Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Ameresco, Inc. Third Quarter 2021 earnings call. At this time, all participants are on a listen-only mode. Later, we conduct a question and answer session, and instructions will follow at that time. 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 P. 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 1/4 for Ameresco. A robust new business development activity yielded significant growth in both our project backlog and our energy assets in development. Our results continued to benefit from our diversified business models 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 and COVID-related delays.
Our energy asset business had an exceptionally strong 1/4, with revenues up 29% and 35 MW 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 can experience from 1/4 to 1/4 in our projects business.
Of note, we were very pleased to add an additional four RNG sites and an innovative battery system to our assets in development during the 1/4. 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 project 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 customer base, which we see as a positive signal for Ameresco's growing business. Several factors have started to come together that are influencing customer decisions. For many customers, the attraction to budget neutral cost savings remains a key selling point. 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 these elements puts us in a very strong competitive position and has significantly expanded our addressable market. The transformational 537.5 MW 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 MWh. The incredibly fast-paced timetable for this project has been driven by the devastating impacts and higher frequency of extreme weather events, which continue to create energy supply emergencies in California.
California, though, is not the only state or region to be facing extreme weather events. Over the last 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. Well, 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 asset and O&M businesses offset softer projects revenue, driving another 1/4 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 2-1/3s 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 and 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 1/4, 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 asset 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 1/4, we placed 4 MW of assets into operation.
We also added an impressive 35 MW 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 MMBtu, the equivalent of approximately 129 MW. Our 319 MW 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. 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 1/4 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 exciting. 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 thirteenth.
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.
Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, you'll need to press star one on your telephone. To withdraw your question, press the pound key. We also please ask that you limit yourself to one question and one Follow-Up. Again, that's one question, one Follow-Up. Our first question comes from Noah Kaye from Oppenheimer. Your line is now open.
Good afternoon, and thanks so much for taking the questions. Hey, everyone.
Hi, Noah.
Hi there.
Hey. 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 number 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 contract, but maybe you could kind of help put a little bit of a finer point on it for us. And I guess as long as we're at it, 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? You know, on the $80 million, I don't think we're gonna talk about specifics there. I mean, there are a number of puts and takes, you know, going into those increased estimates. You know, certainly on the revenue side, we took into account the, you know, an estimate of additional revenue coming from the battery contract.
But, you know, as we talked about in the prepared remarks and as we saw in Q3, you know, we still are anticipating the impact of, you know, various supply chain and COVID-related impacts to the revenue. You know, 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.
You know, we anticipate, you know, greater than 85% coming from our contracted backlog, on the project revenue line, and certainly a high percentage overall coming from contracted revenue sources. You know, if we work our way down the P&L, you know, I think the expected contribution from that contract, and the adjustments being made to revenue, when you combine those with, some of the investments, that we're gonna make, you know, I think it's a combination, certainly on the human capital side as we focus on, you know, retaining our people, as well as, the investments we're gonna make in new resources to support the growth.
You know, we're also expecting to see some increases on the project development side as we continue to focus on, you know, the robust pipeline of projects. You know, we're gonna see those investments continue to impact OpEx, and I think that's what's flowing down to the adjusted earnings guidance.
Hey, Mark. Thank you for that call.
Yeah.
Yeah, go ahead, please.
What I might add to that, as you might recall, during COVID-19, we did cut back a little bit on the expense side and focus a lot in executing the contracts that we had in place. I think that's why we came out through COVID-19 very good, and we're still in it, by the way. The last couple of months and this 1/4, we are increasing OpEx, otherwise hiring more people, adding additional resources.
That's what Mark is trying to point out. We're doing it because 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.
You know, 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. We have to make the investment in order to maintain and probably accelerate the growth down the road.
Right. As you pointed, I think in your prepared remarks, that increase in awarded backlog didn't reflect this contract. You had significant growth in your other projects business, and
Yeah.
We'll see that move through.
