Acuity Brands (NYSE:AYI) Rating Lowered to “Buy” at StockNews.com

Acuity Brands (NYSE:AYI) was downgraded by stock analysts at StockNews.com from a “strong-buy” rating to a “buy” rating in a report released on Tuesday.

A number of other brokerages have also recently weighed in on AYI. Morgan Stanley upgraded Acuity Brands from an “equal weight” rating to an “overweight” rating and upped their price target for the company from $304.00 to $370.00 in a research report on Tuesday, January 14th. Wells Fargo & Company upped their target price on shares of Acuity Brands from $320.00 to $336.00 and gave the stock an “equal weight” rating in a report on Thursday, January 9th. William Blair upgraded shares of Acuity Brands from a “market perform” rating to an “outperform” rating in a research report on Thursday, January 2nd. Finally, Oppenheimer boosted their price target on shares of Acuity Brands from $370.00 to $380.00 and gave the company an “outperform” rating in a research report on Thursday, January 9th. Three investment analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and four have issued a buy rating to the stock. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, the stock presently has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average price target of $341.40.

Acuity Brands Price Performance

Shares of Acuity Brands stock opened at $323.32 on Tuesday. The firm has a market cap of $10.01 billion, a P/E ratio of 23.81, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 2.07 and a beta of 1.40. The firm’s 50-day simple moving average is $316.90 and its 200-day simple moving average is $293.52. Acuity Brands has a twelve month low of $217.64 and a twelve month high of $345.30. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.20, a quick ratio of 2.38 and a current ratio of 2.98.

Acuity Brands (NYSE:AYI) last released its quarterly earnings data on Wednesday, January 8th. The electronics maker reported $3.97 earnings per share for the quarter, beating analysts’ consensus estimates 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 for the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $955.60 million. During the same period in the previous year, the business earned $3.72 earnings per share. The company’s quarterly revenue was up 1.8% on a year-over-year basis. As a group, research analysts expect that Acuity Brands will post 15.86 EPS for the current fiscal year.

Institutional Trading of Acuity Brands

Several hedge funds have recently modified their holdings of the stock. Oddo BHF Asset Management Sas acquired a new position in Acuity Brands during the 3rd quarter worth $3,849,000. Hancock Whitney Corp lifted its stake in shares of Acuity Brands by 42.0% during the third quarter. Hancock Whitney Corp now owns 6,477 shares of the electronics maker’s stock valued at $1,784,000 after acquiring an additional 1,917 shares during the period. Aigen Investment Management LP bought a new position in Acuity Brands in the third quarter valued at about $484,000. Landscape Capital Management L.L.C. acquired a new stake in Acuity Brands in the third quarter worth about $813,000. Finally, McKinley Carter Wealth Services Inc. raised its holdings in Acuity Brands by 15.0% during the 3rd quarter. McKinley Carter Wealth Services Inc. now owns 21,285 shares of the electronics maker’s stock worth $5,862,000 after purchasing an additional 2,773 shares during the last quarter. 98.21% of the stock is owned by institutional investors.

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.