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The most recent trading session ended with Accenture (ACN) standing at $306.61, reflecting a -1.72% shift from the previouse trading day's closing. The stock's change was less than the S&P 500's daily gain of 0.51%. Meanwhile, the Dow experienced a rise of 0.85%, and the technology-dominated Nasdaq saw an increase of 0.27%.

The consulting company's shares have seen a decrease of 3.83% over the last month, not keeping up with the Business Services sector's loss of 2.68% and the S&P 500's loss of 0.25%.

The investment community will be paying close attention to the earnings performance of Accenture in its upcoming release. It is anticipated that the company will report an EPS of $3.14, marking a 1.57% fall compared to the same quarter of the previous year. Meanwhile, our latest consensus estimate is calling for revenue of $16.57 billion, up 0.01% from the prior-year quarter.

ACN's full-year Zacks Consensus Estimates are calling for earnings of $12.09 per share and revenue of $65.31 billion. These results would represent year-over-year changes of +3.6% and +1.87%, respectively.

It's also important for investors to be aware of any recent modifications to analyst estimates for Accenture. These revisions help to show the ever-changing nature of near-term business trends. As a result, we can interpret positive estimate revisions as a good sign for the company's business outlook.

Research indicates that these estimate revisions are directly correlated with near-term share price momentum. To exploit this, we've formed the Zacks Rank, a quantitative model that includes these estimate changes and presents a viable rating system.

The Zacks Rank system, ranging from #1 (Strong Buy) to #5 (Strong Sell), possesses a remarkable history of outdoing, externally audited, with #1 stocks returning an average annual gain of +25% since 1988. Over the past month, the Zacks Consensus EPS estimate has moved 0.02% lower. Accenture is currently sporting a Zacks Rank of #4 (Sell).

In terms of valuation, Accenture is currently trading at a Forward P/E ratio of 25.8. For comparison, its industry has an average Forward P/E of 24.26, which means Accenture is trading at a premium to the group.

We can additionally observe that ACN currently boasts a PEG ratio of 2.96. The PEG ratio is similar to the widely-used P/E ratio, but this metric also takes the company's expected earnings growth rate into account. As the market closed yesterday, the Consulting Services industry was having an average PEG ratio of 1.42.

The Consulting Services industry is part of the Business Services sector. This group has a Zacks Industry Rank of 70, putting it in the top 28% of all 250+ industries.

The Zacks Industry Rank assesses the strength of our separate industry groups by calculating the average Zacks Rank of the individual stocks contained within the groups. Our research shows that the top 50% rated industries outperform the bottom half by a factor of 2 to 1.

Be sure to use Zacks.com to monitor all these stock-influencing metrics, and more, throughout the forthcoming trading sessions.

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The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Nasdaq, Inc.