European IT Services: Ripples from Accenture‘s Q3 cause a storm

Research evidence excerpt

European IT Services: Ripples from Accenture‘s Q3 cause a storm

excessive, especially when we note that at Capgemini's

CMD on 27 May (three days before Accenture's quarter end), CEO Ezzat said Q2 was

"looking good" and indicated that sales cycles were progressing normally. However,

Accenture did say this would be more of an issue in Q4 than it was in Q3 and highlighted

Products (CPG, Retail, Travel, Industrials and Life Sciences) as the most impacted sector, a

sector to which Capgemini is heavily exposed. An Accenture claim of a win at Stellantis

"across their manufacturing" may also not have helped.

M&A and mid-market ambitions may also have played a part

However, we believe part of the reason the stock reaction in Europe was so strong was

that Accenture made three cyber-security acquisitions for $4.2bn and 20x ARR, saying

"we are definitely seeing at our clients this convergence between services and

software" - a trend we highlighted recently (link) - and the importance of using IP as a

differentiator to drive demand and support a transition "to a more non-FTE" model.

Accenture also announced a new offering focused on the mid-market (companies with

$300-3,000m revenues) - Accenture Edge. It noted that "companies in this segment

face many of the same technology, data, AI, cybersecurity and productivity challenges as

large enterprises, but they often need solutions that are faster to deploy, more

repeatable and right-sized for their scale. This segment is also an important priority for

our ecosystem partners, which see strong demand and want to partner with us because

we can bring scale, consistency and delivery quality to a fragmented services market".

This platform-led approach may bring Accenture more into the competitive circle of