Accenture share price has risen modestly in the past few days as investors react to the company’s earnings. ACN rose to a high of $268, which is higher than this month’s low of $243. It remains about 36% below the highest level this year, giving it a market cap of more than $166 billion. So, is Accenture a good buy?
Accenture is a leading technology company that offers consulting services globally, the firm provides services like application services, artificial intelligence, digital commerce, technology consulting, and cybersecurity services. It has over 721k employees globally and over $72 billion in bookings and revenues of over $62 billion.
In the most recent quarter, Accenture’s revenue rose by 15% to over $15.4 billion as companies continued spending on technology. Consolidated revenues for the quarter were $8.3 billion as technology services grew by double-digits. In Europe, despite the ongoing war in Ukraine, revenues rose by 26%. Elsewhere, in growth markets, revenue rose by 26%.
Meanwhile, Accenture said that its operating profit rose to $2.3 billion. Cash balance dropped from $8.2 billion to $7.9 billion. As a result, the company decided to acquire Inspirage, a company that offers implementation solutions for Oracle’s cloud-based supply chain management software.
Accenture is also extremely generous to investors. It recently approved $3 billion in additional share repurchases, bringing the outstanding authority to $6.1 billion. The company also increased its dividend by 15.5% to $1.12 and a forward yield of 1.69%.
Still, Accenture’s returns are much worse than those of other competitors. Its forward yield of 1.69% is lower than that of IBM, Infosys, and Cognizant Technologies, which have a yield of 5.39%, 2.25%, and 1.81%, respectively.
The daily chart shows that the ACN stock price has been in a strong bearish trend in the past few months. This stock crashed to a low of $267, which was the lowest level in May, June, and July. The stock dropped below the 25-day and 50-day moving averages while the MACD has formed a bullish divergence pattern.
Accenture has formed a break and retest pattern, which is usually a bearish sign. Therefore, there is a likelihood that the stock will resume the bearish trend as sellers target the key support at $240. The stop-loss for this trade will be at $275.
This post was last modified on Oct 21, 2022, 07:24 BST 07:24