Accenture Slashes FY20 Outlook; Boosts Dividend 10% - Quick Facts

(RTTNews) - While reporting financial results for the second quarter on Thursday, Accenture Plc (ACN) slashed its business outlook for the full-year 2020 to reflect expected impact of coronavirus pandemic, and provided revenue guidance for the third quarter.

For fiscal 2020, the company now expects earnings in a range of $7.48 to $7.70 per share on revenue growth of 3 to 6 percent in local currency.

Previously, the company projected earnings in the range of $7.66 to $7.84 per share on revenue growth of 6 to 8 percent in local currency.

On average, analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expect the company to report earnings of $7.84 per share on revenue growth of 6.3 percent to $45.94 billion for the year. Analysts' estimates typically exclude special items.

For the third quarter, Accenture expects revenues to be in the range of $10.75 billion to $11.15 billion, reflecting the company's assumption of a negative 1.5 percent foreign-exchange impact compared with the third quarter of fiscal 2019. The Street is looking for revenues of $11.74 billion for the quarter.

Accenture also declared a 10 percent higher quarterly cash dividend of $0.80 per share, payable on May 15, 2020 to shareholders of record at the close of business on April 16, 2020.

As previously disclosed, the company has moved from a semi-annual to a quarterly schedule for dividend payments in the first quarter of fiscal 2020.