Acuity Brands, Inc. (NYSE:AYI) Declares 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 given a dividend of 0.17 per share by the electronics maker on Thursday, May 1st. This represents a $0.68 dividend on an annualized basis and a dividend yield of 0.25%.

Acuity Brands has increased its dividend by an average of 4.9% annually over the last three years. Acuity Brands has a payout ratio of 3.5% meaning its dividend is sufficiently covered by earnings. 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 Stock Performance

NYSE:AYI opened at $268.39 on Friday. The stock has a market capitalization of $8.31 billion, a P/E ratio of 19.76, a PEG ratio of 1.95 and a beta of 1.41. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.20, a quick ratio of 2.38 and a current ratio of 2.98. Acuity Brands has a fifty-two week low of $217.64 and a fifty-two week high of $345.30. The company has a 50 day moving average price of $303.24 and a 200 day moving average price of $303.57.

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

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

A number of brokerages have issued reports on AYI. William Blair upgraded shares of Acuity Brands from a “market perform” rating to an “outperform” rating in a research note on Thursday, January 2nd. Robert W. Baird cut their target price 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. Oppenheimer raised their price target on shares of Acuity Brands from $370.00 to $380.00 and gave the company an “outperform” rating in a research report on Thursday, January 9th. StockNews.com cut Acuity Brands from a “strong-buy” rating to a “buy” rating in a research note on Saturday, March 1st. Finally, Morgan Stanley raised Acuity Brands from an “equal weight” rating to an “overweight” rating and boosted their target price for the stock from $304.00 to $370.00 in a research note on Tuesday, January 14th. Three analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and four have issued a buy rating to the stock. According to data from MarketBeat, the stock currently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average target price of $339.80.

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.