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Accenture beat fourth-quarter revenue estimates and unveiled a sixmonth, $865 million restructuring to realign its workforce and operations for rising demand in digital and AI services. The restructuring program highlights the broader trend of companies adapting their workforce and operations to meet growing demand for digital and AI services, while using restructuring to cut costs and funnel savings into training and operational efficiency. The plan includes severance and selected divestitures, with savings redirected to staff training and operational efficiency. The Dublin-based company expects about $250 million in charges in the November quarter, on top of $615 million recorded in the fourth quarter, for a total of $865 million. Accentures restructuring signals strong demand and includes plans to expand its workforce in 2026, CFRA analyst Brooks Idlet said. Accenture has a strong reskilling operation internally, Idlet added, noting the company is focusing resources on higherdemand areas. Accenture said it is continuing to hire while rolling out a new talent strategy that emphasizes upskilling, phasing out roles with nonviable skills, and using AI to improve productivity. Earlier this month, President Donald Trump announced a $100,000 one-time fee for H-1B visas, part of his immigration crackdown, a move that has raised concerns about higher labor costs and limited access to skilled workers, especially for IT and consulting firms such as Accenture. Accenture secured approval for 1,568 H-1B visa beneficiaries in the first half of the year, U.S. immigration data shows, placing it among the top 25 U.S. employers using the program. Changes to H-1B visa policy are not likely to have a significant impact on Accenture’s business, CEO Julie Sweet said, noting that only about 5% of its U.S. employees are employed on such visas. U.S. federal contract delays and cancellations, which represented 8% of revenue in 2024, reduced this years growth by roughly 20 basis points, company executives said in a post-earnings call. New bookings, a closely watched metric that measures future revenue based on contracts, were $21.3 billion for the quarter. Accenture sees full-year 2026 revenue growth between 2% and 5%, slightly below estimates of 5.3%, according to data compiled by LSEG. The company posted fourth-quarter revenue of $17.6 billion, beating analysts’ average estimate of $17.36 billion. Kritika Lamba, Reuters
Category:
E-Commerce
An uptick in consumer spending helped the U.S. economy expand at a surprising 3.8% from April through June, the government reported in a dramatic upgrade of its previous estimate of second-quarter growth. U.S. gross domestic product the nations output of goods and services rebounded in the spring from a 0.6% first-quarter drop caused by fallout from President Donald Trumps trade wars, the Commerce Department said Thursday. The department had previously estimated second-quarter growth at 3.3%, and forecasters had expected a repeat of that figure. The first-quarter GDP drop, the first retreat of the U.S. economy in three years, was mainly caused by a surge in imports which are subtracted from GDP as businesses hurried to bring in foreign goods before Trump could impose sweeping taxes on them. That trend reversed as expected in the second quarter: Imports fell at a 29.3% pace, boosting April-June growth by more than 5 percentage points. Consumer spending rose at a 2.5% pace, up from 0.6% in the first quarter and well above the 1.6% the government previously estimated. Spending on services advanced at a 2.6% annual pace, more than double the government’s previous estimate of 1.2%. The U.S. consumer remained a lot stronger than many thought, even in the midst of a stock market sell-off and a lot of trade uncertainty, Heather Long, chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union, posted on social media. A category within the GDP data that measures the economys underlying strength came in stronger than previously reported as well, growing 2.9% from April-June, up from 1.9% in the first quarter and in the government’s previous estimate. This category includes consumer spending and private investment, but excludes volatile items like exports, inventories and government spending. But private investment fell, including a 5.1% drop in residential investment. Declining business inventories took more than 3.4 percentage points off second-quarter growth. Spending and investment by the federal government fell at a 5.3% annual pace on top of a 5.6% drop in the first quarter. Stephen Stanley, chief U.S. economist at Santander, noted that GDP growth averaged 1.6% in the first half of 2025 and consumer spending 1.5% “not great but much better than initially thought.” Since returning to the White House, Trump has overturned decades of U.S. policy in support of freer trade. Hes slapped double-digit taxes tariffs on imports from almost every country on earth and targeted specific products for tariffs, too, including steel, aluminum and autos. Trump sees tariffs as a way to protect American industry, lure factories back to the United States and to help pay for the massive tax cuts he signed into law July 4. But mainstream economists whose views Trump and his advisers reject say that his tariffs will damage the economy, raising costs and making protected U.S. companies less efficient. They note that tariffs are paid by importers in the United States, who try to pass along the cost to their customers via higher prices. Therefore, tariffs can be inflationary though their impact on prices so far has been modest. The unpredictable way that Trump has imposed the tariffs announcing and suspending them, then coming up with new ones has left businesses bewildered, contributing to a sharp deceleration in hiring. From 2021 through 2023, the United States added an impressive 400,000 jobs a month as the economy bounded back from COVID-19 lockdowns. Since then, hiring has stalled, partly because of trade policy uncertainty and partly because of the lingering effects of 11 interest rate hikes by the Federal Reserves inflation fighters in 2022 and 2023. Labor Department revisions earlier this month