Ameresco Inc (AMRC) 2015 Q1 法說會逐字稿

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Ameresco first-quarter 2015 earnings call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question-and-answer session, and instructions will follow at that time. (Operator Instructions).

I would like to introduce your host for today's conference, Ashley Patterson. Ms. Patterson, you may begin.

Thank you, Will, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us today for Ameresco's first-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 first quarter, as well as discuss our outlook for the balance of the year. Following the highlights, we will take questions from the audience.

Before we 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 its Annual Report on Form 10-K filed with the SEC on March 6, 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?

Thank you, Ashley, and, good morning, everyone. Before we start, I want to make some comments about our Chief Financial Officer transition. First, I want to thank Andrew Spence for his years of service to Ameresco, and to wish him all the best in his retirement.

Andrew joined us in 2002, a couple of years after our founding, and was instrumental in our success. In addition to building our reporting and control structures, he was a key player in helping us raise the capital that we needed to grow over the years. In addition to his work, helping to raise nearly $2 billion in project financing, he negotiated upgrades facilities and, of course, was critical to allow us our successful IPO. He has a great track record and should be proud when he looks back on his years with Ameresco.

Our finance function will remain in good hands with the promotion of John Granara to Chief Financial Officer, which became official on May 1. John joined us a year and a half ago as Chief Accounting Officer and has been making very good contribution. John has led the implementation of enhancements to our reporting functions that build upon Andrew's good work, which are now providing us with even deeper analytic insights.

John has extensive experience with public companies and in the clean tech sector, and we feel he is the right person to succeed Andrew as Chief Financial Officer. John will be taking over the financial commentary on the call, and you will hear from him shortly.

Now on to Q1 results. The results we reported today demonstrates that 2015 is off to a strong start. Our plan to restore revenue growth and improved profitability is now firmly in place. The various restructuring actions and efficiency improvements we undertook in 2014 are starting to bear fruit. Revenue growth was 15%, driven by resurgence in the federal sector, strong performance in several US regions, and excellent project implementation. Gross margin will have exceeded our corporate target of 20% after removing the effect of challenges in one Canadian project that I will discuss shortly.

Positive adjusted EBITDA of $2 million compares favorably to an adjusted EBITDA loss last year. Finally, we grew our contracted backlog and awarded projects sequentially, which improves the visibility of 2015 guidance. Further, we also increased our assets in development by $80 million year-over-year to $148 million.

Looking across our business segments, strength in the federal sector was the highlight of the quarter. Federal provided more than 20% of our revenues and about 30% of our contracted backlog. Federal revenue of approximately $24 million was up 93%, and adjusted EBITDA of $3.6 million was an important contributor to our first-quarter performance.

We have seen strength in the federal for a couple of reasons. [Foremost] is better execution in identifying and winning project opportunities. Beginning in 2012, we reasserted our internal focus to address federal opportunities with innovative and integrated solutions to enhance our competitive position. We also diversified our federal offerings beyond traditional energy savings performance contracts. We are now addressing contracting opportunities for operations and maintenance, design build projects, and power purchase agreements.

The improvement we have seen is a result of our enhanced internal procedures and marketing approach. The work we started a couple of years ago is gaining traction now, a reflection of the 18- to 24-month cycle that is normal for federal procurement.

The second reason for strength in the federal sector is that the administration continues to make energy efficiency and renewable energy a high priority for federal agencies. This was formalized through the President's Performance Contracting Challenge which began in 2011. It requires agencies to enter into $4 billion in energy performance contracts through the end of 2016. Then, this March, the president issued an executive order which qualifies a set of long-term sustainability requirements for federal agencies for the next 10 years.

We believe that this quarter will help provide continuity to federal continuity to federal ESPC realization beyond 2016, and should increase opportunities for marketing our renewable energy capabilities. Combined with a persistent deferred maintenance that can be addressed by ESPC, we expect the order to be a positive tailwind for our federal business for the foreseeable future.

Let me highlight one federal sector win that can give you a flavor of our success here. You may have seen the large Department of Interior headquarters project we announced a couple of weeks ago. That ESPC project, which encompasses energy and water savings, is expected to generate $77 million in revenue to us over its 20-year term. We placed $26 million into contracted backlog for the two-year implementation phase. The balance is recurring revenue from ongoing energy management services.

While we are proud of our results, we are mindful that there is always room for improvement. When we look at all of the business units and segments that we track internally, if you still have gross margins below our corporate goal [and a couple] reported negative adjusted EBITDA for the quarter. The fact that we have opportunities to perform better leaves us optimistic about the upside we can deliver growth stockholders in the future. Our goal for this unit of segments is to optimize their gross margin and ensure that all are cash flow contributors.

