Although we don't believe in timing the market or panicking over market movements, we do like to keep an eye on big changes -- just in case they're material to our investing thesis.
What: Shares of lighting specialist Acuity Brands
So what: Perhaps the Rolling Stones were right that you can't always get what you want. But in typical fashion, when investors didn't get what they wanted out of Acuity's earnings results, they hit the sell button. Though sales of $425 million were right in line with Wall Street's expectations, the $0.56 in earnings per share was a penny short of what analysts were hoping for.
Now what: Acuity's management isn't pretending things are daisies and lollipops -- the company's core non-residential market has been in a bad way and the expectation is that it will stay that way through at least the first half of 2011. Meanwhile, commodity costs are rising and management sees that taking a bite out of the next quarter's bottom line. But the company is diligently taking the steps that it can -- such as raising prices to offset cost increases -- to ride out this bumpy patch so that it can be well-positioned to take part in the strong growth that management sees ahead for the lighting industry as a whole.
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