Acuity Brands (NYSE:AYI) Upgraded at Morgan Stanley

Morgan Stanley upgraded shares of Acuity Brands (NYSE:AYI) from an equal weight rating to an overweight rating in a research note released on Tuesday morning, Marketbeat reports. The brokerage currently has $370.00 target price on the electronics maker’s stock, up from their previous target price of $304.00.

AYI has been the subject of several other research reports. Oppenheimer boosted 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. The Goldman Sachs Group raised their price target on Acuity Brands from $266.00 to $303.00 and gave the company a “neutral” rating in a report on Wednesday, October 2nd. William Blair raised Acuity Brands from a “market perform” rating to an “outperform” rating in a report on Thursday, January 2nd. Robert W. Baird raised their target price on shares of Acuity Brands from $280.00 to $318.00 and gave the company a “neutral” rating in a research note on Wednesday, October 2nd. Finally, Wells Fargo & Company upped their target price on shares of Acuity Brands from $320.00 to $336.00 and gave the company an “equal weight” rating in a research report on Thursday, January 9th. Three investment analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and four have assigned a buy rating to the stock. According to data from MarketBeat, the stock has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus price target of $341.40.

Acuity Brands Price Performance

Acuity Brands stock opened at $331.40 on Tuesday. The business has a 50 day simple moving average of $315.48 and a 200 day simple moving average of $282.49. Acuity Brands has a one year low of $217.64 and a one year high of $337.99. The company has a market capitalization of $10.26 billion, a PE ratio of 24.40, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 1.94 and a beta of 1.40. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.20, a current ratio of 2.98 and a quick ratio of 2.16.

Acuity Brands (NYSE:AYI) last released its quarterly earnings results on Wednesday, January 8th. The electronics maker reported $3.97 EPS for the quarter, beating analysts’ consensus estimates of $3.87 by $0.10. The firm had revenue of $951.60 million for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $955.60 million. Acuity Brands had a net margin of 11.11% and a return on equity of 19.98%. The company’s revenue for the quarter was up 1.8% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same period in the previous year, the business earned $3.72 earnings per share. On average, sell-side analysts forecast that Acuity Brands will post 15.7 EPS for the current fiscal year.

Insiders Place Their Bets

In related news, SVP Barry R. Goldman sold 5,120 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction on Monday, October 28th. The shares were sold at an average price of $305.00, for a total value of $1,561,600.00. Following the completion of the sale, the senior vice president now owns 8,438 shares in the company, valued at $2,573,590. This represents a 37.76 % decrease in their position. The transaction was disclosed in a filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available at this link. Company insiders own 2.80% of the company’s stock.

Institutional Inflows and Outflows

Several hedge funds and other institutional investors have recently added to or reduced their stakes in AYI. State Street Corp lifted its holdings in shares of Acuity Brands by 1.3% during the 3rd quarter. State Street Corp now owns 969,043 shares of the electronics maker’s stock valued at $266,865,000 after purchasing an additional 12,479 shares in the last quarter. Dimensional Fund Advisors LP lifted its stake in Acuity Brands by 3.4% in the second quarter. Dimensional Fund Advisors LP now owns 629,893 shares of the electronics maker’s stock valued at $152,085,000 after buying an additional 20,832 shares in the last quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC lifted its stake in Acuity Brands by 5.7% in the third 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. AQR Capital Management LLC boosted its holdings 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 valued at $106,201,000 after buying an additional 63,159 shares during the period. Finally, Pacer Advisors Inc. increased its position in shares of Acuity Brands by 7.5% during the third quarter. Pacer Advisors Inc. now owns 437,745 shares of the electronics maker’s stock worth $120,551,000 after acquiring an additional 30,581 shares in the last quarter. 98.21% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors.

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.