Ameresco Inc (AMRC) 2021 Q3 法說會逐字稿

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Ameresco, Inc. Third Quarter 2021 Earnings Call. (Operator Instructions) As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded.

I would now like to turn the conference over to your host, Ms. Leila Dillon, Senior Vice President of Marketing and Communications. Ms. Dillon, you may begin.

Thank you, Justin, and good afternoon, 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, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer; and Mark Chiplock, 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. This call contains forward-looking information regarding future events and the future financial performance of the company. We caution you that such statements are based on management's current expectations or beliefs. Actual results may differ materially as a result of risks and uncertainties that pertain to our business. We refer you to the company's press release issued this afternoon and to our SEC filings. These documents discuss 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, we 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 and in the appendix of the slides, which can be downloaded from our website.

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

Thank you, Leila, and good afternoon, everyone. The third quarter was another strong quarter for Ameresco, as robust. New business development activity yielded significant growth in both our project backlog and our energy assets in development. Our results continue to benefit from our diversified business model, as growth in our higher margin asset and O&M businesses plus a favorable project mix drove an increase in profitability that more than offset the impact of supply chain have COVID-related delays.

Our energy asset business had an exceptionally strong quarter with revenues up 29% and 35 megawatts added into our assets in development. Ongoing additions to our energy asset base create a higher margin, long-term revenue stream that together with our O&M business serve to smooth out the variability that we experience from quarter-to-quarter in our projects business.

Of note, we were very pleased to add an additional 4 RNG sites and innovative battery system to our assets in development during the quarter. Given our deep and wide expertise in advanced energy technologies, Ameresco is able to pursue a very broad range of high-yielding opportunities across our entire geographic footprint.

During the third quarter, several projects and our off-grid integrated solar business were impacted by interruptions and delays due to the industry-wide supply chain issues and COVID-19-related disruptions. It's important to point out that these issues primarily impact the timing of execution and that the delayed revenue will be recognized in later quarters.

Our projects business proposal activity has been robust. As we expected, we experienced a considerable increase in our total projects backlog, which was up 7% sequentially at the end of the third quarter. At the same time, a significant increase in proposal activity is taking place across our customers' base, which we see as a positive signal for Ameresco's growing business.

Several factors have started to come together that they are influencing customer decisions. For many customers, the attraction to budget neutral cost savings remains a key selling point, but we are now seeing a significant increase in projects being driven by the demand for greater power and water resiliency as well as advanced technology solutions that can lower our customers' carbon footprint. Ameresco's ability to provide comprehensive solutions addressing all risk elements puts us in a very strong competitive position and has significantly expanded our addressable market.

The transfer measure 537.5 megawatt battery energy storage contract that we announced 10 days ago is an excellent example of the growth potential we see on the horizon. The contract is the largest in Ameresco's 20-year history. We will be designing and building 3 battery energy storage systems for Southern California Edison. In total, the project will provide the California grid with 4 hours of clean resilient power storage for a total of 2,150 megawatt hours.

The incredibly fast-paced timetable for this project has been driven by the devastating impact and higher frequency of extreme weather events, which continue to create energy supply emergencies in California. California alone is not the only state origin to be facing extreme weather events. Over the last years -- few years, the grid has been disrupted by numerous wildfires, extreme heat and cold as well as hurricanes in many regions of the country. Many utilities and their customers are now looking at distributed energy resources and microgrids to augment the grid and create a more reliable and resilient system.

As a larger percentage of our energy supply comes from these intermittent resources like solar and wind, blackouts and energy shortages may become more likely. We continue to support these technologies as they are a very important part of the new energy mix in our economy. However, their intermittent nature does create a need for more backup power and resilient solutions, including firm supply of renewable energy resources.

Ameresco's portfolio of solutions perfectly complements this approach. While the Southern California battery contract is our first of this size, we are actively engaged in numerous other discussions for similar solutions. We believe the next decade will be marked by dramatic changes in the domestic power system with resources shifting to more distributed assets and microgrids to increase overall reliability and resiliency.

I will now turn the call over to Doran to provide some comments on our financial performance and guidance. Doran?

Thank you, George, and good afternoon, everyone. Please refer to our press release and supplemental slides that have been posted to our website for additional financial information.

As George mentioned, the third quarter clearly demonstrated the resiliency of our business model as continued growth in our higher margin energy assets and O&M businesses offset softer projects revenue, driving another quarter of profit growth. As we have noted before, quarterly projects revenue can be uneven by nature, which has only been exacerbated by industry-wide COVID-19 restrictions and supply chain disruptions. This is one of the reasons the company has purposely built out our recurring revenue businesses since its founding, which now account for over 2/3 of our adjusted EBITDA.