Yes. That's what got us excited about the performance of the third quarter. The fact, you know, we've been waiting. The proposal activity is more than just double for what we had the previous years. Finally, we're beginning to see the results, you know, the awards. Then as our timing works through the backlog, get the awards, and then 6 months to 1 year later, you get the actual contracts.
Yeah.
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.
Right.
That's why you 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, you know, how you effectively won the contract, where you were able to differentiate whether, you know, in or around the service capabilities, the technology you were proposing, and then what you think that means in terms of other opportunities of a utility scale type nature.
Sure.
You're hinting at it, you know, in these prepared remarks, but it sounds like.
Sure.
There's quite a robust opportunity out there.
Yeah. Sure. I mean, the Southern Cal, they went out with an RFP, and we were monitoring the situation, what they were doing with the PUC and so on. We were one of the first companies to respond to the RFP, and there were a few others as well. In addition to that, we are doing another project for Southern Cal, smaller sized project.
We got to know them very good. They recognize that we have tremendous capabilities in that area. Actually, I visited them, I would say, 3 months ago or so. 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, the inverters, and so on and so forth.
We have lined up suppliers for all the key equipment for the project, transformers and so on, and as well, somebody to wrap it and build it for us. The other thing I want to point out to everybody, to our investors as well as the analysts, is the fact that it. When you take the contract as a single contract, it is a very large-sized contract for us. If you break it down, there are 3 contracts, 3 different sites. If you think we did the Savannah River back in 2010, we were one 1/3 the size of the company, and we did a $200 million contract, and it was the wood biomass, much more complicated than these particular ones.
What makes them challenging is the schedule and some of the supply issues that we have to develop contingency plans to make sure that we get everything there on time. On the other one, the opportunities, that's why I focus my remark a lot. It's getting to be more and more of an issue. Microgrids and battery storage and so on, it's gonna 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. You get a cold front or a hurricane or whatever, all those things out, you got to make up that difference somehow. That's the need for backup power, energy storage, whatever the technology is down the road.
Right. Right. Thank you very much for the color. I'll jump back in queue.
Thanks. Thanks a lot.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Julien Dumoulin-Smith from Bank of America. Your line is now open.
Hey, guys, this is Anya stepping in for Julien.
Hi, Anya.
Hey, how are you? My first question here is, I was wondering if you could 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? Do you see any risks, or I guess any impact at all to your annual cadence of 3-4 RNG projects? Or do you think you could kind of, like, make up for it, 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, who's 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 turn it up, but no major hiccup. It impacted a little bit the economics, but not that much.
For example, some of the materials for the LED controls, we get them from a factory in Vietnam. It was shut down for 3 weeks and so on. That impacted pretty much all of our LED projects. The good thing is that's why it didn't impact us as much on the profitability of the company. 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 a little bit with this vaccinated, not vaccinated, especially in the Northwest region, some of our subcontractors, because they had maybe one or 2 employees unvaccinated, they wouldn't have access to some of the facilities.
The schools were not open, or even in the past, we used to do work at night in some of the schools. Now because they were open and they were concerned in case somebody went in there that was unvaccinated, so they wouldn't allow us to do night work. PVC, some roof tiles. Anyway, Mark.
Yeah. No, I think you hit on a lot of the examples. You know, the only thing I might add is that it certainly wasn't unique to any particular business unit or region. We saw it across really all of our project related businesses. You know, 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, you know, officials to get into the same room. You know, again, just impacted the timing that you know on a contract that we probably would have expected to see in Q3. You know, we certainly ran the gamut of different challenges across supply chain and COVID.
Okay, awesome. Thanks. That was a great answer. Thanks for the clarity there. Second, as a Follow-Up, I just wanted to ask about just the guidance range. Is that pretty much predominantly driven by this contract, or 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 1/4 you said you were still relatively conservative on that. Have you sort of incorporated some of that positive pricing into your guidance for 2021 or?
