Accenture Boosts FY26 Dividend Payout, AI Revenue Triples: Five Key Takeaways From Management Concall

Accenture Plc announced its financial results for the fourth quarter and full-year ending Aug. 31, 2025, reporting a 7% rise in revenue to $17.6 billion, beating Wall Street estimates, led by solid demand from clients for its artificial intelligence consulting services. The Dublin-based technology giant declared significant generative AI bookings at $1.8 billion in Q4FY25.

Accenture recorded new bookings of $21.3 billion for the quarter, bringing the full-year total to $80.6 billion. Gen-AI played a major role, contributing $1.8 billion in new bookings for the quarter and $5.9 billion for the year. The tech consulting major conducted a concall with its management after announcing the results. Here are the key takeaways from the concall:

1.FY26 Revenue Guidance

For Q1 FY26, revenue guidance is $18.1-18.75 billion, representing 1-5% growth (including ~1.5% federal business impact). For the full year FY26 guidance, Accenture's revenue growth is pegged at 2-5% in local currency (3-6% excluding federal impact). Inorganic contribution expected at ~1.5% - ~$3 billion planned for acquisitions.

2.Dividend Payout, Capital Allocation

Accenture plans to return at least $9.3 billion to shareholders through dividends and share repurchases, reporting a12% increase from FY25. The company repurchased 1.6 million shares for $474 million in Q4 at an average price of $295.45 per share. The Board approved $5 billion of additional share repurchase authority.

The Board also declared a quarterly cash dividend of $1.63 per share payable Nov. 14, representing a 10% increase over last year. For FY26, capex is expected to be approx. $1 billion, about $400 million more than FY25, primarily for expanding real estate and leasehold improvements in major markets.

3. AI Strategy

Accenture tripled AI revenue to $2.7 billion in FY25 and nearly doubled AI bookings to $5.9 billion. The company has expanded its AI workforce significantly, growing from 40,000 AI/data professionals working on a few Gen AI projects to 77,000 professionals working on over 6,000 advanced AI projects.

Accenture said AI adoption at enterprise scale remains slow, with a gap between executive mindshare and actual implementation. ''A major example of cloud implementation was provided with the Bank of England's real-time settlement system, which was rebuilt using private cloud," it said.

4. Acquisitions, M&A deals

Accenture took significant market share, growing at more than 5x their "investable basket" of competitors. Accenture expects to invest about $3 billion in acquisitions in FY26. In FY26, they expect acquisitions to contribute about 1.5% to revenue growth. In FY25, Accenture invested approximately $1.5 billion across 23 acquisitions.

5. Macro Environment

Accenture said the macroeconomic backdrop did not improve over FY24. It has not seen any meaningful change (positive or negative) in the overall market. In their FY26 guidance, at the top end of the range they assume no change in discretionary spend, while the bottom of the range allows for deterioration.

Accenture announced a business optimization program with headcount reductions and severance, with expected savings of over $1 billion to be reinvested in people and business. It is implementing a three-pronged talent strategy: upskilling existing workers, exiting those who cannot be reskilled, and identifying efficiency opportunities.

Accenture plans to increase headcount across all three markets (including US and Europe) in FY26 based on business demand. Regarding H1B visas, the company noted limited exposure with only about 5% of US workforce on H1B visas