Out Fox The $treet

The stock of Accenture Ltd. (ACN) has had a great run over the last couple of years as the company has grown earnings and repurchased shares. As the stock has nearly doubled, the buybacks have stalled leaving the company with less bang for the investment. As one of the world's leading management consulting, technology services and outsourcing organizations has seen earnings nearly double in the last few years, the stock has seen strong gains. The company, though, hasn't been able to increase the buyback amount and in fact spent less in fiscal year 2012 versus 2011. All signs that the insiders with the best information might consider the stock price expensive. Read the full article at Seeking Alpha. Disclosure: No positions mentioned. Please review the disclaimer page for more details. 

Accenture (ACN) jumped roughly 8% today on the back of solid earnings released last night. Anybody following the Net Payout Yields would've been alerted to jump into this stock long before this report. Even after a big run the last few months, ACN has a solid dividend of 2% and repurchased $620M worth of shares during the last quarter providing a roughly 8% buyback yield. The total Net Payout Yield jumps to nearly 10% even with the jump in stock price. ACN raised full year guidance to a mid point of $3.12 a share easily exceeding the $3.04 estimate. Part of this is due to the $.04 gain in this quarter alone from the buybacks. Then again analysts know they plan to buyback shares so that should be factored into estimates. Lots of investors continue to slam buybacks but ACN provides an ample example of how they can work so masterfully. With the stock depressed over the last year, ACN used their good balance sheet and strong cash flow to buy back shares on the cheap. So cheap that ...