Sumitomo Mitsui Trust Group Inc. Raises Stake in Acuity Brands, Inc. (NYSE:AYI)

Sumitomo Mitsui Trust Group Inc. lifted its position in shares of Acuity Brands, Inc. (NYSE:AYI) by 16.3% in the fourth quarter, according to the company in its most recent disclosure with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The institutional investor owned 6,500 shares of the electronics maker’s stock after buying an additional 909 shares during the quarter. Sumitomo Mitsui Trust Group Inc.’s holdings in Acuity Brands were worth $1,899,000 at the end of the most recent quarter.

A number of other hedge funds and other institutional investors have also modified their holdings of the company. State Street Corp grew its holdings in shares of Acuity Brands by 1.3% during 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 in the last quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC grew its holdings in shares of Acuity Brands by 5.7% during 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 in the last quarter. Pacer Advisors Inc. grew its holdings 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 buying an additional 30,581 shares in the last quarter. Seizert Capital Partners LLC grew its holdings in shares of Acuity Brands by 2.0% during the third quarter. Seizert Capital Partners LLC now owns 281,308 shares of the electronics maker’s stock worth $77,469,000 after buying an additional 5,435 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Captrust Financial Advisors grew its holdings in shares of Acuity Brands by 9.3% during the third quarter. Captrust Financial Advisors now owns 269,043 shares of the electronics maker’s stock worth $74,092,000 after buying an additional 22,781 shares in the last quarter. 98.21% of the stock is currently owned by hedge funds and other institutional investors.

Analysts Set New Price Targets

A number of equities research analysts have recently commented on the stock. William Blair upgraded shares of Acuity Brands from a “market perform” rating to an “outperform” rating in a report on Thursday, January 2nd. Morgan Stanley upgraded shares of Acuity Brands from an “equal weight” rating to an “overweight” rating and boosted their target price for the company from $304.00 to $370.00 in a report on Tuesday, January 14th. Wells Fargo & Company boosted their target price on shares of Acuity Brands from $320.00 to $336.00 and gave the company an “equal weight” rating in a report on Thursday, January 9th. StockNews.com downgraded shares of Acuity Brands from a “strong-buy” rating to a “buy” rating in a report on Tuesday. Finally, Oppenheimer boosted their target price on shares of Acuity Brands from $370.00 to $380.00 and gave the company an “outperform” rating in a report on Thursday, January 9th. Three research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and four have issued a buy rating to the company’s stock. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, the company has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus price target of $341.40.

Acuity Brands Trading Up 0.4 %

Shares of AYI stock opened at $325.13 on Friday. The stock has a market cap of $10.07 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 23.94, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 2.07 and a beta of 1.40. The company has a quick ratio of 2.38, a current ratio of 2.98 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.20. Acuity Brands, Inc. has a fifty-two week low of $217.64 and a fifty-two week high of $345.30. The firm’s 50 day moving average price is $316.80 and its two-hundred day moving average price is $293.73.

Acuity Brands (NYSE:AYI) last announced its quarterly earnings results 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. The firm had revenue of $951.60 million for the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $955.60 million. Acuity Brands had a net margin of 11.11% and a return on equity of 19.98%. Acuity Brands’s revenue was up 1.8% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same period in the previous year, the company posted $3.72 earnings per share. On average, analysts anticipate that Acuity Brands, Inc. will post 15.86 EPS for the current year.

Acuity Brands Increases Dividend

The firm also recently declared a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Friday, February 14th. Shareholders of record on Monday, February 3rd will be given a dividend of $0.17 per share. This represents a $0.68 dividend on an annualized basis and a yield of 0.21%. This is a boost from Acuity Brands’s previous quarterly dividend of $0.15. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Monday, February 3rd. Acuity Brands’s payout ratio is 5.01%.

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.