The multinational IT company Accenture stated on Thursday that it would eliminate around 19,000 jobs, or 2.5% of its staff. The corporation disclosed that more than half of the layoffs would affect workers in its corporate activities that are not billable.
"While we continue to hire, especially to support our strategic growth priorities, during the second quarter of fiscal 2023, we initiated actions to streamline our operations and transform our non-billable corporate functions to reduce costs. Over the next 18 months, these actions are expected to result in the departure of approximately 19,000 people (or 2.5% of our current workforce), and we expect over half of these departures will consist of people in our non-billable corporate functions," the company said in a statement on Thursday.
They continued by saying that they had allocated $1.2 billion for the severance of the workers who will be laid off.
The IT major has reduced its forecasts for annual revenue and earnings. Rather than from the previously anticipated 8 to 11 percent, the IT company now anticipates an increase in yearly sales of between 8 and 10% in local currency. Revenue for the upcoming quarter is expected to be between $16.1 billion and $16.7 billion, according to the company.
In addition, the business stated that it anticipates profits per share to be between $10.84 and $11.06 as opposed to the previous range of $11.20 to $11.52. They also announced a $1.12 per share cash dividend for the quarter.
$22.1 billion in new orders, $10.7 billion in consultancy orders, and $11.4 billion in orders for managed services were placed during the quarter.
Notably, Accenture's third-quarter forecast fell short of Wall Street expectations. Also, the US Federal Reserve boosted interest rates by 25 basis points the day before to this development.
