Acuity Inc. (de)

AYI on NYSE. Acuity sells lighting, controls, and building management systems to businesses and building owners. Market value $9.1bn.

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Price checks use the past 12 months to May 2026. Quality checks use five annual reports, the latest for the year to August 2025.

Should I look at this?

Worth a closer look

Read what could go wrong

This is not advice. Check the numbers below.

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Cash yield
past 12 months to May 2026
7.0%high

For every $100 of what the whole company costs, it produced $7.01 of spare cash in the past 12 months. A savings account pays about $4.

Price to profit
past 12 months to May 2026
14.1×fair

You pay 14.1 years of operating profit for the business. The average large US company costs around 18.

Return on capital
five annual reports to August 2025
17.7%five-year median

Each dollar kept in the business earns 18 cents a year. Above 10 is good.

Quality score: 96 of 100. Price score: 91 of 100. Our list needs 70 on quality and 60 on price.

$304.84 a share, 19% above its 1-year low

Over the past year the price has ranged from $257.04 to $380.17.

Dividend: 0.2% a year

Paid every year for at least 5 years

Prices from Monday’s close (5 October).

Five years of cash, in billions

0.4
0.3
0.5
0.6
0.5
0.6
2021202220232024202512 monthsto May '26
Revenue
$3.5bn$4.0bn$4.0bn$3.8bn$4.3bn
Operating margin
12.4%12.7%12.0%14.4%13.0%
Debt to equity
0.240.270.250.210.33
Shares outstanding
0.03bn0.03bn0.03bn0.03bn0.03bn

Health checks

  • Free cash flow positive5 of 5 years
  • Accounting looks honest (Beneish)Nothing unusual
  • Financial strength (Piotroski)5 of 8 checks we could run
  • Profit backed by cash (accruals)Yes
  • Debt0.33× equity
  • Revenue growth, five yearsSlow, 5.5% a year
  • Buying back its own sharesYes, 8% fewer since 2021

The quarter to May 2026

How the business did, compared with the same quarter a year earlier.

  • Sales: $1.2 billion last quarter, about the same as a year ago.
  • Profit: $141 million, up 43% on a year ago.
  • It keeps 14 cents of each $1 of sales as operating profit, up from 13 cents a year earlier.
  • Spare cash over the past 12 months: $639 million, up from $506 million.
  • 2% fewer shares than a year ago. Each share owns a bit more of the company.
  • Debt is $285 million more than cash, down from $625 million a year ago.
  • Sales grew on a year ago in each of the last 4 quarters.
Sales by quarter
Sales by quarter
Quarter toAmount
August 2024$1.0bn
November 2024$952m
February 2025$1.0bn
May 2025$1.2bn
August 2025$1.2bn
November 2025$1.1bn
February 2026$1.1bn
May 2026$1.2bn
Profit by quarter
Profit by quarter
Quarter toAmount
August 2024$119m
November 2024$107m
February 2025$78m
May 2025$98m
August 2025$114m
November 2025$121m
February 2026$97m
May 2026$141m

From the company's quarterly reports to the SEC.

Dates

Next results (estimated)
n/a
Last annual report (10-K)
27 October 2025
Next quarterly (estimated, 10-Q)
24 September 2026

Who owns it

6 long-term investors we follow own it, down from 7 last quarter. 636 funds in all.

Jun '25
Dec '25
Jun '26

Sold out this quarter

Largest holders overall

From 13F filings for the quarter ended 30 June 2026.

Big holders and activists

3 investors own more than 5%.

From Schedule 13D and 13G filings: anyone owning more than 5% must file one.

What insiders did

In the last 12 months, 2 insiders bought $340,746 of shares on the open market. 2 sold $7m, $3m of it under preset trading plans.

  • HOLCOM KAREN J
    SVP & Chief Financial Officer
    Sold
    under a preset trading plan
    Date
    1 September 2026
    Shares
    2,000
    Price
    $329.62
    Value
    $659,240
  • GOLDMAN BARRY R
    SVP & General Counsel
    Sold
    Date
    2 July 2026
    Shares
    1,200
    Price
    $365.65
    Value
    $438,780
  • HOLCOM KAREN J
    SVP & Chief Financial Officer
    Sold
    under a preset trading plan
    Date
    1 June 2026
    Shares
    2,076
    Price
    $303.14
    Value
    $629,319
  • Leibman Maya
    Director
    Bought
    Date
    30 April 2026
    Shares
    200
    Price
    $288.83
    Value
    $57,766
  • O'Shaughnessy Laura
    Director
    Bought
    Date
    8 April 2026
    Shares
    1,000
    Price
    $282.98
    Value
    $282,980
  • HOLCOM KAREN J
    SVP & Chief Financial Officer
    Sold
    under a preset trading plan
    Date
    28 January 2026
    Shares
    4,974
    Price
    $309.23
    Value
    $2m
  • GOLDMAN BARRY R
    SVP & General Counsel
    Sold
    Date
    28 October 2025
    Shares
    4,489
    Price
    $365.11
    Value
    $2m
  • GOLDMAN BARRY R
    SVP & General Counsel
    Sold
    Date
    24 October 2025
    Shares
    4,687
    Price
    $368.01
    Value
    $2m

From Form 4 filings: insiders must report trades in their own company's shares within two days.

Warning signs in its filings

Problems the company itself reported to the SEC, in its own words.

None of the warning signs we check for were found.

We look for five warning signs: doubt it can keep going, weak checks on its own accounts, a notice that its past accounts can't be relied on, a change of auditor, and one customer bringing in a big share of sales. We don't check lawsuits, investigations or debt yet.

We checked the auditor's report, internal controls, restatement notices, auditor changes and big customers in the 10-K filed 27 Oct 2025, plus the 10-Q filed 25 Jun 2026 and 7 later 8-Ks.

A 10-K is the yearly report every US company files with the SEC. An 8-K is a short notice of a big event.

What could go wrong

Cheap for a reason is the question the numbers cannot answer.

Whether the price already reflects the risks is what the deep dive is for.

What changed in the risks this year

Companies must list what could hurt them each year. These are the parts that changed since last year’s report.

  • Company operating systems, information systems, or devices have experienced, and may experience in the future, a failure or a compromise of security, which could adversely impact our operations as well as the effectiveness of internal controls over operations and financial reporting.

    While prior compromises of our security have not had, in the aggregate, a material impact on the Company’s operations and financial condition, the Company expects events of this nature to continue as cyber-attacks are becoming more sophisticated and frequent. As artificial intelligence (“AI”) technologies advance, new and increasingly sophisticated attack methods are emerging, including fraud involving impersonation technologies or other forms of generative automation that enhance the scale and effectiveness of cyber threats. The techniques used in such attacks change rapidly, and certain vulnerabilities or attack methods may go undetected until after they are already deployed, potentially allowing them to persist within our systems for extended periods. The Company monitors its data, information technology, and personnel usage of Company systems to reduce these risks and continues to do so on an ongoing basis for any current or potential threats. Refer to Part I, Item 1C. Cybersecurity for further details.
    Read more

Read it in the annual report

The deep dive

Everything above is arithmetic on public filings. The deep dive reads the last ten years of annual reports, the proxy statements, and the earnings calls, then argues the case the way Buffett, Klarman, and Hohn would, and checks every claim against the source.

  • What the business is worth, as a range, and the margin of safety at today’s price
  • Prices to start buying, buy, and buy hard
  • The three things that would make this a mistake
  • Every number footnoted to the filing it came from
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What a finished deep dive looks like

Not advice. Numbers on this page come from SEC filings and are updated each night; prices are updated again after the US market closes. The five-year figures are rounded.