Acuity Brands, Inc. (NYSE:AYI) to Issue Quarterly Dividend of $0.17

Acuity Brands, Inc. (NYSE:AYI) announced a quarterly dividend on Thursday, January 23rd,RTT News reports. Stockholders of record on Monday, February 3rd will be paid a dividend of 0.17 per share by the electronics maker on Friday, February 14th. This represents a $0.68 annualized dividend and a dividend yield of 0.20%. The ex-dividend date is Monday, February 3rd. This is an increase from Acuity Brands’s previous quarterly dividend of $0.15.

Acuity Brands has raised its dividend payment by an average of 4.9% annually over the last three years. Acuity Brands has a payout ratio of 3.5% meaning its dividend is sufficiently covered by earnings. Analysts expect Acuity Brands to earn $16.99 per share next year, which means the company should continue to be able to cover its $0.68 annual dividend with an expected future payout ratio of 4.0%.

Acuity Brands Price Performance

Acuity Brands stock opened at $332.38 on Friday. The company has a current ratio of 2.98, a quick ratio of 2.38 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.20. The business’s 50 day simple moving average is $316.93 and its 200 day simple moving average is $289.16. Acuity Brands has a 12 month low of $217.64 and a 12 month high of $345.30. The company has a market cap of $10.29 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 24.48, a PEG ratio of 2.09 and a beta of 1.40.

Acuity Brands (NYSE:AYI) last posted its quarterly 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. Acuity Brands had a return on equity of 19.98% and a net margin of 11.11%. The company had revenue of $951.60 million during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $955.60 million. During the same quarter in the prior year, the company earned $3.72 EPS. The firm’s quarterly revenue was up 1.8% compared to the same quarter last year. Sell-side analysts forecast that Acuity Brands will post 15.72 EPS for the current year.

Analysts Set New Price Targets

Several analysts have recently issued reports on AYI shares. Morgan Stanley raised shares of Acuity Brands from an “equal weight” rating to an “overweight” rating and boosted their price target for the company from $304.00 to $370.00 in a research report on Tuesday, January 14th. William Blair raised shares of Acuity Brands from a “market perform” rating to an “outperform” rating in a report on Thursday, January 2nd. Oppenheimer raised their price target on Acuity Brands from $370.00 to $380.00 and gave the stock an “outperform” rating in a report on Thursday, January 9th. StockNews.com lowered Acuity Brands from a “strong-buy” rating to a “buy” rating in a research note on Friday, January 10th. Finally, Wells Fargo & Company increased their target price on shares of Acuity Brands from $320.00 to $336.00 and gave the stock an “equal weight” rating in a research note on Thursday, January 9th. Three analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and four have assigned a buy rating to the stock. According to data from MarketBeat.com, the stock has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average price target of $341.40.

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.