Ameresco Q2 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
August 5, 2024

Key Takeaways

  • Ameresco disclosed the resignation of CFO Doran Hall and transition to Mark Chiplock, introducing short-term leadership uncertainty.
  • Q2 revenues rose 34% to $438M, led by a 45% increase in projects revenue, while backlog jumped 36% YoY to a record $4.4B.
  • Gross margins fell to ~15% as unexpected costs—including a $6.6M charge and a $10M full-year revision—on SoCal Ed projects weighed on profitability.
  • Ameresco raised its 2024 revenue and adjusted EBITDA guidance, targeting ~27% revenue growth and ~35% EBITDA growth at midpoints, driven by strong execution and backlog visibility.
  • Secured a potential 5-year RNG supply contract with a major California utility, reducing RIN volatility and bolstering stable, long-term asset revenue.
AI Generated. May Contain Errors.
Earnings Conference Call
Ameresco Q2 2024
00:00 / 00:00

There are 16 speakers on the call.

Operator

Soon, everyone. We appreciate you joining us for today's call. Joining me here are George Sakellaris, Ameresco's Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer Doran Hole, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Nicole Bulgarino, Executive Vice President and General Manager, Federal and Utility Solutions Mike Backus, Executive Vice President, Renewable Natural Gas and Mark Chiplock, Senior Vice President and Chief Accounting Officer. Before I turn the call over to George, I would like to make a brief statement regarding forward looking remarks. Today's earnings materials contain forward looking statements, including statements regarding our expectations.

Operator

All forward looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties. Please refer to today's earnings materials, the Safe Harbor language on Slide 2 of our supplemental information and our SEC filings for a discussion of the major risk factors that could cause our actual results to differ from those in our forward looking statements. In addition, we use several non GAAP measures when presenting our financial results. We have included the reconciliations to these measures in our supplemental information. I will now turn the call over to George.

Operator

George?

Speaker 1

Thank you, Leila, and good afternoon, everyone. Before I get started on the Q2 results, I would like to address the statement captured in our earnings release. Doran Hall has resigned as Chief Financial Officer to pursue other opportunities. We greatly appreciate Doran's contributions over the last 5 years and wish him the best in his future endeavors. Doran will continue to serve as Chief Financial Officer until August 30, at which time Mark Chiplat could be promoted to the Chief Financial Officer.

Speaker 1

Mark has been with Ameresco for over 10 years and has served in multiple roles with increasing responsibility. I am thrilled to have Mark step into this role as a seasoned MRSCO leader. In addition, Josh Baraboe will assume an expanded role as a Senior Vice President of Finance. I believe our deep bench of seasoned executives will skillfully navigate this transition. And now on to the results.

Speaker 1

Our momentum continue into the Q2 as the Ameresco team again delivered strong revenue growth across all four of our business lines, led by an impressive 45% growth in projects revenue. At the same time, we continue to build on our excellent long term visibility, increasing total backlog by 36% year over year to a record $4,400,000,000 will also bring in a record 155 Megawatts of Energy assets into operation, and we still have 6 35 megawatts of assets in development. Demand of our renewable energy efficiency and resiliency offerings continues to be very strong as our customers seek clean technology solutions that yield both cost savings and increased reliability. Ameresco's technology agnostic platform and depth of engineering expertise allows us to stay at the forefront of the energy transition. While our market environment continues to be very strong, we do understand that there is a lot of uncertainty around the upcoming elections.

Speaker 1

Embarrasso was established almost 25 years ago that has not only grown, but thrived under a variety of administrations. The foundation of our business is helping customers, including the government, achieve core savings and improve their energy infrastructure in a capital efficient manner. I have asked 2 key members of our executive team, Nicole Folgerino and Mike Paccas to join us to discuss their business. Nicole?

Operator

Thank you, George, and good afternoon, everyone. As George just mentioned, we are excited for the outlook of both our federal and utility businesses as we expect continued demand for resilient clean energy projects for many years to come. Over the last 2 decades, while we have seen policy and messaging shift from 1 administration to another, the key drivers for our business have remained consistent. Our government agency and military customers continue to be focused on mission critical projects that deliver secure and resilient power to support their bases, ports, facilities, office buildings and military housing communities. We are uniquely positioned to help our customers achieve these objectives by reducing load through the latest energy efficiency upgrades and by deploying distributed generation solutions.

Operator

Across multiple administrations, we have delivered large highly successful comprehensive energy solutions for the Department of Defense and other government agencies. We have a very strong pipeline of additional projects and assets integrating domestically sourced solutions using third party financing. For our utility business, our customers are focused on providing cost effective, reliable electricity, while also transitioning to clean energy. In addition, they need to increase capacity to address the load growth driven by electrification and data center development. More recently, utility customers have been utilizing battery energy storage solutions for resiliency and grid stability, providing critical power during peak demand periods and allowing the grid to better handle an increased amount of intermittent renewable energy.

Operator

We are already experiencing rapid growth of our utility business as seen by the meaningful increase in the number of significant announcements made in just the last few years. The battery storage systems we recently celebrated with the United Power team in Colorado last week are a perfect example of this work, as is the large Capone solar and battery storage system we brought online in June, which is a great example of an integrated solution serving both our federal and our utility customers at the same time. As you can see, our strong reputation for technology expertise and execution places us in a prime position to capitalize on the expanding opportunities in both the federal and utility markets. Our projects save money, enhance efficiency, provide clean, resilient, reliable power, while creating jobs and supporting local and national policies. This great value proposition is in high demand regardless of changes in Washington.

