Accenture’s board declared a quarterly cash dividend of $1.63 per share on Thursday, a 10 percent increase from a year earlier, payable to shareholders the same day the company pushes staff to close out a soft quarter.
The dividend announcement follows a third quarter earnings report that fell short of what analysts had expected, with new bookings down 2 percent and revenue guidance for the current quarter coming in below Wall Street forecasts, according to the company’s earnings call transcript. Accenture shares have traded under pressure since the report as investors weigh slowing bookings against the company’s ongoing artificial intelligence push.
Chief executive Julie Sweet has responded by circulating an internal memo urging employees worldwide to find new ways to generate revenue before the fiscal year closes on August 31. The memo asked staff to prioritize closing deals and expanding existing client work in the final weeks of the quarter, a request that came alongside a one time exception letting employees carry over unused vacation days into the next fiscal year rather than losing them.
Sweet has spent much of the past year restructuring Accenture around generative AI services, a shift she described to Fortune in April as the hardest change the 770,000 person firm has undertaken in its history. The company has leaned heavily on AI consulting and implementation work to offset slower growth in its traditional outsourcing and technology services business, even as that transition has yet to fully show up in bookings growth.
The dividend increase signals that Accenture’s board remains confident in the company’s underlying cash flow despite the bookings miss, a pattern common among large consulting firms navigating a slower spending environment among corporate clients. Accenture has raised its dividend annually for more than a decade.
Accenture is scheduled to report full fiscal year results in the coming months, when investors will get a clearer picture of whether the late quarter sales push Sweet requested from staff translated into stronger bookings numbers.
