Wall Street Just Sold Off These IT-Services Stocks on AI Fears. Is the Sell-Off Overdone?

Shares of Accenture (NYSE: ACN) cratered astir 18% connected June 18 -- the consulting giant's worst single-day driblet connected record. What spooked investors wasn't the quarter. It was the outlook, and the fearfulness down it.

And Accenture didn't autumn alone. EPAM Systems (NYSE: EPAM) slid astir 9% the aforesaid time without reporting thing of its own. The interest driving this sell-off? The hazard of artificial quality (AI) threatening the enactment these firms get paid for.

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So is AI structurally shrinking request for IT services, oregon is this an overreaction?

Accenture: a grounds driblet connected a cautious outlook

Overall, Accenture's fiscal 3rd 4th of 2026 (the play ended May 31, 2026) was solid. Revenue roseate 6% to $18.7 billion, and net per stock climbed 9%.

But the occupation was the guidance. Management trimmed its full-year gross maturation outlook to 3% to 4% successful section currency, from 3% to 5%. New bookings, a measurement of aboriginal work, fell 2%.

CEO Julie Sweet tied portion of the softness to the warfare successful the Middle East, which she said chopped astir $100 cardinal from fiscal third-quarter gross comparative to expectations.

And Sweet is optimistic that AI volition beryllium a catalyst for its business.

"We judge that AI volition beryllium a tailwind for america and our manufacture arsenic it scales," Sweet said connected the company's fiscal third-quarter net call.

But the marketplace seems much pessimistic. At astir $128 arsenic of this writing, little than fractional its 52-week high, Accenture trades astatine lone astir 10 times earnings.

EPAM Systems: the astir exposed?

If immoderate of these businesses looks susceptible to AI coding tools, it's EPAM. It's a pure-play integer engineering and bundle improvement store -- the hands-on programming enactment that AI assistants support getting amended astatine automating.

The banal has been punished for it. Shares closed adjacent $77 arsenic of this writing, down astir two-thirds from a January precocious supra $220. Adding to the stock's calamity, EPAM was dropped from the S&P 500 earlier this month.

Still, the concern held up reasonably good successful the archetypal quarter, with gross up 7.6% to $1.4 billion. But absorption chopped its full-year gross maturation outlook to a scope of 4% to 6.5%.

In the meantime, EPAM signed a multi-year concern with AI developer Anthropic and is grooming much than 20,000 employees connected Anthropic tools.