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Ameresco, Inc. (AMRC)

Q2 2015 Earnings Call· Sat, Aug 1, 2015

$27.81

-0.36%

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Ameresco Second Quarter 2015 Earnings Results Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later we will conduct a question-and-answer session and instructions will be given at that time. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to turn the conference over to your host for today's conference, Gary Dvorchak. Sir, you may begin.

Gary Dvorchak

Analyst

Thank you, [Evan], and good morning everyone. Thank you for joining us today for Ameresco's second quarter 2015 earnings conference call. I am joined today by George Sakellaris, Ameresco's Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer and John Granara, the Company's Chief Financial Officer. On today's call management will review the operating and financial highlights of the second quarter as well as assess our outlook for the balance of the year. Following the highlights we will take questions from the audience. Before I turn the call over to George and John, I would like to make a brief statement regarding forward-looking remarks. Today's call contains forward-looking information regarding future events and the future financial performance of the company. Ameresco cautions you that such statements are just predictions and actual results may differ materially as a result of risks and uncertainties that pertain to our business. Ameresco refers you to the company's press release issued this morning and it’s Annual Report on Form 10-K filed with the SEC on March 06, 2015, which discusses important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in the company's projections or forward-looking statements. Ameresco assumes no obligation to revise any forward-looking statements made on today's call. In addition, the company will be referring to non-GAAP financial measures during this call. These non-GAAP financial measures are not prepared in accordance with Generally Accepted Accounting Principles. A GAAP to non-GAAP reconciliation as well as an explanation behind the use of non-GAAP financial measures is available in our press release as well as our prepared remarks. I will now turn the call over to George Sakellaris. George?

George Sakellaris

Analyst

Thank you, Gary and good morning everyone. Our solid Q2 results confirm to ask that our recovery is on trust and that our plan to restore revenue growth and improved profitability is gain and traction. Topline growth of 7% exceeded our target range and profitability was excellent with adjusted EBITDA up 9% to over $11 million. Importantly our core project business sustains his momentum with revenue growth of 13% and gross margin expansion over 20%. Our sales and development teams performed well with new awards $189 million heating the high this quarterly level in almost three years. Revenue in our key segments of federal and U.S. regions posted robust growth of 17% and 19% respectively and renewable energy revenue rebounded from Q1. Overall we saw solid momentum that was impacted only by certain non-issues in couple of segments, which I will address later. First, I would like to discuss what we are doing proactively to drive our business. The federal segment was a gain or start perform building and solid growth demonstrated in Q1. Revenue was up 17% as we performed work on an increasing portfolio projects around the country. One good example is the project we are recently completed at the Army at Delphi law in Maryland which we announced in June 4. That project includes energy savings, water conservation, rainwater harvesting and two megawatts and carport solar generating capacity. Since 2002 our multi-phased partnership with Delphi is helped to reduce their energy consumption by nearly 50% and provided more than four megawatts of onsite distributed generation. This project shows the increasing leverage we get from follow on work. The project was a third contract we fulfilled for the Delphi law. Our quartile portfolio clients we focus on winning additional business often we demonstrate success and establish a good…

John Granara

Analyst

Thank you, George and good morning everyone. As we get started with the financials, please note that unless otherwise stated all the amounts I referenced relate to Q2 2015 and the comparisons for the year-over-year changes. Also I wanted to let you know that in the prepared remarks filed on our website will now include table showing revenue and adjusted EBITDA by segments. We’ve been asked for this in the hence the revenue is disclosed in our SEC filings so we thought that you would find it more help of the season numbers as we review them now. Starting with the P&L total revenues of $152.5 million were up 7%. As George discussed this quarter was characterized by strong performance in our core project business, recovery in energy revenue within our small-scale infrastructure segment and stability in O&M. Those are partially offset by the issues that George just mentioned in Canada in Solar PV sales. In our core business of projects 13% revenue growth was driven by ongoing strength in federal which was up 17% and the strong performance in our Central and Northwest regions with each being up over 40%. Our Eastern and Southwest regions were flat and down 7% respectively. UK and other international contributed over $3 million while Canada declined 30% as we anticipated. Recurring operations and maintenance revenue of $15.1 million was up 6%. Revenue stream is generally quite stable and visible due to the large long-term nature of the contracts as we disclosed left quarter, we have visibility on over $700 million of federal O&M revenue extending out up to 18 years. Energy revenue which we report in our small-scale structure segment comes from our landfill gas and solar projects. We sold $14.7 million worth of electricity in the quarter a nice recovery of 19%…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] And our first question comes from the line of Noah Kaye of Northland Capital. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Noah Kaye

Analyst

Thank you and good morning George, John and Gary and Ben.

