Accenture up 17% premarket on $22.2 billion of Q4 bookings; its buyback paid about $131 a share

Accenture shares were trading at $215.27 before the open on Thursday, up 17.4% from Wednesday's $183.37 close, according to Nasdaq.com premarket quotes. The consultancy's fiscal fourth-quarter release showed revenue of $18.68 billion, above the top of its own $17.75 billion to $18.40 billion range, and CNBC reported it also beat the FactSet consensus of $18.3 billion.

Our morning brief flagged the soft spots: quarterly free cash flow fell to $2.85 billion from $3.81 billion and clients took 50 days to pay instead of 47. Here is what sits underneath the headline numbers.

Bookings: outsourcing is carrying the order book

New bookings were $22.17 billion in the quarter, up 4% in dollars and 5% in local currency, a book-to-bill of 1.2. The split matters. Managed services, the multiyear outsourcing work, booked $12.77 billion at a book-to-bill of 1.4. Consulting booked $9.40 billion at 1.0, meaning it only replaced what it billed.

For the full year, bookings were $84.54 billion, up just 3% in local currency, against revenue growth of 5%. Managed services revenue grew 6% in local currency for the year, consulting 3%. Accenture also counted 141 client bookings of $100 million or more in the year, a record, per chief executive Julie Sweet.

Revenue growth was broad in the quarter: every region grew 7% in local currency, and communications, media and technology clients led the industry groups at 11%. Products, the largest group at $5.56 billion, grew only 4%.

Margins and the clean comparison

Fourth-quarter GAAP operating margin was 15.3%. That looks like a 370 basis point jump, but last year's quarter carried business optimization charges worth $0.78 a share. Against last year's adjusted 15.1%, the gain was 20 basis points. The same caution applies to EPS: $3.29 is 46% above last year's GAAP figure, but 9% above the adjusted $3.03.

The fiscal 2027 outlook is where the margin story firms up. Accenture guided to an operating margin of 15.9% to 16.1%, 50 to 70 basis points above this year's GAAP 15.4% and 10 to 30 basis points above its adjusted 15.8%. EPS guidance is $14.39 to $14.81, and free cash flow $11.0 billion to $11.8 billion against $11.62 billion this year.

The buyback bought the bottom

Accenture repurchased or redeemed 17.6 million shares for $2.3 billion in the fourth quarter, which ran from June through August. That works out to roughly $131 a share ($2.3 billion divided by 17.6 million), close to where the stock bottomed. For the year it retired 39.9 million shares for $7.5 billion, and the board added $6.0 billion of authority in September, leaving about $6.9 billion available. The lower share count added $0.13 to quarterly EPS, while lower non-operating income took away $0.11.

The company returned $11.5 billion in all, up 38%, raised its quarterly dividend 5% to $1.71 and plans to return at least $9.5 billion in fiscal 2027.

Why the move is this large

The size of the jump says as much about where the stock had been as about the quarter. Nasdaq.com price history shows Accenture closed 2025 at $268.30, peaked at $288.54 on January 14, then fell to $124.44 by June 30. The 52-week range is $118.15 to $291.09. Even after Thursday's premarket gain, the shares are about 20% below where they started the year, and about 73% above the June close.

The fear behind the slide is written into Accenture's own risk factors: that AI could reduce demand for its services. A quarter in which managed services bookings ran well ahead of revenue, guidance pointed to wider margins and headcount stood at roughly 814,000 people is the opposite of the collapse that pricing implied. Premarket volume had already reached 2.6 million shares, above the stock's average full-day volume of about 2 million.

What traders will watch next: whether consulting bookings, flat to revenue this quarter, pick up, and whether collections improve from 50 days. The first-quarter guide is $18.95 billion to $19.60 billion in revenue, or 2% to 6% local-currency growth.

Sources: Accenture fourth-quarter and full-year fiscal 2026 results (SEC Form 8-K, Exhibit 99), CNBC, Nasdaq.com premarket quote, summary and historical prices as of 8:51 a.m. ET. Premarket prices move quickly. This is market information, not investment advice.