Sanctuary Advisors LLC Grows Stock Holdings in Acuity Brands, Inc. (NYSE:AYI)

Sanctuary Advisors LLC lifted its position in shares of Acuity Brands, Inc. (NYSE:AYI) by 4.5% during the fourth quarter, according to the company in its most recent filing with the SEC. The institutional investor owned 13,652 shares of the electronics maker’s stock after buying an additional 586 shares during the quarter. Sanctuary Advisors LLC’s holdings in Acuity Brands were worth $3,988,000 at the end of the most recent quarter.

A number of other large investors also recently modified their holdings of AYI. State Street Corp lifted its stake in Acuity Brands by 1.3% in the 3rd quarter. State Street Corp now owns 969,043 shares of the electronics maker’s stock worth $266,865,000 after purchasing an additional 12,479 shares in the last quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC lifted its stake in Acuity Brands by 5.7% in the 3rd quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC now owns 626,810 shares of the electronics maker’s stock worth $172,654,000 after purchasing an additional 34,032 shares in the last quarter. Pacer Advisors Inc. lifted its stake in Acuity Brands by 7.5% in the 3rd quarter. Pacer Advisors Inc. now owns 437,745 shares of the electronics maker’s stock worth $120,551,000 after purchasing an additional 30,581 shares in the last quarter. Seizert Capital Partners LLC lifted its stake in Acuity Brands by 2.0% in the 3rd quarter. Seizert Capital Partners LLC now owns 281,308 shares of the electronics maker’s stock worth $77,469,000 after purchasing an additional 5,435 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Captrust Financial Advisors lifted its stake in Acuity Brands by 9.3% in the 3rd quarter. Captrust Financial Advisors now owns 269,043 shares of the electronics maker’s stock worth $74,092,000 after purchasing an additional 22,781 shares in the last quarter. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 98.21% of the company’s stock.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

Several brokerages have commented on AYI. Morgan Stanley upgraded shares of Acuity Brands from an “equal weight” rating to an “overweight” rating and boosted their price target for the stock from $304.00 to $370.00 in a research note on Tuesday, January 14th. William Blair upgraded shares of Acuity Brands from a “market perform” rating to an “outperform” rating in a research note on Thursday, January 2nd. StockNews.com upgraded shares of Acuity Brands from a “buy” rating to a “strong-buy” rating in a research note on Wednesday. Oppenheimer boosted their target price on shares of Acuity Brands from $370.00 to $380.00 and gave the stock an “outperform” rating in a report on Thursday, January 9th. Finally, Wells Fargo & Company boosted 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. Three equities research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating, three have given a buy rating and one has issued a strong buy rating to the company. According to data from MarketBeat, Acuity Brands presently has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus target price of $341.40.

Acuity Brands Stock Performance

Acuity Brands stock opened at $309.11 on Friday. The company’s 50-day moving average price is $317.32 and its 200-day moving average price is $296.85. Acuity Brands, Inc. has a twelve month low of $217.64 and a twelve month 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 cap of $9.57 billion, a PE ratio of 22.76, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 2.06 and a beta of 1.40.

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

Acuity Brands Increases Dividend

The company also recently declared a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Friday, February 14th. Investors of record on Monday, February 3rd were issued a dividend of $0.17 per share. This represents a $0.68 annualized dividend and a yield of 0.22%. This is an increase from Acuity Brands’s previous quarterly dividend of $0.15. The ex-dividend date of this dividend was Monday, February 3rd. Acuity Brands’s dividend payout ratio is presently 5.01%.

Acuity Brands 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.