Jeffrey Eckel
Analyst · Oppenheimer. Please go ahead
Thanks, Chad, and good afternoon, everyone. Today we're announcing GAAP earnings of $0.13 per share, and core earnings of $0.38 per share. GAAP earnings decreased due to a one time provision that will be discussed later in the call.In the third quarter, we realized year-over-year growth in core earnings per share of 6% and growth in core net investment income of 37%. This growth was driven by an improvement of 130 basis points in our portfolio yield, which now stands of 7.7% and a lower leverage position now one and a half times debt-to-equity. We closed $287 million of transactions in the third quarter, more than 90% of which we intend to fund on balance sheet. Year-to-date, we've closed $810 million of transactions and remain well on track to close over a $1 billion of investments for the full year.In addition, we continue to improve our access to capital and our liquidity position by following up with $150 million add on to our previously discussed $350 million inaugural corporate unsecured green bond. We also reiterate our three year guidance through 2020 of 2% to 6% growth in core earnings per share from the 2017 base. And as we do every quarter, and for every investment, we calculate the carbon reductions from our investments. The carbon count for our third quarter investment is 0.35, offsetting over 96,000 metric tons of annual carbon emissions.Turning the Slide 4, as a reminder, we source our pipeline from the premier engineering development and operating companies driving the energy system of the future. We endeavor to do this on a programmatic basis in each of the Behind the Meter, sustainable infrastructure and Grid Connected markets. Across these markets, we invest in approximately 10 asset classes that provide a highly diversified and uncorrelated flow of investment opportunities. Given our investments year-to-date and our view on fourth quarter opportunities, we remained comfortable we will be able to meet or exceed our $1 billion annual target.As of the end of the third quarter, our 12 months pipeline remained strong and more than 2.5 billion with Behind the Meter or BTM opportunities totaling 76% of this opportunity set. The weighting of our pipeline toward BTM opportunities is reflective of our belief that the future of energy will be decentralized, digitalized and decarbonized. The majority of the BTM pipeline remains governmental energy efficiency and resiliency opportunities, the bulk of which are securitized. With regard to other BTM asset classes, the commercial and industrial portion of our pipeline continues to grow, as several recent announcements have indicated including those in community solar, C&I solar and C&I energy efficiency opportunities with new clients, as well as a safe harbor facility for Sun power C&I business, all of which demonstrate the potential of programmatic relationships.The residential solar market continues to expand and makes up a growing but still modest portion of our pipeline. I'd also note how quickly resi solar, once storage is added has gone from nice to have home addition to a need to have home resiliency system, due to the ongoing power outages associated with catastrophic wildfires in California.Approximately 13% of our pipeline consists of sustainable infrastructure assets. This diverse set of opportunities includes climate change, adaptation, and resiliency investments. The Grid Connected market remains competitive to the amount of capital chasing deals driving down returns. As a result, our opportunities remain weighted towards utility scale solar land investments, with existing clients for whom we offer an accretive slice of capital to help them compete for new business. As landlord with a senior position the cash flows, we're also largely protected from short term energy price fluctuations and counterparty credit risk like the PG&E bankruptcy.To summarize this page, with a long term investment horizon and a broad platform focused on climate change solutions, we will continue to execute on the investment opportunities in the given quarter that provide the best risk adjusted returns.Turning to Slide 5, we provide a view into our managed assets and our portfolio. Since the end of Q2, our portfolio has grown from 1.8 billion to 1.9 billion as rotation of lower yielding assets off balance sheets is more than offset by additions of higher yielding assets to the balance sheet. BTM assets comprised 57% of our portfolio, with Grid Connected and sustainable infrastructure assets making up the remainder at 36% and 7% respectively.In total, we have 195 investments with a $9 million average investment size, which speaks to the diversity of our portfolio. As we previously noted, we treat some portfolios of assets as a single investment. So the total number of physical assets and obligors is substantially larger and thus diversity is even more robust than these figures suggest. While residential solar has become a larger portion of our portfolio because of the attractive risk adjusted returns, we have several decades of experience in syndicating large positions and are focused on ensuring our portfolio retains the appropriate level of diversity and return to support our continued growth.I'll now turn it over Jeff L to detail our financial performance.