Accenture sees Q4 bookings ‘about the same’ as Q3

Accenture CFO Kathleen McClure said on the company’s Q3 earnings call: “So let me just kind of maybe step back and look at Q4 and the overall guidance for the full year. So first, I did mention this, but I just want to just reiterate that we are on track for our business optimization actions. So we’re going to do about $800M of cost for the full year ’23. Additional color is that for Q4, as we look at bookings, we think they’ll be about the same as what we did in Q3 of this year and have about the same complexion. Julie talked a bit about small deals. What I will tell you in terms of our revenue guidance for Q4, which is 2% to 6%. At the top end of our revenue guidance, that reflects some improvement in small deal performance, while the bottom end allows for some further deterioration. And we commented also in our scripts about CMT. And so within our overall range of 2% to 6%, we do allow for CMT to get a little bit worse. And then lastly, to bring it on home as it relates to North America, because these two factors do impact North America performance. In the context of our overall 2% to 6% range for the quarter. North America, which was 2% growth this quarter, it would likely be flat around the midpoint of our guidance range and it reflects a slight decline at the bottom of our range. And as Julie mentioned, obviously, we will give you more color, as I always do on next year when we get into September, and we’ll see how Q4 plays out.”