SG Americas Securities LLC Sells 48,186 Shares of Acuity Brands, Inc. (NYSE:AYI)

SG Americas Securities LLC lowered its stake in shares of Acuity Brands, Inc. (NYSE:AYI) by 95.1% during the 3rd quarter, HoldingsChannel.com reports. The firm owned 2,462 shares of the electronics maker’s stock after selling 48,186 shares during the quarter. SG Americas Securities LLC’s holdings in Acuity Brands were worth $678,000 at the end of the most recent quarter.

Several other hedge funds and other institutional investors also recently bought and sold shares of the stock. Raleigh Capital Management Inc. increased its position in Acuity Brands by 5,666.7% during the fourth quarter. Raleigh Capital Management Inc. now owns 173 shares of the electronics maker’s stock valued at $35,000 after acquiring an additional 170 shares during the last quarter. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. boosted its position in shares of Acuity Brands by 23.4% during the fourth quarter. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. now owns 99,573 shares of the electronics maker’s stock valued at $20,396,000 after buying an additional 18,881 shares during the period. Wellington Management Group LLP grew its stake in shares of Acuity Brands by 4.1% during the fourth quarter. Wellington Management Group LLP now owns 1,149,459 shares of the electronics maker’s stock valued at $235,444,000 after buying an additional 45,666 shares during the last quarter. Quadrature Capital Ltd lifted its stake in shares of Acuity Brands by 14.4% during the 4th quarter. Quadrature Capital Ltd now owns 13,438 shares of the electronics maker’s stock worth $2,755,000 after acquiring an additional 1,694 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Kapitalo Investimentos Ltda increased its stake in Acuity Brands by 88.4% in the fourth quarter. Kapitalo Investimentos Ltda now owns 1,396 shares of the electronics maker’s stock worth $286,000 after purchasing an additional 655 shares during the period. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 98.21% of the company’s stock.

Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth

A number of research analysts have recently commented on AYI shares. Robert W. Baird upped their price target on shares of Acuity Brands from $280.00 to $318.00 and gave the stock a “neutral” rating in a report on Wednesday, October 2nd. Oppenheimer upped their target price on shares of Acuity Brands from $315.00 to $370.00 and gave the stock an “outperform” rating in a research note on Wednesday, October 2nd. Wells Fargo & Company lifted their price target on shares of Acuity Brands from $289.00 to $305.00 and gave the company an “equal weight” rating in a research note on Wednesday, October 2nd. The Goldman Sachs Group increased their price objective on Acuity Brands from $266.00 to $303.00 and gave the stock a “neutral” rating in a research note on Wednesday, October 2nd. Finally, StockNews.com lowered Acuity Brands from a “strong-buy” rating to a “buy” rating in a research report on Tuesday, August 27th. Three investment analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and two have assigned a buy rating to the company. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, the stock has a consensus rating of “Hold” and an average price target of $324.00.

Acuity Brands Stock Performance

Shares of Acuity Brands stock opened at $308.00 on Monday. The company has a 50-day simple moving average of $259.13 and a two-hundred day simple moving average of $255.57. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.21, a quick ratio of 2.16 and a current ratio of 2.72. Acuity Brands, Inc. has a one year low of $156.84 and a one year high of $310.96. The company has a market capitalization of $9.48 billion, a PE ratio of 25.04, a P/E/G ratio of 1.97 and a beta of 1.41.

Acuity Brands (NYSE:AYI) last issued its quarterly earnings results on Tuesday, October 1st. The electronics maker reported $4.30 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, topping analysts’ consensus estimates of $3.90 by $0.40. The business had revenue of $1.03 billion for the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $1.02 billion. Acuity Brands had a return on equity of 20.49% and a net margin of 11.00%. The business’s quarterly revenue was up 2.2% on a year-over-year basis. During the same period in the prior year, the firm posted $3.74 earnings per share. Research analysts expect that Acuity Brands, Inc. will post 15.48 EPS for the current fiscal year.

Acuity Brands Dividend Announcement

The firm also recently declared a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Friday, November 1st. Stockholders of record on Friday, October 18th will be paid a dividend of $0.15 per share. The ex-dividend date is Friday, October 18th. This represents a $0.60 dividend on an annualized basis and a dividend yield of 0.19%. Acuity Brands’s payout ratio is 4.88%.

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.