Harding Loevner, an asset management company, released its “Global Equity Strategy” third-quarter 2025 investor letter. A copy of the letter can be downloaded here. The fund returned 2.62% gross (2.52% net) in the third quarter of 2025, compared to a 7.74% return for the MSCI All Country World Index and 7.36% gain for the MSCI World Index. YTD, the strategy rose 10.61% (net) compared to 18.86% and 17.83% for the indexes. The firm highlighted in the letter that the last six months represented one of the strongest momentum phases in over 70 years. Since the beginning of the year, high-momentum stocks have outperformed low-momentum stocks by a remarkable 45 percentage points, with much of the growth driven by advancements in AI. In addition, please check the fund’s top five holdings to know its best picks in 2025.
In its third-quarter 2025 investor letter, Harding Loevner Global Equity Strategy highlighted stocks such as Accenture plc (NYSE:ACN). Accenture plc (NYSE:ACN) is a professional services company that provides management consulting, technology, and outsourcing services. The one-month return of Accenture plc (NYSE:ACN) was 13.06%, and its shares lost 23.81% of their value over the last 52 weeks. On December 03, 2025, Accenture plc (NYSE:ACN) stock closed at $272.85 per share, with a market capitalization of $169.945 billion.
Harding Loevner Global Equity Strategy stated the following regarding Accenture plc (NYSE:ACN) in its third quarter 2025 investor letter:
“Markets have now pinpointed various software and IT-services companies as likely victims of Al. The portfolio holds Accenture plc (NYSE:ACN), the leading global provider of IT services, with almost 800,000 employees and annual revenues of US$70 billion. There is debate over whether technological change will commoditize its business, reduce barriers to entry, and lower the margins of incumbents, or instead allow Accenture to capture new revenue streams. Management seems to recognize the significance of generative AI for its industry (dinosaurs saw the meteor, bears will say). Therefore, it’s racing to modernize the business with the goal of delivering, and eventually profiting from, Al functionality across product lines. The question is whether Accenture can evolve fast enough; its progress so far is encouraging.
Accenture’s Al bookings doubled to US$5.9 billion in its fiscal year that ended in August. Accenture also remains the number one consultant for Google, Microsoft, Amazon Web Services, Oracle, and NVIDIA, and business with its key partners grew 9% in fiscal 2025. The company’s competitive advantage stems from these key relationships and the breadth of its domain expertise rather than just having armies of computer programmers. It has a uniquely skilled workforce, with 77,000 Al and data specialists, and the capacity to invest further in its people and technological capabilities to stay competitive.
Accenture, an IT-services holding, delivered good results; however, its outlook was disappointing due to slower growth in the IT budgets of large companies, which are proceeding more cautiously with some projects due to macroeconomic concerns while also redirecting capital toward Al-focused work. The reduced guidance added to concerns that Al disruption may become a net negative for Accenture.”
Accenture plc (NYSE:ACN) is not on our list of 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. As per our database, 66 hedge fund portfolios held Accenture plc (NYSE:ACN) at the end of the third quarter, which was 65 in the previous quarter. In the fiscal fourth quarter of 2025, Accenture plc (NYSE:ACN) reported revenues of $17.6 billion, reflecting a 7% increase in U.S. dollars and 4.5% in local currency. While we acknowledge the risk and potential of Accenture plc (NYSE: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 Accenture plc (NYSE:ACN) and that has 10,000% upside potential, check out our report about this cheapest AI stock.
In another article, we covered Accenture plc (NYSE:ACN) and shared the list of best slow growth stocks to invest in. In addition, please check out our hedge fund investor letters Q3 2025 page for more investor letters from hedge funds and other leading investors.
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Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.
