Daiwa Securities Group Inc. Takes Position in Acuity Brands, Inc. (NYSE:AYI)

Daiwa Securities Group Inc. bought a new stake in Acuity Brands, Inc. (NYSE:AYI) in the 4th quarter, according to the company in its most recent 13F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The institutional investor bought 4,760 shares of the electronics maker’s stock, valued at approximately $1,391,000.

Several other large investors have also modified their holdings of the stock. State Street Corp boosted its holdings in shares of Acuity Brands by 1.3% in the 3rd quarter. State Street Corp now owns 969,043 shares of the electronics maker’s stock valued at $266,865,000 after buying an additional 12,479 shares in the last quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC boosted its holdings in shares of Acuity Brands by 5.7% in the 3rd quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC now owns 626,810 shares of the electronics maker’s stock valued at $172,654,000 after buying an additional 34,032 shares in the last quarter. Pacer Advisors Inc. boosted its holdings 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 buying an additional 30,581 shares in the last quarter. Seizert Capital Partners LLC boosted its holdings in shares of Acuity Brands by 2.0% in the 3rd quarter. Seizert Capital Partners LLC now owns 281,308 shares of the electronics maker’s stock valued at $77,469,000 after buying an additional 5,435 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Captrust Financial Advisors boosted its holdings in shares of Acuity Brands by 9.3% in the 3rd quarter. Captrust Financial Advisors now owns 269,043 shares of the electronics maker’s stock valued at $74,092,000 after buying an additional 22,781 shares in the last quarter. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 98.21% of the company’s stock.

Analyst Ratings Changes

A number of analysts recently weighed in on AYI shares. StockNews.com cut shares of Acuity Brands from a “strong-buy” rating to a “buy” rating in a research note on Saturday, March 1st. William Blair upgraded shares of Acuity Brands from a “market perform” rating to an “outperform” rating in a research note on Thursday, January 2nd. Wells Fargo & Company increased their price target on shares of Acuity Brands from $320.00 to $336.00 and gave the stock an “equal weight” rating in a research note on Thursday, January 9th. Morgan Stanley upgraded shares of Acuity Brands from an “equal weight” rating to an “overweight” rating and increased their price target for the stock from $304.00 to $370.00 in a research note on Tuesday, January 14th. Finally, Oppenheimer upped their price objective 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. Three research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and four have assigned a buy rating to the company. According to MarketBeat, the stock presently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average target price of $341.40.

Acuity Brands Stock Performance

Shares of AYI opened at $263.01 on Friday. The company has a 50-day simple moving average of $311.42 and a 200-day simple moving average of $302.66. 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 capitalization of $8.14 billion, a PE ratio of 19.37, a P/E/G ratio of 1.95 and a beta of 1.41. Acuity Brands, Inc. has a 52-week low of $217.64 and a 52-week high of $345.30.

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

Acuity Brands Increases Dividend

The company also recently declared a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Friday, February 14th. Shareholders of record on Monday, February 3rd were paid a dividend of $0.17 per share. This is a boost from Acuity Brands’s previous quarterly dividend of $0.15. This represents a $0.68 annualized dividend and a dividend yield of 0.26%. The ex-dividend date of this dividend was Monday, February 3rd. Acuity Brands’s dividend payout ratio (DPR) 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.