Accenture plc (NYSE:ACN) is one of the AI Stocks in the Spotlight This Week. On September 24, Evercore ISI analyst Amit Daryanani lowered the price target on the stock to $300.00 (from $330.00) while maintaining an Outperform rating.
As per the analyst, Accenture’s upcoming quarterly report seems promising. The firm expects it to deliver a “steady performance with some upside potential” owing to a stable FX backdrop and de-risked setup.
Post earnings, the firm lowered the price target on the stock to $280.00 (from $300.00) while maintaining an Outperform rating.
“ACN reported modest upside to Aug-qtr results with rev/EPS of $17.6B/$3.03 vs. street at $17.4B/$2.98 – notably new bookings came in at $21.3B (+6%) and gen AI bookings saw a strong acceleration coming in at $1.8B (+80%% y/y). From a geographic basis the ~4.5% cc growth was driven by ~5% growth in Americas (8% ex-public AFS headwind), 6% in APAC and 3% in EMEA. For FY26, the reported revenue guide came in at up +4-7% reported top line growth vs. street expectation for up 5.8% (though guide is inline with buyside expectations). EPS guide came in at $13.52-13.90, bracketing street expectation of $13.78. For FY26 the expectation is for – a) growth to be balanced across consulting and managed services in the low to mid single digit range, b) discretionary spend to decline modestly at low-end of guide an stay flat at the high-end of their FY26 guide, c) EBIT margins to keep expanding as ACN noted they see AI project pricing to be accretive to their overall profile vs. fears that it would be dilutive and d) headcount is expected to grow across all regions and capex is going up y/y by $400M to reflect more hiring and more return to office.
“Gen AI remains a key focus and the acceleration in bookings is a clear positive for the company. They noted they have >77,000 employees that are skilled AI / data professionals (vs. 40K LY) and their revenues from Gen AI projects in FY25 came in at $2.7B and should show robust growth in FY26 as well. Critically, ACN stressed they see Gen AI projects as being margin accretive to their corporate averages and see customers take the Gen AI project savings to kick start other projects (implying this could help both in increasing number of engagements and profit per engagement). Net/net: We think the print and guide were better than feared though expectations were fairly muted. Going forward, the focus will be on can we see organic sales and profit acceleration through FY26 specially as the public headwinds persist within the expected range. Maintain OP but adjusting our target to $280 (prior $300).”
Accenture plc (NYSE:ACN) offers strategy and consulting services.
While we acknowledge the risk and potential of ACN as an investment, our conviction lies in the belief that some AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns and doing so within a shorter time frame. If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than ACN and that has 10,000% upside potential, check out our report about this cheapest AI stock.
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