Operator

I will now turn the call over to Mike. Mike?

Speaker 2

Thank you, Nicole. Ameresco has been developing biofuel projects since our founding. And I can honestly say that I have never been as excited as I am now about its prospects. For a number of years, RNG's primary market has been the transportation sector, leveraging the RFS program. But as global markets have continued to focus on sustainability, primarily in the electric side of the carbon footprint equation, we are seeing many industries turn their attention to the thermal side.

Speaker 2

This is a market with huge potential with natural gas utility consumption over 4 40 times the volumes used in the transportation sector. And for Ameresco, it is a perfect opportunity as it involves longer term profitable offtake contracts, while reducing our exposure to rents. Gas utility RFPs for RNG supply agreements have picked up noticeably as these parties seek to meet their carbon reduction goals. In the end, RNG is the only immediately available drop in green substitute for natural gas, requiring no changes to the utility's existing infrastructure. This demand is not only driven by the utilities themselves, but also by the states and their regulatory bodies as part of programs to reduce overall carbon impact.

Speaker 2

In light of this, we are very excited to announce that Ameresco has been chosen by a large California based natural gas utility to supply RNG to help meet its state mandated locally sourced renewable content. If final approval is granted by the California Public Utility Commission, this would represent a meaningful portion of our RNG volume. In doing so, this fixed price contract would also help to balance our portfolio to reduce long term exposure to RIN volatility while benefiting from a 5 year profitable revenue stream. And this potential contract represents only one of many opportunities across the country to sell our RNG via longer term offtake agreements to non transportation customers. In summary, Ameresco's biofuels business is uniquely positioned to capitalize on this expansion of the addressable market with the entrance of very large industries such as natural gas utilities.

Speaker 2

Importantly, this asset class also continues to meet our return hurdles without reliance on any IRA related investment tax credits. We believe our RNG assets will continue to provide significant, stable, profitable growth for years to come. I will now turn the call over to Doran to comment on our financial performance and outlook.

Speaker 3

Thanks, Mike, and good afternoon, everyone. Before I start, I just want to say a huge thanks to George and the entire Ameresco team for what's been an amazing experience I've had here over the past 5 years. It is impossible to put into words how much I've learned from this management team and this Board. I want to congratulate Mark and Josh on their new roles. It's been a real pleasure working with both of them.

Speaker 3

I feel very, very confident in their successful futures here at Amreso. And I have to say the company is in excellent hands. So with that, now let's jump into the numbers. For additional financial information, please refer to the press release and supplemental slides that were posted to our website after the market closed today. Total revenues in the quarter grew 34% to $438,000,000 with each of our 4 business lines experiencing revenue growth.

Speaker 3

Our projects business revenue grew 45%, reflecting our focus on execution and conversion of our backlog. Energy asset revenue grew 6.8%, largely due to the greater number of operating assets compared to last year, improved production as well as higher RIN prices. We brought a record 200 megawatt target for the year. Our large and growing base of operating energy assets now stands at 6 61 Megawatts, which should provide decades of profitable revenue to the company. Our O and M business had a very strong quarter with revenue growing 13.9% as we continue to win more long term O and M business, while revenue for our other line of business grew 9.5% with strong performance from our consulting business.

Speaker 3

Gross margin of approximately 15% dipped as we incurred additional costs of approximately $6,600,000 related to our SCE projects plus a mix of some other lower margin projects. That said, our underlying gross margins as well as the expected margins in our backlog continued to match our historic ranges. In the Q2, our revenue growth as well as cost savings and operating leverage drove adjusted EBITDA growth of 21% to $45,100,000 As George noted, our business development activity on both the project and asset side was very healthy during the quarter. The company's total project backlog was approximately $4,400,000,000 growing 36% year on year and 9% sequentially. This growth was led by our contracted backlog, which reached $1,600,000,000 and grew 50% year on year and 12% sequentially.

Speaker 3

Turning to our balance sheet and cash flows, we ended the quarter with approximately $150,000,000 in cash and corporate debt of approximately $273,000,000 Our debt to EBITDA leverage ratio under our senior secured credit facility declined to 2.9 times and remains below the covenant level of 3.5 times. Our energy asset debt advance rate remained at a conservative 73%. Importantly, we believe our access to energy asset capital is excellent with many financing options available as demonstrated by us having secured approximately $170,000,000 in new project financing commitments in the quarter. We also believe our energy assets remain highly attractive to many financing parties interested in teaming with Ameresco given our proven capabilities. And on the corporate side, at the end of the quarter, we were pleased to have successfully raised $100,000,000 in subordinated debt from Nuveen Energy Infrastructure Credit.

Speaker 3

Our cash flow continued to be strong with positive adjusted cash flow from operations of approximately $154,000,000 during the quarter. Our 8 quarter rolling average, which best represents our implementation cycle, reached almost $45,600,000 our supplemental slides, we highlight the increased momentum we have seen in the rolling cash flows and we expect both cash flow metrics to continue to improve, especially as we bill and collect on the SoCal Ed battery projects. Speaking of SoCal Ed, our performance testing has been approved and we are working together on the final checklist for substantial completion for 2 of the 3 projects. The 3rd project, which was more significantly impacted by the 2023 rainfall is expected to reach substantial completion in September of this year. Now let me spend a few minutes on our new 2024 guidance.

