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

Acuity Brands, Inc. (NYSE:AYI) announced a quarterly dividend on Thursday, March 27th, RTT News reports. Investors of record on Friday, April 18th will be given a dividend of 0.17 per share by the electronics maker on Thursday, May 1st. This represents a $0.68 dividend on an annualized basis and a dividend yield of 0.25%.

Acuity Brands has raised its dividend payment by an average of 4.9% per year over the last three years. Acuity Brands has a payout ratio of 3.5% meaning its dividend is sufficiently covered by earnings. Research analysts expect Acuity Brands to earn $17.42 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 3.9%.

Acuity Brands Price Performance

Shares of AYI traded down $2.89 during trading hours on Thursday, reaching $268.39. The company had a trading volume of 289,867 shares, compared to its average volume of 267,110. The company has a current ratio of 2.98, a quick ratio of 2.38 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.20. Acuity Brands has a 12-month low of $217.64 and a 12-month high of $345.30. The firm has a 50 day simple moving average of $304.50 and a 200-day simple moving average of $303.82. The company has a market capitalization of $8.31 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 19.76, a PEG ratio of 1.95 and a beta of 1.41.

Acuity Brands (NYSE:AYI) last posted its quarterly earnings results on Wednesday, January 8th. The electronics maker reported $3.97 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, beating analysts’ consensus estimates of $3.87 by $0.10. The company had revenue of $951.60 million during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $955.60 million. Acuity Brands had a net margin of 11.11% and a return on equity of 19.98%. The company’s revenue for the quarter was up 1.8% on a year-over-year basis. During the same period last year, the firm earned $3.72 EPS. Research analysts expect that Acuity Brands will post 15.86 earnings per share for the current year.

Wall Street Analyst Weigh In

A number of brokerages have recently weighed in on AYI. Morgan Stanley upgraded Acuity Brands from an “equal weight” rating to an “overweight” rating and raised their price target for the company from $304.00 to $370.00 in a research report on Tuesday, January 14th. Oppenheimer lifted their target price on shares of Acuity Brands from $370.00 to $380.00 and gave the stock an “outperform” rating in a research 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. Wells Fargo & Company lifted their price objective on Acuity Brands from $320.00 to $336.00 and gave the stock an “equal weight” rating in a research report on Thursday, January 9th. Finally, Robert W. Baird lowered their target price on Acuity Brands from $340.00 to $310.00 and set a “neutral” rating on the stock in a report on Thursday. Three analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and four have assigned a buy rating to the stock. According to MarketBeat, Acuity Brands presently has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average target price of $339.80.

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.