Q3 revenue was $273.7 million compared to $282.5 million the previous year. Approximately $30 million worth of projects revenue was delayed and is expected to hit in subsequent quarters. We anticipate the COVID-19 and supply chain challenges to continue into 2022. We constantly monitor the availability and timely delivery of materials as well as the availability in cost of labor, especially given COVID-related restrictions and vaccine mandates.

Our increased guidance, which I will discuss later in the call, takes all of this into consideration. Energy asset revenue increased an impressive 29%, reflecting the continued growth of our operating portfolio, improved performance of our existing operating assets and strength in RIN prices. O&M revenue also had a robust quarter with growth of 12% as we continue to attach long-term O&M contracts to our project work.

Our gross margin of 21.5% benefited from a favorable project mix and generally continues to benefit from the growth in our higher margin energy assets and O&M businesses. We had GAAP EPS of $0.33 and non-GAAP EPS of $0.41, with adjusted EBITDA of $40.2 million, increasing 9% year-over-year.

During the quarter, we placed 4 megawatts of assets into operation. We also added an impressive 35 megawatts to our assets in development, including a battery energy storage system and 4 additional smaller RNG facilities. With the addition of these 4, we now have 17 RNG assets in development with a total expected annual output of over 10 million MMBtus, the equivalent of approximately 129 megawatts. Our 319 megawatts of operating assets have approximately $1 billion in long-term contracted revenue and incentives. Together with our $1.1 billion O&M backlog, we continue to have considerable long-term visibility to these higher margin revenue streams.

Moving to our project backlog. We were very pleased to have increased our total project backlog 7% sequentially and 5% year-over-year to $2.36 billion as we continue to see a significant pickup in customer interest and bidding activity. Our recently announced battery storage contract with SCE was not included in the Q3 backlog number, but will hit our Q4 contracted project backlog. And as a leading clean tech integrator, we are pursuing many other large complex projects with clients who recognize our expertise and proven track record.

Let me add a little financial color to the SCE design-build contract. Work has already begun in the fourth quarter with the anticipated completion by August 1, 2022. As with other projects, revenue will be recognized on a percentage of completion basis, and we expect a relatively uniform level of work throughout the life of the contract.

As we have stated, design-build contracts typically yield gross margins in the high single-digit range. We have included the estimated impact from this contract for the remainder of this year in our raised 2021 guidance ranges. We will not be commenting on the 2022 impact yet as it will be factored into our 2022 guidance ranges when we release that information early next year.

Given our strong year-to-date performance, the addition of the SCE contract, a lower-than-anticipated tax rate plus an increased investment in our people, new resources and growth strategies, we are pleased to be increasing our 2021 guidance as detailed in our press release. With these factors, we are increasing the revenue midpoint by $80 million and the EBITDA midpoint estimate by $5 million.

Now I'd like to turn the call back over to George for closing comments.

Thank you, Doran. In closing, I want to again take a moment to thank our employees for their dedication and outstanding execution, as well as our customers and stockholders for their continued support. I believe that the prospects we see in front of us have never been more excited. Our portfolio of innovative solutions and our track record of execution and delivering top-quality products makes Ameresco the industry's preferred partner for the most complex and comprehensive advanced energy projects.

Our recent battery storage contract win is a tremendous achievement for the company and we believe it's also indicative of the types of opportunities that are rapidly evolving in the market as we focus on a clean, resilient future.

Finally, I'm excited to announce that Ameresco will be holding its first Investor Day in New York City on January 13. We will provide analysts and investors with an opportunity to gain better insights into our compelling long-term opportunities.

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

(Operator Instructions) And our first question comes from Noah Kaye from Oppenheimer.

So first of all, congrats on contract win with SoCal Edison. This is very significant. And so I'd like to ask a couple of questions related to it. I guess, #1 is a housekeeping matter. Is it possible to do a simple bridge to the $80 million increase in revenue guidance? I think you mentioned that you expect revenue recognition on this project fairly rapidly over the life of the contract. Maybe you could kind of help put a little bit of a finer point on it for us. And I guess as long as for added, we could also ask a little bit about your mentioning the increased investment in people and systems to support growth. If there's any details you can provide there.

Hey, Noah, this is Mark. Maybe I can start just talking about the guidance, right? So on the $80 million, I don't think we're going to talk about specifics there. I mean there are a number of puts and takes going into those increased estimates. Certainly, on the revenue side, we took into account that an estimate of additional revenue coming from the battery contract. But as we talked about in the prepared remarks and as we saw in Q3, we still are anticipating the impact of various supply chain and COVID-related impacts to the revenue.