showed that the economy created 911,000 fewer jobs than originally reported in the year that ended in March. That meant that employers added an average of fewer than 71,000 new jobs a month over that period, not the 147,000 first reported. Since March, job creation has slowed even more to an average 53,000 a month. On Oct. 3, the Labor Department is expected to report that employers added just 43,000 jobs in September, though unemployment likely stayed at a low 4.3%, according to forecasters surveyed by the data firm FactSet. Seeking to bolster the job market, the Fed last week cut its benchmark interest rate for the first time since December and signaled that it expected two more cuts this year. But the surprisingly strong second-quarter GDP growth may give the central bank less reason to cut rates despite intense pressure from Trump to do so. Fed officials will be watching even more closely than unusual when their favorite inflation gauge the Commerce Department’s personal consumption expenditures (PCE) price index comes out Friday. Thursdays GDP report was Commerce Departments third and final look at second-quarter economic growth. It will release its initial estimate of July-September growth on Oct. 30. Forecasters surveyed by the data firm FactSet currently expect the GDP growth to slow to an annual pace of just 1.5% in the third quarter. Paul Wiseman, AP economics writer
Category:
E-Commerce
Sales of previously occupied U.S. homes remained sluggish in August, even as a late-summer slide in mortgage rates brought home loan borrowing costs to a 10-month low. Existing home sales slipped 0.2% last month from July to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4 million units, the National Association of Realtors said Thursday. Thats the slowest sales pace since June. Sales rose 1.8% compared with August last year. The latest sales figure topped the 3.96 million pace economists were expecting, according to FactSet. The national median sales price increased 2% in August from a year earlier to $422,600. Thats the 26th consecutive month that home prices have risen on an annual basis and the highest median sales price for any August on data going back to 1999. The U.S. housing market has been in a sales slump since 2022, when mortgage rates began climbing from historic lows. Sales of previously occupied U.S. homes sank last year to their lowest level in nearly 30 years. Through the first eight months of this year, home sales are down 1.2% compared to the same period last year. Mortgage rates have been mostly declining since late July ahead of the Federal Reserves widely anticipated decision last week to cut its main interest rate for the first time in a year amid growing concern over the U.S. job market. But while lower rates give home shoppers more purchasing power, borrowing costs remain too high for many Americans to afford to buy a home following years of skyrocketing home prices. Consider, the U.S. median home sales price is now 52% higher than it was in August 2019, before the housing market superheated during the initial years of the pandemic. However, mortgage rates are declining and more inventory is coming to the market, which should boost sales in the coming months, said Lawrence Yun, NARs chief economist. Homes purchased last month likely went under contract in June and July, when the average rate on a 30-year mortgage ranged from 6.85% to 6.72%, according to Freddie Mac. The decline in mortgage rates accelerated in August and this month, dropping the average rate as low as 6.26% last week. Homebuilders have had success drumming up sales by lowering prices and offering incentives, including paying to lower mortgage rates for home shoppers who may not be able to afford to buy at current rates. Sales of new single-family U.S. homes jumped 20.5% in August from the previous month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 800,000 units, the U.S. Census Bureau reported Wednesday. Sales were up 15.4% from a year earlier, the strongest pace so far this year, but are still running about 1.4% lower than a year ago. However, new home sales are a small fraction of the overall housing market, which remains constrained by lack of affordability and a chronic shortage of homes for sale, especially those in the more affordable end of the market. That trend has weighed especially on first-time homebuyers, who dont have home equity gains to put toward a new home purchase. They accounted for 28% of homes sales last month. Historically, they made up 40% of home sales. Still, the inventory of homes for sale across the U.S. has increased gradually as the market has slowed and is now at a level where supply and demand are more balanced. There were 1.53 million unsold homes at the end of last month, down 1.3% from July and up 11.7% from August last year, NAR said. Thats still well below the roughly 2 million homes for sale that was typical before the pandemic. Augusts month-end inventory translates to a 4.6-month supply at the current sales pace, matching the supply level at the end of July and an increase from 4.2 months in August last year. Traditionally, a 5- to 6-month supply is considered a balanced market between buyers and sellers. Homes are also taking longer to sell. Properties typically remained on the market for 31 days last month before selling, up from 26 days a year earlier, NAR said. The longer homes linger on the market, the more pressure it puts on homeowners eager to sell to give buyers a better deal. That’s led to more sellers lowering prices. A little over 20% of homes on the market in August had their initial listing price lowered, according to Realtor.com. If mortgage rates continue to ease, that should help bring out more buyers, but economists’ forecasts generally call for the average rate on a 30-year mortgage to remain above 6% this year. Despite improvement, rates are still not low enough to unlock the vast majority of homeowners, who continue to enjoy sub 6% rates, but it will help those on the margins and may lead to a more active fall home sales season, said Danielle Hale, chief economist at Realtor.com. By Alex Veiga, AP business writer
Category:
E-Commerce
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