“We exceeded our fourth-quarter revenue guidance range and capped off another year of broad-based growth across our business.” Julie Sweet, Accenture CEO, in the company’s fiscal fourth-quarter release
Accenture stock closed up almost 16% on Thursday, after trading as high as 22%, because the market had priced in a collapse that the numbers did not show.
CNBC reported the shares were heading for their best day ever. The quarter was a beat: revenue of $18.68 billion against $18.03 billion expected, EPS of $3.29 against $3.18, and a record 141 client bookings of $100 million or more.
Here is what the rally did not price. Total new bookings rose 4% in dollars to $22.2 billion. The record is in the big deals. The base is growing slowly.
The forecast tells the same story. Accenture guides fiscal 2027 revenue growth of 3% to 6% in local currency. It grew 5% in fiscal 2026 on $74.2 billion of revenue. The midpoint, 4.5%, is a step down. It beat the 3.9% Wall Street expected, which is why the stock jumped.
The EPS Math
The company’s release headlines GAAP EPS of $14.39 to $14.81 for fiscal 2027, “a 6% to 9% increase.” That compares against fiscal 2026 GAAP EPS of $13.56, which carries business optimization costs.
Use the adjusted $13.97 base and the same range is 3.0% to 6.0%. Reuters, in a report carried by WHBL, reported the outlook as 3% to 6% for both revenue and adjusted EPS. That is the like-for-like number.
Two framings of one forecast. One flatters.
What Is Still Missing
The fear was that AI eats the work Accenture bills for. Susquehanna’s caution, as Reuters relayed it, is that systems integration and application development are nearly half of revenue.
The fiscal fourth-quarter release I read carries no separate AI bookings or AI revenue figure. We flagged that in June, when AI bookings were the number that mattered. It is still the number that matters, and it is still not there.
Accenture employs about 814,000 people and plans to return at least $9.5 billion to shareholders in fiscal 2027.
BTN’s view: the rally was a relief trade on a company that proved it is not dying. It did not prove it is accelerating. A stock that gains 16% on a 4.5% midpoint is priced for the fear to be over. Until Accenture shows what AI contributes in dollars, the fear is not over.