George Sakellaris

Analyst

Good morning.

John Granara

Analyst

Good morning.

Noah Kaye

Analyst

May we could start a little with your views on the solar/renewable project backlog I think last quarter you articulate aspirations for 20 megawatts for the year. Where we up to at this point in the year and with your CapEx figure around $60 million if I just sort do that for what basis are you expecting maybe a little bit better than 20 megawatts and solar are there other components that we should understand? Thanks.

John Granara

Analyst

There are other components that you should understand, Kaye. We are developing non-solar projects as well which is in that number. So we previously said that we expected to put 20 megawatts in service this year, we’re actually thinking while that's still achievable. We did incur some delays related to some legislation here Massachusetts related to at the cap in the net metering. However we we’re encouraged that at least the Senate passed legislation that would lift that cap. So were hoping that those projects are now going to be back on track. But if I would hedge I’d say we’re probably going to be in the - we might be closer to the 15 megawatts. But with regards to our pipeline, we said previously that our total pipeline was 80 megawatts, we’re actually now up over 90. So we did incrementally grow the pipeline, so assuming we get those projects back on track. We should get closer to the 20 and then of course we are building out the Fort Detrick project, that we’ve talked about in the past. We’ve targeted that to be another 18 megawatts in Q1 of next year. Our pipeline is very much still active.

Noah Kaye

Analyst

Is there an added component here of a landfill gas or other assets that we should think about?

George Sakellaris

Analyst

We are developing, I think we didn’t mention it in the last call. We have two and potentially three sides that that they look better for us now to development for the Green Gas and take advantage of the marine market - identification number. And we have copper sites, definitely we are developing them to sell Green Gas and they look pretty good right now. And we are expanding some dollars associated with us the two particular sites. And the other thing why the capital investment is little bit larger than if you were to relate to the 15 megawatts that will be installed this year, is due to the fact that we are doing some work like Fort Detrick. For example in some other projects that they will not become online till next year, that’s a 15 megawatt the John was pointing out. It was the project that will come in line this year, actually as we started this quarter return on couple projects already and then we have in Q2 have another two to three I think will online this quarter.

Noah Kaye

Analyst

Great.

George Sakellaris

Analyst

The delay and delay on the net – you probably know some of you know the issue in the State of Massachusetts, international and Greek category that we reached the cap on the net merely cap. And we have four projects that were impacted, so they have been delayed like John pointed out, it was good that the Senate increased the cap, but it just go through the House and then the Governor has to sign it. But we are optimistic that we will get those projects on the contract

Noah Kaye

Analyst

And just tuning to the project business you made some good comments on the federal piece that in particular DoD. I think as well as some activity that DOE is undertaking. Can you just kind of help us understand how the scope and potentially the size of projects in federal is evolving, are you looking at more micro grid opportunities, are you looking at in a more comprehensive measures including not only energy conservation. But also solar and other DG, just give us a sense of where the projects are heading?

