Accenture plc (NYSE: ACN) is back in the AI spotlight on December 9, 2025. The shares are trading around $269–270 after a brutal year that saw the stock fall roughly 30–40% from its February peak, even as the company delivered record bookings and doubled down on generative AI. linkedin.com+2Barchart.com+2
Today’s main catalyst: a multi‑year partnership with Anthropic, fresh evidence of institutional and insider buying, and a growing chorus of analysts arguing that Accenture’s AI “reinvention” may finally be mispriced in investors’ favor. Seeking Alpha+3Reuters+3GuruFocus+3
Accenture stock on 9 December 2025: price, performance and valuation
As of the latest trade on December 9, 2025, Accenture stock changes hands at about $269.64, up a little over 1% on the day, with an intraday range roughly between $266.6 and $272.5.
Key snapshot:
- Market cap: around $165 billion Value Sense+2Public+2
- Trailing P/E: ~22x; forward P/E: ~19x StockAnalysis+2Yahoo Finance+2
- Price‑to‑sales: about 2.4x; price‑to‑book: roughly 5.3x Yahoo Finance+1
- ROE (TTM): ~25–26% Wisesheets
- Dividend: forward annual dividend about $6.52 per share, a yield near 2.4–2.5%; last ex‑dividend date was October 10, 2025 Yahoo Finance+1
The more important context:
- After hitting an all‑time high near $394 in February 2025, Accenture slid into the $230s by August, a decline of about 40% at the lows. linkedin.com+1
- Multiple sources put the year‑to‑date drop in the high‑20s to low‑30s percent range as of late November and early December. Webull+3Nasdaq+3Trefis+3
In other words, Accenture is still a big‑cap AI and consulting leader with premium financials, but it is much cheaper than it was a year ago and trades at lower multiples than its own recent history and parts of the broader U.S. IT sector, though it still carries a premium to some narrower IT‑services peers. Companies Market Cap+2Simply Wall St+2
Today’s big story: a multi‑year Anthropic partnership
The headline news on December 9 is that Accenture and Anthropic have struck a multi‑year partnership to accelerate enterprise adoption of generative AI. Reuters+2MarketScreener+2
Key elements of the deal:
- The companies are forming a new Accenture Anthropic Business Group focused on building and deploying AI solutions based on Anthropic’s Claude models. Reuters+1
- Accenture plans to train around 30,000 employees to use Claude and Claude Code, Anthropic’s AI coding assistant. This is Anthropic’s largest enterprise deployment to date. Reuters+2The Wall Street Journal+2
- The group will prioritize heavily regulated industries such as financial services, healthcare, life sciences and the public sector—areas where AI adoption has lagged because of compliance and risk concerns. Reuters+1
This Anthropic move sits on top of Accenture’s recent partnership with OpenAI, under which a large portion of its IT workforce is being trained on ChatGPT Enterprise and related tools. Reuters+1
Pre‑market, one outlet reported Accenture stock up about 1.25% to $270 on the back of the Anthropic announcement, highlighting how AI news has become the primary driver of sentiment in ACN shares. Tokenist
Institutional and insider buying: confidence or just housekeeping?
While AI headlines grab attention, ownership trends are also supportive for Accenture bulls:
- Ossiam, a quantitative asset manager, recently disclosed that it bought an additional 12,596 Accenture shares, lifting its position to 22,221 shares. MarketBeat
- State Street Corp, one of the world’s biggest asset managers, now holds an Accenture stake valued at about $8.37 billion, underscoring how deeply embedded ACN is in institutional portfolios. MarketBeat
On the insider front:
- CEO Julie Sweet acquired 5,172 Class A shares at roughly $268.54 per share under Accenture’s Voluntary Equity Investment Program. Stock Titan
- Accenture’s general counsel similarly bought 1,594 shares at the same price through the same plan. Stock Titan
These stock purchases are structured through a standing equity program, so they should not be read as definitive “calls” on short‑term price. Still, large institutional positions and ongoing insider accumulation generally reinforce the message that key stakeholders are committed to the long‑term story.
AI‑first “reinvention”: earnings, bookings and restructuring
Accenture describes its current strategy as a company‑wide “reinvention” centered on AI, data and cloud—and the numbers from its latest results back up how big that bet has become.
Fiscal 2025 by the numbers
For the fiscal year ended August 31, 2025, Accenture reported: Moneycontrol+4Accenture Newsroom+4Barchart.com+4
- Revenue: about $69.7 billion, up 7% year over year.
- Q4 (June–August) revenue:$17.6 billion, also up about 7% in U.S. dollars (4.5% in local currency).
- New bookings:
- $21.3 billion in Q4.
- A record $80.6 billion for the full year.
- Generative AI bookings: over $1.8 billion in Q4 and roughly $5–6 billion for the year, with management indicating that advanced AI revenue roughly tripled year over year.
