Acuity Brands (NYSE:AYI) Posts Earnings Results, Beats Expectations By $0.06 EPS

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

Acuity Brands Stock Up 1.2 %

NYSE AYI opened at $266.79 on Thursday. Acuity Brands has a 52 week low of $217.64 and a 52 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. The company has a market capitalization of $8.26 billion, a P/E ratio of 19.65, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 1.95 and a beta of 1.41. The stock’s 50-day moving average price is $297.70 and its 200-day moving average price is $304.27.

Acuity Brands Announces Dividend

The business also recently declared a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Thursday, May 1st. Shareholders of record on Friday, April 18th will be given a $0.17 dividend. This represents a $0.68 dividend on an annualized basis and a yield of 0.25%. The ex-dividend date is Thursday, April 17th. Acuity Brands’s payout ratio is 5.01%.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

Several brokerages recently issued reports on AYI. StockNews.com cut shares of Acuity Brands from a “strong-buy” rating to a “buy” rating in a report on Saturday, March 1st. Wells Fargo & Company dropped their price target on Acuity Brands from $336.00 to $290.00 and set an “equal weight” rating on the stock in a research note on Friday, March 28th. Oppenheimer upped their price objective on Acuity Brands from $370.00 to $380.00 and gave the company an “outperform” rating in a research report on Thursday, January 9th. William Blair raised Acuity Brands from a “market perform” rating to an “outperform” rating in a research report on Thursday, January 2nd. Finally, Morgan Stanley upgraded 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 note on Tuesday, January 14th. Three equities research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and four have given a buy rating to the company’s stock. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, the company has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average target price 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.