Speaker 3

We're increasing our revenue range based on the solid financial performance for the first half of the year and our strong visibility for the remainder of the year. Our new gross margin range reflects the expected full year impact of the cost budget revisions on the SCE projects of approximately $10,000,000 Our new guidance range would yield revenue and adjusted EBITDA growth of 27% and 35%, respectively, at the midpoints. You can find more details on the revised 2024 guidance in our press release. Now I'd like to turn the call back over to George for closing comments.

Speaker 1

Thank you, Doran. Ameresco thrives in an environment where customers seek clean energy solutions that result in cost savings and greater resiliency. We believe this environment and the demand for these solutions will continue regardless of the political environment in Washington. We are extremely well positioned with over $8,300,000,000 in future revenue visibility and we are laser focused on executing our tremendous backlog and cash flow generation. In closing, I would like to once again thank our employees, customers and stockholders for their continued support.

Speaker 1

Operator, we would like to open the call to questions now.

Speaker 4

Thank And our first question is going to come from the line of Noah Kaye with Oppenheimer and Co. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Speaker 5

Good afternoon. Thanks for taking the questions. First one is around cash generation. The trend line here, especially in the last few quarters around the improving cash generation is really encouraging. Obviously, in the past, there were some conversion headwinds related to specific projects.

Speaker 5

But I was hoping you could maybe take us a little bit deeper into what you've seen to drive some of the improvement in cash generation and your visibility into that continuing potentially additional levers. You're not necessarily just have to talk on SoCal Edison, but in the business more broadly.

Speaker 1

Yes. I will let Mark get into this, but go ahead, Mark.

Speaker 6

Yes. So I think what we're seeing, so if you look

Speaker 7

in the quarter, a lot

Speaker 6

of the timing in Q2, but some of the things that I found to be encouraging that I think will help us to continue to show the improved cash flow is that a lot of billing milestones were front end loading now in some of our contracts. So we're seeing those come in. You see it on the federal ESBC, net liability and receivable, and you also see it on our deferred revenue line. We also saw the proceeds from the conversion of or the transfer of ITC in the quarter as well. So I think those are some of the positives that are helping that trend.

Speaker 6

I think, keep in mind, the quarterly stuff is always going to be lumpy, which is why we started to roll out this new metric. But yes, we're encouraged by some of the things that we're seeing and the changes we're making on the contractual side that are keeping those building milestones a little bit more front end loaded to keep the projects cash flow positive throughout.

Speaker 1

Yes. And if I might add a little bit there, Noah, focusing on a particular issue, you get generates very good results, by the way, sending out the bills on time, following up in the collection and so on. And it just helped a lot because the accounts receivable, it was substantial. And then back then when the interest rates, they weren't that high, probably we weren't paying as much attention as we should be paying. And the fact that the last, I would say, now 9, 10 months we've been focusing a lot, We have seen all those metrics come down as a cash generated and going up.

Speaker 1

And we will continue to focus on that. I still think there is room for improvement in that area. Great.

Speaker 2

Thanks.

Speaker 5

Second question on the RNG business. Mike called out the contract with the large California natural gas utility supply RNG. And I think, Mike, you did a good job talking on these points of why that kind of predictability and visibility is helpful. So we just like to understand what is the opportunity and the appetite of the company to continue to increase sort of these fixed contracts as a portion of the RNG exposure. Is there any kind of target we should think about that would be optimal for the portfolio?

Speaker 5

And then how does this potentially contribute to more favorable financing on the development of the assets?

Speaker 1

Very, very good question. I will ask Mike to address it and then I will come back at the end what percentage we might get into long term contracts. Go ahead, Mike.

Speaker 2

I think generally, we've said to the Street in the past that we try to fix our pricing 50% of the volume on our new projects. This is a unique contract vehicle and that's leaving the transportation sector and going to a voluntary market. Obviously, great credit with the utility and the terms will, I think, without a doubt help on the financing of these projects. And I think we're going to start seeing more and more of this of our gas going to the non transportation sector as that market continues to expand.

Speaker 1

And the financing, Don, do you want to add something?

Speaker 3

No, not surprisingly, when you get fixed price contracts, the banks like the stability of those cash flows and the fact that we're actually now striking these projects, even though this first one might be 5 years, as more and more of those cash flows get fixed, we would expect

Speaker 1

that we'll

Speaker 3

get better advance rates. And obviously we'll be pushing for tighter spreads in the future, but it's definitely one of those characteristics.

Speaker 4

Thank you. And one moment as we move on to our next question. And our next question is going to come from the line of Stephen Gengaro with Stifel. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Speaker 2

Thanks. Good afternoon, everybody. George, I thought you might have been about to add something on the last question before I asked mine.

Speaker 1

No.

Speaker 2

Okay. Okay. Sorry. So I think 2 things for me. And 1, I'll start with and I'm not sure how much you want to get into this.

Speaker 2

But when you look at your energy assets backlog and you look at your projects backlog and SCE rolling off, at a high level, what should we think about as the big positives and negatives as we go into 2025?

Speaker 1

I don't know if I

Speaker 3

The big positives and negatives.