Yeah, we have for sure. I mean, again, it's definitely one of the puts and takes. You know, I think, again, without talking specifics about all the moving pieces and the guidance, you know, our estimates are just slightly below where the market is. So, you know, I think that certainly has to be a factor, but that's probably what I'll say on that particular input.
Okay, great. Thanks. I'll jump back in the queue.
Anne, thank you. Our next question comes from Eric Stine from Craig-Hallum. Your line is now open.
Hi, everyone.
Hi, Eric.
Eric.
Hi there.
Hey.
Hey. Just going back to the SCE award in arguably California's 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. You know, just curious if you could expand on, you know, maybe size of those compared to the one that you just won, and timing of when you know we could start to think about that. Obviously, these are large and maybe they move 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. I think you will find out that the market is moving more and more, battery storage, microgrids, and so on. So.
Got it. Okay.
I'm trying to get away with that echo there.
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 stick with 2 questions and just on RNG. You mentioned the four 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 all landfill sites, all four of them. I will say this much in the queue. We are working on some sites and some other potential deals. I will still put them in the proposal category right now. 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. Right now, they're in medium stages, I would call them. Because the price is so much lower, the value proposition is much better for them and so on. We are looking very aggressively.
Okay. Appreciate it.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Craig Shere from B. Riley.
Hey, Angelo. Thanks. Yeah, thanks for taking my question here, guys, and congrats on this CE deal. Maybe to start for me, we've talked 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, where you're seeing strength here? And then it looks like you had a pure kind of battery added during the 1/4 here. I wanted to get a sense of, you know, within the pipeline and kind of current assets, you know, how many are kind of pure, you know, battery versus, you know, hybrid or, you know, solar only.
If you could kind of give, like, a breakdown of where things stand and, you know, the momentum between those. The timeframe for the renewable gas plants, you know, that were added before the would be great as well.
Sure. I'll try to hit all of those questions in one fell swoop. 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 MW of that represents the battery capacity. Some of that is standalone, 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. 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. We've talked in the past about, you know, the 2021, you know, the single asset that's placed in service already. 2022, 3 assets, and 2023, 4 assets. You know, the 4 that have been added, you know, I think clearly we talk about 17 assets in development, and the 2021 through 2023 don't add up to 17. You can kind of see the timeframe is gonna stretch beyond that 2023 mark, to get the rest of these in operation.
Okay. No, that's very helpful. Then, you know, project delays obviously challenged the whole space, and you talked about, you know, pushing about $30 million from some of these supply chain challenges. Sounded like that was, you know, stuff that you thought was gonna be in the third quarter, but, you know, got pushed to fourth 1/4 and beyond.
I'm just curious, you know, how many projects are being pushed into 2022 versus, you know, the prior guide, you know. Then kinda curious around the timing where you guys are seeing, you know, there might be kind of a light at the end of the tunnel here, or is it, you know, too tough to call at this point?
Yeah. Chris, it's hard to say the number of actual projects being pushed, right? I mean, we're, you know, we're kind of looking at it from a, you know, total revenue standpoint.
Yeah.
You know, certainly, you know, we would see some of the revenue that got pushed out of Q3, you know, spill into Q4. You know, in terms of, you know, pushing out into next year, I mean, again, we continue to anticipate that we're gonna see these challenges through Q4 and into next year. We'll continue to pull revenue out of this year and into 2022.
Any sense of how much was kind of pushed out, you know, for the full year for some of these delays?
I wouldn't say that.
No.
It's rather than call them project delays, that's why I said revenue delays. For example, take some of the streetlight jobs, and we couldn't get the controls, but we could do some other work. Otherwise, you delay some of the revenue associated with a particular project. That's why on my remark, I said delay. That revenue will be recognized, but a little bit later time.
No, understood. Okay. Thanks, guys.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Tim Mulrooney from William Blair. Your line is now open.
Hey, this is Sam filling in for Tim.
Hi.
Thanks for taking our questions here, guys. Congrats on the 1/4, first of all.
Thanks, Sam.
Thank you.
