Acuity Brands, Inc. (NYSE:AYI) Announces Quarterly Dividend of $0.15

Acuity Brands, Inc. (NYSE:AYI) declared a quarterly dividend on Thursday, September 26th, Wall Street Journal reports. Investors of record on Friday, October 18th will be paid a dividend of 0.15 per share by the electronics maker on Friday, November 1st. This represents a $0.60 dividend on an annualized basis and a yield of 0.22%. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Friday, October 18th.

Acuity Brands has a payout ratio of 3.6% indicating that its dividend is sufficiently covered by earnings. Research analysts expect Acuity Brands to earn $15.35 per share next year, which means the company should continue to be able to cover its $0.60 annual dividend with an expected future payout ratio of 3.9%.

Acuity Brands Price Performance

Shares of AYI opened at $270.08 on Friday. Acuity Brands has a fifty-two week low of $156.84 and a fifty-two week high of $275.63. The firm’s 50-day simple moving average is $248.15 and its two-hundred day simple moving average is $253.00. The stock has a market cap of $8.31 billion, a PE ratio of 21.96, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 1.77 and a beta of 1.41. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.22, a quick ratio of 2.15 and a current ratio of 2.77.

Acuity Brands (NYSE:AYI) last posted its quarterly earnings results on Thursday, June 27th. The electronics maker reported $4.15 earnings per share for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of $3.82 by $0.33. Acuity Brands had a return on equity of 20.97% and a net margin of 10.12%. The company had revenue of $968.10 million for the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $996.52 million. During the same quarter in the prior year, the business posted $3.50 EPS. The firm’s quarterly revenue was down 3.2% compared to the same quarter last year. Analysts anticipate that Acuity Brands will post 14.26 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

AYI has been the topic of a number of recent research reports. StockNews.com cut Acuity Brands from a “strong-buy” rating to a “buy” rating in a research note on Tuesday, August 27th. Robert W. Baird dropped their price target on shares of Acuity Brands from $286.00 to $280.00 and set a “neutral” rating on the stock in a research note on Tuesday, June 18th. Finally, Wells Fargo & Company raised their price objective on shares of Acuity Brands from $260.00 to $289.00 and gave the company an “equal weight” rating in a research note on Tuesday. Three analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and two have given a buy rating to the stock. According to MarketBeat.com, the stock presently has a consensus rating of “Hold” and a consensus target price of $286.25.

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.