- Q4 EPS: adjusted EPS of about $3.03 beat consensus (~$2.97), while GAAP EPS came in lower due to restructuring charges and optimization costs. Investing.com+2investor.accenture.com+2
- Margins: Q4 adjusted operating margin around 15.1%, slightly higher than a year earlier despite heavy AI investment. investor.accenture.com+2Investing.com+2
The company now has roughly 779,000 employees worldwide and reported that AI and data specialists have grown to about 77,000, up from 40,000 two years ago. Accenture Newsroom+2Moneycontrol+2
Restructuring and workforce shift
To fund this reinvention, Accenture is also in the middle of a major restructuring:
- Management has outlined an $865 million restructuring program, including more than 11,000 job cuts, aimed at rebalancing the workforce toward AI‑related roles. Financial Times+1
- Executives have been explicit that employees who cannot be retrained for AI‑centric work may ultimately be exited, even as the firm continues hiring aggressively in areas like data engineering, cloud architecture and AI safety. Financial Times
This combination of strong AI‑driven bookings, margin resilience and painful restructuring helps explain why Q4 results beat estimates on both revenue and EPS, yet the stock still traded down immediately afterward—investors remain nervous about the trajectory for IT services spending and the true payoff from the AI CapEx boom. Nasdaq+3Investing.com+3Barron’s+3
A web of AI partnerships and acquisitions
The Anthropic deal is not a one‑off. Over the past two years, Accenture has been stitching together an ecosystem of AI partners, tools and specialist acquisitions:
- OpenAI: Accenture has a broad partnership to train a large portion of its IT workforce on ChatGPT Enterprise and embed OpenAI models into client solutions. An analysis of the partnership notes that Accenture is already turning “AI hype into profits” via concrete client work. Finviz+1
- Snowflake: A recently expanded collaboration with Snowflake’s AI Data Cloud is meant to scale generative AI innovation and data‑driven transformation for global clients such as Caterpillar. Accenture Newsroom
- WEVO: Accenture has taken a strategic stake in WEVO, an AI‑powered customer research platform that lets clients simulate and validate customer behavior before rolling out products and services. Accenture Newsroom
- Acquisitions: Trade press tracking Accenture’s dealmaking estimate dozens of acquisitions across 2024–2025, including AI‑focused firms such as Halfspace, NeuraFlash and Decho, to deepen capabilities in generative AI, Salesforce automation and cloud data engineering. CRN+1
Accenture’s Tech Vision 2025 research underlines why the company sees such a large runway: fewer than 40% of executives say they have scaled gen‑AI solutions, and only about one in eight report significant enterprise‑wide impact so far. Accenture
If those numbers move meaningfully higher, firms capable of designing, deploying and operating complex AI systems at scale—precisely Accenture’s positioning—could see years of follow‑through demand.
What Wall Street says about Accenture stock
Despite the share price slump, analysts remain broadly positive on ACN.
Consensus ratings and price targets
Several major aggregators show a clustered set of “Buy/Overweight” ratings and mid‑to‑high single‑digit upside over the next 12 months:
- MarketBeat: 28 analysts, average target $294.25, with a range of $215 to $370, implying about 9% upside from the current ~$270 level. MarketBeat
- TipRanks: 20 analysts, average target $289.63, high $346, low $250, pointing to roughly 8–9% upside. TipRanks
- MarketWatch: classifies Accenture as “Overweight” with an average target around $278–279 based on 28 analyst estimates. MarketWatch
Individual brokers such as TD Cowen have reiterated Buy ratings with targets near $295, reinforcing that the Street still sees Accenture as a quality compounder rather than a broken growth story. Robinhood
Value‑oriented takes after a 30–40% slide
A growing set of research notes and media pieces describe Accenture as a potential value opportunity:
- Trefis argues that ACN “could be a good value buy,” noting that the stock is down close to 30% year to date, trades at lower‑than‑usual valuation multiples, and still posts solid mid‑teens operating margins. Trefis
- Another Trefis analysis contends that Wall Street may be underestimating Accenture’s potential, citing healthy revenue growth, a robust backlog of AI‑related bookings, and a P/E ratio around 20x, only modestly above S&P 500 medians. Trefis
- A Simply Wall St deep dive frames Accenture’s $3 billion multiyear AI investment as a key driver of future growth and asks whether the stock’s 30% slide has created a mispricing. Yahoo Finance+2Webull+2
- A Zacks note from October highlighted that Accenture shares had fallen about 31.5% year‑to‑date, even as generative AI bookings surged, framing ACN as a potentially attractive—but not risk‑free—re‑entry point. Nasdaq
- Articles from Seeking Alpha, Forbes and others point to the stock trading at roughly 14x free cash flow at recent levels and at a discount to its own historical price‑to‑sales and P/E ratios, with one piece calling this the “best time in 10 years to buy” and another describing a “rare opportunity” after a 40% selloff. Seeking Alpha+2Seeking Alpha+2
But not everyone is relaxed
Short‑term traders and more cautious strategists still flag risks:
- A Benzinga screen of worrisome tech stocks put Accenture on the list for momentum‑focused investors, pointing to its volatile chart and recent drawdown. Benzinga
- Some commentary emphasizes that Q4 guidance for fiscal 2026—revenue growth of just 2–5% and only modest margin expansion—looks conservative for a stock that historically commanded a premium multiple. Investing.com+2Barron’s+2
- Analysts at firms like Zacks highlight that the IT services industry as a whole is under pressure, with clients scrutinizing discretionary projects and taking longer to sign large transformation deals. Nasdaq+1
Valuation check: still quality at a more reasonable price
Pulling together the different datasets, Accenture today looks like:
- Quality: high ROE (~25%), durable double‑digit operating margins, strong free‑cash‑flow conversion, leading position in large enterprise clients. Accenture Newsroom+3Wisesheets+3Investing.com+3
- Valuation:
- Trailing P/E around 22x, below its 10‑year average P/E near the mid‑20s and lower than many large‑cap software/IT peers, though higher than some pure IT‑services indices. Simply Wall St+3Companies Market Cap+3FullRatio+3
- PS ratio of about 2.4x and PB ratio a little above 5x, both down significantly from 2021–2022 peaks. Yahoo Finance+2StockAnalysis+2
- PEG ratios (price vs. expected growth) around 2x, suggesting a moderate premium to the market for what is now mid‑single‑digit to high‑single‑digit growth. Yahoo Finance+2AlphaQuery+2
For investors who frame Accenture as a compounder with durable margins and strong cash returns, this combination of lower multiples and improving AI metrics is what underpins the current “value opportunity” narrative. Moneycontrol+3Trefis+3Trefis+3
Key catalysts to watch next
1. Q1 fiscal 2026 earnings on December 18
Accenture will report Q1 FY26 results on December 18, 2025, with a conference call scheduled for 8:00 a.m. EST. Yahoo Finance+4Accenture Newsroom+4Yahoo Finance+4
Investors will be focused on:
- Whether new bookings remain strong after the record FY25 numbers.
- How much incremental revenue comes from generative AI and related services.
- Any update to the 2–5% revenue growth and $13.52–13.90 adjusted EPS guidance for FY26. Investing.com+1
2. Anthropic and OpenAI deals translating into dollars
The market will want to see concrete evidence that AI partnerships are more than marketing:
- Utilization of newly trained Claude Code and OpenAI‑based tools by Accenture developers. Reuters+1
- Case studies and deal wins in regulated industries, where AI adoption is still early. Reuters+1
3. Progress on restructuring and margins
Accenture’s ability to execute the $865 million restructuring, retrain staff, and still nudge margins higher will be crucial to sustaining its premium valuation. Trefis+3Financial Times+3investor.accenture.com+3
Risks to keep in mind
Even after the sell‑off and today’s positive headlines, Accenture is not a risk‑free story:
- Macro and IT‑spending risk: If global IT and consulting budgets weaken further, bookings and revenue could come in at the low end—or below—the 2–5% growth range the company has indicated. Financial Times+2The Times of India+2
- AI boom‑bust dynamics: Wider worries about an AI investment bubble, including concerns over debt‑funded data‑center build‑outs, could weigh on all AI‑linked names, even those with strong fundamentals. Reuters+2Reuters+2
- Competitive pressure: Hyperscalers and SaaS vendors are embedding more AI capabilities directly into their platforms, potentially shrinking the traditional IT‑services “pie” and forcing firms like Accenture to move up the value chain. linkedin.com+2Moneycontrol+2
- Execution and drawdown history: Historically, even quality stocks like Accenture have seen 30–40% drawdowns during major market shocks, and recent history has shown that its shares can be volatile when expectations reset. Trefis+2Nasdaq+2
Bottom line: what today’s news means for ACN stock
On December 9, 2025, the case for Accenture looks like this:
- A global leader in consulting and IT services with nearly $70 billion in annual revenue and a massive backlog of work. Accenture Newsroom+1
- A company that has bet early and heavily on generative AI, now signing multi‑year deals with both OpenAI and Anthropic, and building out an army of tens of thousands of AI and data specialists. CRN+3Reuters+3Finviz+3
- A stock that is materially cheaper than a year ago, trading at around 22x trailing earnings and 2.4x sales after a roughly 30–40% decline from its highs, yet still earns high returns on equity and pays a respectable dividend. linkedin.com+3StockAnalysis+3Wisesheets+3
Bulls see today’s Anthropic partnership, ongoing insider buying and strong AI‑driven bookings as confirmation that Accenture is emerging as one of the key “picks and shovels” providers in the enterprise AI gold rush, now available at a more reasonable price. Bears counter that growth is slowing, the consulting cycle is uncertain, and AI spending could prove more cyclical and fragile than current hype suggests. Benzinga+4Reuters+4GuruFocus+4
For now, Wall Street consensus tilts positive with modest upside, but the real story will be written by the next few quarters of earnings, bookings and AI wins.
Disclaimer: This article is for information and commentary only and does not constitute financial advice, investment recommendation or a solicitation to buy or sell any security. Always do your own research or consult a qualified financial advisor before making investment decisions.