Speaker 1

I mean, the big part of this is the fact that we have a great, great backlog and executing on that backlog. And the other good thing that I wanted to point out, and we're doing the analysis earlier on that backlog, the actual gross profit margin has been growing up every quarter since we started focusing in screening our what kind of project we'll get to trying to push the margins up. So that's a great, great positive. The backlog that we have on the assets, whether it's the battery storage or the solar plants or the renewable assets that the gas plants that they would be coming up, it's they had great, great positives. The only negative, it's elections, they might have an impact.

Speaker 1

But on the other hand, and that's why I wanted Nicole and Mike to be here today to explain that the federal business, it has done excellent under any administration and on the renewable gas now that the utilities are getting to be more and more in the states and getting to requiring the utilities to get more renewable natural gas as part of the percentage that they provide their customers. It's very good. So and with the Southern California rolling off, I think the risks are the negatives are very much lower and the risks and the potential the goods are the way the part is much higher.

Speaker 2

Great. Thanks, George. And maybe just as a follow on to that, when you look at the projects portfolio, you mentioned this a little bit, but the embedded margins, assuming strong execution of the backlog, you should have margin improvement in projects over the next 1 to 2 years. Is that a fair assessment?

Speaker 1

That is yes, that is a fair that's a fair statement. That's why and it has become a focus. And what I have found out, especially as the company grows and which have grown in the last 5 years, and then with the COVID situation, they're bringing some difficulties. I think the team here and there, they took some projects that did not have the best margins. So they didn't have all the risks mitigated as they should have.

Speaker 1

But refocusing the organization, margins and minimize risks associated with those margins is key and it's bearing fruit so far. So a lot of positive for next year.

Speaker 2

Thanks. And just one other quick one. You've done this a little bit in the past. Is there anything what should we consider as we think about seasonality in the back half of the year? You kind of guided for 2024.

Speaker 2

Just how should we think about how that unfolds in the 3rd and 4th quarters? Any color around that?

Speaker 1

Yes. Good question. And I will let Mark follow-up because you've been dreaming about all the numbers. Yes.

Speaker 6

I think maybe just briefly, when it comes to shaping, unlike last year, I think we would expect Q3 and Q4 to be fairly similar, maybe a small bump in Q3 related to normal seasonality, but should be they should be a little bit more since Q3 and Q4

Speaker 1

as opposed to the past year.

Speaker 2

Great. Thank you, Mark.

Speaker 4

Thank you. And one moment as we move on to our next question. And our next question is going to come from the line of George Giannakoulis with Canaccord Genuity. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Speaker 8

Hi, good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for taking my questions. Hi.

Speaker 9

I'd just like to understand

Speaker 8

a little bit about the revised revenue and EBITDA guidance just to make sure we're all clear. So there's a $5,000,000 reduction at the midpoint based on increased costs from SCE. Just to be clear, if you had if you didn't have those costs, would you have raised by $5,000,000 Is there anything else that's pulling down the EBITDA guidance for 2024? Is it just the SCE costs that you alluded to?

Speaker 1

Yes. Basically, we try to reflect that the impact that the Southern California projects have. And even though we had some other mine other projects that they adversely impacted. However, and I'll let Mark explain a little bit more, but basically that was the impact because we had thought that the projects will have been done after the last quarter. So

Speaker 6

yes, I think it was the modifications we're really focused on, at least the EBITDA were on the assumed cost for SCE. We're certainly having strong revenue performance. But obviously, you've seen a little bit lower margin profile. So we took that into account. But I think based on the first half performance and what visibility we have, we made those changes and we feel pretty good about.

Speaker 8

Okay. And then maybe just a question on the backlog, the big growth in backlog. I'm curious as to whether you can give us a little bit more detail as to what's going on there? Where do you see significant growth? And is there anything related to data center opportunities?

Speaker 8

Thank you.

Speaker 1

Yes. And actually, across the board, we see growth across the board. But since Nicole is here and she is the project queen, I will let her talk a little bit.

Operator

Sure. I think a large percentage of our growth in backlog is coming from the market drivers that we just described earlier a few minutes ago, really related to the battery energy storage. So we're seeing those in our project business on a lot of our federal utility markets. So that's probably the largest portion of that. And then certainly, not captured in the pipeline right now, but there is a lot of work that we're doing, to capitalize on batteries for the data centers and energy.

Operator

It's a little too early right now for that to be in the awarded pipeline.

Speaker 6

Great. Thank you.

Speaker 4

Thank you. And one moment as we move on to our next question. And our next question is going to come from the line of Kashy Harrison with Piper Sandler. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Speaker 10

Good afternoon. Thanks for taking the questions. And Doran, best of luck with the future endeavors. So, yes, so first question is for Mike. Sorry if I missed this, but did you quantify the size of this RNG project you're working on with the California utilities, a megawatt or EBITDA number would be great.

Speaker 10

Just trying to think of the scale of this project relative to the portfolio.

Speaker 2

Yes. There's 2 projects. And so this year, about 22 megawatts, 23 megawatts between the 2. 1 comes online actually this quarter coming up and the other one will come online in early 2026. The agreement with the utility doesn't begin actually affect them until January 1, 2026.

Speaker 2

It's a material portion of our portfolio. If it was if those two projects were online today, it will represent probably close to 40% of our supply. And in 2026, we're forecasting it to be around 12%, 13% of our supply.

Speaker 10

That's helpful. I appreciate the added color. And then my next question is just a follow-up on the budget revisions to Silke Ad. I think you flagged $10,000,000 of total revisions in EBITDA. Can you just help us think through the risk of potential further budget revisions?

