Acuity shared their FY 2026 Q1 (really, 2025 CY Q4) results and their lighting business’ (ABL – Acuity Brands Lighting) performance was in line with our Q4 2025 Pulse of Lighting report findings … and we have no idea if Acuity participated in our survey.

Acuity Reports

According to Acuity’s call, based upon the transcript and their report,

• Overall business was up 20%, however, ABL was up 1% and their AIS (Intelligent Space Group) business, which is impacted by their QSC acquisition, was up 250%. Q1 ’26 is $1.144 billion vs $952M
  • ABL (Lighting) was up 1% from $886M to $895M.
    • “Driven by growth in the independent sales network” due to an elevated backlog driven by forward buying due to price increases (so, the old “rob Peter to pay Paul” as distributors and lighting agents took pending projects “off the street”.)
  • AIS (Intelligent Spaces) was up 250% from $74M to $257M (primarily QSC)
• The company is positioning itself as an “industrial technology” company, no longer an industrial or lighting company, which then could infer that future growth opportunities may diverge from the core of lighting and perhaps lighting becomes a “cash cow” to support investments in other endeavors that will further diversify the company (all supposition.)
  • And their #2 Capital Allocation Priority in the presentation deck … “Invest in M&A”
• ABL
  • “Performed well in a tepid lighting market.” (And their performance mirror what the findings were in our Q4 Pulse of Lighting Report, which infers that they took little, if any, market share.)
  • Neil Ashe highlighted Lithonia’s EAX Area Luminaire and the ability to embed nLight controls, which highlights the feedback we heard that controls are an opportunity for 2026. The ease of configuring solutions and offering controls could be a benefit to drive revenue … as it makes it easier for the lighting agent to recommend the right solution / options.
  • Introducing some products that benefit from AIS’ offering. While technically not “cross-selling”, it is a “cross-migration” of products and functionality to support selected vertical markets.
  • Acuity apparently has an awards marketing strategy. Seeking to win awards and then promote that they won for selected vertical markets. Neil mentioned a few awards and examples of this. Whether this translates into sales / means anything to specifiers and end-buyers is unknown.

Acuity spent a little more time talking about AIS, and with a little more enthusiasm … because it has better results and lighting is “predictable.”

Analyst Questions

• Cross-sell. Acuity believes this should be driven by the customer rather than pushed by the channel. Pushing it through the channel would be challenging, especially at this stage, because there is not, or not much synergy among sales organizations or distribution channels for ABL and AIS product offerings and brands. But could there be opportunities down the line, very probably for some product offerings … perhaps dual branded offerings and especially for any dual trade distributors (electrical and HVAC).
• Neil mentioned a product category that Acuity does not offer but is frequently used in some vertical markets (grocery, convenience stores, fueling) … digital signage. Perhaps a future acquisition segment?

According to SeekingAlpha, Neil said (and I didn’t pick this up in the transcript), “In Acuity Brands Lighting, we continue to experience a tepid lighting market. The market appears to be waiting for clarity around interest rates, inflation and policy.” The challenge with this is that the lighting market is primarily driven be new commercial construction. Today we’re in a renovation-driven market. Few believe that if interest rates dropped a point or two that commercial construction, especially office and retail, would expand significantly. There doesn’t appear to be national demand. There could be some renovation. And, if there was demand, these projects would occur regardless of an interest rate drop. At the same time, a point or two drop in construction material inflation costs will not encourage developers to put up speculative buildings.

It will take a couple of years, best case, for the tide to raise all boats in the construction market, nationally. If it will. The key is identifying vertical markets to pursue, filling product gaps, identifying demographic and geographic trends that may drive construction needs. The industrial market is a different dynamic (and it is interesting that Acuity rarely comments on its performance in the industrial sector with Holophane.)

The takeaway … Acuity’s lighting division performed at the market rate, however, it is still the queen of the ball from a market share viewpoint and distributors comment on the company’s delivery performance.