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Chart of the Day: Acuity Brands Sees the Light
The Chart of the Day belongs to the lighting equipment company Acuity Brands (AYI) . I found the stock by using Barchart's powerful screening functions to find stocks with the highest technical buy signals, highest Weighted Alpha, superior current momentum and having a Trend Seeker buy signal then used the Flipchart feature to review the charts for consistent price appreciation. Since the Trend Seeker signaled a buy on 11/ 14 the stock gained 31.84%.
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. This segment serves electrical distributors, retail home improvement centers, electric utilities, national accounts, original equipment manufacturers, digital retailers, lighting showrooms, and energy service companies. The ISG segment offers building management solutions, such as products for controlling heating, ventilation, air conditioning, lighting, shades, refrigeration, and building access that deliver end-to-end optimization of those building systems; and building management software that enhances building system management and automates labor intensive tasks. This segment serves system integrators, as well as retail stores, airports, and enterprise campuses. The company offers its products and solutions under the Atrius, Distech Controls, and KE2 Therm Solutions brands. Acuity Brands, Inc. was incorporated in 2001 and is headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia.
Barchart's Opinion Trading systems are listed below. Please note that the Barchart Opinion indicators are updated live during the session every 20 minutes and can therefore change during the day as the market fluctuates. The indicator numbers shown below therefore may not match what you see live on the Barchart.com website when you read this report.
Barchart Technical Indicators:
- 100% technical buy signals
- 45.20+ Weighted Alpha
- 30.24% gain in the last year
- Trend Seeker buy signal
- Above its 20, 50 and 100 day moving averages
- 12 new highs and up 17.71% in the last month
- Relative Strength Index 79.95%
- Technical support level at $237.43
- Recently traded at $241.00 with 50 day moving average of $202.93
Fundamental Factors:
- Market Cap $7.67 billion
- P/E 17.74
- Dividend yield .22%
- Wall Street projects Revenue will be down 1.90% this year but increase again by 4.20% next year
- Earnings are estimated to increase 5.90% this year, an additional 5.40% next year and continue to compound at an annual rate of 12.78% for the next 5 years
Analysts and Investor Sentiment -- I don't buy stocks because everyone else is buying but I do realize that if major firms and investors are dumping a stock it's hard to make money swimming against the tide:
- Wall Street analysts issued 4 strong buy, 3 buy, 8 hold and 1 under perform recommendations this month
- Analysts price targets are $170 to $260 with a consensus of $233 - below its recent price
- The individual investors following the stock on Motley Fool voted 208 to 20 for the stock to beat the market with the most experienced investors voting 42 to 4 for the same result
- Value Line gives the stock its highest rating of 1 and but has an 18 month price target of $224 -5% below the recent price
- CFRAs MarketScope has a buy rating
- 6,320 investors monitor the stock on Seeking Alpha
Additional disclosure: The Barchart Chart of the Day highlights stocks that are experiencing exceptional current price appreciation. They are not intended to be buy recommendations as these stocks are extremely volatile and speculative. Should you decide to add one of these stocks to your investment portfolio it is highly suggested you follow a predetermined diversification and moving stop loss discipline that is consistent with your personal investment risk tolerance and reevaluate your stop losses at least on a weekly basis.
On the date of publication, Jim Van Meerten did not have (either directly or indirectly) positions in any of the securities mentioned in this article. All information and data in this article is solely for informational purposes. For more information please view the Barchart Disclosure Policy here.
