1,623 Shares in Acuity Brands, Inc. (NYSE:AYI) Acquired by Versor Investments LP

Versor Investments LP acquired a new stake in Acuity Brands, Inc. (NYSE:AYI) during the fourth quarter, Holdings Channel.com reports. The institutional investor acquired 1,623 shares of the electronics maker’s stock, valued at approximately $474,000.

Other hedge funds and other institutional investors also recently made changes to their positions in the company. State Street Corp lifted its stake 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 valued at $266,865,000 after acquiring an additional 12,479 shares during the period. Geode Capital Management LLC lifted its position in Acuity Brands by 5.7% during 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 period. Pacer Advisors Inc. boosted its stake in shares of Acuity Brands by 7.5% in the 3rd quarter. Pacer Advisors Inc. now owns 437,745 shares of the electronics maker’s stock valued at $120,551,000 after purchasing an additional 30,581 shares during the last quarter. Seizert Capital Partners LLC grew its position in shares of Acuity Brands by 2.0% during the 3rd quarter. Seizert Capital Partners LLC now owns 281,308 shares of the electronics maker’s stock worth $77,469,000 after buying an additional 5,435 shares during the period. Finally, Captrust Financial Advisors raised its stake in shares of Acuity Brands by 9.3% during the third quarter. Captrust Financial Advisors now owns 269,043 shares of the electronics maker’s stock worth $74,092,000 after buying an additional 22,781 shares during the last quarter. 98.21% of the stock is owned by institutional investors and hedge funds.

Wall Street Analyst Weigh In

A number of brokerages have issued reports on AYI. Morgan Stanley raised shares of Acuity Brands from an “equal weight” rating to an “overweight” rating and raised their price objective for the company from $304.00 to $370.00 in a research note on Tuesday, January 14th. Oppenheimer raised their price target on Acuity Brands from $370.00 to $380.00 and gave the stock an “outperform” rating in a research report on Thursday, January 9th. StockNews.com downgraded Acuity Brands from a “strong-buy” rating to a “buy” rating in a report on Saturday. William Blair upgraded Acuity Brands from a “market perform” rating to an “outperform” rating in a report on Thursday, January 2nd. Finally, Wells Fargo & Company upped their price target on Acuity Brands from $320.00 to $336.00 and gave the company an “equal weight” rating in a research note on Thursday, January 9th. Three equities research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and four have assigned a buy rating to the company. According to data from MarketBeat.com, Acuity Brands has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus price target of $341.40.

Acuity Brands Stock Down 0.7 %

NYSE:AYI opened at $296.94 on Friday. Acuity Brands, Inc. has a 1 year low of $217.64 and a 1 year high of $345.30. The stock has a 50-day moving average price of $316.80 and a two-hundred day moving average price of $300.61. The stock has a market cap of $9.19 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 21.87, a PEG ratio of 1.95 and a beta of 1.40. 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 (NYSE:AYI) last posted its earnings results on Wednesday, January 8th. The electronics maker reported $3.97 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, topping analysts’ consensus estimates of $3.87 by $0.10. The business had revenue of $951.60 million during 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%. Acuity Brands’s revenue for the quarter was up 1.8% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same period in the prior year, the business earned $3.72 EPS. As a group, equities analysts expect that Acuity Brands, Inc. will post 15.86 earnings per share for the current year.

Acuity Brands Increases Dividend

The business also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Friday, February 14th. Investors of record on Monday, February 3rd were given a $0.17 dividend. This is a boost from Acuity Brands’s previous quarterly dividend of $0.15. This represents a $0.68 annualized dividend and a yield of 0.23%. The ex-dividend date was Monday, February 3rd. Acuity Brands’s payout ratio is currently 5.01%.

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.