I think we feel really confident in that revised range just given the visibility that we have coming out of our project backlog for sure. We anticipate greater than 85% coming from our contracted backlog on the project revenue line and certainly a higher percentage overall coming from contracted revenue sources.

If we work our way down the P&L, I think the expected contribution from that contract and the adjustments we made to revenue, when you combine those with some of the investments that we're going to make, I think it's a combination, certainly on the human capital side, as we focus on retaining our people as well as the investments we're going to make in new resources to support the growth. We're also expecting to see some increases on the project development side as we continue to focus on the robust pipeline of projects. So we're going to see those investments continue to impact OpEx. And I think that's what's flowing down to the adjusted earnings guidance.

Yes, Mark, thank you for that color. Yes, go ahead please.

So what I might add to that, as you may recall that during COVID-19, we did cut back a little bit on the expense side and focused a lot in executing the contracts that we had in place. And I think that's why we came out through COVID-19 very, very, very good. And we're still in it, by the way. But the last couple of months and this quarter, we are increasing OpEx otherwise hiring more people, adding additional resources, and that's what Mark is trying to point out.

And we're doing it because as we're shifting some resources for that matter because in order to execute this expeditious time schedule of this battery storage contract, we're shifting some resources, senior managers that they build in other projects to this particular project. And our backlog is developing fast. The opportunities are out there. And that's why you saw the considerable pickup in the projects awarded, over 31% year-to-date. And -- but we have to make the investment in order to maintain and probably accelerate the growth down the road.

Right. And as you pointed, I think, in your prepared remarks, that increase in awarded backlog didn't reflect this contract. So you had significant growth in your other projects business, and we'll see that.

Yes. And that's what has got us excited about the performance of the third quarter the fact we've been waiting. The proposal activity is more than just doubled for what we had the previous years. And finally, we're beginning to see the results of the awards. And then as our timing works through the backlog, get the awards in 6 months to a year later, you get the actual contracts. But if you get to Southern Cal, it went from proposal to award to contract with a few months in the proposal stage and then about 10 days in the award to contract the stage. That's why we like those contracts, by the way.

Thanks, George. That feeds into my last question, which is around -- I mean, obviously, there was an urgency to this project, but I'd like to get a little bit of color on how you effectively won the contract where you were able to differentiate whether in and around the service capabilities, the technology you were proposing? And then what do you think that means in terms of other opportunities of the utility scale type niche. You're hinting at it in these prepared remarks, but it sounds like there's quite a robust opportunity out there.

Yes. Sure. I mean, Southern Cal, they were out with an RFP and we were monitoring the situation what they were doing with the PUC and so on. And we were one of the first companies to respond to the RFP, and there were few others as well. But in addition to that, we are doing another project for Southern Cal, smaller sized project, which -- so we got to know them very good. And they recognized that we have tremendous capabilities in that area. Actually, I visited them, I would say, 3 months ago or so. And we went after very aggressively.

We did line up suppliers and EPC contractors and so on because one of the key issues, of course, is getting the batteries there, and so on and so forth. So we have lined up the suppliers for all the key equipments for the project, transformers and so on and as well somebody to wrap it and build it for us.

And the other thing I want to point out and to everybody, to our investors as well as the analyst is the fact that, when you take the contract, there's a single contract, it's a very large-sized contract for us. But if you break it down, they have 3 contracts, 3 different sites. And if you think we did Savannah River back in 2010, we were only 1/3 of the size of the company, we did a $200 million contract and it was -- there was Biomass, much more complicated than this particular one. But what makes them challenging is the schedule and some of the supply issues that we have -- we developed in contingency plans to make sure that we get everything there on time.

The other one, the opportunities, that's why I focus my remarks a lot. It's getting to be more and more of an issue. Microgrids and battery storage and so on, it's going to be the way of the future because as I said in my remarks, more solar, more wind. And of course, they are intermittent and they depend on weather. As you get cold front or a hurricane or whatever, all those things out, you got to make up that difference some time. So that's the need for backup power, energy storage, whatever the technology is down the road.

Our question comes from Julien Dumoulin-Smith from Bank of America.

This is Anya stepping in for Julien. So...

Hi, Anya.

Hey, how are you? My first question here is, I was wondering if you can just elaborate a little bit more on the supply chain issues. How much of that is driven by shortages versus cost inflation? Which of your businesses are particularly affected? And then do you see any risk or I guess any impact at all to your annual cadence of 3 to 4 RNG projects? Or do you think you can kind of like make up for -- I think over the long term? Just wanted to get your thoughts on that.

