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PAA Research’s Fourth Quarter 2023 Lighting Agent Survey - How long can AYI sustain record gross margins with pricing...

January 8th, 2024

PAA Research surveys lighting agents across the country on a semi-annual basis.  The latest survey was conducted in the first two weeks of December.  17 lighting agents responded to our...

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AYI: Riding Three Unsustainable Trends; The Threat of Mean Reversion (or Worse) in Gross Margins Looms Large

October 5th, 2023

Heading into 2023, we thought the broader industrial complex would be fertile ground for short ideas, particular those companies that generated meaningful revenue, earnings, and cash flow growth through...

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AYI: Customer Incentives Are Growing Rapidly, Price Reductions Could Come Next

January 9th, 2023

Is anyone else tired of hearing the phrase “product vitality” from this management team?  There were 10 references to “product vitality” during AYI’s 1Q23 earnings conference call, which means if you were...

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AYI: PAA Research's 4Q22 Lighting Agent Survey - Here Comes the Slowdown

December 15th, 2022

Attached is a report outlining feedback from lighting agents across the United States. It appears the lighting industry is headed towards a significant slowdown and the pricing gains that have driven growth for the past 18-24 months are fading...

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AYI: The Topping Process Starts with Growth Quality Issues

January 7th, 2022

We imagine that many AYI bulls are highly disappointed with the stock price action in response to what appeared to be on the surface a “blowout” quarter for the company.  However, upon further review, perhaps the quarter wasn’t as strong...

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AYI: Downplaying Price Increases When You’re a Supply Chain Disruption Winner

October 6th, 2021

“So some of the backlog will have different impacts of the price increase. So we had our first price increase announced in March, which was impacting late in the fourth quarter, very, very little, and we saw some of that realization...

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AYI: Lighting Agent Survey - How Long Can Pricing Hold Up?

October 5th, 2021

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AYI: When Mix Shift Is Your Gross Margin Expansion Story

April 1st, 2021

“Given our current gross profit margin improvement, we think that we can achieve the gross profit of above 42% for the balance of the fiscal year.” Karen Holcom, Senior VP and CFO, Acuity Brands, Inc. 3/31/21. 2Q21 Earnings Conf. Call For...

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AYI: What’s the Cost of a Digital Transformation? For Shareholders, It Could Be a Lot; Our Revised Estimates

April 3rd, 2020

               “The recent revenue trends, however, will not fix themselves. There has been industry deflation. We have additional...

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AYI: A perfect storm of demand destruction and continued competition from Asian imports has emerged; Lowering AYI Price...

March 27th, 2020

This note represents the first of what will be a series of reports that we will publish in the coming weeks backed by surveys across a variety of industries.   While there are many...

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AYI: PAA Research's Fourth Quarter 2019 Lighting Agent Survey

January 7th, 2020

Below is a link to a report outlining the findings from our 4Q19 survey of lighting agents. There are five critical conclusions that we want to point out: The efficacy of the 2H18 and early 2019 list price increases has eroded meaningfully The...

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AYI: Quickly Passing Through the Eye of the Storm - Pricing Pressure and Asian Competition Are Re-Emerging As the...

June 28th, 2019

Attached please find a slide deck outlining the feedback from our latest survey of lighting agents.

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AYI: A Question of Quality as Management Simply Makes It Up as They Go Along

April 3rd, 2019

Well, let’s chalk today’s price action to yet another example of the difficulties of predicting near term gyrations in any given stock.  Even with PERFECT information, we would not have predicted that AYI shares would rally 9%...

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AYI: The Narrative Is About to Change, Time to Get Short

April 26th, 2016

As a firm, we pride ourselves on the rigors of our idea generation process. Rigorous fundamental analysis, in-depth primary research, accounting scrutiny etc. are all hallmarks of our investment process.  However, despite the intensity of our work on any...

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AYI: Can the Company Clear a Higher Bar? Our Short Term Concerns Outweigh Our Long-Term Enthusiasm, Closing Out Long...

January 7th, 2011

Acuity Brands has been our favorite long idea in the industrials complex over the past year.  As a pure-play lighting equipment manufacturer with a growing portfolio of LED products and lighting...

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AYI: Channel Checks Indicate the Company Is Poised to Deliver Another Quarter of Revenue and EPS Upside

October 4th, 2010

Acuity Brands will report 4Q10 earnings on Wednesday, October 6th before the market opens. Based on our checks with approximately 35-40 lighting agents across the country we anticipate the company is poised to...

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AYI: 3Q10 Consensus Revenue Expectations Look Reasonable, Expect EPS Upside in the Form of Continued Gross Margin...

June 29th, 2010

AYI will report 3Q10 results before the market opens tomorrow. We expect the company to deliver inline revenues, but once again top consensus estimates due to better than expected gross margins. ...

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Can AYI's 2Q10 Results Justify the Run-up in the Stock? What Channel Feedback Tells Us - Closing Out Our Long AYI/Short...

March 26th, 2010

Approximately four months ago we introduced a pair trade: long AYI/short HUBB based on our view that AYI shares were poised for mean reversion in stock price performance relative to those of HUBB and...

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Our Expectations for AYI’s 1Q10 Results, the Company Has Plenty of “Dry Powder” Heading Into 2010

March 12th, 2010

This report was originally published on 1/4/10.A few weeks ago we introduced a pair-trade: long AYI/short HUBBbased on our expectation that AYI shares were poised to witness absolute and relative upside following an...

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Shedding Some “Light” On a New Pair Trade Idea: Long Acuity Brands (AYI)/Short Hubbell Inc. (HUBB)

March 11th, 2010

This report was originally published on 12/3/09.We have been long-time admirers of the business models of the leading electrical product manufacturers including: Cooper Industries, Thomas and Betts, Hubbell...

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Current Ideas

EXPI

SELL/SHORT

$4

HUSQ.B

SELL

$50

UFPI

SELL/SHORT

$45

TREX

SHORT

$18

PRDO

SELL/SHORT

$5

STRA

SELL/SHORT

$42

CWH

LONG

$75

OSTK

LONG

$128

CM

SELL/SHORT

$50

RY

SELL/SHORT

$50

ARC

LONG

$5.50

AYI

SHORT

$50

BIG

SHORT

$28

WWE

LONG

$65

XOXO

LONG

$37

RLGY

PAIR TRADE

$10

RDFN

PAIR TRADE

$30

BCO

LONG

$35

ING.PA

SHORT

$35

TRUP

SELL/SHORT

$10

CTC

SHORT

$101

ATGE

SHORT

$15

HCG.TO

SHORT

$0

RON.TO

SHORT

$9

ESI

SHORT

$0

BGG

PAIR - LONG BGG/SHORT TTC

25%

TTC

PAIR - LONG BGG/SHORT TTC

25%

Z

SHORT

$14.00

NA.TO

SHORT

$22

ZU

SHORT

$15

TRLA

SHORT

$20

MCRS

SHORT

$31

APOL

SHORT

$35

OPEN

SHORT

$30

KNL

PAIR - LONG KNL/SHORT MLHR

25%

CSGP

SHORT

$100

GCA

LONG

$8

IPSU

LONG

$20

MLHR

SHORT

$22

LOOP

PAIR - LONG CSGP/SHORT LOOP

40%

THQI

LONG

$35

WPO

SHORT

$275

COCO

SHORT

$0

HNI

SIG

RGR