Strength Seen in Accenture (ACN): Can Its 8.3% Jump Turn into More Strength?

Accenture (ACN) shares ended the Thursday trading session 8.3% higher at $207.38. The jump came on an impressive volume with a higher-than-average number of shares changing hands in the session. This compares to the stock's 29.2% loss over the past four weeks.

The surge was fueled by a major strategic alliance with Mistral AI. The partnership underscores a growing investor shift toward software and consulting firms, as focus moves beyond hardware providers to companies enabling enterprise AI adoption and deployment.

This consulting company is expected to post quarterly earnings of $2.87 per share in its upcoming report, which represents a year-over-year change of +1.8%. Revenues are expected to be $17.74 billion, up 6.5% from the year-ago quarter.

Earnings and revenue growth expectations certainly give a good sense of the potential strength in a stock, but empirical research shows that trends in earnings estimate revisions are strongly correlated with near-term stock price movements.

For Accenture, the consensus EPS estimate for the quarter has remained unchanged over the last 30 days. And a stock's price usually doesn't keep moving higher in the absence of any trend in earnings estimate revisions. So, make sure to keep an eye on ACN going forward to see if this recent jump can turn into more strength down the road.

The stock currently carries a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). You can see the complete list of today's Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy) stocks here >>>>

Accenture is a member of the Zacks Computers - IT Services industry. One other stock in the same industry, Serve Robotics Inc. (SERV), finished the last trading session 1.1% higher at $10.47. SERV has returned -15.5% over the past month.

Serve Robotics Inc.'s consensus EPS estimate for the upcoming report has remained unchanged over the past month at -$0.49. Compared to the company's year-ago EPS, this represents a change of -113%. Serve Robotics Inc. currently boasts a Zacks Rank of #3 (Hold).

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This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).

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