I will talk about it a little bit and then Mark has been into it day in and day out more. On the RNG projects, we had a slight delay on the project that we were executing in order to tenor up. But no major hiccup did impact a little bit the economics, but not that much. For example, some of the materials with the LED controls, we got them from a factory in Vietnam, it was shut down for 3 weeks and so on. So that impacted pretty much all of our LED projects. And the good thing -- and that's why it didn't impact us as much on the profitability of the company. So that's why I mentioned on my call, the project mix. Some of those projects, they were lower margin projects. So they didn't have as much impact.

The other thing that it surprised me little bit, which is vaccinated, not vaccinated, especially in the Northwest region. Some of our subcontractors because they had maybe 1 or 2 employees have not vaccinated, they wouldn't have access to some of the facilities, or before, we used the school will not open or even in the past, we used to do work at night in some of the schools. And now because they were opened, they were concerned in case somebody was -- went in there that was unvaccinated, so they wouldn't allow us to do night work. So then PVC some roof tiles anyway. Mark?

Yes. No, I think you hit on a lot of the examples. The only thing I might add is that it certainly wasn't unique to any particular business unit or region, we saw across really all of our project-related businesses. And so I think we even saw beyond that just sheer delivery of materials or COVID-related impacts.

We saw contracts being delayed because COVID wouldn't allow certain officials to get into the same room. And so again, just impacted the timing on a contract that we probably would have expected to see in Q3. So we certainly ran the gamut of different challenges across supply chain in COVID.

Okay. Awesome. Thanks. That was a great answer I think for the clarity there. And then second, as a follow-up, I just wanted to ask about just the guidance range. Is that pretty much predominantly driven by this contractor? How much of that is impacted by -- I guess, what are your thoughts on D3 RIN pricing? And what sort of expectations are factored into guidance? I know last quarter, you said you were still relatively conservative on that. Have you sort of impact, I guess, incorporated some of that positive pricing into your guidance for 2021 or?

Yes. Yes, we have, for sure. I mean, it's definitely one of the puts and takes. I think, again, without talking specifics about all the moving pieces in the guidance, our estimates are just slightly below where the market is. So I think that certainly has to be a factor. But that's probably what I'll say on that particular input.

And our next question comes from Eric Stine from Craig-Hallum.

So just going back to the SCE award and arguably, California has got the most urgency in this area, but obviously, as you mentioned, other areas as well, I mean, you talked about this building pipeline of similar large projects. Just curious if you can expand on maybe size of those compared to the one that you just won and timing of when we could start to think about that? Obviously, these are large and maybe they moved slowly, but this one seems to have moved actually pretty fast given what's going on.

Well, this one moved very fast because, like I said, it's an emergency situation that's happening in California. I will say this much. We're working on quite a few of them. Generally, they are smaller than this particular project. And I think you will find out that the market is moving more and more battery storage, microgrids and so on. So...

Operator, can you get away with that echo there?

Okay. Okay. Got it. All right. I guess we'll stay tuned for that, but it's obviously a pretty positive environment. Maybe I'll just -- I'll stick with 2 questions. And just on RNG, you mentioned the 4 new ones that you added. Any color on whether those are dairy RNG? And then as you look at the pipeline, I mean, how does that kind of break down between your traditional landfill versus dairy?

No. Those are the landfill sites, all 4 of them. But I will say this much in the dairy, we are working on some sites and some other potential deals. I will still put them in a proposal category right now. But I think in the near future, you will see us moving more -- we'll be able to put them in what I call assets in development. But right now, they are in medium stages, I will call them. But because dairy score much lower, the value proposition is much better for them and so on. We are looking very aggressively.

And our next question comes from Chris Souther from B. Riley.

Congrats on the SCE deal. Maybe to start for me, I'd talk about the uptick in energy asset development pipeline. You saw strong additions in both solar and storage and then also the renewable gas. Can you talk about the types of solar and storage, are you seeing strength there? And then it looks like you had a pure kind of battery added to -- added during the quarter here. I wanted to get a sense of within the pipeline and kind of current assets, kind of pure battery versus hybrid or solar only, if you can kind of get like a breakdown of where things stand and the momentum between those? And then the time frame for the renewable gas plants that were added before those would be great as well.

Sure. I'll try to hit all of those questions in one fell swoop. So you will notice that we kind of labeled the solar and battery in the supplemental slides now out of the figure that you see for solar and battery, 39 megawatts of that represents the battery capacity. Some of that is stand-alone. Some of that is combined with solar. The one that's being added is a battery that's being added to an existing solar project so that we've already got in our operating portfolio. So that's kind of a great example of being able to go back and figure out how battery resiliency can be a supplement to things that we already own and operate.

I think on the RNG side, there hasn't been really any change to the cadence of implementation. So we've talked in the past about the 2021, the single asset that's placed in service already; 2022, 3 assets; and 2023, 4 assets. The 4 that have been added, I think, clearly, we talk about 17 assets in development and the '21 through '23 don't add up to 17. So you can kind of see the time frame is going to stretch beyond that 2023 mark to get the rest of these in operation.

