Welcome to the Ameresco Third Quarter 2015 Earnings Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions]. I would now like to introduce your host for today's call Gary Dvorchak. Sir, you may begin.

Thank you, Eric and good morning everyone. Thank you for joining us today for Ameresco's third 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 the 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. This 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 in March of 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. We assume 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?

Thank you, Gary. And good morning everyone. As has been the case all year and as we could expect that our results are being driven by the resurgence strength in our U.S. regions and federal business segments. Our US region segment grew its revenue 33%, a faster rate than both Q1 and Q2, the federal segment also continued it's now two year on of exceptional revenue growth by increasing 29% this quarter. The solid performances offset our weaker business units including Canada, and integrated PV resulting in 20% project and 12% total revenue growth. We also sustained solid profitability. Adjusted EBITDA was $16.1 million up 42% sequentially. In addition we had strong cash flow this quarter generating $24.6 million from operations which is up substantially compared to last year. Equally important our sales performance was outstanding which enabled us to continue to improve our visibility for future growth. Our new awards grew 33% to $208 million that’s increasing the total awarded backlog by over 7%. Our sales teams are energized and focused on driving new business. We are confident that they can continue to win new words and keep up with our pace of implementation. In both our U.S. regions and federal segments, RFP volume is up, proposal submissions are increasing in the awarded projects are larger. A great example is our eastern region where we booked a landmark award, one of the largest awards in our corporate history. We placed $75 million in awarded backlog to start and this housing related project may end up being even larger. An award of this size clearly demonstrates both, the trend in our market to larger projects in our ability to win them as an industry leader. It [indiscernible] enforces the demand we’re seeing for housing related work. In August we announced…

Thanks, George and good morning everyone. So before we get started I did want to remind everyone that unless otherwise stated all the amounts I reference relate to Q3 2015 and comparisons are for the year over year change. Starting with the P&L revenues of $189.1 million was up 12%. As George discussed this quarter was characterized by strong performance in our core project business in the U.S. Those were partially offset by the lower revenue from Canada and Solar PV equipment sales which is a continuation of the headwinds we have been fighting all year. In our core project business the 20% revenue growth was broadbased, U.S. region was up 35% with all areas record double digit growth. Federal was up 34% as we built on the momentum we have seen for the past few quarters. Outside of our borders the decline in Canada was large year over year but that segment has stabilized now, and was down only slightly sequentially. We believe we have contained the problems there. We have put in place an experienced local leadership team, we have a growing awarded backlog and we think we can start posting growth again in 2016. To further prepare for growth and to rationalize the cost structure based on the new revenue run rate. We are reorganizing the group and further reducing costs. For example we're closing one of our sales offices and consolidating the coverage across others. We expect to take a restructuring charge in Q4 to handle the reorganization which I'll discuss shortly. Recurring operations of maintenance revenue of 15.5 million was up 8%. We typically do not expect rapid growth in O&M rather it acts like a steady annuity for us bringing in stable revenue and profit year in and year out. Energy revenue which we…

[Operator Instructions]. And our first question comes from Noah Kaye from Oppenheimer. Your line is now open.

I would like to start with a few questions on the project side if I might. First of all, we understand that Massachusetts is trying to lift the cap on that metering before end of November. What are you assuming for timing on that in your guidance, how does that relate to both kind of the cadence of solar installed projects and in the tax guidance that you’ve given.

So the net metering cap really impacts the development in the construction of the projects in Massachusetts more so than the current year guidance. So we are -- in terms of our guidance we are assuming that even if passed in November that there is not going to be enough time to materially impact the amount of solar that we're able to place in service so at this point where we stand the projects that we were targeting that are impacted by the net metering cap have not begun development so there's really, virtually no way that those are going to be placed in service. So to kind of give you an update I think we've said in the past that we are expecting 15 megawatts to be placed in service. We still think that's a doable amount but I think the component of that is now shifting a little bit. In that we will probably be placing closer to 8 or 9 megawatts in Massachusetts and we're also now expecting about 50% of our Fort Detrick project to be in service by the end of the year as well and just as a reminder that's about 18 megawatt project. So net-net we think that we're probably still in that 15 to 20 megawatt range for the year but the components of that is different, it's less Massachusetts project than we originally thought. Related to the tax rate, although not impacted by the net metering, that is directly related to the tax expenditures that’s making its way through Congress. We are assuming that that does get passed and that will bring us to the 25% tax rate for the year. So that is our current assumption.

