Acuity Brands Earnings Preview

Motley Fool Staff
Updated

Acuity Brands (NYS: AYI) met its estimates last quarter, but investors hope that it will beat them this quarter. The company will unveil its latest earnings on Monday. Acuity Brands is a provider of lighting fixtures, control devices, components, systems, and services for commercial and institutional, industrial, infrastructure, and residential applications for various markets.

What analysts say:

  • Buy, sell, or hold?: Analysts are bullish on Acuity Brands as six analysts rate it as a buy and only one analyst rates it as a sell. Analysts still rate the stock a hold, but they are a bit more wary about it compared to three months ago.

  • Revenue forecasts: On average, analysts predict $467.4 million in revenue this quarter. That would represent a rise of 10% from the year-ago quarter.

  • Wall Street earnings expectations: The average analyst estimate is earnings of $0.67 per share. Estimates range from $0.63 to $0.78.

What our community says:
CAPS All-Stars are solidly behind the stock with 94.7% giving it an outperform rating. The community at large backs the All-Stars with 92.6% awarding it a rating of outperform. Fools are gung-ho about Acuity Brands, though the message boards have been quiet lately with only 75 posts in the past 30 days. Despite the majority sentiment in favor of Acuity Brands, the stock has a middling CAPS rating of three out of five stars.

Management:
Acuity Brands' profit has risen year over year by an average of 53.2% over the past five quarters. Revenue has now gone up for three straight quarters.

Now let's look at how efficient management is at running the business. Traditionally, margins represent the efficiency with which companies capture portions of sales dollars. The following table shows gross, operating, and net margins over the past four quarters.

Quarter

Q4

Q3

Q2

Q1

Gross Margin

40.4%

41.4%

39.4%

41.4%

Operating Margin

11.2%

11.0%

8.9%

10.7%

Net Margin

6.9%

5.9%

4.8%

5.7%

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Earnings estimates provided by Zacks

At the time thisarticle was published

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