Another important initiative for us is to further develop our recurring revenue streams. We are working to identify ongoing O&M opportunities on more of our projects. In fact, we were awarded two such new contracts this quarter. O&M was a good contributor this quarter, with profitability of both our corporate average. Looking at our O&M contracted portfolio extending out for the next 18 years, we have visibility on approximately $700 million of revenue.

On top of O&M, we are aggressively building our renewable energy portfolio. We believe this business should continue to grow in the years ahead, especially for solar power and distributed generation due to favorable market conditions. The cost of PV hardware continues to fall, supporting good internal rates of return, and the cost of financing remains exceptionally low.

We would caution you, though, that we must navigate certain headwinds. For instance, in 2016, a full 30% Section 48 investment tax credits for solar will expire. Despite that, we believe the outlook is bright for solar and distributed generation.

As a result of our strategic decision to own and operate certain assets, last quarter we began to separately report our assets in development. We have more than $200 million [to] generate in assets our balance sheet, and another $148 million under development. We placed 2.4 megawatts of solar projects in service during the quarter.

A great example of our efforts in solar is a large-scale renewable energy plant we are building at Fort Detrick in Maryland. Ameresco will build, own, operate, and maintain this solar facility. Fort Detrick will purchase the electricity for Ameresco with a 25-year purchase power agreement. This 18.6-megawatt broke ground on April 1, and is expected to go into operation in March of 2016.

Another great example is our Massachusetts Department of Transportation solar project. Ameresco was selected by Massachusetts Department of Transportation to design, finance, install, own and operate 5.5 megawatts of solar arrays across ten sites along three major highways including the Mass Turnpike. The solar arrays are now in process of being installed on otherwise underutilized land, and we provide both clean energy and cost savings to the Commonwealth.

Our renewable energy portfolio revenues were up 16% and made a meaningful contribution to adjusted EBITDA.

Before I turn the call over to John for financial details, let me circle back to my earlier comments on our Canada segment. As we discussed last quarter, we have struggled there due to one difficult project. We will lose money on it as we approach completion this year, and we fully reserved for the loss this quarter. We have identified the [vision] and leadership issues that caused the problem, and we do not expect a repeat of the mistakes we made.

Our results still met our expectations despite the challenges in Canada. But, as I mentioned, a better run rate analysis of our business is to remove the effect of this one project. Absent that effect, we will have achieved gross margin of over 20% and generated $5 million of adjusted EBITDA. Based on our solid first-quarter results, we are reaffirming our guidance for 2015.

Now, I will turn the call over to John to provide more detail about our financial results and guidance. John?

Thank you, George, and good morning, everyone. As we get started with the financials, please note that, unless otherwise stated, all the amounts I reference relate to Q1 2015, and the comparisons are for the year-over-year changes.

Starting with the P&L, total revenues of $115 million were up 15%, driven by a 28% increase in project revenues. Revenues from all other service offerings were essentially flat. As George highlighted, federal revenues of $24.1 million nearly doubled and were a key element of growth. Revenues from US regions and small-scale infrastructure also grew, with both up around 15%. We grew total revenues despite a 33% decline of revenues from Canada.

I should note that we do have some foreign exchange exposure related to our Canada and UK operations, and fluctuations in the value of the US dollar can impact our revenue. On a constant currency basis, revenues would have grown approximately 17%.

As George mentioned, an important initiative in our communications with investors is to better highlight our growing recurring revenue streams, principally our O&M and energy revenues. Our O&M revenue this quarter was $13.5 million, up slightly. Revenues from our operating assets, which mainly come from our LFG and solar PV projects, were $12.4 million, up 16%.

Moving on to gross margin and operating expenses, gross margin for the first quarter was 17%, down slightly from last year. As George mentioned, we did absorb a significant loss in one Canadian project. Removing that effect, our gross margins would have been over 20%, which is more in line with our expectations and indicates that we continue to achieve our run rate profitability objectives.

Note that we have restructured and refocused our Canadian operations, and if we remove the loss associated with that one project, the rest of the Canadian business is expected to return to profitability this year.

SG&A expenses were $24 million, below both the year-ago quarter and Q4 of 2014. The sequential improvement reflects our continued expense discipline as well as seeing the benefits of the restructuring activity done in 2014. Operating income was a loss of $4.4 million, in line with our expectations and with normal seasonality. Net loss was $4.2 million or $0.09 per diluted share. Net loss and loss per share were half of what they were last year. If we remove the effect of the loss in Canada, net income and EPS would have been approximately breakeven.

