSE:ACN) last posted its quarterly earnings results on Thursday, December 19th. The information technology services provider reported $3.59 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, topping analysts’ consensus estimates of $3.43 by $0.16. Accenture had a return on equity of 26.91% and a net margin of 11.41%. The business had revenue of $17.69 billion for the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $17.15 billion. During the same quarter in the prior year, the company earned $3.27 EPS. The business’s revenue was up 9.0% compared to the same quarter last year. As a group, analysts expect that Accenture plc will post 12.73 earnings per share for the current year.

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.