You know, 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 a project 5 or 10 years ago versus the average size of a project today, or even a range. Just, anything to really kind of help frame the issue for us.
Yeah. It's a good question. I mean, we go back into one of my favorite projects that I use. Its size changed dramatically, Parris Island. When we won that contract through the RFP process, it was about a $48 million contract. Some of the measures, it was changing out some boilers, some chiller work, some lights, and steam upgrades and hot water heaters, and so on.
Otherwise, a typical HVAC boiler retrofit. Then the client approaches us. 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 forget the year right now.
We went back to the drawing boards, and we designed a project that we had the combined heat and power plant of 8 MW, 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. That became a $98 million project. It's been up and running very successfully. Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, that's where they maintain the nuclear submarines. Similar situation. During the ice storms that we had the last couple of winters, it's the only place that had power. And the same with Parris Island.
They had one of the storms, the hurricanes that came by, they maintained power. That's 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 one in 100, 1% otherwise. We had come up with that to achieve that, we needed about 10% of the outstanding load to spinning reserve. Now the spinning reserve will be the batteries. If you take out, we go down the road, let's say you have a 30%-40% between solar and wind, a single event with weather can take out both.
You need some backup, you need microgrids and the data centers out there, the banks, they're beginning to realize, hospitals. Of course, the federal government was the first to realize that, we have to have some backup. The projects has expanded. The smart sensors are included and, all the advanced technology. Yep.
Awesome. Appreciate the color there. Maybe pivoting back to the battery technology a little bit, but more so on the distributed energy front. You know, 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, you know, 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 do 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, they make economic sense even right now, because when 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, you don't wanna lose. Everybody worries about cybersecurity, losing power is sometimes it can be much worse than that.
And the cost, 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, have come down tremendously. The batteries, we are making progress, but not as much as ultimately I think we will be able to see.
The microgrids are getting to a point that they make good economic sense.
Gotcha. Appreciate the answers here. Good luck in the next 1/4.
That's why the market expanded. You know, it went from $10-$20 billion dollar market to $90+ billion dollar market, if you look at some of these studies by Navigant and those guys out there.
Perfect. Appreciate it.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Jed Dorsheimer from Canaccord Genuity. Your line is now open.
Hi. Thanks. I guess first question, just maybe an extension on the storage side. Looks like that was, you know, for. It wasn't for long duration storage, just doing the calculation of 4-hour backup. So I'm curious, you know, maybe could you provide a bit more detail on how that came about and 'cause your comments around microgrid would maybe suggest that, you know, a combination of both long duration and short duration storage. I'm just trying to figure out sort of where we're at, if this is the tip of a much larger iceberg or how to think about this.
Yeah, I mean, look at it this way. The four-hour battery storage for this particular application came from looking at the load profile of the utility. That's what basically they went out and requested. So what they thought in order to bid, and actually, believe it or not, it was a morning peak that they were worried a lot about. But ultimately, with a microgrid such thing, and that's why I said in my comment, we will need firm renewable supplies.
For example, let's go back to the Parris Island that we use natural gas right now. It has a combined heat and power, and the battery storage has been used to bridge the gap. Because even though you have your own generation, you cannot bring it up to maximum load instantaneously. You know, the battery can.
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. Now, 20 years from now, we wanna be at net zero. That natural gas, we have to fire the turbine with either hydrogen, some clean fuel. That's why I say, ultimately, we will need firm renewable resources.
Yeah. I'm curious. Yep, go ahead.
Go right ahead.
No, I was just gonna ask, I mean, along those same lines, you know, we're seeing, I think, I'm not sure if it came from Charlie Baker or somebody else, but I read that, you know, this state, Massachusetts, wants from Eversource a plan that without natural gas, we're seeing, you know, 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. I'm curious, with that exposure, how you're thinking about positioning the, you know, George just mentioned hydrogen.
I'm curious how you're thinking about the portfolio in the context of some of these, you know, political debates that are going on right now.
Well, I think, 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. 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.
Yeah.
