Acuity Brands (NYSE:AYI) Upgraded by StockNews.com to “Strong-Buy”

StockNews.com upgraded shares of Acuity Brands (NYSE:AYI) from a buy rating to a strong-buy rating in a research note issued to investors on Tuesday morning.

Separately, Wells Fargo & Company raised their price objective on Acuity Brands from $200.00 to $236.00 and gave the stock an overweight rating in a research report on Tuesday, December 19th. Two analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating, two have issued a buy rating and one has assigned a strong buy rating to the company’s stock. According to data from MarketBeat, the company presently has a consensus rating of Moderate Buy and a consensus price target of $215.00.

Acuity Brands Price Performance

Acuity Brands stock opened at $268.73 on Tuesday. The company has a current ratio of 2.45, a quick ratio of 1.85 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.24. The company has a market capitalization of $8.28 billion, a PE ratio of 22.99, a P/E/G ratio of 1.95 and a beta of 1.49. Acuity Brands has a 12 month low of $149.30 and a 12 month high of $270.95. The stock has a 50-day moving average price of $249.07 and a two-hundred day moving average price of $206.76.

Acuity Brands (NYSE:AYI) last posted its earnings results on Tuesday, January 9th. The electronics maker reported $3.72 EPS for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $3.23 by $0.49. The firm had revenue of $934.70 million during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $935.14 million. Acuity Brands had a return on equity of 21.43% and a net margin of 9.56%. The business’s quarterly revenue was down 6.3% on a year-over-year basis. During the same period last year, the company earned $3.04 earnings per share. Analysts expect that Acuity Brands will post 13.72 EPS for the current year.

Acuity Brands Announces Dividend

The business also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Wednesday, May 1st. Stockholders of record on Wednesday, April 17th will be given a dividend of $0.15 per share. The ex-dividend date is Tuesday, April 16th. This represents a $0.60 dividend on an annualized basis and a dividend yield of 0.22%. Acuity Brands’s dividend payout ratio (DPR) is 5.13%.

Insiders Place Their Bets

In other Acuity Brands news, SVP Barry R. Goldman sold 1,900 shares of Acuity Brands stock in a transaction that occurred on Wednesday, January 10th. The stock was sold at an average price of $226.01, for a total value of $429,419.00. Following the completion of the sale, the senior vice president now directly owns 8,611 shares in the company, valued at $1,946,172.11. The sale was disclosed in a filing with the SEC, which is available at the SEC website. In other Acuity Brands news, SVP Barry R. Goldman sold 1,900 shares of Acuity Brands stock in a transaction that occurred on Wednesday, January 10th. The stock was sold at an average price of $226.01, for a total value of $429,419.00. Following the completion of the sale, the senior vice president now directly owns 8,611 shares in the company, valued at $1,946,172.11. The sale was disclosed in a filing with the SEC, which is available at the SEC website. Also, SVP Dianne S. Mills sold 6,000 shares of Acuity Brands stock in a transaction that occurred on Thursday, January 18th. The stock was sold at an average price of $225.11, for a total value of $1,350,660.00. Following the completion of the sale, the senior vice president now owns 8,554 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $1,925,590.94. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. 1.50% of the stock is currently owned by corporate insiders.

Institutional Investors Weigh In On Acuity Brands

A number of hedge funds have recently added to or reduced their stakes in the company. FMR LLC grew its stake in Acuity Brands by 0.5% in the third quarter. FMR LLC now owns 3,365,821 shares of the electronics maker’s stock valued at $573,233,000 after acquiring an additional 17,459 shares during the period. Vanguard Group Inc. grew its stake in Acuity Brands by 1.9% in the first quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. now owns 3,313,389 shares of the electronics maker’s stock valued at $627,225,000 after acquiring an additional 60,541 shares during the period. BlackRock Inc. grew its stake in Acuity Brands by 0.9% in the first quarter. BlackRock Inc. now owns 2,982,396 shares of the electronics maker’s stock valued at $564,568,000 after acquiring an additional 25,598 shares during the period. Wellington Management Group LLP grew its stake in Acuity Brands by 19.3% in the first quarter. Wellington Management Group LLP now owns 1,208,990 shares of the electronics maker’s stock valued at $228,862,000 after acquiring an additional 195,515 shares during the period. Finally, Morgan Stanley grew its stake in Acuity Brands by 620.3% in the fourth quarter. Morgan Stanley now owns 1,197,721 shares of the electronics maker’s stock valued at $198,355,000 after acquiring an additional 1,031,432 shares during the period. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 98.21% of the company’s stock.

Acuity Brands Company Profile

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.