Speaker 10

For example, if the project is delayed another quarter, what does that do to that forecast? And then,

Speaker 11

are these overruns separate from

Speaker 10

the liquidated damages? Or are these tied to the liquidated damages? Any color on that would be appreciated. Thank you.

Speaker 1

Okay, John. Yes.

Speaker 3

Kashy, I'll start and let other guys chime in. So the $10,000,000 across the entire year is the expectation. So you've seen some mention of adjustments

Speaker 6

already in Q1. We talked about

Speaker 3

continue to get delayed. I don't know continue to get delayed. I don't know that we see a huge risk of that number going up from there. I think we've been it's a pretty conservative estimate of what we might face as we bring those to substantial completion. That is completely separate from anything related to LDs.

Speaker 4

Thank you. And one moment as we move on to our next question. And our next question comes from the line of Eric Stine with Craig Hallum Capital Group. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Speaker 12

Hi, everyone. So just curious on the project business, you mentioned that you had some larger projects in this quarter and that's why the margin came in where it was. But George, you also talked about some projects that were priced maybe in the past that were rolling through and that impacted margin. Just curious, I mean, is this trend to larger projects? Is that something that you expect to sustain?

Speaker 12

Or is this more about, hey, you just had a mix of that in the quarter plus some of those older contracts? I mean, that's what impacted the margin in the quarter.

Speaker 1

Primarily, we had some large portion of the project executed for the quarter coming from some of the European EPC contracts that we have signed over there. And then when you book the revenue, because we consulted on the top line and then the margin, and you count only half of the actual margin, and it impacted more than normally. But the overall though, what we have on the backlog of the projects, so that's what makes me feel very good, it's going up. But any given quarter, the mixture might change and that adversely impacts you. Marlon, do you want to add anything to that?

Speaker 6

I think that's just mix.

Speaker 12

Okay. No, that's great. And then maybe second one for me, just more high level. I know the SCE, the contracts there, a lot of that is out of your control, it's weather related, etcetera. But as you sign more of these energy storage awards, I'm just curious some of the lessons learned, how you're structuring contracts differently, anything that you might be changing based on what's happened here for SoCal Edison?

Speaker 1

We have become the professors of the industry. We learned a lot. And every contract that we signed right now has got different great, great protections for us. But you can see where the backlog, all the wins that we have and the execution that we have been able to achieve past Southern Cal. For example, the United Power, we just finished it and we broke the record within 1 year from signing the contract to actually getting 6 out of the 8 projects already up and running.

Speaker 1

And the other 2, they are fully contracted. They are being commissioned right now. Then you go down to Hawaii, the component projects and even with labor, difficulties there, it's up and running again, solar as well as 44 megawatts of various storage. And the one that we recently announced in the UK, it's an excellent, excellent project and if we have minimized, that's about all the risks associated with it. And Yes.

Speaker 1

And the only

Speaker 6

thing I'll add on the one in the U. K, it's a really good example of where we're focusing on improving those contracts by front loading more of the milestones. And so that was you saw a

Speaker 11

big part

Speaker 6

of that come through our deferred revenue line on the cash flow in Q2. So, we're making those changes to improve cash flow and liquidity.

Speaker 12

Got it. Okay. Thank you.

Speaker 4

Thank you. And one moment as we move on to our next question. And our next question is going to come from the line of Joseph Osha with Guggenheim. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Speaker 4

All right. We'll move on to our next question. And our next question is going to come from the line of Craig Irwin with ROTH MKM. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Speaker 9

Good evening. Thanks for taking my questions. So George, I wanted to ask if there's some metrics maybe you can share with us around organic growth either in revenue or contracted backlog away from the energy storage business. The legacy energy storage, Maybe if you have a storage contribution to your contracted backlog that could help with visibility or if you could help us with what the storage contribution to revenue growth is year over year in the quarter?

Speaker 1

I will give it on the high level. The battery storage projects right now, they represent about almost 10% of $4,400,000,000 Actually, they are between $350,000,000 to $400,000,000 in battery storage. And the growth on the others, it's the federal government, it's across the board. It's a traditional core of business and that's why you're seeing the margins slowly picking up. So and that's why I made the point to clarify that a little bit because we're looking at the federal sector even though we haven't.

Speaker 1

Like usually the revenues, 1 third comes from the federal government. And if you do the arithmetic, about 1 third of the backlog right now is a federal government project. So it's but at any given especially some of the EPC projects that they come in fast, by the way, from the RFP and then you start executing. And then especially if you front load them or the execution behind the material and so on. So they impact the margin, they might hit the margin for that particular quarter.

Speaker 1

But they are contributing a great leverage on the profitable profitability the top the gross profit line.

Speaker 9

Excellent. That's strong progress. So my second question I wanted to ask is about the assets business, right? So you seem to be outperforming there, some nice growth year over year in EBITDA. Many of the other companies in the sector, both private and public, are having issues, let's just say politely.

Speaker 9

Even a couple of the very large portfolios of projects that were slated to get built, the customers are apparently taking them away from the partners that they've identified. Can you maybe talk

Speaker 1

to us a little bit

Speaker 9

about your philosophy about how you structure these projects that allows you to generate positive returns in difficult periods? And can you maybe talk about whether or not you'd be interested in these portfolios?

