Your humble editor listened in on the Acuity Brands investor call. Below are my notes:
- C&I sales normally about 60% of volume, this quarter dropped by 3% or 4%.
- Closing a few small plants and will leave inventory in place—not cost effective to move
- Excess capacity will be absorbed into other locations. Consolidate to improve cost and productivity. These are smaller manufacturing facilities from recent acquisitions.
- Home Center business was up slightly
- Atrius is doing well.
- Plan to grow at a higher rate than the overall market.
- Last two acquisitions very interesting. Solidify position with emergency and power back up. Deploying capital to bring value to shareholders.
- Spent $298 YTD with stock buy-back. $600M over last 5 quarters on stock buy-back
- Expanded credit facility to give more flexibility. Have 5.2M shares that they have authority from board to repurchase
- M&A pipeline continues to be busy
- Contractor Select offers attractive price points, with better margins. Does not see competitors backing away from contractor programs.
Price Increase:
- Announced at LIGHTFAIR and the increase not only covers fluorescent, but certain LED product
- Starting to roll through
- Seeing benefit
- Everyone in this space is experience increase cost, so optimistic that it will stick.
- Too early to impact Q3, but expect it to impact Q4
- 75% of lighting is project based; impact of price increases will have some impact, but impact on stock and flow business