Acuity Brands, Inc. (NYSE:AYI) Shares Purchased by Vanguard Group Inc.

Vanguard Group Inc. raised its holdings in Acuity Brands, Inc. (NYSE:AYI) by 0.5% during the fourth quarter, HoldingsChannel reports. The firm owned 3,104,542 shares of the electronics maker’s stock after buying an additional 16,407 shares during the period. Vanguard Group Inc. owned about 0.10% of Acuity Brands worth $906,930,000 as of its most recent filing with the SEC.

Other institutional investors and hedge funds have also made changes to their positions in the company. State Street Corp grew its holdings in shares of Acuity Brands by 1.3% during the third quarter. State Street Corp now owns 969,043 shares of the electronics maker’s stock worth $266,865,000 after buying an additional 12,479 shares during the last quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC grew its stake in shares of Acuity Brands by 5.7% in the 3rd quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC now owns 626,810 shares of the electronics maker’s stock valued at $172,654,000 after purchasing an additional 34,032 shares during the last quarter. Captrust Financial Advisors increased its holdings in shares of Acuity Brands by 9.3% in the third quarter. Captrust Financial Advisors now owns 269,043 shares of the electronics maker’s stock valued at $74,092,000 after purchasing an additional 22,781 shares during the period. Fisher Asset Management LLC raised its stake in shares of Acuity Brands by 1.5% during the fourth quarter. Fisher Asset Management LLC now owns 188,670 shares of the electronics maker’s stock worth $55,116,000 after purchasing an additional 2,795 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Allianz Asset Management GmbH lifted its holdings in shares of Acuity Brands by 2.4% during the fourth quarter. Allianz Asset Management GmbH now owns 152,187 shares of the electronics maker’s stock worth $44,458,000 after purchasing an additional 3,589 shares during the period. 98.21% of the stock is owned by hedge funds and other institutional investors.

Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth

Several brokerages have issued reports on AYI. Wells Fargo & Company dropped their price objective on shares of Acuity Brands from $336.00 to $290.00 and set an “equal weight” rating on the stock in a research note on Friday. Morgan Stanley raised shares of Acuity Brands from an “equal weight” rating to an “overweight” rating and increased their price target for the stock from $304.00 to $370.00 in a report on Tuesday, January 14th. Robert W. Baird lowered their price objective on Acuity Brands from $340.00 to $310.00 and set a “neutral” rating on the stock in a report on Thursday. Oppenheimer increased their target price on Acuity Brands from $370.00 to $380.00 and gave the stock an “outperform” rating in a research note on Thursday, January 9th. Finally, StockNews.com cut Acuity Brands from a “strong-buy” rating to a “buy” rating in a report on Saturday, March 1st. Three equities 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 has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus target price of $330.60.

Acuity Brands Trading Down 2.0 %

Shares of AYI opened at $262.44 on Friday. Acuity Brands, Inc. has a twelve month low of $217.64 and a twelve month high of $345.30. 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 firm has a market capitalization of $8.12 billion, a P/E ratio of 19.33, a PEG ratio of 1.95 and a beta of 1.41. The firm’s 50-day moving average is $301.88 and its two-hundred day moving average is $303.67.

Acuity Brands (NYSE:AYI) last released its quarterly earnings results on Wednesday, January 8th. The electronics maker reported $3.97 earnings per share for the quarter, topping analysts’ consensus estimates of $3.87 by $0.10. The business had revenue of $951.60 million for 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 company’s revenue was up 1.8% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same quarter in the prior year, the firm posted $3.72 EPS. On average, research analysts predict that Acuity Brands, Inc. will post 15.86 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Acuity Brands Dividend Announcement

The firm also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Thursday, May 1st. Investors of record on Friday, April 18th will be given a $0.17 dividend. The ex-dividend date is Thursday, April 17th. This represents a $0.68 annualized dividend and a dividend yield of 0.26%. Acuity Brands’s dividend payout ratio is presently 5.01%.

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.