Adjusted EBITDA and non-GAAP measures that we believe to be reflective of our economic performance was a positive $1.8 million or $0.04 per share. This compares to an adjusted EBITDA loss of $918,000. Removing the Canada effect, our adjusted EBITDA was a healthy $5 million. Below the operating income line, other expenses were $2.7 million. This includes approximately $1.3 million or $0.03 per diluted share of foreign exchange loss, primarily related to the strengthening US dollar.

Before I turn to the balance sheet, I do want to touch upon our effective tax rate, which was 41% in the quarter. As a result of the losses in Canada, we are planning to record a non-cash tax valuation allowance in 2015. Excluding the impact of the valuation allowance, our estimated effective tax rate for the year would have been closer to 20%.

Having said that, even with this valuation allowance, we still expect our effective tax rate for the year to be closer to 25%, and this is because we should capture solar-related ITC credits on three projects that we expect to complete this year.

Turning to the balance sheet, as expected, some of our key metrics were impacted by the seasonal decline in activity in Q1. Cash was down $5.3 million since December 31. And while DSO was up sequentially, it was well lower than Q1 of 2014. Total debt declined to $100.8 million, and is down from $102 million on December 31. If we remove project debt, which is non-recourse to us, corporate debt was $25.5 million, down from $29 million at the end of last quarter.

Looking at CapEx, we invested $5.9 million in renewable energy projects that we plan to own and operate. For the year, we continue to expect CapEx to be $75 million to $90 million, with most of it related to the assets in development. During the quarter, we executed a sale-leaseback arrangement with a commercial bank that will allow us to finance certain solar assets. Under the arrangement, we will sell the completed systems to a tax equity investor, and then we will lease back the systems.

During the quarter, we received $7.6 million of proceeds related to the first two projects, and we realized a $1 million cash gain that will be deferred for book purposes and recognized over the life of the asset. In addition, we recorded a capital lease liability of $3.5 million related to these projects.

This financing arrangement was an important step to support our long-term strategy to grow our renewable energy portfolio by reducing our financing burden. Specifically, this deal allows us to finance projects with little or no capital by monetizing the ITC. Meanwhile, we are still able to retain the economic benefits related to ownership, which includes the sale of the solar renewable energy certificates.

Looking at backlog and visibility, we started the year with $386 million of fully contracted backlog and ended the quarter with $387 million. During the quarter, $68 million was converted to revenue, while we added $70 million from project awards to contracted backlog. We ended the quarter with awarded backlog of $168 million. Newly awarded projects in the quarter were $90 million.

With our strong start to the year, we remain confident in the guidance we provided on the last call. For the year, we continue to expect revenues to be in the range of $610 million to $640 million. We are expecting double-digit revenue growth from both our federal and US region business segments, which is being partially offset by a decrease in Canada. Of the $610 million to $640 million of expected revenues, we now believe $350 million will come from contracted backlog, based on contracts signed in the quarter. This represents improved visibility when you compare to our prior estimate of $310 million. We expect $50 million to $90 million of revenue to come from awarded projects and pipeline. The remaining revenue will come from energy sales, O&M, and other revenues.

We anticipate gross margin to be between 19% and 20%, and operating expenses to be around 16% to 17% of revenue. As I mentioned earlier, although our effective tax rate was 41% in Q1, we anticipate the rate for the full year to be around 25%. This all should lead to EPS in the range of $0.16 to $0.24, and adjusted EBITDA in the range of $43 million to $48 million.

Finally, related to our outlook for the second quarter, we expect revenues to be within the range of $139 million to $145 million, and EPS around breakeven. This guidance assumes that our effective tax rate remains at 41% in Q2. As I noted, while we expect our effective tax rate for the year to end up around 25%, the timing of the transactions that would affect that rate is still uncertain at this time.

So, with that, we would now like to open the line for questions. So I will turn the call back over to our coordinator, Will, to run the Q&A session.

(Operator Instructions). Noah Kaye, Northland Capital Markets.

Congratulations, John, on your new role; and nice job on the quarter. Let's start with the federal growth opportunities, since you spent some time on that. Understand that the DOE $55 billion authorization IDIQ opportunity should hit pretty soon. I believe the deadline has been extended out to mid-May. Can you give us an idea of how you are thinking about that specific opportunity, and how that feeds into your commentary on the federal tailwinds?

