Accenture Stock Crashes 18% to 2017 Low
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- Accenture cut its full-year revenue growth forecast to no more than 4%, down from prior guidance of 3 to 5%, after new bookings fell 3% in local currency to $19.3bn for the three months ending May
- Accenture shares closed down 18%, sending market capitalization below $80bn from more than $200bn at the post-Covid consulting peak
- CEO Julie Sweet attributed part of the shortfall to the Middle East war, which she said cost $100mn more in revenue than expected and triggered slower client decision-making elsewhere
- Accenture unveiled three cybersecurity acquisitions — runZero, NetRise, and a majority stake in Dragos — totaling $4.2bn in enterprise value, part of a $9bn fiscal-year M&A budget more than double its original plan
- Jefferies analyst Surinder Thind warned that "questions around the resiliency of demand in an AI-first world are likely to be amplified" given recent advances in agentic AI capabilities
- Sweet said corporate IT budgets have not risen overall — "they're spending it differently" — even as Accenture continues winning AI advisory work and recently agreed to buy UK AI start-up Faculty for $1bn
Why it matters: Accenture's $120bn-plus market-cap wipeout since the post-Covid peak signals that Wall Street no longer views traditional IT consultancies as automatic beneficiaries of enterprise AI adoption. With the company now spending $9bn on acquisitions — double its original plan — to pivot into cybersecurity and AI services, the results show an industry in defensive transformation rather than outright decline, as Sweet insists AI advisory is still flowing in even as discretionary consulting dries up.