George Sakellaris

Analyst

It’s very good question. I think the federal market, and we talk a little bit about the people that they run into problems and the goals that they have. They gave much more familiar with the concept and much more comfortable, the only bottleneck is that they do not have enough to move some of the projects through the pipeline and that's why it's a long gestation period, it takes long to convert them. But you are right the projects are getting a bit more sophisticated as to what kind of technologies they implement. And we see more micro grid opportunities, we even have couple storage batteries and more of the comprehensive offering, like I said the Delphi project of the 4 megawatts of PV installation as well as very comprehensive electric savings, gas savings and substantial water saving. So and that's why and I mentioned it last time we feel, Ameresco is well positioned, because of the deep technical expertise that we have in the company and we can take advantage of those opportunities. And in the federal sector especially they are looking for more comprehensive projects because they have the energy efficiency goals as well as the water saving goals and the renewable target they have to meet. So to the extent that we could package all the things together it makes the project more attractive. And the new technology that’s evolving well it’s the LEDs or the microgrids for battery storage or the microturbines they make in this business much more cost-effective and we’re getting better traction in the market place. So very good question. The market is evolving and I think we have evolved with the market and I think it's beginning to pay well. It’s too early to tell, but that’s why I alluded our success rate lately it’s been pretty good. We feel good about it, but we would like to see few more colors like this.

Noah Kaye

Analyst

Okay, great. Thank you so much for the color.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from the line of Jim Giannakouros from Oppenheimer. Your line is open. Please go head.

Jim Giannakouros

Analyst

Thanks, good morning everyone.

George Sakellaris

Analyst

Good morning.

John Granara

Analyst

Good morning Jim.

Jim Giannakouros

Analyst

A quick clarification here and looking at your total project backlog last year I had a $1.39 billion number you guys are posting a $1.324. I know it’s minor, but I'm just tracking year-over-year backlog change that reflects my comp is there a restatement there or recharacterization of backlog that I should be aware off.

John Granara

Analyst

Jim, that’s a good catch. I did not the mentioned it on the call, but in the prepared remarks, but our prior year amounts have all been restated to break out and remove the items that we now included in our assets and development. So we did restate those amounts that were in prior year in that category so that you would get up a pure apples-to-apples comparison. So a portion of the $152 million of assets and development that we have this year were actually included in our backlog last year because at that time we thought we were developing them for a potential sale are developing for others, but we pull them back and we now plan to own and operate those ourselves primarily. So that's the primary difference there.

Jim Giannakouros

Analyst

Got it. Okay.

George Sakellaris

Analyst

That number now stands at 152 in projects and development.

Jim Giannakouros

Analyst

Understood, okay. And then also I mean as far as I understand that your revenue recognition is improving I'm just trying to understand the ebbs and flows of your backlog is building clearly it seems the demand is certainly improving, but your revenue recognition is improving which is kind of offsetting that. So and trying to think longer-term and the set up I mean are your efforts in revenue recognition has improved clearly, is it more in federal or is it in smaller projects, is it that across the board?

John Granara

Analyst

It’s across the board, Jim. I mean we saw acceleration in particular the month of June was a strong month for us so we exceeded our internal expectations. We do obviously a fair amount of work in schools in K-12 and we’re able to gain access to those sites a little bit earlier than we thought and mobilize some of the projects. So that's where we saw and it’s really in particular the month of June was a very strong month versus our internal targets. I would say that we expect in terms of the ebbs and flows that you said that probably came – that probably doesn't – it’s incremental for the year or just reduce the amount of revenue we recognized in Q3 because we are able to get into some of the sites early.

Jim Giannakouros

Analyst

Got it. Okay. That’s all I had guys. Thank you.

John Granara

Analyst

Welcome. End of Q&A

Operator

Operator

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] And I am showing no further question. I would like to turn the conference back over to Mr. George Sakellaris for any closing remarks.

George Sakellaris

Analyst

Thank you very much, Ben. Let me close the call by reiterating that the midpoint of 2015, we haven’t meet the expectations for improved growth and profitability and we tend to continue to drive the recovery. Despite the lingering impact of the Canadian project, our overall results are good. Our federal sector business has revived its growth and we are executing across most U.S. regions. We are winning new contracts in our coal project business with an attractive rate and we think visibility can continue to improve. Our performance in the first half gives us confidence that we can continue to meet our expectations in the quarters ahead. I also want to mention an upcoming investor event on Monday, August 10 John will be presenting and hosting one-on-one meetings at the Jeffries Industrial Conference in New York. We invite any of you attending the conference to schedule a meeting with us through your salesperson at Jeffries. Thank you all again, and this concludes the call and you may now disconnect. Have a nice day.