Well, it's the recompete right now that are going through, and we have to submit along with everybody else. As you might recall, right now there are 16 energy services companies that they qualified for that opportunity. And the new RFP states that they will only choose 10 companies, and then two of the large companies and two of, what I would say, small business and minority-owned business. And we feel very good about it because of our track record in the federal sector. So I think that we will be one of the companies that will be selected. And I think, in the long-term, it is going to give us a great, great opportunity. And based on the qualifications that we have in the past, we have done very, very well.

Just a follow up on that. It seems like -- (multiple speakers).

And --.

I'm sorry. Go ahead, George.

And the other thing that I would say, because the amount is so large, we will not have a contract [filling] issue that we did have in the past. So the opportunity will be much, much larger than it has been in the past.

Right. And it seems like there is a preference with this RFP to be able to bring both energy efficiency and renewable energy competencies to the table, which obviously you have significantly developed.

Exactly. And that was our strategy. And, actually, it is interesting you are bringing it up. One of the comments that we get back from the federal government, they said, you guys are the only ESCO company that just broadens their offering to do all the renewables. And it has helped us the last couple of years, winning some pretty good projects like the Fort Detrick project and a couple of other ones; and the biomass down at Savannah River, and where we are adding a second phase to it right now, another biomass heating plant. So it seems to be working. The strategy seems to be working. And, look, it is who we are. We are a comprehensive development and engineering company; and financing. So it is working. Cross our fingers, it will continue to be working.

Okay. Great. And to move to the solar growth plan, I believe you stated last quarter you thought you would put about 20 megawatts or so of projects into operation this year. I see you are reiterating your CapEx expectations related to assess in development. Do you still think that 20 megawatts figure sounds about right? And how would you characterize the growth of your solar pipeline for next year, at this point?

The growth has been very, very good in the pipeline, especially for next year; as far as whether we will reach the 20, or it would be 15 or 20 or 25 megawatts this year, but I will tell you this much -- that it will be more than 20 projects of [varied prospection], and hopefully the better part of them will reach commercial operation by the end of the year.

Yes. No, this is John. So as we said, we did place 2.4 megawatts into service this quarter. What we didn't say, but maybe we'll provide a little bit more color for you, is that we added actually 6 megawatts to our assets and development pipeline during the quarter. So we were able to backfill the pipeline nicely this quarter.

And that is only for -- plus the 18.5 megawatts at Fort Detrick.

Yes, but that was already in our number.

Okay.

So I think you had disclosed a pipeline -- total pipeline of -- remind me, last quarter it was like 75 to 80 megawatts range, something like that.

That is correct.

You have incrementally added 6 megawatts to that since then, or --?

Well, as part of that 80, we added 6 of it to our assets in development. So we secured and awarded -- we secured the rights to develop those projects.

Okay. Excellent. So we would you put the total pipeline at versus the 80 this quarter versus last quarter? Or is it about the same?

Yes. I would say it is about the same.

Okay.

We are continually backfilling with the new awards, and we are continuing to bid on new opportunities. So the proposal activity is pretty healthy in the solar world right now.

Okay. Thanks so much. I will jump back in queue.

Jim Giannakouros, Oppenheimer.

George, you mentioned -- and I apologize if I missed it. You mentioned -- I believe you mentioned you have line of sight to $700 million in revenue. Can you break that down in what comes from backlog and other areas? And was that meant as a 2016 figure?

The $700 million comes from contracts that we have in place right now for the operation and maintenance. And that is over 18 years. And if you look at the average life, we have an average life of those contracts at about 12 to 13 years there. So otherwise, some of them might be five years, and some that go out 20 to 25 years. And a couple of the big ones that we have, I think go out for 20 years.

Understood. Okay. And, given the successes that you are having in federal, it seems like there is runway there. You mentioned that the $4 billion in ESPCs through 2016 was -- is basically being hoped for, or being imparted on the federal agencies. Can you just update us specifically on, is that tracking on pace? Do you envision an acceleration in activity over the coming quarters to meet that goal? And which agencies specifically look to be the most active there?

Yes. And so far this year, about $213 million has been awarded, associated with a particular order. We see an acceleration on the federal market across the board. And I think it has to do primarily because right now they have some kind of a measuring stick that the White House is using that all agencies, they have to report monthly what activities they are actually doing.

Okay. Okay. And then (multiple speakers).

