Acuity Brands, Inc. (NYSE:AYI) Receives Average Recommendation of “Moderate Buy” from Brokerages

Acuity Brands, Inc. (NYSE:AYI) has been assigned a consensus recommendation of “Moderate Buy” from the six brokerages that are currently covering the stock, Marketbeat reports. Three equities research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and three have assigned a buy rating to the company. The average 12-month target price among brokers that have issued ratings on the stock in the last year is $341.40.

A number of research analysts have issued reports on the company. Oppenheimer lifted their price objective on Acuity Brands from $370.00 to $380.00 and gave the company an “outperform” rating in a research note on Thursday, January 9th. Wells Fargo & Company upped their price target on Acuity Brands from $320.00 to $336.00 and gave the company an “equal weight” rating in a report on Thursday, January 9th. StockNews.com raised Acuity Brands from a “buy” rating to a “strong-buy” rating in a report on Wednesday. William Blair raised Acuity Brands from a “market perform” rating to an “outperform” rating in a report on Thursday, January 2nd. Finally, Morgan Stanley raised Acuity Brands from an “equal weight” rating to an “overweight” rating and upped their price target for the company from $304.00 to $370.00 in a report on Tuesday, January 14th.

Institutional Inflows and Outflows

A number of institutional investors have recently bought and sold shares of the company. Vanguard Group Inc. lifted its holdings in Acuity Brands by 0.5% in the fourth quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. now owns 3,104,542 shares of the electronics maker’s stock valued at $906,930,000 after acquiring an additional 16,407 shares during the period. Fuller & Thaler Asset Management Inc. lifted its holdings in Acuity Brands by 0.8% in the fourth quarter. Fuller & Thaler Asset Management Inc. now owns 1,120,979 shares of the electronics maker’s stock valued at $327,471,000 after acquiring an additional 8,705 shares during the period. Wellington Management Group LLP lifted its holdings in Acuity Brands by 10.2% in the fourth quarter. Wellington Management Group LLP now owns 1,117,489 shares of the electronics maker’s stock valued at $326,452,000 after acquiring an additional 103,162 shares during the period. Durable Capital Partners LP lifted its holdings in Acuity Brands by 158.9% in the fourth quarter. Durable Capital Partners LP now owns 1,088,477 shares of the electronics maker’s stock valued at $317,977,000 after acquiring an additional 668,048 shares during the period. Finally, State Street Corp lifted its holdings in Acuity Brands by 1.3% in the third quarter. State Street Corp now owns 969,043 shares of the electronics maker’s stock valued at $266,865,000 after acquiring an additional 12,479 shares during the period. Institutional investors own 98.21% of the company’s stock.

Acuity Brands Stock Down 1.8 %

Shares of NYSE:AYI opened at $320.77 on Friday. The stock has a fifty day simple moving average of $317.36 and a two-hundred day simple moving average of $296.68. The stock has a market capitalization of $9.93 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 23.62, a PEG ratio of 2.08 and a beta of 1.40. Acuity Brands has a 12-month low of $217.64 and a 12-month high of $345.30. The company has a current ratio of 2.98, a quick ratio of 2.38 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.20.

Acuity Brands (NYSE:AYI) last announced its quarterly earnings data on Wednesday, January 8th. The electronics maker reported $3.97 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, beating analysts’ consensus estimates of $3.87 by $0.10. The business had revenue of $951.60 million during the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $955.60 million. Acuity Brands had a return on equity of 19.98% and a net margin of 11.11%. The firm’s quarterly revenue was up 1.8% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same quarter in the previous year, the business earned $3.72 earnings per share. On average, research analysts anticipate that Acuity Brands will post 15.86 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Acuity Brands Increases Dividend

The company also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Friday, February 14th. Shareholders of record on Monday, February 3rd were issued a $0.17 dividend. This is an increase from Acuity Brands’s previous quarterly dividend of $0.15. The ex-dividend date was Monday, February 3rd. This represents a $0.68 dividend on an annualized basis and a yield of 0.21%. Acuity Brands’s dividend payout ratio is currently 5.01%.

About Acuity Brands

Acuity Brands, Inc provides lighting, lighting controls, building management system, location-aware applications in the United States and internationally. The company operates in two segments, Acuity Brands Lighting and Lighting Controls (ABL); and the Intelligent Spaces Group (ISG). The ABL segment provides commercial, architectural, and specialty lighting solutions, as well as lighting controls and components for various indoor and outdoor applications under the A-Light, Aculux, American Electric Lighting, Cyclone, Dark to Light, eldoLED, Eureka, Gotham, Healthcare Lighting, Holophane, Hydrel, Indy, IOTA, Juno, Lithonia Lighting, Luminaire LED, Luminis, Mark Architectural Lighting, nLight, OPTOTRONIC, Peerless, RELOCWiring Solutions, and Sensor Switch.