Last Friday, Accenture (NYSE: ACN) stock jumped 4.5% after the company beat earnings expectations yet again and raised guidance. Investors cheered the company's results, outlook. and impressive financial ratios.

Well, institutional investors did, anyway. They own about 82% of the company. Even with a market cap of about $35 billion, the stock is not well known among individual investors.

And that's their loss.

Checking all the right boxes
Accenture has significant international exposure and a growing dividend, and it regularly beats earnings estimates. Its client list is a Who's Who of Global 1000 companies. And it has a talented and deep management bench. IBM's (NYSE: IBM) services business would like to be more like Accenture. That's quite a compliment, considering most large tech players want to be more like IBM.

Earnings per share of $0.75 for Accenture's most recent quarter beat the consensus estimate of $0.72 and grew 25% year-over-year. It's Accenture's 13th earnings beat in 14 quarters. With two quarters left in the fiscal year, management guided fiscal 2011 EPS up by $0.14 to between $3.22 and $3.30, an increase of 21% to 24%. Revenue of $6.5 billion increased 17% year over year. New bookings were $7 billion.

Accenture's financials compare favorably with other major providers of IT services -- IBM, Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ) and Computer Sciences (NYSE: CSC) -- and hold their own versus other large tech companies.

Growth Over the Past Four Quarters

Company

Revenue Growth

EPS Growth*

Net Margin

ROE

Accenture

11.0%

26.2%

8.0%

60.2%
IBM

4.3%

15.1%

14.9%

64.9%
Hewlett-Packard

8.8%

18.0%

7.2%

22.0%
Computer Sciences

1.0%

(13.5%)

5.1%

12.0%
Apple

63.3%

74.6%

21.8%

36.8%
Microsoft

13.6%

28.8%

30.8%

44.3%
Google

24.0%

28.9%

29.0%

20.7%

*Excluding extraordinary items.
Source: Capital IQ, a division of Standard & Poor's.

Company

Trailing P/E

Forward P/E

Forward Dividend Yield

Accenture

17.6

15.6

1.7%
IBM

13.8

12.2

1.6%
Hewlett-Packard

8.9

8.2

1.1%
Computer Sciences

9.1

9.1

1.7%
Apple

19.3

14.3

N/A
Microsoft

10.9

9.7

2.5%
Google

19.7

16.9

N/A

Sources: CNBC.com and Yahoo! Finance, as of March 25 close.

It's no surprise that Accenture trades at a premium to competitors. Accenture is well positioned to benefit from an improving economy because of its exposure to project-based work and strong customer relationships. CSC has high exposure to government clients and is suffering from budget cuts in that sector. In its most recent quarterly report, HP -- which acquired services goliath EDS in 2008 -- cited its services business as an area for improvement.

IBM is the competitor that worries Accenture, but even mighty IBM saw low-single-digit revenue growth in its services business last quarter. As much as I admire IBM and like IBM stock -- especially at its current valuation -- Accenture is plain and simple out-executing its competitors.

Foolish takeaway
Accenture is a well-managed company with a global presence. It's taking market share and benefiting from an improving economy. The people on its management acts like the owners they are, which is a plus for shareholder value. Individual investors would be well served to take a look at this little-known company.

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