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. You know, 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, you know, the customers that we have like us to stand behind our work. We need to be able to stand behind the technologies.
Nevertheless, you know, as these technologies advance, we're just gonna 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.
No, I agree.
That's helpful. Thanks, guys. I'll jump back in the queue.
Sure.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Stephen Gengaro from Stifel. Your line is now open.
Thanks. Good afternoon, everybody.
Hi, Stephen.
Stephen.
Two things from me, and I'll start with the significant award that you guys announced over in California. Can you talk about, you know, with a project of this size, sort of the safeguards you've put in place and the confidence you have on the execution front? 'Cause that's the one thing I worry a little bit about is, you know, it's obviously a pretty large project and, you know, you mentioned gross margin ranges for similar projects. What's the level of confidence and how do you think about execution here?
We're very confident that we will execute well. It's an extremely important project for us. We develop contingency after contingency to make sure that nothing falls through the cracks, and the whole management team is focused on that.
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, you scale them up, there are many of them, but then you have to interface them. I feel very comfortable.
You know, I have built a 650 MW power plant and coal-fired way back when I started as an engineer at the Savannah River, which was the biomass plant. We think we can execute very, very well.
Okay, great. Yeah. Thanks for that color. The other quick one for me is, I know you're not gonna give me an exact timeframe, 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 four-year time period? Or is that a reasonable way to gauge how they kinda unfold and come into operation?
I think that's probably fair, Stephen. We have talked before about a 3-4-year time horizon based on the assets that are going in and coming out. I don't think that's changing substantially. You know, some of those assets can move a little bit more quickly than others, but 3-4 years is probably fair. Yeah.
Okay, great. No, thank you. This is helpful.
Thanks, Stephen.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Benjamin Thelen from Piper Sandler. Your line is now open.
Yeah. Hey, thank you for taking my question today. 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. I'm trying to figure out, you know, just how that impacts your margin profile of your projects business. 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? Then I have a Follow-Up. Thanks.
Yeah, 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 press upon our own business units again and again, is about operating leverage. You know, 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.
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, you know, 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 temper any impact, temporary or otherwise, that might be on our gross margin percentage.
Gotcha. That, that's helpful. Thank you for that. 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, you know, looking for an acquisition to expand your presence in the European markets. Is that something that's still on the table? Then, you know, could you provide any insights into when you guys might make an inorganic, you know, growth opportunity? Is that 2022? Is that later this year? Thanks.
Short answer, we can't really tell you anything, you know, 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. Then could you maybe comment on, you know, 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, you know, things are priced too aggressively and you want those prices to come down? Or what's keeping you guys from making a deal?
I wouldn't put it into any one thing. You know, Ameresco has a strong track record of acquiring businesses over the last 20 years and integrating them appropriately. 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 that's determinative.
All right. Thank you.
The other thing, I wouldn't assume that we're staying away. You know, we are actively looking. We haven't changed our tune.
Not on the sidelines, no.
It does have to fit our metrics, what we're looking for.
Thank you. Congrats on the 1/4.
Thanks.
Thank you.
Thanks. Thank you. Our next question comes from Ben Kallo from Baird. Your line is now open.
Hey, guys. Hey, George, you've been hiring people for a long time. I just wanna understand the market right now for hiring, and
No, it's-
Let's go from there.
Yeah. No, it's we've been hiring and once in a while we lose a few people. That's why we have made some I would say strategic investments and to make sure we keep our good employees and. One of the good things about Ameresco, we always have been able to hire the talent that we need. For example, all the units, maybe they are looking for people, but they are not short of people. I mean, I don't know if we can disclose how many people we hired, but we've been very, very active in the last 2 months and no.
Two months of the last 1/4 and this first month of this 1/4 because we're building up and especially the RNG facility unit and now the battery storage, the microgrids, all these advanced markets. If you recall back in 2018, 2019, we made huge investment in order to get these advanced technologies. Now because we're coming out of COVID-19, again, we're making some good investments and I think it's gonna help us very, very well going down the road. It hasn't been an issue.
