Accenture PLC Earnings - Q4 2026 Analysis & Highlights
Accenture delivered strong Q4 and full-year fiscal 2026 results driven by broad-based growth across markets and industries, with significant momentum in AI-driven transformations, record bookings from large enterprise clients, and substantial investments in acquisitions and talent development to position for long-term growth.
Key Financial Results
Q4 revenue of $18.7 billion, growing 7% in local currency, above the top end of guided range.
Full-year fiscal 2026 revenue of $74 billion, growing approximately 5% in local currency and adding approximately $4.5 billion of revenue over FY '25.
Q4 bookings of $22.2 billion, reflecting 4% increase in US dollars and 5% in local currency, with overall book-to-bill of 1.2.
Full-year bookings of more than $84 billion, up 5% in US dollars and 3% in local currency, including 141 quarterly client bookings greater than $100 million, 12 more than last year.
Gross margin for Q4 of 32%, compared to 31.9% for the fourth quarter last year.
Q4 operating margin of 15.3%, a 20 basis point increase from adjusted operating margin in Q4 last year.
Full-year adjusted operating margin of 15.8%, a 20 basis point expansion over adjusted FY '25 results.
Q4 diluted earnings per share grew 9% to $3.29, compared with adjusted diluted EPS of $3.03 in the fourth quarter last year.
Full-year adjusted earnings per share of $13.97, reflecting 8% growth over adjusted FY '25 EPS.
Q4 free cash flow of $2.8 billion resulting from cash generated by operating activities of $3.1 billion, net of property and equipment additions of $250 million.
Full-year free cash flow of $11.6 billion, up 7% year-over-year, reflecting a very strong free cash flow to net income ratio of 1.4.
Days services outstanding of 50 days compared to 48 days last quarter and 47 days in the fourth quarter of last year.
Business Segment Results
Consulting bookings of $9.4 billion in Q4, with a book-to-bill of 1.0.
Managed services bookings of a record $12.8 billion in Q4 after previous record in Q4 of last year, with a book-to-bill of 1.4.
Trailing four-quarter book-to-bill for managed services of 1.2.
Fixed priced work, which includes outcome based, now over 65% of bookings and continues to grow.
Q4 consulting revenues of $9.3 billion, up 6% in US dollars and 7% in local currency.
Q4 managed services revenues of $9.4 billion, up 7% in both US dollars and in local currency, driven by high-single-digit growth in technology managed services and high-single-digit growth in operations.
Full-year consulting revenues of $36.9 billion, up 5% in US dollars and 3% in local currency.
Full-year managed services revenues of $37.3 billion, up 8% in US dollars and 6% in local currency, driven by mid-single-digit growth in technology managed services and high single-digit growth in operations.
Americas revenues grew 7% in local currency, led by high-tech, software and platforms, utilities and banking and capital markets.
EMEA delivered 7% growth in local currency, led by growth in public service, banking and capital markets, and software and platforms.
Asia-Pacific revenue grew 7% in local currency, driven by growth in public service, insurance and communications and media.
Top 10 ecosystem partners represented more than 60% of revenue in fiscal 2026, and revenue from that work grew 6%, outpacing Accenture overall.
For eight emerging AI and data partners, bookings more than tripled and revenue more than doubled compared with fiscal 2025.
Capital Allocation
Q4 acquisitions of $1.9 billion deployed.
Approximately $3 billion of capital related to the Cyber OT acquisitions, including Dragos, shifted into September due to regulatory timing, and those transactions have now closed.
Full-year strategic acquisitions of $4.9 billion across 17 acquisitions.
Q4 share repurchases of 17.6 million shares for $2.3 billion at an average price of $131.89 per share.
Q4 quarterly cash dividend of $1.63 per share for a total of almost $1 billion, representing a 10% increase over last year.
Full-year cash returned to shareholders of a record $11.5 billion, a 38% increase over the prior year, including the $2 billion of additional share repurchases executed in the fourth quarter.
