Wedge Capital Management L L P NC Has $11.10 Million Holdings in Acuity Brands, Inc. (NYSE:AYI)

Wedge Capital Management L L P NC lowered its stake in Acuity Brands, Inc. (NYSE:AYI) by 22.6% in the fourth quarter, according to its most recent disclosure with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The fund owned 37,985 shares of the electronics maker’s stock after selling 11,117 shares during the period. Wedge Capital Management L L P NC owned approximately 0.12% of Acuity Brands worth $11,097,000 as of its most recent SEC filing.

A number of other institutional investors and hedge funds also recently made changes to their positions in the stock. State Street Corp lifted its position in shares of Acuity Brands by 1.3% in the third quarter. State Street Corp now owns 969,043 shares of the electronics maker’s stock worth $266,865,000 after buying an additional 12,479 shares during the last quarter. Dimensional Fund Advisors LP lifted its position in shares of Acuity Brands by 3.4% in the second quarter. Dimensional Fund Advisors LP now owns 629,893 shares of the electronics maker’s stock worth $152,085,000 after buying an additional 20,832 shares during the last quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC lifted its position in shares of Acuity Brands by 5.7% in the third quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC now owns 626,810 shares of the electronics maker’s stock worth $172,654,000 after buying an additional 34,032 shares during the last quarter. AQR Capital Management LLC lifted its position in shares of Acuity Brands by 16.7% in the second quarter. AQR Capital Management LLC now owns 442,007 shares of the electronics maker’s stock worth $106,201,000 after buying an additional 63,159 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Pacer Advisors Inc. lifted its position in shares of Acuity Brands by 7.5% in the third quarter. Pacer Advisors Inc. now owns 437,745 shares of the electronics maker’s stock worth $120,551,000 after buying an additional 30,581 shares during the last quarter. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 98.21% of the company’s stock.

Insider Activity

In other news, SVP Barry R. Goldman sold 5,120 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Monday, October 28th. The stock was sold at an average price of $305.00, for a total value of $1,561,600.00. Following the sale, the senior vice president now directly owns 8,438 shares in the company, valued at approximately $2,573,590. This represents a 37.76 % decrease in their position. The transaction was disclosed in a document filed with the SEC, which is accessible through this link. Corporate insiders own 2.80% of the company’s stock.

Analyst Ratings Changes

Several research firms recently weighed in on AYI. Wells Fargo & Company boosted their price objective on Acuity Brands from $320.00 to $336.00 and gave the stock an “equal weight” rating in a research report on Thursday, January 9th. The Goldman Sachs Group boosted their price objective on Acuity Brands from $266.00 to $303.00 and gave the stock a “neutral” rating in a research report on Wednesday, October 2nd. Morgan Stanley raised Acuity Brands from an “equal weight” rating to an “overweight” rating and boosted their price objective for the stock from $304.00 to $370.00 in a research report on Tuesday, January 14th. Robert W. Baird boosted their price objective on Acuity Brands from $280.00 to $318.00 and gave the stock a “neutral” rating in a research report on Wednesday, October 2nd. Finally, StockNews.com cut Acuity Brands from a “strong-buy” rating to a “buy” rating in a research report on Friday, January 10th. Three investment analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and four have given a buy rating to the company. Based on data from MarketBeat, the stock has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus target price of $341.40.

Acuity Brands Trading Down 0.0 %

Shares of AYI opened at $330.70 on Friday. Acuity Brands, Inc. has a 12-month low of $217.64 and a 12-month high of $337.99. The company has a quick ratio of 2.16, a current ratio of 2.98 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.20. The firm has a market capitalization of $10.24 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 24.35, a P/E/G ratio of 1.94 and a beta of 1.40. The stock’s 50-day moving average price is $315.63 and its 200 day moving average price is $283.73.

Acuity Brands (NYSE:AYI) last issued its quarterly earnings results 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. Acuity Brands had a return on equity of 19.98% and a net margin of 11.11%. The firm had revenue of $951.60 million for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $955.60 million. During the same period in the previous year, the company posted $3.72 earnings per share. The company’s quarterly revenue was up 1.8% compared to the same quarter last year. As a group, research analysts predict that Acuity Brands, Inc. will post 15.7 earnings per share for the current year.

Acuity Brands Company 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.