237 Shares in Acuity Brands, Inc. (NYSE:AYI) Purchased by BankPlus Trust Department

BankPlus Trust Department bought a new position in shares of Acuity Brands, Inc. (NYSE:AYI) during the 4th quarter, HoldingsChannel reports. The institutional investor bought 237 shares of the electronics maker’s stock, valued at approximately $69,000.

Several other hedge funds have also recently bought and sold shares of the company. State Street Corp lifted its stake in Acuity Brands by 1.3% during the 3rd quarter. State Street Corp now owns 969,043 shares of the electronics maker’s stock worth $266,865,000 after acquiring an additional 12,479 shares in the last quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC lifted its stake in Acuity Brands by 5.7% during the 3rd quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC now owns 626,810 shares of the electronics maker’s stock worth $172,654,000 after acquiring an additional 34,032 shares in the last quarter. Pacer Advisors Inc. lifted its stake in Acuity Brands by 7.5% during the 3rd quarter. Pacer Advisors Inc. now owns 437,745 shares of the electronics maker’s stock worth $120,551,000 after acquiring an additional 30,581 shares in the last quarter. Seizert Capital Partners LLC raised its position in Acuity Brands by 2.0% in the 3rd quarter. Seizert Capital Partners LLC now owns 281,308 shares of the electronics maker’s stock valued at $77,469,000 after purchasing an additional 5,435 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Captrust Financial Advisors boosted its stake in shares of Acuity Brands by 9.3% in the 3rd quarter. Captrust Financial Advisors now owns 269,043 shares of the electronics maker’s stock valued at $74,092,000 after buying an additional 22,781 shares during the period. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 98.21% of the company’s stock.

Wall Street Analyst Weigh In

Several equities analysts have recently issued reports on AYI shares. Wells Fargo & Company lifted their price objective on Acuity Brands from $320.00 to $336.00 and gave the company an “equal weight” rating in a research note on Thursday, January 9th. William Blair upgraded Acuity Brands from a “market perform” rating to an “outperform” rating in a research note on Thursday, January 2nd. 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. Morgan Stanley upgraded Acuity Brands from an “equal weight” rating to an “overweight” rating and lifted their price objective for the company from $304.00 to $370.00 in a research note on Tuesday, January 14th. Finally, StockNews.com upgraded Acuity Brands from a “buy” rating to a “strong-buy” rating in a research note on Wednesday, February 19th. Three equities research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating, three have given a buy rating and one has given a strong buy rating to the stock. According to MarketBeat, the stock currently has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus target price of $341.40.

Acuity Brands Price Performance

AYI stock opened at $306.17 on Tuesday. The business has a 50 day moving average price of $316.92 and a 200 day moving average price of $299.03. The stock has a market cap of $9.48 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 22.55, a PEG ratio of 1.95 and a beta of 1.40. Acuity Brands, Inc. has a fifty-two week low of $217.64 and a fifty-two week high of $345.30. The company has a quick ratio of 2.38, a current ratio of 2.98 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.20.

Acuity Brands (NYSE:AYI) last posted its earnings results on Wednesday, January 8th. The electronics maker reported $3.97 earnings per share for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of $3.87 by $0.10. The firm 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 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. Equities research analysts anticipate that Acuity Brands, Inc. will post 15.86 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Acuity Brands Increases Dividend

The firm also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Friday, February 14th. Investors of record on Monday, February 3rd were paid a dividend of $0.17 per share. This is a boost from Acuity Brands’s previous quarterly dividend of $0.15. The ex-dividend date was Monday, February 3rd. This represents a $0.68 annualized dividend and a yield of 0.22%. Acuity Brands’s payout ratio is presently 5.01%.

Acuity Brands 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.