Speaker 1

Yes. It's basically it starts from the beginning. The assets that we are developing and we try to derisk them. And the ones that we keep, we're looking for higher returns than some other people would look at. And that's why we have said in the past, because we have a very, very good development team.

Speaker 1

And just think about it that we are across the country and that basically gets lots of projects. So the ones that we will give, we do it for all of them, but the ones especially we will give would not only with derisking, but looking for higher returns that exceed our cost of capital. And that's why raising this new VINI capital, even though it was a little bit on the higher cost on interest, we feel very confident that we can invest that at considerably higher returns than what we are paying and they have interest we're paying them. In addition to it's a great company and they're going to be good partners for another project. So I think it's doing our job upfront.

Speaker 1

And I've been in this business for a long time and we do risk. And then with Doran's help and Jazz help, we do risk these projects a lot. And that's why the investment committee that we have does all the due diligence and playing all kinds of what ifs games. What if this happened? What if this happened?

Speaker 1

And then at the end of the day, we say, okay, we will keep that project or that project is lined up for sale. And that's why we developed the business. We say that part of our assets in our portfolio, we will not that we develop it before we put them on our balance sheet, so we will sell them at a very good profit because the market is so liquid out there.

Speaker 3

Craig, I'll just add that that market for our develop and sell assets is exactly the reason why we're probably not going after any portfolios that are out there as a buyer, because we're kind of taking advantage of the market that's out there at a cost of capital, return hurdles that are lower than ours to sell the assets that we're developing. And the development team, George mentioned, is so strong, it's bringing so many solid quality megawatts into that asset and development metric that we've got the liberty to kind of choose the ones we want to keep on our balance sheet. And other folks in the market also don't have as diversified of a pool of asset types. I mean, we've got one of the best or arguably the best development group for RNG on the street. And that's not going to fall into the competition that you might see for some of the others that are more into the solar and battery side.

Speaker 9

Understood. Thank you for that color. And I should say, Doran, I hope you're going somewhere where we continue to work together going forward. And Mark, congratulations on the promotion.

Speaker 1

Thanks, guys. Thank you, Greg.

Speaker 4

Thank you. And one moment as we move on to our next question. Our next question is going to come from the line of Tim Mulrooney with William Blair. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Speaker 7

Yes. Thanks for taking my questions. I wanted to ask about your gross margin guide to start, which I think was about 18% at the midpoint previously and it's now more in the low 16% range. Can you just help bridge the gap that led you to adjust your outlook? I know there was a $10,000,000 SoCal impact.

Speaker 7

I think that that probably only accounts for 50 to 60 bps, if I'm doing my math right. So just curious what the other moving pieces are.

Speaker 6

Remember in Q1, we also took a handful of hits to gross margin just as of legacy projects and some things that were a little bit unexpected. I think we were able to kind of offset that overall by the performance on the revenue side. But yes, Q1 and Q2 combined, I think, is really what's driving the margins down. I think that we talked about the SoCal Ed impact. I think it's important to come back and really refocus on what we're seeing in operating leverage, which is actually up.

Speaker 6

So even though we're seeing gross margins down, we're still continuing to grow gross faster than OpEx, so we're seeing improvement in our operating leverage. But yes, I think, Tim, that's really the bridge on all you're seeing in margins is there were also some hits that we took on certain filings in Q1 as well.

Speaker 7

Okay. That's helpful and well understood. Thank you. Secondly, backlog on your projects business is up a lot year over year, I think maybe 36% or something like that. But I'm not sure if you have this number handy.

Speaker 7

We're curious how much of that's from switching assets in development over the project side versus completely new wins, like how much is each of those buckets is driving that increase?

Speaker 1

It's all new wins. It's all new wins. Nicole, do you want to add something?

Operator

Yes. No significant wins across multiple business lines from the federal government to utilities to our U. K. Group. So it's several nothing to do with converting assets in the last few quarters.

Speaker 7

Okay. Thank you. Go ahead, George.

Speaker 6

Well, basically, what I'm going

Speaker 1

to say, the assets that they are in development, we don't they are in development right now. If we convert them to sales, you will see them in that particular quarter. But up to date, they have no impact on the backlog projects backlog that we have reported.

Speaker 7

Okay, got it. And if you don't mind, I'd sneak one more in, take advantage of having Nicole on the call today. Nicole, specifically on your solar projects, could you just talk about any differences that you're seeing in projects moving forward between standalone solar versus projects that have solar plus energy storage? Is there any noticeable difference in which types of projects are having an easier time moving forward in this environment? Thank you.

Operator

Well, I think in all of and then just all of them, you're seeing solar with battery storage and that's really related to peak demand, getting the most maximized PPA price or savings. So and it's just a requirement. I mean, you're using these for like our federal government is using these for resiliency. So they're going to need the battery energy systems with them coupled with the PV system to be able to meet that requirement too. So it's not just clean energy, but it's resilient energy as well.

Speaker 7

Understood. Thank you. And Doran, we'll miss you around here, man.

Speaker 4

Thank you. One moment as we move on to our next question. And our next question is going to come from the line of William Griffin with UBS. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Speaker 13

Great. Thanks for the time. My first question, just wondering if you could update us on the RNG projects you're expecting to commission in the second half of this year and how those are progressing? And I think previously you provided a rule of thumb on RNG revenue contribution of $2,300,000 per megawatt equivalent. Could you talk about how the potential utility deal would impact that figure, if at all?

