Vernon J. Nagel
Analyst · Thompson Research Group
Kathryn, thank you, this is Vern. First of all, I believe that the conventional lighting product portfolio, middle to upper value lighting propositions, I think that pricing is fairly stable. The notion of selling value-add is still alive and well at some of the lower-end products, more of the, I'll call, value purchases. You see a number of competitors that are in the marketplace, I think, attempting to take share using price as a point of differentiation mostly on stock and flow type things, certainly, not on projects. And even there, I don't see pricing being punitive. It's just that, typically, their business strategy, I call, the termites, the termites tend to use price as their point of differentiation. And I don't know that, that has meaningfully changed in the past 12 months, nor do we expect it to meaningfully change in the next 12 months. I would say relative to the growing LED portfolio, if you look at simply the product of an LED luminaire, it's sure that pricing continues to come down, particularly as cost, chips in particular, become more commoditized. And so that trend has not changed nor do we expect it to change. Profitability, you didn't ask this question, on LED products, I think costs are coming down in an appropriate fashion for a company like Acuity to actually generate profits that are consistent with its other portfolio. And again, there's puts and takes around all of that. So I see, from a simple product perspective, trends continuing as they are. I do believe that lighting solutions, integrated lighting systems, where you're selling not just a discrete luminaire or a discrete control product, you're selling an integrated system into a campus that ties into building management. There, I see the opportunity for price improvements, particularly as features and benefits around lighting control systems come to the forefront and folks understand the value of those. In other words, you're getting energy savings while you're using the space. The luminaire can be dimmed down 30% because there's light coming through the window, so you're able to take advantage of daylight harvesting. I see the opportunity to sell higher value in those kinds of things going forward. So I would expect, as we continue to hone our value proposition around integrated lighting systems for us to actually sell more value per square foot influencing our margins.