Investment of $1 billion in R&D and $1 billion in learning and development to upskill and reskill people for the AI era.
Quarterly cash dividend of $1.71 per share declared by Board of Directors to be paid on November 13.
Approximately $7 billion of share repurchase authority remaining.
Expected to return at least $9.5 billion in FY '27, representing approximately 75% of operating cash flow through a combination of dividends growing 5% per share and $5.5 billion in share repurchases, which exceed issuances.
Expected to deploy another approximately $5 billion in acquisitions in fiscal '27 based on opportunities to accelerate growth strategy.
Industry Trends and Dynamics
Large-scale reinventions, including many driven by AI, drove strong demand, spanning transforming functions and building out digital cores.
Nearly 100 additional clients initiated their first advanced AI work in Q4, bringing the fiscal 2026 total to more than 400.
Clients are at very different stages of AI readiness, with much of growth coming from continuing to build their digital core, data foundations and the enterprise AI stack needed to use AI at scale.
Revenue from work with top 10 ecosystem partners continues to outpace overall growth.
37 clients with bookings greater than $100 million in Q4.
317 Diamond clients, Accenture's largest relationships, at year-end.
Clients are focused on AI and believe AI will help them achieve more than previously possible across the enterprise.
AI demand is broadening because of depth and breadth of expertise in various functions of an enterprise across industry, process, operating model, data, technology, and AI.
AI is being embedded in broader transformations clients are undertaking, including in customer experience, supply chain, finance, and core value chains of industries.
Token costs are going down, enabling companies to use AI in more places and at scale.
Competitive Landscape
Growth was broad-based across markets, industries and both types of work, and Accenture once again took significant market share.
Pricing was overall stable in 2026, and at the same time in Q4, lower pricing was seen in many areas of the business.
Accenture operates in a highly competitive environment, and guidance for FY '27, including 10 to 30 basis point margin expansion, assumes continued intense competition with current expectations baked in.
Accenture is the number one partner of the top three frontier companies and now offers full life cycle services for open weight models.
Accenture is number one partner for emerging AI and data partners and top ecosystem partners because it has both delivery models.
Accenture has a business group with Palantir and the FDE model is a growth opportunity because Accenture can scale FDEs with Palantir and many other partners.
Accenture's strong ecosystem position is one of the reasons for confidence in the AI opportunity.
Macroeconomic Environment
Overall demand environment, including discretionary spending, did not meaningfully change despite strong bookings capture.
Very dynamic macro environment expected to continue.
Middle East direct impact continued to be a headwind and in fact worsened in Q4, but indirect impacts on discretionary spend for product and resources stabilized.
Middle East is roughly about $1 billion on an annualized basis, and Accenture expects that to continue and has baked it in.
For FY '27, top end of range doesn't assume any growth from Middle East and bottom of range allows for deterioration.
Overall budgets for most clients who are calendar year-end are only starting now, with more clarity expected in January and February.
Assumption for FY '27 is more of the same in terms of overall budgets.
For FY '27, guidance allows for stable to slightly improving discretionary spend environment at top end of range, while bottom allows for deterioration.
Growth Opportunities and Strategies
Accenture is investing in platforms and new solutions to embed advanced AI earlier into large-scale reinventions.
Proprietary assets and platforms, ecosystem relationships, and ability to deliver work through consulting, managed services or combination of both, allow Accenture to meet clients where they are and help them move at pace.
Managed services-led work includes significant consulting and AI expertise, as many clients use this work to both reinvent and get greater certainty around outcomes, including cost savings.
Largest client relationships continue to expand as clients take on broader, more strategic transformations.
Accenture is expanding in the mid-market through acquisitions like COMWARE and McCoy, an end-to-end technology services provider and trusted Dutch SAP transformation partner respectively.
Accenture is expanding functional skills within Song business in high growth areas through acquisitions like Whalar, a leading creator and social agency.