Okay. That's very helpful. And then project delays, obviously, it challenge the whole space and you talked about pushing about $30 million from some of the supply chain challenges. It sounded like that was stuff that you thought was going to be in the third quarter, but got pushed to fourth quarter and beyond. I'm just curious how many projects are being pushed into 2022 versus the prior guide. And then kind of curious around the timing where you guys are seeing there might be kind of a light at the end of the tunnel here? Or is it too tough to call at this point?

Yes. Chris, it's hard to say the number of actual projects being pushed, right? I mean we're kind of looking at it from a total revenue standpoint. And certainly, we would see some of the revenue that got pushed out of Q3 go into Q4. But in terms of pushing out into next year, I mean, again, we continue to anticipate that we're going to see these challenges through Q4 and into next year and so will continue to pull revenue out of this year and into 2022.

So any sense on how much was kind of pushed out for the full year for some of these delays?

I wouldn't say that. And it's rather than COVID project delays that's why I said revenue delays, for example, take some of the street light jobs and we're going to get to control, but we could do some other work. So other words, you delay some of the revenue associated with a particular project. And that's why in my remarks I said delayed that revenue will be recognized, but a little bit later time.

And our next question comes from Tim Mulrooney from William and Blair (sic) [William Blair].

This is Sam filling in for Tim. Thanks for taking our questions here guys. Congrats on the quarter, first of all.

Thanks, Tim.

Thank you.

You've discussed in the past the ongoing shift towards more comprehensive and complex projects. I was curious if you had any stats to help us understand the magnitude of that shift. Like maybe the average size of the project 5 or 10 years ago versus the average size of the project today or even a range? Just anything to really kind of help frame the issue for us.

Yes. Yes, it's a good question. I mean we go back into one of my favorite projects that I use that its size changed dramatically, Parris Island. When we won that contract through the RFP process, it was about $48 million contract. And some of the measures, it was changed out, some boilers, some killer works, some lights and steam upgrades and the hot water here and so on. Otherwise, a typical HVAC boiler retrofit.

And then the client of the project, he says you know, we have many storms down here. We need resiliency. Also we have a requirement by the federal government to have 30% renewables by, I forgot the year right now. So we went back to the drawing boards, and we designed a project that we had the combined heat and power plant of 8 megawatts, an emergency generator, a battery storage, a solar plant. And of course, in order to match the load with the generation that you have on your system instantaneously when you get off the grid, you need a microgrid, you need a computer in order to control and see what's going on. And that became a $98 million project.

It's been up and running very successfully. Plus with naval shipyards that's where they maintain the nuclear submarines, similar situation. And during the ice storm as we had the last couple of winters, it's the only place that we had power. And the same with Parris Island. They got one of the storms, the hurricanes that came by, they maintained power. So -- and also expanding more and more.

I think I said it before, back when I was at New England Electric and we're doing the planning for generation and transmission, we used to design the system for a loss of load probability of 1 in 100, 1% otherwise. And we had come up that to achieve that we needed about 10% of the outstanding load to spin-in reserve. And now there's been a reserve will be batteries.

So as you take out, we go -- as we go down the road, let's say, you have 30%, 40% between solar and wind, a single event, which weather can take out both. So you need some backup, you need microgrids and the data centers out there, the banks they're beginning to realize, hospitals and of course the federal government was the first to realize that we have to get some backup. And so the projects just expanded. So the smart sensors are included and all the advanced technology.

Awesome. Appreciate the color in there. Maybe pivoting back to the battery technology a little bit, but more so on the distributed energy front. When we look at LED lighting technology and just how it matured, it helped lower the cost of the technology by 90% and that ushered in a wave of retrofits and mass adoption. When we look at the state of distributed energy now and just the battery storage, where do you think we're at on the technology maturity curve here? And then how much your costs need to come down from where they're currently at to kind of see maybe a similar mass adoption of it?

In quite a few cases that make economic sense even right now because they take into consideration interruption of service. If you're a hospital, for example, you cannot afford to lose power. If you're a university or a data center where they're doing -- it's -- you don't want to lose -- everybody worries about cybersecurity. Losing power is sometimes it can be much, much worse than that. So -- and of course, I think they have come down some. And that's why the market has expanded.

For example, the sensors, the smart sensors or the LED and of course, the solar, the panels and everything else, wind has come down tremendously. The batteries, we are making progress, but not as much as ultimately, I think we will be able to see and the microgrids that we are getting to a point that they make good economic sense.

Appreciate the answers here. Good luck next quarter.

