AYI Acuity Brands, Inc.

$AYI Q4 '26 Earnings Results & Recap • Reported GAAP EPS of $5.63 up 8.27% YoY • Reported revenue of $1.24B up 2.92% YoY

$AYI Q4 is out, and it answers the question from the pre-mortem: does the top line finally accelerate? Net sales came in at 1,244.4 million, up 2.9% year over year. That is a real step up from last quarter's 1.6%, though basically in line with the roughly 1.25 billion the Street expected. Adjusted EPS of 5.77 beat the 5.66 consensus by about 2%. Same pattern as always: the beats keep living on the margin line, not the top line. The real story is inside the mix. Intelligent Spaces grew 16.6% to 297.6 million. The core lighting business shrank 0.4% to 958.7 million. The growth company hiding inside Acuity keeps outgrowing the legacy one. Full year: revenue 4,641.8 million up 6.8%, adjusted EPS 19.90 up 10.5%. Two things to carry into the 8:00 call: 44.9 million of the quarter was tariff refunds, which the company strips out of its adjusted numbers. And the release gave no 2027 guidance at all.

$AYI Earnings pre-mortem: Acuity reports its fiscal Q4 Thursday morning before the open. Consensus is EPS 5.66 on revenue of about 1.25B. The pattern to watch: Acuity has beaten EPS four quarters straight, and Zacks' earnings ESP sits at +4.46% into this report. But the revenue line has barely moved. Last quarter's beat came on 1.6% revenue growth. The quarter before that, revenue missed by 2.3%. So the beats are margin-driven, not growth-driven. At 20x earnings with the top line growing 1-2%, the question Thursday is not really whether they beat the 5.66 number. It is whether revenue finally accelerates. Stock closed Friday at 319.42, up 3.2%.

$AYI I know very little about this company, but this was recommended this morning by one of the services as a pre-Earnings play... Might nibble if there is a pullback.