Acuity Brands (NYSE:AYI) Issues Earnings Results

Acuity Brands (NYSE:AYI) posted its earnings results on Thursday. The electronics maker reported $3.73 EPS for the quarter, beating analysts’ consensus estimates of $3.67 by $0.06, RTT News reports. The firm had revenue of $1.01 billion during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $1.03 billion. Acuity Brands had a return on equity of 19.98% and a net margin of 11.11%. The company’s quarterly revenue was up 11.1% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same period in the prior year, the company earned $3.38 EPS.

Acuity Brands Trading Up 1.2 %

Shares of NYSE AYI opened at $266.79 on Thursday. Acuity Brands has a twelve month low of $217.64 and a twelve month 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. The business has a fifty day simple moving average of $297.70 and a two-hundred day simple moving average of $304.27. The firm has a market cap of $8.26 billion, a PE ratio of 19.65, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 1.95 and a beta of 1.41.

Acuity Brands Dividend Announcement

The company also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Thursday, May 1st. Shareholders of record on Friday, April 18th will be issued a dividend of $0.17 per share. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Thursday, April 17th. This represents a $0.68 annualized dividend and a yield of 0.25%. Acuity Brands’s payout ratio is currently 5.01%.

Analysts Set New Price Targets

Several analysts recently weighed in on the company. William Blair upgraded Acuity Brands from a “market perform” rating to an “outperform” rating in a report on Thursday, January 2nd. Morgan Stanley raised shares of Acuity Brands from an “equal weight” rating to an “overweight” rating and increased their target price for the company from $304.00 to $370.00 in a research note on Tuesday, January 14th. StockNews.com cut shares of Acuity Brands from a “strong-buy” rating to a “buy” rating in a research note on Saturday, March 1st. Robert W. Baird reduced their price objective on shares of Acuity Brands from $340.00 to $310.00 and set a “neutral” rating on the stock in a research report on Thursday, March 27th. Finally, Oppenheimer boosted their target price on Acuity Brands from $370.00 to $380.00 and gave the company an “outperform” rating in a research report on Thursday, January 9th. Three research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and four have issued a buy rating to the company. According to data from MarketBeat, the stock presently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus price target of $330.60.

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.