Speaker 1

Yes. Mike, go ahead on the projects.

Speaker 2

Yes. So we have a project that's about 11.7 Megawatts that's being commissioned right now. It's going through a final product gas testing. You get approved to go into the pipe. So I would expect sometime this month, early September that will be fully commercial.

Speaker 2

And then we have another project that's 15.6 Megawatts that should go commercial sometime in October of this year.

Speaker 1

And then as far as the metrics, what we have said before that for the RNG plants, on the revenue side, you see about $1,500,000 to $3,000,000 top line and then with ring prices where they are now $750,000,000 to $1,500,000 on the EBITDA contribution per megawatt.

Speaker 2

We haven't updated it for the you asked about the utility agreements. Those numbers are reflective of the utility agreements. The offtake prices are less than the current spot market in the RFS program, which is trading around $3.40 right now, Ren, but materially better than what we've seen in terms of long term agreements in the RFS space.

Speaker 13

Got it. That's helpful. Could you refresh our memory as to what the underlying assumption was as far as RIN prices for the prior sort of revenue sensitivity?

Speaker 3

I don't think we've provided that before, Will. And I think that broadly speaking, obviously, there are puts and takes about the way that this will change the hedging for RINs, etcetera. But I still think those ranges are still good. Yes.

Speaker 13

Got it. And just one last one for me. I think last quarter you had talked about guidance assuming some continued delays in the assets business. It appears you're well on track at this point to hit the 200 megawatt target. So in light of the revised guidance, I mean, where should we kind of think about results falling assuming you get the 200 megawatts fully online on the Envision timelines?

Speaker 3

Yes. We guidance just reflects that.

Speaker 1

We feel pretty good about the 200 that you've given before. So far, we have 168,000,000 and then we have a few coming up very, very shortly. So we feel good about the 200.

Speaker 13

All right. Thanks very much. That's all for me.

Speaker 4

Thank you. And one moment as we move on to our next question. And our next question will come from the line of Pavel Molchanov with Raymond James. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Speaker 14

Yes. Thanks for taking the question. You offered some commentary earlier in the call about the upcoming U. S. Election.

Speaker 14

Of course, Britain had an election barely a month ago. And you talked about some of the battery projects, for example, that you're doing there. So can we get an update on your UK opportunity, including maybe what's going on in Bristol?

Speaker 1

Yes. I mean, with the new government of Azeriya, especially of the money that they're planning to allocate for clean projects, it's going to help us a lot. It's going to take some time, of course, but it's going to take time to evolve. But in the long term though, it's going to be very, very, very helpful. And then on Bristol City, we continue to make good progress.

Speaker 1

We made some organizational changes over there, hiring a new person to run that particular project. And they had they made some changes on our their side. And I think you will see that project going forward moving at a faster pace. And the overall, the environment in Europe is very, very good. And that's why you see great growth in the European market for us.

Speaker 3

I mean, having talked to the management team over there, the litany of targeted processes and changes that the new labor government are going to go through, I think as George said, it's going to take a little bit of time, but there's a lot there and there's a lot of momentum. It's a great backdrop for the company, especially because we over in the U. K, our business looks a lot like what it looks like here in the United States. We're across multitude of technologies, energy efficiency, solar battery, EV chargers, we're kind of touching it all. And so these incentives are going to come bring some strength.

Speaker 3

I feel very confident about that. Okay.

Speaker 14

Let me ask a quick one about Washington. Why do you think the Treasury still has not unveiled the Section 45Z numbers for any of the biofuels including RNG?

Speaker 1

Mike, you want to tackle that one? If I got an answer for that, we had

Speaker 2

a lot of phone calls. I mean, I'll spin it a little differently. I mean, we're seeing movement. We submitted all our applications on time and we actually got notified the EPA is going through and reviewing our application as we speak. So we are seeing progress at least on the administrative side.

Speaker 2

I can't tell you why Treasury hasn't already ruled something out on not just 45 z but a number of the other tax credits. What we keep being told is that it should be some time in this fall that we would get some guidance, but we haven't received anything.

Speaker 9

All right. Thanks very much.

Speaker 4

Thank you. And one moment as we move on to our next question. And our next question is going to come from the line of Ben Kallo with Baird. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Speaker 15

Hey, thank you so much and thank you, Doran. My question is on the asset business. In this year, I think you had some pull ins for the 200 megawatts because Is that a big number compared to what we should expect for next year? Could you just give us some kind of color about how we should think about the average number of megawatts that comes on over a year? Or if it's better to look at a 2 year timeframe, maybe that's some color you could give.

Speaker 15

Thank you.

Speaker 1

No, no, it's not we're not putting in from next year to this year, not at all. Actually, some of these projects that we delayed that we didn't bring them on last year because of interconnection and so on. And we have said that we want to target between 80 megawatts to 100 megawatts, 120 megawatts per year. But like anything else, the business is lumpy. And this year, we were able to bring 200 megawatts and the next year looks pretty good as well.

Speaker 1

So it's not pulling any assets from last year to this year. It's basically a couple of assets that were delayed from the year before to this year.

Speaker 15

Understood. And then just when we think about tariffs on Chinese sales starting up, What is your approach? And have you lined up domestic suppliers? And how do you think that that impacts the overall storage market distance? You're getting a higher mix towards that business.

Speaker 15

Thank you.

