法国巴黎银行点评埃森哲投资者日：维持中性、目标价205美元，称AI与定价顺风暂难抵消核心业务逆风

Tailwinds for Accenture's ( ACN ) business, including pricing growth and revenue growth from artificial intelligence, cannot yet offset the headwinds the business is facing, BNP Paribas said on Thursday. Following the company's investor day, BNP analyst Stefan Slowinski said the new targets provided by the company (mid-single-digit growth in 2027 and 2028 before accelerating to mid-to-high single-digit growth in 2029, along with expanding gross margins by 10 to 30 basis points per year) did not provide much for investors. “While not clear, we do not believe the FY’28 guidance for mid-single-digit growth would be an inflection higher from the mid-single-digit growth guided for FY’27 (i.e., 6% vs. 5%, for example),” Slowinski wrote in a note to clients. “In addition, the growth acceleration in FY’29 appears to be driven by continued high growth of the new ‘Network’ businesses (Capital Projects, Datacentres, Health, AI and Decision Intelligence, Education, Cyber, Network Intelligence, Mid Market, Edge), currently just 6% of revenues, and expected to double to 12% by 2029. The ‘Core’ business (modernizing ERP/mainframe, cloud migration, eliminating tech debt, transforming functions, cross enterprise transformation, etc. through businesses including Industry and Enterprise, Digital Core, Finance, Talent, Cybersecurity, Song, Supply Chain and Engineering), representing 94% of revenues, is not expected to see acceleration. Growth is also expected to be driven through a new focused effort on mid-market companies (just 8% of revenues today from companies with $300m-$3bn of revenues).” Slowinski has a Neutral rating and a $205 price target on Accenture. Delving deeper, the analyst said Accenture did not indicate if the new outcome-based pricing, nor the newer Networks businesses, would be more capital intensive. “Accenture has signaled that the ‘absorbing AI efficiencies’ is a near-term headwind, as AI automation likely pressures parts of Accenture’s business, and this is where much investor concern has been,” Slowinski explained. “We did not get much concrete discussion of where these headwinds are, other than in parts of managed services and other ‘squeezing of the legacy’, or for how long these headwinds are expected to last. And overall, despite the company saying for the first time last quarter that it was seeing competitive pricing pressure, the company is assuming ‘pricing’ (as per the company definition of what the margin is on new business) remains stable or improves out to 2029.”