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

Acuity Brands, Inc. (NYSE:AYI) announced a quarterly dividend on Thursday, March 27th, RTT News reports. Stockholders of record on Friday, April 18th will be paid a dividend of 0.17 per share by the electronics maker on Thursday, May 1st. This represents a $0.68 annualized dividend and a dividend yield of 0.26%. The ex-dividend date is Thursday, April 17th.

Acuity Brands has raised its dividend payment by an average of 4.9% annually over the last three years. Acuity Brands has a dividend payout ratio of 3.5% indicating that its dividend is sufficiently covered by earnings. Equities 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 Trading Down 2.0 %

Acuity Brands stock opened at $262.44 on Friday. The stock has a market cap of $8.12 billion, a PE ratio of 19.33, a P/E/G ratio of 1.95 and a beta of 1.41. The company has a current ratio of 2.98, a quick ratio of 2.38 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.20. The stock has a 50-day moving average price of $301.88 and a 200 day moving average price of $303.67. Acuity Brands has a 52 week low of $217.64 and a 52 week high of $345.30.

Acuity Brands (NYSE:AYI) last announced its quarterly earnings data on Wednesday, January 8th. The electronics maker reported $3.97 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $3.87 by $0.10. The business 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 company’s quarterly revenue was up 1.8% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same quarter in the prior year, the firm posted $3.72 earnings per share. Equities research analysts predict that Acuity Brands will post 15.86 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

A number of equities research analysts have recently commented on the company. William Blair raised Acuity Brands from a “market perform” rating to an “outperform” rating in a research report on Thursday, January 2nd. Oppenheimer lifted their price target on Acuity Brands from $370.00 to $380.00 and gave the company an “outperform” rating in a report on Thursday, January 9th. Morgan Stanley raised shares of Acuity Brands from an “equal weight” rating to an “overweight” rating and raised their target price for the stock from $304.00 to $370.00 in a research report on Tuesday, January 14th. Robert W. Baird cut their price target on shares of Acuity Brands from $340.00 to $310.00 and set a “neutral” rating on the stock in a research note on Thursday. Finally, Wells Fargo & Company lowered their price objective on shares of Acuity Brands from $336.00 to $290.00 and set an “equal weight” rating for the company in a research note on Friday. Three analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and four have assigned a buy rating to the company. According to data from MarketBeat, Acuity Brands currently has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average price target of $330.60.

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.