Accenture's rising acquisition spending raises concern about shareholder value as its return on invested capital falls. ROIC dropped from about 113% to 25% while debt tripled in two years to $13.4 billion, exceeding cash for the first time. Revenue grew 6% and operating margin held near 15-16%; 25% is still a very good return and net debt is close to zero. AI's potential to reshape consulting remains a worry. x.com 

Accenture's headcount-based consulting model is being cannibalized by AI pure-plays, and it is hard to win in AI when the entire model is selling human labor. Bookings of $19.3B came in below last year's $19.7B, and the stock is making new 52-week lows. Headcount reductions look inevitable across the industry. x.com 

Accenture looks undervalued because the market seems to have decided AI kills consulting, while it could be the big winner as companies need AI implemented at scale. Q2 bookings hit a record $22.1B, AI bookings nearly doubled to $2.2B and FCF guidance rose to $10.8-11.5B. It has 85,000 dedicated AI staff, and unlike McKinsey it builds, runs and maintains AI, yet trades at 14x earnings, cheaper than Coca-Cola. This could be very wrong, but it looks interesting at these levels. x.com  x.com  x.com 

Accenture's core work of installing software for enterprises is exactly what agentic AI does first and cheapest: the coding, testing and documentation that fill billable hours. For ten years it compounded as the firm, with 786,000 people and $70B in revenue, that taught the Fortune 500 to use its tools. Now those tools may not need a teacher. The stock is down 58% in a year and breaking down both fundamentally and technically. x.com 

Accenture and Wolters Kluwer benefit massively from cheaper AI tokens and margin gains as they deploy AI. Their knowledge costs rank among the highest relative to COGS, but regulatory capture, reputation and sticky customers keep revenue broadly intact. Neither shows clear signs of slowing growth; Accenture guided to high-single-digit revenue growth from 2029. Despite enormous terminal-value compression, an unwinding AI-infrastructure trade could bring a sizeable rerating if fundamentals hold. … Show more

Accenture looks overdone after its post-earnings plunge, with a dividend yield above 5% and a forward P/E in the low 10s, near March 2020 pandemic-low prices. It booked 104 deals of $100 million-plus this year, up 13%, raised its dividend 10% and is buying Dragos, runZero and NetRise to expand in cybersecurity. Yet this is not a growth stock: revenue missed, bookings fell 2%, guidance was cut, the Middle East cost $400 million, and agentic AI threatens consulting. It could fall further. x.com 

Accenture looks set to rebound after shares fell 18–20% on guidance cuts tied to AI eating into consulting demand. AI bookings have since hit records, and it announced a $2B buyback plus a mid-market pivot to reignite growth. Holding above $134.70 should start filling the gap above, with targets of $155.82, $169.76 and $181.94. x.com 

IT services firms such as Accenture and Capgemini should benefit because AI makes many marginal use cases economical, raising the number of people needed, and IT services have the bodies. AI does not excuse users from technical expertise such as knowing Diffie-Hellman key exchange or what O(n log n) means. @desmondjywee counters that some giants may burn cash to maintain the illusion of growth while new competitors emerge. x.com 

Big money is rotating out of overextended chips and AI plays, leaving semiconductor stocks that went straight up as exit liquidity for retail still piling in. The money is moving into software such as Accenture, Salesforce and ServiceNow, energy names Hawaiian Electric and Southern Company, and boring dividend stocks Whirlpool, Target and UPS. It is also flowing into China: Alibaba, JD.com, PDD, Baidu and Chinese internet stocks. x.com  x.com