Dec 19 Reuters IT services provider Accenture forecast secondquarter revenue below Wall Street targets on Tuesday, anticipating cautious spending by clients as macroeconomic uncertainty remains an overhang.

Analysts expect IT services expenditure to remain muted in the near term as businesses typically decide their annual budgets only after February. Accenture itself has pointed to slower budgetrelated decisionmaking, especially in tech and media companies.

Accenture39;s revenue from the communications, media technology industry group fell 10 in the first quarter, while sales from North America, the company39;s biggest market, fell 1, to 7.56 billion.

We continued to see lower discretionary spend, which impacts our consulting type of work, CEO Julie Sweet told analysts in an earnings call.

If you look around the environment, there are not a lot of green shoots on the economic side.

Tata Consultancy Services, Indias No.1 IT services exporter, reported weakerthanexpected quarterly results in October, while Infosys cut the upper end of its annual revenue forecast, as clients were still hesitant to spend on discretionary projects. Both companies are Accenture39;s competitors in the outsourcing business.

Accenture39;s shares fell 2.6 in trading before the bell.

The firm reiterated its fiscal 2024 forecasts for revenue growth and profit as it expects large digital transformation deals to materialize in its results in the back half of our year.

It recorded generative…