Accenture reported fourth-quarter fiscal 2026 revenue of $18.68 billion for the period ended Aug. 31, beating its own prior guided range of $17.75 billion to $18.40 billion, according to the company’s Oct. 1 earnings release. Sales rose 6% in U.S. dollars and 7% in local currency from a year earlier. GAAP diluted earnings per share were $3.29 — up 9% versus adjusted EPS of $3.03 in the year-ago quarter, Accenture’s preferred year-over-year bridge after business-optimization costs hit fiscal 2025 results.
New bookings reached $22.17 billion in the quarter, with a book-to-bill of 1.2. Full-year fiscal 2026 revenue was $74.18 billion, up 5% in local currency and above the company’s earlier full-year local-currency growth guide of 3% to 4%. Adjusted full-year EPS was $13.97; free cash flow was about $11.6 billion.
On the earnings call, management cast AI-related work as a demand driver without publishing a single “AI revenue” line in the release tables. Coverage of the call said Accenture counted more than 400 clients starting advanced AI work in fiscal 2026, nearly 110,000 AI and data professionals, and bookings more than tripled — with revenue more than doubled — across eight emerging AI and data partners versus fiscal 2025. Those figures are client counts, headcount, and a partner-subset growth claim, not total AI services dollars. CEO Julie Sweet said overall demand and discretionary spending “did not meaningfully change,” a hedge against reading the beat as a broad IT-spend boom.
For fiscal 2027, Accenture guided local-currency revenue growth of 3% to 6% and GAAP diluted EPS of $14.39 to $14.81. Shares surged more than 22% at one point and closed up close to 16% on Oct. 1, CNBC reported, after the beat and outlook eased some AI-disruption fears for IT services.
This piece is about Accenture’s results, guidance, and the stock — not a partnership announcement with Anthropic or any other single vendor.