Accenture CEO Julie Sweet said the company is seeing an inflection point with companies adopting artificial intelligence enterprise-wide and scaling use cases.
Speaking on the company's fourth quarter earnings call, Sweet said:
"We're also starting to see early signals of an inflection point with more clients looking for true enterprise-wide plans and activation and seeking out our successful experience with scaling in enterprises and at Accenture. Two years into this AI journey, we also are seeing a pattern in how AI can expand our opportunities with our clients."
Sweet said many of these AI projects also require AI readiness, which means more transformational work. Those chores include data modernization to go along with digital operations and cloud deployments. She cited a financial services client that is using Accenture to modernize the data estate, but that also requires retiring legacy systems and more foundational work.
"We're seeing more stories like this across our portfolio, where AI is extending across the enterprise and adjacent work is following," said Sweet. "Building the digital core remains our biggest growth driver."
Banking is one of the main industries revamping the data stack. Sweet added that Ecolab is redesigning processes and then scaling into AI agents. "Ecolab is on a path to deliver an estimated 5% to 7% sales growth and 20% operating income margin without increasing costs at the same pace," said Sweet.
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Accenture reported fourth quarter earnings of $2.25 a share on revenue of $17.6 billion, up 7% from a year ago. Accenture recorded new bookings of $21.3 billion in the fourth quarter and $1.8 billion of that sum was generative AI. GenAI bookings doubled for fiscal 2025 to $5.9 billion and revenue tripled to $2.7 billion.
For fiscal 2025, Accenture reported earnings of $12.15 a share on revenue of $69.7 billion.
As for the outlook, Accenture said it expects fiscal 2026 revenue growth of 2% to 5% in local currency. Earnings will grow at a 9% to 12% clip.
Other takeaways from Accenture's fourth quarter:
- Sweet added that many of Accenture's customers are enterprises that tried do-it-yourself AI but ran into roadblocks scaling projects. "We've had lots of clients who have started things on their own and then come to us who've got good proof of concept that their team was able to do but then just can't scale it," said Sweet.
- AI savings are being reinvested. "AI absolutely boosts efficiency in areas like coding or operations. But those savings don't disappear. They're being reinvested into new priorities. The list of what our clients want to do with technology is truly virtually unlimited. And so, when we can save them money by delivering our services with advanced AI, that frees up their budget to do the next things on their list," said Sweet.
- Companies are held back by change management and process reinvention.
- AI strategy includes growth and savings. "Almost every CEO that I've talked to says they pivoted way too far towards productivity and not enough to growth," said Sweet.