And as far as which agencies, the one that is the slowest is probably the Air Force and the Navy. But just about every other agency, it is moving ahead, I would say very aggressively, especially the GSA and the Bureau of Prisons, the Army National Guard. So it is across the board. And I think even the Navy and the Air Force, they have begun moving.

Got it. Thank you. And, forgive me if you did get into the granular points. But as far as the costs -- the cost inflation, or the execution issue that you had in Canada, you said that there was one difficult project there. What were the issues that drove the cost up?

It was a large project, and it was a $100 million project; and a retrofit where I would say, like we do over here, [hot] properties, similar properties up in Canada. And the people that were there, I don't think they did enough preliminary engineering. And the contracts that they signed, they did not protect us adequately. And that is why we have made some changes in the leadership up there and changed the procedures.

Okay. And, just on that -- and, again, John opened up with some comments on the Canadian business -- if I understand it correctly, that, excluding this one project loss, I believe, John, you said that the rest of the Canadian business returns to profitability this year. Did I hear that right, that the rest of the Canadian business still was running at a loss, or --?

Right. So we expect, excluding this project, that Canada will return to profitability -- breakeven to profitable this year. They were not -- the rest of the Canadian business was not profitable in Q1, so they still incurred a smaller -- small loss. But, as we look forward to the year and we look at their pipeline of opportunities and new projects that we expect, we are expecting them to be profitable for the year -- the rest of the business.

Chip Moore, Canaccord.

Just wanted to follow up on the pickup in federal activity, sort of the cadence of how that played out in the quarter, maybe you can talk about.

For going forward, or over the last quarter?

No, what you saw this quarter, when you saw things pick up specifically. Was that start of the year, or how did that play out?

We started seeing the pickup actually last year by the amount of awards that we started winning. And that is why we placed several projects in construction, and good size projects. And we were able to execute on them very well in the implementation. And I think what you saw this quarter, some of the revenues, I would say, have accelerated some of the prospection for the next quarter from the federal group. But, overall, for the year, though, we are forecasting very, very good growth in that particular market.

Okay. That's fair. And, obviously, still early, but when you think about the next election cycle and any impact there on the federal side, what are your early thoughts?

Because the federal government, they have to do these kinds of projects in order to improve the infrastructure, and they don't have the money to actually implement the projects using their own funds. Remember, these projects are budget-neutral. So we think they will continue. And some of the, what I would say, measured candidates for president right now, I know they feel very strongly about this kind of an offering; either part of the aisle, either side of the aisle.

So I feel pretty good from the federal market. And especially with what President Obama did, having this 10-year plan, the agency is beginning to move and the concept gets more and more traction. And I think we are beginning to see those results. The agencies feel more comfortable executing this kind of contract, and they are getting more familiar with it and they feel better about it. And I think we are beginning to see the results. We anticipate that, for the next few years, federal government is going to become a major driver of our business.

Okay. That's great. That's helpful. And then, lastly, on the renewable energy side, maybe just talk a little bit about competitive environment, what you are seeing out there. I think you talked about 6 megawatts added for solar this quarter. What are you seeing competitively?

It is -- I would say it is pretty tough on the solar market. Where we get the advantage is where we have the relationships. And that is why I keep saying that [MRS], where we have a great franchise across the country; and because many of these customers that we are winning projects with our existing clients that we might have, and we have done other services. And, even though price counts a lot in these particular projects, you will find that when they do the evaluation, the other capabilities count as well, and the services have been local, and so on. And having 72 offices across the United States and Canada is helping us, because they know we will be able to execute. Sometimes we lose projects, but many of them don't happen. And, at least with us, each and every project we have won, we have been able to build.

Okay. Thanks. Nice work.

At this time, I am showing no further questions.

I would like to turn the call back over to George Sakellaris for closing remarks.

Thank you, Will. Let me close the call by reiterating that we got 2015 off to a good start with solid results, including notable improvements across most of our business units. Results were satisfactory despite a tough situation on one project in Canada. We are driving a solid recovery in our federal sector business. We are executing across most US regions, and continue to build our portfolio of renewable energy-producing assets. We remain optimistic about the potential for additional operating improvements in the quarters ahead.

I also want to mention two investor events coming up this month. Next week, on May 12, we will be hosting one-on-one meetings at the Deutsche Bank Clean Tech conference in New York. The following day, we will be presenting and hosting one-on-one meetings at the Oppenheimer Industrial Growth Conference, also in New York. We invite any of you attending either conference to schedule a meeting with us through your respective salesperson at each of those firms.

Thank you all, again. And this concludes the call, and you may now disconnect; and also please have a good day.