And that's why the market expanded. It went from $10 billion to $20 billion market to $90-plus billion market. If you look at some of these tariffs by Navigant and those guys out there.

And our next question comes from Jed Dorsheimer from Canaccord Genuity.

I guess first question, just maybe an extension on the storage side. It looks like that was for -- it wasn't for a long-duration storage just doing the calculation of 4-hour backup. So I'm curious -- maybe could you provide a bit more detail on how that came about? And because your comments around microgrid would -- well maybe suggest that a combination of both long duration and short duration storage. And so I'm just trying to figure out sort of where we're at if this is the tip of much larger iceberg? Or how to think about this?

Yes. I mean look at it this way. The 4-hour battery storage for this particular application came from looking at the load profile of the utility, and that's what basically they were requested. So what my thought in order to beat -- actually it was a morning pick that they were worried a lot about, but ultimately, with the microgrid such thing, that's why I said in my comments, we will meet firm renewable supplies.

And for example, go back to the Parris Island that we use natural gas right now, together combined heat and power, and the battery storage has been used to bridge the gap because even though you have your own generator, you cannot bring it up to maximum load instantaneously. The battery can. And then you have the battery, It bridges you. It keeps you up and running for the next 2, 3 hours until your load picks up. But now, 20 years from now, we're going to be net 0 natural gas, we have to fire the turbine. We see the hydrogen come clean fuel. And that's why I say, ultimately, we will need firm renewable resources.

Yes. I'm curious. Yes, go ahead.

Go right ahead.

No, I was good. Just to add, I mean, along those same lines, we're seeing, I think -- I'm not sure if it came from Charlie Baker or somebody else, but I read that this state, Massachusetts, is wanted from Eversource a plan that without natural gas, we're seeing nat gas in California that's viewed in a similar fashion as oil.

Now I completely disagree with the logic and most of these people don't understand physics or failed their physics classes, but I'm curious with that exposure, how you're thinking about positioning the -- George just mentioned hydrogen, I'm curious how you're thinking about the portfolio in the context of some of these political debates that are going on right now?

Well, I think we -- when you look at hydrogen and what's potentially coming there, I think that we like the optionality that we have with the portfolio of operating landfill gas and renewable natural gas plants that are in development. So that's something that -- there's a reason why we're keeping our eyes on this.

You've mentioned a couple of technologies which are coming. And I'll just kind of circle back to the fact that we're an integrator. We're a clean tech integrator. We focus on the highest and best technologies. We're looking at new technologies pretty continuously. We start to pilot these in certain projects. Sometimes it's on the EPC design-build side, sometimes it's on the energy asset side.

I can say that I've seen pilots on hydrogen as well as long-duration storage flowing through into our backlog. They're small, but they're small for a reason because we need to test them out, and we need to make sure that we're comfortable with the technologies because the customers that we have like us to stand behind our work. And so we need to be able to stand behind the technologies. But nevertheless, as these technologies advance, we're just going to position ourselves to have the technological capability to understand, install, operate, maintain. And if we like them on our own balance sheet, we'll own them. If that's better suited for our customers, then our customers will own them. I think that's the way I see that.

I agree.

And our next question comes from Stephen Gengaro from Stifel.

Two things for me. And I'll start with the significant award that you guys announced over in California. Can you talk about -- with a project of this size sort of the safeguards you put in place and the confidence you have on the execution front because that's the one thing I worry a little bit about is, it's obviously a pretty large project, and you mentioned gross margin ranges for similar projects. So what's the level of confidence? And how do you think about execution here?

We're very confident that we will execute and we will execute well and it's an extremely important project for us. And we develop contingency after contingency to make sure that nothing falls through the cracks and the whole management team is focused on that. But look, if I go back and I told that to the management team and to my Board because it breaks down to 3 different projects, and if you think about it, what does it involve battery storage, transformers, inverters and of course, they have -- you scale them up, they have many of them, but then you have to interface them. And I feel very comfortable, I have built a 650-megawatt power plant and coal-fired way back when I started this in Virginia or the Savannah River, which was the Biomass plant. We think we can execute very, very well.

Okay. Great then. Thanks for that color. The other quick one for me is when I think about -- and I know you're not going to give me an exact time frame, but when I think about the energy assets under development, I mean it's obviously a very healthy portfolio. Should we think about that sort of becoming active over a 4-year time period? Or is that a reasonable way to gauge how they kind of unfold and come into operation?

I think that's probably fair, Steve. We have talked before about a 3- to 4-year time horizon. Based on the assets that are going in and coming out, I don't think that's changing substantially. Some of those assets can move a little bit more quickly than others, but 3 to 4 years is probably fair, yes.

