Accenture plc ACN is scheduled to release second-quarter fiscal 2024 results on Mar 21, before market open.

ACN has an impressive earnings surprise history. Its earnings surpassed the Zacks Consensus Estimate in each of the trailing four quarters, the average surprise being 5.9%.

Q2 Expectations

The Zacks Consensus Estimate for the top line is currently pegged at $15.8 billion, suggesting a marginal dip from the year-ago quarter's reported number. The expected decline due to lower discretionary spend, and softness in software and platforms, communications and media, and banking and capital markets is likely to have been significantly offset by strength in cloud migration and modernization, ERP, data advancements, AI (including GenAI), platforms and security.

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Our estimate for revenues from the Managed Services segment is pegged at $7.7 billion, suggesting a 2.5% rise from the year-ago quarter's reported actuals. Our estimate for Consulting revenues is pegged at $8.1 billion, indicating a 2.6% decrease from the year-ago quarter's recorded figure. The decline is likely to have been due to a decrease in discretionary spending.

Our estimate for the Health & Public Services segment’s revenues is pegged at $3.2 billion, indicating a 4.6% increase from the year-ago quarter's level. We anticipate revenues from the Resources segment to be $2.2 billion, indicating a marginal increase from the year-ago reported figure. Revenues from the Communications, Media & Technology segment are expected to decline 5.6% from second-quarter fiscal 2023 actuals to $2.7 billion.

Our estimate for the Products segment’s revenues is pegged at $4.7 billion, indicating a marginal decrease from the prior-year levels. We expect Financial Services revenues to be $3 billion, implying a marginal decrease from the year-ago fiscal quarter.

Moving to geographical markets, our expectations for revenues from the EMEA region are around $5.6 billion, suggesting a marginal rise from the year-ago fiscal quarter. This is likely to have been due to growth in public services, and banking and capital markets.

We expect revenues from North America to have decreased slightly to $7.4 billion due to declining revenues in software and platforms, communications and media, and banking and capital markets.

The Zacks Consensus Estimate for the bottom line is pegged at $2.7 per share, which indicates a 1.5% decrease from the year-ago fiscal quarter. The decline is likely to have been due to business optimization actions.