Speaker 1

I think Conan can take that because I'm talking tariffs all the time.

Speaker 3

I think the I don't know that we're on our back foot here necessarily. I think that keep in mind our purchases the difficulties of imports. We're not doing like large multi gigawatt installations. So when you're doing PG, the per watt cost is pretty high. The individual components are less of an impact and so tariff impact on our metal pole.

Operator

Yes. I just will add. A lot of our projects have been or for federal government where we've been using domestic solutions for quite some time. And I think we'll continue to see that trend for utilities as well, wanting to support the domestic supply chain here as well as certainly for the IRA business as well.

Speaker 1

So when we're doing our pricing, we use primarily domestic panels and domestic pricing and then that eliminates some of that particularly. But what has happened though, as soon as they talk about tariffs, the prices go up domestic as well as the other ones.

Speaker 15

Well, thank you and congratulations, Mark. Thanks.

Speaker 6

Thank you.

Speaker 4

Thank you. One moment as we move on to our next question. Our next question is going to come from the line of Julien Dumoulin Smith with Jefferies. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Speaker 11

Hey, good afternoon team. Thank you very much, Doreen. It's been a real pleasure. I wish you all the best, sir. So maybe with that, just if I can come back to the RNG numbers you guys were talking about on the call here, I think if I heard this right, you talked about it representing this arrangement representing 40% of the supply today, but only 12% to 13% of the supply pro form a for 2026, if I heard that right.

Speaker 11

I mean, that's a pretty big implied step up in overall volumes. I just want to make sure I understand how you think about the scaling up of the volumes in megawatt terms or what have you from today through that 26 at the outset? And I got a quick follow-up.

Speaker 2

Julian, what I said was that if those plants were online today, we would they would represent 40% of our total supply in 2024. They're not online today. When they come online, we start supplying the gas to the utility in 2026. We'll have brought a number of plants online since then And it will represent about 12% of our forecasted volume in 2026, which means we're growing the business.

Speaker 11

Yes, yes, yes. It's kind of like a tripling. That's kind of what I was trying to get at. It's sort of a subtle affirmation of the overall trajectory, right, kind of a and if you think about what that implies, if you've got 50 megawatts today, doesn't that suggest you got like kind of ballpark 150 pro form a for, call it year end 26 when you get the stuff online?

Speaker 2

Being a human calculator, I won't confirm or deny what you said. I think what I would tell you is that our projects are sizable, right? These aren't dairy projects. They're primarily landfill gas. And many of the projects that are in development or construction now are sizable.

Speaker 2

I'm going to add a lot to our portfolio over the next couple of few years.

Speaker 11

Right. But there's no reason, I mean, look, the landfill gas, what you've done before as well, you continue to scale at that roughly dollar $1,000,000 per megawatt adding 100 megawatts here seems like a pretty significant contributor. Just again, look, something novel per se, but you've implicitly reaffirmed that with this latest contract.

Speaker 2

I'm not sure I understood what you just asked. Can you repeat that?

Speaker 1

I mean, the plan, Julian, is that we had 2 to 3 plants a year. And what happens, couple of those plants that we had in, they are good size. And that's why the numbers get a little bit Yes.

Speaker 11

I think we're all saying the same thing. It's very sizable, dollars 100,000,000 EBITDA or something like that. Indeed. Excellent. And just to clarify on the strategy on RNG, because obviously you've got this, call it, medium term contract.

Speaker 11

Is there any thoughts change the tenor of the contracts that you have in RNG? I mean, obviously, there's some political risk potentially in the RNG universe here. How do you think about your decision tree to take market versus start the contract up on a more term basis here?

Speaker 2

We've actually evaluated term for many years. This is our first time we've seen this market evolve. We pick and choose our term based on optimal value Look at it. And I think we'll continue doing that. We've had opportunities to do much longer term than 5, but the discount is too steep.

Speaker 2

It doesn't make a lot of sense. But that market is evolving. And remember, when we first started doing RNG, we were doing these 1, 2 year deals and then it got up to 3 and then 5. I think that will continue to evolve over time as the addressable market expands and demand continues to grow for the product.

Speaker 4

Thank you. And we're going to move on to our last question. And our last question is going to come from the line of Ryan Finks with B. Riley. Your line is open.

Speaker 4

Please go ahead. Yes.

Speaker 3

Hey, guys. Thanks for sneaking me in. Maybe I'll just ask one more on RNG for Michael. How much is the potential ERIN pathway affecting your strategy here, if at all? And do you have any high level thoughts on if and when that might come to pass?

Speaker 2

Well, as you're probably aware, we have a fairly sizable electric portfolio and that we continue to operate that would benefit from that pathway. We maintain an incredible depth of bench that allows us to pivot anytime if we choose to go to electric versus RNG. We have a very dynamic of that because as you know with this group develops power plants for others as well. Look at the balls in motion, I mean, it's going to be interesting to see how this moves along. If we have a current administration, you get godly optimistic, we'll see that pathway open up.

Speaker 2

But candidly, with Musk's push with the other the Republican side, he would benefit greatly with E RINs. So we don't count on it. It's never been in any of our forecast. We don't budget for it. It's upside.

Speaker 4

Thank you. That does conclude today's question and answer session. Ladies and gentlemen, this also will conclude today's conference call. Thank you for participating and you may now disconnect. Everyone have a great day.

Powered by Quartr