And our next question comes from Ben Thelen from Piper Sandler.

So in the past, you guys have talked about the theme of increasing demand for resiliency solutions, which is leading to that larger ticket size or larger project size overall. And I'm trying to figure out just how that impacts your margin profile of your projects business. So does this mean because you're taking larger projects, it hurts your margin over time because you're giving customers discount? Or am I thinking of that incorrectly? And then I have a follow-up.

Yes. I mean, I think we've probably said what we can about the margin profile associated with that big contract. The one thing that I would kind of go back to is something that I pressed upon our own business units, again and again, is about operating leverage. Gross margin percentage may see impacts from project mix. But when you look at the contribution to the bottom line, if we're taking on lower margin design-build contracts without the requirement to really boost up or increase our OpEx as a corresponding response to taking on those projects, then we're executing on improved operating leverage, which I measure as gross margin dollars versus OpEx dollars. That's kind of how I think about operating leverage.

And as long as we continue to improve that, then we're doing the right thing, even if it means going out and winning business that might have a lower gross margin percentage on that particular thing that might bring the project mix down. Again, like we talked about in our comments because we continue to invest in the energy assets and increase the O&M, those higher margin recurring revenue businesses will continue to feed into that mix and temporary -- any impact temporary or otherwise that might be on our gross margin percentage.

Got you. That's helpful. Thank you for that. And then switching gears a little bit here. Could you update us on the acquisition front or on some of these inorganic growth opportunities that you have in front of you? I think in the last earnings call, you guys mentioned possibly looking for an acquisition to expand your presence in the European markets. Is that something that's still on the table? And then could you provide any insights into when you guys might make an inorganic growth opportunity? Is that 2022? Is that later this year? Thanks.

So short answer, we can't really tell you anything sort of -- with any kind of certainty about the timing of any particular acquisition, we continue to evaluate things as they come along.

Okay. That's helpful. And then could you maybe comment on what you're seeing in terms of like multiples you would have to pay for businesses? Is that what's keeping you on the sidelines right now? Is that -- things are priced too aggressively and you want those prices to come down? Or what's keeping you guys for making a deal?

I wouldn't put it into any one thing. Ameresco has a strong track record of acquiring businesses over the last 20 years and integrating them appropriately. And so it's not just about the multiple, it's about is it the right business? Is it additive? Do we view it as financially accretive? Does it make strategic sense? The multiple is one of those factors, but I don't think that's determinative.

I wouldn't assume that we stay in our way. We are actively looking. We never changed our...

Not on the sight.

It does have to fit our metrics, what we're looking for.

And our next question comes from Ben Kallo from Baird.

George, you've been hiring people for a long time. And I just wanted to understand the market right now for hire. And let's go from there.

Yes. No, it's -- we've been hiring. And once in a while, we lose your people. That's why we have made some, I would say, strategic investments and to make sure we keep good employees. And -- but one of the good things about MRS, we always have been able to hire the talent that we need. And for example, all the units maybe they are looking for people, but they are not short of people.

And I mean, I don't know if we can disclose how many people we hire, but we've been very, very active in the last 2 months and -- no, 2 months of the last quarter and of this first month of this quarter because we're building up in especially the RNG facility -- unit and now the battery storage, the microgrid, all these advanced markets.

If you recall, back in 2018, '19, we made huge investments in order to get to these advanced technologies. And now because we're coming out of COVID-19, again, we're making some good investments and I think it's going to help us very, very well going down the road. So it hasn't been an issue.

Thank you. And there's a lot of talk in the marketplace about software layering on to all types of technologies for smart meters or whatever. How are you thinking about that and what you're doing -- and the M&A question was already asked, but how do you think about where software fits and what you could do? Thank you.

Go ahead.

Sure, Ben. So software is critically important. So as you know, we have a couple of Software-as-a-Service businesses. And our -- what we've been doing has been to continue to integrate the offerings and the capabilities of those businesses into our regular way origination of energy efficiency and renewable energy business. And I think it is critically important.

One of our business units that uses a software called Asset Planner is currently monitoring data collection on energy infrastructure from, I think, approximately 3 billion -- a little bit more than 3 billion square feet of building space. That gives us a tremendous database to provide benchmarking to our customers when we're talking to them about the state of affairs or the state of play from their perspective, where they stand from a building infrastructure, facility condition, carbon reduction opportunities you name it. And I think that the software plays an important part there. And we're continuing to develop that internally. I don't see that as an M&A discussion.

And our next question comes from Chip Moore from EF Hutton.

Wanted to follow up on the utility scale energy storage opportunity as well. I think you alluded to a number of active discussions underway. Is there a way you can talk about sort of how advanced you are in some of those discussions or maybe how the overall pipeline looks, particularly some of those regions that may have a bit more sense of urgency?