Thank you. You know, there's a lot of talk in the marketplace about you know, software and layering on to all types of technologies from you know, smart meters to whatever. How are you thinking about that in what you're doing? You know, the M&A question was already asked, but you know, how do you think about where software fits and what you can do? Thank you.
Go ahead.
Sure, Ben. Software, critically important. You know, 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. I think it is critically important. You know, 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 sq ft of building space.
You know, that gives us a tremendous database to provide benchmarking to our customers when we're talking to them about, you know, 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. I think that the software plays an important part there. We're continuing to develop that internally. I don't see that as a, you know, an M&A discussion.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Chip Moore from EF Hutton. Your line is now open.
Hi. Thanks for taking the question, folks. Wanted to follow up on the utility scale energy storage opportunity as well. I think you alluded to, you know, 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, you know, pretty clear which utility regions are facing the needs for resiliency. Furthermore, because much of what we're talking about here is at the proposal stage, it's difficult to frame volumes, quantities, timelines, 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.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Just about every one of them, we are in some kind of competitive process, so it's very hard to talk about, you know, specifics.
Yes.
regarding that.
Yeah. Understood. This is probably more for the January date, right, in New York, but George, I'd just 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.
Yep.
hits directly with a number of the businesses where we operate, right? Whether it be the biofuels or the solar or the battery storage or, what have you. You know, I mean.
Energy efficiency.
Yeah, energy efficiency. You know, the initial draft when it was still in the $4 billion range was pretty robust, right? Even when you see things fall by the wayside, there's still a lot in there that is quite meaningful for our business.
Thanks, guys.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Pavel Molchanov from Raymond James. Your line is now open.
Thanks for taking the question. 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 standalone power storage for the very first time, this $800+ 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. It wouldn't impact us. It will impact the utility, Southern Cal, because they will own the project.
Yeah. The technical answer to your question is we don't know until the legislation is passed and we see the effective dates and the nature of how they view place in service versus starting construction, et cetera, when it comes to those ITC eligibility points on storage. As George pointed out, this isn't an energy asset on Ameresco's balance sheet.
Okay.
That calculus is more relevant to our customer.
Right. Okay. Understood. One more policy question. Yeah, I suppose back in July is when the EPA was supposed to release its RVO targets for 2021, and of course, now we're 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?
No, the latest estimate and the information we get from the people that we have in Washington is sometimes in December. But they said that before, you know?
Yeah.
We don't know. It depends. 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, you know, recognizing you're not speaking about M&A or, you know, inorganic opportunities, but, you know, 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. Usually the U.K. office, we're looking at some opportunities in, I would say, the southeastern part of Europe. We are not at the point that we can talk about it yet. We took in some additional leadership, like to hire over there and expand. The opportunities are many there. I wanna focus a lot and point out that the United States continues to have tremendous opportunities. What makes me excited about it, the market is expanding.
Okay. Thanks very much.
Of course, if we get the leg-
Yep.
The legislation.
Right.
It'll be even better for us, you know?
Yeah. Indeed. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Gregory Wasikowski from Webber Research. Your line is now open.
Hey, good afternoon, everybody. Thanks for squeezing me in.
Sure, Greg.
Sure.
I know you guys have talked about it at length already, but a couple more questions on the SCE deal. First, just when thinking about the pipeline for similar types of projects of similar size, just curious, how is that gonna work operationally? Maybe from a personnel perspective or going 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.
Yeah.
We're not afraid to do that. You know, that cost actually doesn't hit our OpEx because they're 100% utilized. You know, there's no real kind of overhead to think about with respect to those people. 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 wanna work with us.
Awesome. That's great to hear. 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 the idea to, you know, remain variable in terms of scope throughout the life of the project?
I think that the $892 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. You know, that it's probably as good of an answer as I can give for that.
Got it. Understood. Yeah. All right. That's all I got. Thanks, guys.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. I'm showing that as our last question. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating, and you may now disconnect.