Acuity Brands, Inc. (NYSE:AYI) Q1 2024 Earnings Conference Call January 9, 2024 8:00 AM ET

Company Participants

Charlotte McLaughlin - VP, IR

Neil M. Ashe - Chairman, President, and CEO

Karen J. Holcom - SVP and CFO

Conference Call Participants

Joseph O'Dea - Wells Fargo

Timothy Wojs - Robert W. Baird

Christopher Snyder - UBS

Ryan Merkel - William Blair

Christopher Glynn - Oppenheimer & Co.

Jeffrey Sprague - Vertical Research

Jeffrey Osborne - TD Cowen

Unidentified Analyst - Goldman Sachs

Operator

Good morning, and welcome to the Acuity Brands Fiscal 2024 First Quarter Earnings Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, the company will conduct a question-and-answer session. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to Charlotte McLaughlin, Vice President of Investor Relations. Charlotte, please go ahead.

Charlotte McLaughlin

Thank you. Good morning, and welcome to the Acuity Brands fiscal 2024 first quarter earnings call. As a reminder, some of our comments today may be forward-looking statements based on our management's beliefs and assumptions and information currently available to our management at this time. These beliefs are subject to known and unknown risks and uncertainties, many of which may be beyond our control, including those detailed in our periodic SEC filings. Please note that our company's actual results may differ materially from those anticipated, and we undertake no obligation to update these statements. Reconciliations of certain non-GAAP financial metrics with our corresponding GAAP measures are available in our 2024 first quarter earnings release, which is available on our Investor Relations website at www.investors.acuitybrands.com.

With me this morning is Neil Ashe, our Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer, who will provide an update on our strategy and give an overview of the quarter. And Karen Holcom, our Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, who will walk us through our fiscal first quarter financial performance. There will be an opportunity for Q&A at the end of this call. For those participating, please limit your remarks to one question and one follow-up, if necessary. We are webcasting today's conference call live. Thank you for your interest in Acuity Brands. I will now turn the call over to Neil Ashe.

Neil M. Ashe

Thank you, Charlotte and thanks to all of you for joining us this morning. We continue to demonstrate strong execution in our fiscal 2024 first quarter. We increased our adjusted operating profit, our adjusted operating profit margin, and our adjusted diluted earnings per share. We generated significant free cash flow and we allocated capital effectively to drive value. Both our Lighting and our Intelligent Spaces businesses continued to perform well during the quarter. Particularly in ABL our performance was excellent. We increased adjusted operating profit by $15 million on $71 million less sales, and increased the adjusted operating profit margin 280 basis points to 17.5%. Our strategy is yielding results. We're increasing product vitality, elevating service levels, using technology to improve and differentiate both our products and how we operate the business, and we are driving productivity.