Based on the aggregated intelligence of 180,000-plus investors participating in Motley Fool CAPS, the Fool's free investing community, global consulting giant Accenture (ACN +6.92%) has earned a respected four-star ranking.
With that in mind, let's take a closer look at Accenture and see what CAPS investors are saying about the stock right now.
Accenture facts
|
Headquarters (founded) |
Dublin, Ireland (1995) |
|
Market Cap |
$46.8 billion |
|
Industry |
IT consulting and other services |
|
Trailing-12-Month Revenue |
$28.2 billion |
|
Management |
CEO Pierre Nanterme (since 2011) CFO Pamela Craig (since 2006) |
|
Return on Equity (average, past 3 years) |
64.8% |
|
Cash/Debt |
$5.9 billion / $0 |
|
Dividend Yield |
2.3% |
|
Competitors |
IBM Computer Sciences Infosys |
Sources: S&P Capital IQ and Motley Fool CAPS.
On CAPS, 95% of the 1,350 members who have rated Accenture believe the stock will outperform the S&P 500 going forward.
Just last week, fellow Fool Simon Erickson (TMFInnovator) tapped the company's recent earnings miss as an attractive buy-in opportunity:
Accenture missed Rev guidance, largely due to weakness in Brazil and Europe and fewer big projects, which caused shares to drop 11%. I'm not sure why this miss was so shocking, really. The current market uncertainty is influencing companies' IT/consulting spend, which effected ACN's short-term results.
Looking bigger picture though, ACN is in a great position to outperform:
-Their focus on data analytics and cloud computing are fast-growing markets to be competing in.
-Their reputation is phenomenal. They focus is on long-term relationship building, which allows for recurring revenues and a sticky customer base. ...
-They are one of the few consulting firms to also offer to deploy IT and hardware solutions. ...
-They have an asset-light model that allows them to return profits to shareholders. They have tripled their annual dividend in the last five years.
Accenture has outperformed the market in 8 of the last 10 years. I would expect them to do more of the same in the future.
