Accenture Increases Financial Guidance with Focus on GenAI and Workforce Training

“GenAI continues to be a catalyst for reinvention across the enterprise, and building the database needed to capitalize on AI is a growing part of that growth,” » said Julie Sweet, president and CEO of Accenture.

Accenture overcame a stable demand environment to increase its revenue for the first fiscal quarter of 2025 and raise its full-year guidance thanks to its growing focus on GenAI, its growing list of acquisitions and training its rapidly growing workforce.

It was a message investors wanted to hear as they drove the company’s stock price up more than 7 percent to $372.16 per share by the end of the trading day.

Julie Sweet, president and CEO of Accenture During the company’s first fiscal quarter 2025 financial analyst conference call on Thursday, she said she was very pleased with Accenture’s performance in the quarter, which executed its strategy to position the company for strong growth in fiscal year 2025.

“Our customers continue to prioritize large-scale transformations, and we are their reinvention partner of choice, as evidenced by our $18.7 billion in bookings, including 30 customers with quarterly bookings greater than $100 million “, she said.

Accenture had what Sweet called another “landmark” quarter in GenAI with $1.2 billion in bookings and about $500 million in revenue.

Accenture is responding by investing in its business and people, with $242 million invested in five acquisitions and approximately 14 million hours of training provided during the quarter to help bring the latest solutions and technologies to clients, to provide employees marketable skills and to reinvent its services. using GenAI.

“We have increased our data and AI workforce to approximately 69,000 people, continuing our progress toward our goal of 80,000 by the end of fiscal 2026,” she said. “We are proud to be recognized by Fortune as one of the World’s Best Workplaces, moving from No. 10 to No. 6.”

During the quarter, Accenture added approximately 24,000 employees.

Accenture’s acquisitions in the fiscal first quarter include U.S.-based Award Solutions, which Sweet said expands the company’s training offerings tailored to the unique needs of telecommunications network managers, network operations, engineers performance and IT professionals; Consus.health, a healthcare management consultancy based in Germany; Germany-based management and technology consulting company focused on SAP Camelot Management Consultants; and Joshua Tree Group, a US-based supply chain consulting firm specializing in distribution center performance.

The company plans to spend $3 billion on acquisitions for the entire 2025 fiscal year.

Accenture’s demand environment during the quarter was similar to what the company experienced, Sweet said.

“Our clients are focused on reinvention, which means large-scale transformations,” she said. “We are currently not seeing an improvement in our customers’ overall spend, particularly on smaller transactions. When these market conditions improve, we will be well positioned to take advantage of them while continuing to meet demand for the critical programs our customers prioritize, as planned.

Building the strong digital core needed for reinvention was an important driver of Accenture’s growth this quarter, Sweet said.

“GenAI continues to be a catalyst for reinvention across the enterprise, and building the database needed to capitalize on AI is a growing part of that growth,” she said. “Themes related to both profitability and growth continue in the demand we are seeing. (Through) our strategy to be the reinvention partner of choice and how we bring together our services, our ecosystem relationships and our large-scale investments in cutting-edge platforms like SynOps and GenWizard, as well as technologies Like GenAI to drive value for our customers, we help our customers build their digital cloud core, including in the cloud, which saw double-digit growth this quarter.

Asked by an analyst whether Accenture sees market conditions improving in the future, Sweet said last year was a period of limited spending, particularly on smaller deals, but since then the company focused on winning larger reinvention customers.

“The idea was to meet the demand, which translates into greater reinventions, and that would allow us to return to strong growth in 2025, as these transactions start to multiply,” she said. “And so what you see is the result of what we’re really proud of, which is a little bit of agility last year, that when the market changed, we changed. As you know, these are not easy deals to close quickly, and we quickly changed course last year, responded to demand, and then put ourselves in this position. This is why we emphasized that the market environment has not changed. This is the result of the strategy that we have implemented, and which we are particularly capable of implementing because we have all the skills and capabilities. We offer a mix of consulting and managed services.

When asked if the upcoming change in U.S. presidency and focus on efficiency would impact Accenture, Sweet said his company is excited because its skills at the federal level are aimed at increasing efficiency and contribute to the security of the country.

“We are working with a US federal agency to secure critical infrastructure,” she said. And to change services to citizens, we work with very important agencies. So we believe we are very well positioned to continue to contribute to the federal government’s mission to secure, help citizens and drive greater efficiency, which will be closely linked to cloud, data and AI. And what really puts us in a unique position is that we think there will be an even greater appetite to bring commercial solutions to the federal government. And we’re in a very unique position because we have strong government expertise, but we have commercial and private solutions. We are the leader among all major ecosystem partners. … The vast majority of what we do is essential to the mission of the federal government. We therefore see a real opportunity to continue to collaborate with the new administration, as we have done with all administrations.

Accenture in numbers

For its fiscal 2025 first quarter, which ended Nov. 30, Accenture reported revenue of $17.69 billion, up about 9% from the $16.22 billion reported by the company for its first fiscal quarter 2024.

This included communications, media and technology revenue of $2.86 billion, up 7 percent; financial services revenue of $3.17 billion, up about 4 percent; health and utilities revenue of $3.81 billion, up about 13 percent; product revenue of $5.43 billion, up about 12 percent; and resource revenues of $2.42 billion, up about 6 percent.

Of the total revenue, $9.05 billion came from consulting, up 7 percent, while $8.64 billion came from managed services, up about 11 percent.

Revenue for Accenture’s Americas business was $8.73 billion, up 9%, while GenAI’s new bookings totaled $1.2 billion.

Accenture also reported GAAP net income of $2.32 billion, or $3.59 per share, up from last year’s $2.01 billion, or $3.10 per share.

Looking to the future

For its second fiscal quarter 2025, Accenture forecasts revenue between $16.2 billion and $16.8 billion, an increase of 5% to 9% compared to its revenue for the second fiscal quarter 2024.

For full fiscal 2025, Accenture raised its expected year-over-year revenue growth to 4% to 7%, up from its previous estimate of 3% to 6%. .

Accenture also expects GAAP earnings for the year to be between $12.43 and $12.79 per share, up from $12.55 per share to $12.91 per share. The new estimates would represent growth of 9 to 12 percent in fiscal 2024.