Second question on the project side. You mentioned 85 million of tax equity capacity now back on the envelope math for me that would support around 100 to 120 megawatts of solar. Do you agree with that math and if so does that mean that your solar pipeline is actually expanded since the last earnings call?

So our pipeline has certainly expanded, the increase in the assets in development from last quarter all of it is essentially solar. So that is true. I would be hesitant to give you an exact megawatt per dollar amount because our projects really vary in size and I think as you know our projects tend to be on the smaller side and we'll aggregate projects -- to give you a specific dollar amount I think that that could be misleading. But you know what it will say that you know the 85 million gives us the capital we think for what we have currently in development and construction and given that we have 185 million of assets in development in total, you know we’re going to be seeking additional sources of capital but we feel comfortable that we're going to be able to do that.

And could you just give us an idea of how diversified in terms of geographies your solar pipeline is now? You know obviously Massachusetts being one but just how many states does that represent and how concentrated is it just so we can start to think a little bit about some of the puts and takes around the policy and demand environment for solar by state.

Yeah I mean I think I can tell you that we do have a large concentration in Massachusetts, it's about half and then the other half is it's really it's not significantly concentrated in one particular area I mean we know that Fort Detrick is in Maryland so that's a that's a pretty large concentration. But outside of that it's pretty widespread in the areas that you would typically expect.

Moving to ESPC business. Would like to ask just a question about the tailwinds in federal first of all, you know I think some of the DOE, Data I/O announcements as well as the President's Executive actions pointed to a much larger contracting opportunity. Just wondering in your conversations and in your federal group's conversations with the agencies, is that really starting to flow through now and how would you kind of characterize the pipeline of federal opportunities now versus say a year ago.

Versus a year ago it's better, and continues to improvement and we see more pick up in the activity as well as in the executing the contract going all the way from the [indiscernible], the awards and then moving the contracts to execution and implementation. No question about it and that’s why I pointed out the tailwinds, a very favorable in the federal market right now and we feel pretty good about it's direction for the next couple of years I would say.

I will just say, the only thing I would add is the thing that we have seen is that the federal government certainly getting smarter the way they contract and so they realize that they're able to get more return on their investments so to speak by combining and aggregating as much as they can and that's what we're seeing with a lot of the deep retrofit projects. So the projects are certainly larger, now the downside of that is as we said in the call is some of the larger projects do take a little bit longer to convert but overall we see this as a positive in a growing opportunity.

That is a great point and that would make that project larger and larger what they call deep retrofit measures.

Right. So I wanted to ask about the partnership with LendLease, you mentioned you're going to be providing more details in the future. So you know we look forward to that. You know but obviously a massive property infrastructure group and international is the thinking here on CNI, that you might be able to expand to new geographies or should we really think about that as still kind of focused on growing the domestic CNI market and any other color you can give on how you're viewing these guys as both sort of channel partner and a value add as you go through the sales process.

We met them because as you know they managed a substantial amount of federal facilities and we are working with them on couple of projects that we plan to announce later on but we will focus in the United States and that's why I think I did mention it on my remarks that even though they own facilities across the globe we will focus domestically. We feel they bring a lot to the table by introducing us, managing their own facilities or introducing us to one of their partners and then as you probably know they have a pretty good execution installation team that we can leverage and implement [indiscernible] the project. So we feel pretty good about the partnership and when we have the project that we want to talk about it then we will get more details regarding the joint venture. I don’t want to take too much [indiscernible] press releases.

[Operator Instructions]. And I'm showing no further questions at this time. I would like to turn the call back to George for any closing remarks.

Thank you, Eric. I want to conclude by highlighting the fact that we are executing the critical activities that will cause this company to grow. The most important is winning new business. Obviously without a steady flow of the new awards projects our growth stalls. We believe that new awards are our most important leading indicator. We grew new awards by 33% this quarter to $208 million. That number is far higher than the average rate we were winning in the recent past. And we are proud of this exceptional performance. After winning new business we need to execute. Completing projects, on or ahead of schedule and on or under budget is the hallmark of Ameresco. This keeps both customers and shareholders happy and increases our ability to win follow on work. A $139 million of project revenues this represents outstanding execution. With a pace of accomplishment well ahead of earliest quarters. Our execution team keep our customer satisfied as well as incentive, our sales team to work even harder to keep our pipelines full. We’re pleased to be demonstrating progressively better performance again this quarter as we promised at the start of the year. We deliver solid revenue growth by executing in our core project business and we improved our visibility due to the work of our sales team in capturing ever larger project opportunities. We look forward to finishing the year on a strong note and intend to build on our momentum in 2016 and beyond. Thank you.