Dec 18 (Reuters) – Accenture beat Wall Street expectations for first-quarter revenue on Thursday, buoyed by robust demand for its artificial intelligence-driven IT services as the company advances its AI strategy to capture greater market share.
The company’s aggressive AI push underscores a wider industry trend of enterprises using machine learning tools to help speed up mundane and complex tasks, freeing up resources to focus elsewhere, as investors bet on these processes to massively boost growth.
“I am very pleased with our $21 billion in new bookings, including 33 clients with quarterly bookings greater than $100 million,” said CEO Julie Sweet.
Accenture partnered with top AI startups Anthropic and OpenAI earlier this month to train its employees on their models and familiarize with their latest capabilities to upskill workers and stay ahead of competitors.
The IT consulting company, however, is contending with uneven demand from public sector and government clients amid a federal drive to cut spending and refocus funds.
It forecast second-quarter revenue to be between $17.35 billion and $18 billion, the midpoint of which is below analysts’ expectations of $17.78 billion, according to data compiled by LSEG.
Shares of the company were down around 2% in premarket trading.
Accenture reported revenue of $18.74 billion for the first quarter, compared with the estimate of $18.52 billion.
The company earned $3.94 per share on an adjusted basis, while analysts expected $3.74 per share.
(Reporting by Zaheer Kachwala in Bengaluru; Editing by Shilpi Majumdar)