Accenture closed Ookla, a global leader in network intelligence, competitive benchmarking and customer experience analytics, which is an expansion into a new growth area with a non-FTE commercial model.
Ookla deepens industry skills in the core value chain of the comms and tech industries.
Accenture announced agreement to acquire Industries eXcellence Group, which deepens engineering skills as part of supply chain and engineering business.
Acquisitions are used to scale in high growth areas, deepen industry and functional capabilities, and expand into new growth areas which increasingly include businesses with non-FTE commercial models.
Accenture is investing $1 billion over the next five years to build out safety business, including a safety lab and team.
Accenture acquired Faculty earlier this year driven in part because they have deep safety experience.
Accenture selected by Anthropic for AI expertise, security expertise, and AI safety expertise, with relationship being non-exclusive.
Accenture continues to believe opportunities related to AI are greater than impact of AI-related efficiencies in business, and expects that to continue as AI enables enterprises to do much more.
AI is making both Accenture's own delivery and technologies it implements more efficient, with additional productivity achieved in delivering services creating greater value for clients and faster, more efficient implementations.
Strategy is to lean into AI efficiencies precisely because they create value for clients, while continuing to invest and rotate capabilities to capture larger growth opportunities AI creates.
Accenture views AI as a tailwind for the company.
Tech ecosystem is incredibly dynamic with nearly daily change related to AI, meaning clients have more choices but also more decisions to make, and they turn to Accenture to help them make these decisions.
Data and AI are now core to all of Accenture's partners, both largest partners and emerging data and AI partners.
Top ecosystem partners, hyperscalers and SaaS players are all introducing new AI features and functionality at speed.
Model landscape continues to evolve with frontier specialized, smaller, and open-weight models.
Over last 12 months, AI ecosystem has become much more interconnected, with clients able to access frontier models directly through hyperscalers and increasingly through SaaS applications they already use.
SaaS providers are rapidly embedding AI and agentic capabilities into their applications and workflows.
Private and sovereign AI are increasingly important to clients, and Accenture is at the heart of creating these solutions.
Accenture will now report top 10 ecosystem partners and emerging AI and data partners together as one group, and has added Dell, an important partner in private AI.
Accenture will provide ecosystem partner update annually beginning in FY '27.
Accenture is experiencing a lot of demand in new areas and is both upskilling and hiring in data and AI.
Accenture increased revenue per person this year, which is expected in part due to AI.
Accenture expects to hire in every market next year, but it will be below what was hired this year.
Accenture still expects to hire more entry level, as it is very focused on changing what entry-level workers do.
Accenture expects federal to be a significant contributor in FY '27.
Accenture is very relevant to the agenda of the federal government right now, with big wins like the data platform at the Department of War.
Financial Guidance and Outlook
For Q1 FY '27, revenues expected in range of $18.95 billion to $19.6 billion, assuming FX impact of about negative 1% compared to Q1 FY '26, reflecting estimated 2% to 6% growth in local currency.
For full fiscal '27, FX impact on results in US dollars expected to be about flat compared to fiscal '26.
For full fiscal '27, revenue expected in range of 3% to 6% growth in local currency over fiscal '26.
Inorganic contribution expected of 2% to 2.5% in FY '27.
For operating margin in FY '27, expected to be 15.9% to 16.1%, a 10 to 30 basis point expansion over adjusted fiscal '26 results.
Variability in quarters expected on way to 10 to 30 basis points of expansion for the year.
Annual effective tax rate expected in range of 24.5% to 26.5% in FY '27, compared to adjusted effective tax rate of 24.9% in fiscal '26.
Full year diluted earnings per share for fiscal '27 expected in range of $14.39 to $14.81, or 3% to 6% growth over adjusted fiscal '26 results.
Operating cash flow for full fiscal '27 expected in range of $11.9 billion to $12.7 billion.
Property and equipment additions expected to be approximately $900 million in FY '27.