No. I mean, I think from a regional perspective, we probably don't even need to say because it's pretty clear which utility regions are facing the needs for resiliency. And then furthermore because much of what we're talking about here is at the proposal stage, it's difficult to frame volumes, quantities, time lines, et cetera, for those particular opportunities. I think it was just important for us to note that the proposal activity and the level of discussions is certainly on the rise in that sector.

And that's about every one of them. We are in some kind of competitive process. So it's very hard to talk about specific regarding that.

Yes, understood. And this is probably more for the January guide, right, in getting your -- George, love to get your thoughts on proposed funding and the reconciliation bill and how you could be positioned there? Thanks guys.

Well, that -- of course, the proof is in the pudding depending on what ends up passing, right? However, our current read of this bill is that what remains is still extraordinarily constructive to the industry overall and hits directly with a number of the businesses where we operate, right, whether it'd be the biofuels or the solar or the battery storage or what have you.

Energy efficiency.

Energy efficiency, the initial draft when it was still in the $4 billion range, was pretty robust, right? And so even when you see things fall by the wayside, there's still a lot in there that is quite meaningful for our business.

And our next question comes from Pavel Molchanov from Raymond James.

Let me go back to actually the very last one about build back better. Given that one of the, I suppose, high profile provisions of build back better is opening the investment tax credit to stand-alone power storage for the very first time. This $800-plus million project that you are working on, will that qualify for the tax credit? If it is already getting built and will presumably continue to be built after the bill passes?

It depends. I mean. But when it impacts us, it will impact the utility Southern Cal because they will own the project.

Yes, the technical answer to your question is we don't know until the legislation is passed and we see the effective dates in the nature of how they view placed in service versus starting construction, et cetera, when it comes to those ITC eligibility points on storage. But as George pointed out, this isn't an energy asset on Ameresco's balance sheet. So that calculus is more relevant to our customer.

Right. Okay. Understood. One more policy question. I suppose back in July is when the EPA was supposed to release its RVO targets for 2021. And of course, now we're in November, and it still hasn't happened. What is your understanding on when those numbers will come out for the current year? Or indeed, if they will come out at all?

The latest estimate and the information we get from the people that we have in Western is sometimes in December. But they said that before like you said. But -- so we don't know, it depends. But on the other hand, we know what the supply is. I think the demand for the RINs will continue to be great because the market is undersupplied.

Okay. Last question, recognizing you're not speaking about M&A or inorganic opportunities. But 3 months ago, I think you touched a little bit more about what you're doing across the Atlantic on an organic basis in terms of new project opportunities. Can you touch on what you're seeing in Europe now that the Fit for 55 framework has come out and is starting to get implemented?

I mean we've seen very, very good activity, especially in our U.K. office and usually in the U.K. office, we're looking at some opportunities in, I would say, the eastern part of -- southeast part of Europe. But we are not at a point that we can't talk about it yet. We took in some additional leadership like to hire over there and expand. The opportunities are mainly there. But I want to focus a lot and point out that the United States continues to have tremendous opportunities and what makes me excited about it, the market is expanding. And of course, if we get the legislation, it will be even better for us.

Yes, indeed. Thank you.

Thank you.

And our next question comes from Greg Wasikowski from Webber Research.

I know you guys have talked about it at length already, but a couple of more questions on the SEC -- SCE deal. First, just when thinking about the pipeline for similar types of projects of similar size, just curious how is that going to work operationally maybe from a personnel perspective or Doran, to your point, from an operating leverage perspective, are you able to stack similar types of projects on top of each other? Or is it more of a one at a time approach as of now?

I think we're able to stack. I mean, interestingly, what we also have the ability to do and what was evident from kind of implementing this one was that we actually have quite a few people we can tap to pull in on a consulting basis as well. We're not afraid to do that. That cost actually doesn't hit our OpEx because they're 100% utilized. There's no real kind of overhead to think about with respect to those people. And actually going through the process that we've gone through in staffing this particular one makes me even more confident in our capability to take on more because we're recognizing that there are people there who really want to work with us.

Awesome. That's great to hear. And then next, I just wanted to get a sense of the price variability, if at all, on that $892 million of revenue. Is this something that would get firmed up and settled soon? Or is it the ideas to remain variable in terms of scope throughout the life of the project?

I think that the $892 million is based on the sum of the kind of face price on each of the 3 contracts -- each of the 3 projects. Each of those have standard traditional change order provisions that you would see in a design-build contract. So that's probably as good of an answer as I can give for that.

And I'm showing that is our last question. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating, and you may now disconnect.

Thank you.

Thank you, all.