Next up, we've got Zeo Energy. Tim, are you with us?
I am Craig. How are you today?
Nice to see you, Tim. Tim Bridgewater is the CEO of Zeo Energy, ticker Zeo on the Nasdaq. We're gonna begin with Tim's brief presentation in a moment, and then of course, we wanna hear from you. We're gonna talk about your questions. Again, I'm gonna keep everyone's lines muted throughout this presentation. If you have a question, just go to the bottom of your Zoom window, click the Q&A button. A text box will appear, and you can then type in and submit your question. Before we begin, please allow me to get the safe harbor statement out of the way for you. This segment may contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995.
All statements pertaining to future financial and/or operating results, along with other statements about the future expectations, beliefs, goals, plans, or prospects expressed by management, constitute forward-looking statements. Any statements that are not historical fact should also be considered forward-looking statements. Of course, forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties. Tim, go right ahead.
Okay, great. Thanks, so much for having me on today. Let me just share my screen. Can you see that okay?
Yes.
Okay. Zeo Energy, we're listed on the Nasdaq. We went public via a De-SPAC process, a merger with a SPAC in March of 2024. We're just a young, publicly traded company. We're in the residential solar space, and. See if it's going down here. There we go. What you just read, Craig, there's the short version of it if you wanted to read it on the safe harbor and forward-looking statements. Basically, our company is in two sectors. Our core business is residential solar. We sell, install, and maintain residential solar systems in various states. We've been better than our peers in the market. It's been a couple of rough years for the solar, residential solar industry.
Quite a few large companies, some public companies have gone bankrupt, Sunnova, SunPower, and others. High interest rates and other things have led to that. We've been able to beat our peers in many regards. It's been kind of a flat couple of years, 2024 and 2025. The industry looks, from our perspective at least, to be recovering now. We look forward to a very good and profitable year in 2026 from the residential side. Long-duration energy storage, we made an acquisition last year of a company called Heliogen, that was involved in long-duration storage, so effectively batteries for projects behind the meters. We have been developing some projects around that, which I can speak to a little more.
Just announced a project in central Utah with Creekstone Energy to develop 280 MW. We're working on the storage and the solar side of that particular project. From our core business, we are vertically integrated in that we sell, we install, we have installation teams, W-2 employees that are out installing projects. We have a sales force of about 350 sales reps that go out and knock during the summertime. It's a strong sales machine. We install in, you know, 30-45 days after the sale, after getting permitting and whatever else is needed for the residential solar space. We did not have a lot of debt when we went public, and we still don't have much debt on the balance sheet.
We've been able to fund our business through cash flow over the history of our company. We really started this business in 2018, and we've been careful to go into various states now where our sales reps can sell, and we can install residential solar business. To give you a little idea of how our business works, we have our sales process includes setters who go out and knock doors 50-125 doors a day depending on where they're at. Those setters set up a meeting for a presentation. The closers will then go in and make a proposal presentation. They close about half of those presentations. They are managed in each different area and office by a manager who both recruits and then manages during the summertime.
We have specific KPIs that help to drive the sales side and then move our installation cycle through a methodical process where we install on the homes, and then we work with the utility to get interconnected to the grid. The value proposition for our customers are that we're competing with their existing energy pricing, their power bill, and we can effectively sell them and finance over a long period of time, 20-25 years, their purchase and actually save them on a monthly basis what they're already paying to the power company. It's also helpful that they can sell power back to the grid, so they monetize excess power generation. In many states where we're in, it's a one-to-one net metering process, so they can put power onto the grid and then pull it back off at night.
It's a good value proposition for them. People are looking for resilience to be off the dependency on the grid. Another value proposition we provide is that we sell, we install, we service, and we help put the financing together if the customer needs financing as well. We're kind of a seamless one-stop shop for our customers. We started in Florida in 2018, 2019 timeframe, grew our business rapidly. The market was growing quite rapidly during those years, 18, 19, 2021. Then high interest rates slowed the industry down quite a bit in 2023, you know, 2024, and 2025. We've been able to stay nimble versus our competitors and be, I think, in a position to expand carefully to other states over that timeframe.
We're in Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Illinois, among other states. We're just starting to expand into California as well. We look forward to this coming year where we already see some positive signs of growth, even though some of the analysts are predicting a further contraction in the residential solar space. The great thing about residential solar and solar in general is that the U.S. is relatively far behind the rest of the world. The adoption in Australia is over 15%. Germany, Netherlands, Europe, they're in the mid-teens. The U.S. is about 8% now. Just under 100 million homes that are in the U.S. and only about 8% penetration right now. There's lots of room for growth.
As interest rates continue to stabilize and hopefully fall back down, that should increase the opportunity for selling into the residential solar market. A lot of policies and states are looking to try and lower the cost of power for consumers, and solar is one of the best ways to do that. As we look forward at the growth, there's huge demand on the grid right now with all of the AI data centers demanding more power. Pricing is increasing from utilities, and so we see an opportunity for residential solar in particular to continue to fill a void and give stable, predictable pricing to consumers who want to have solar on their homes. The ability to put solar on a home frees up more capacity on the grid for other needs.
We think that in addition to our residential business, there is also a great opportunity for our solar storage business, which is basically building long-duration batteries, large-scale batteries that I'll talk about here in a minute, that can be used for grid management or for behind-the-meter systems that power data centers and other commercial and industrial users. Basically, the company that we acquired in August of 2025 was in the CSP, concentrated solar and storage, business.
We decided to acquire them in part for the cash on the balance sheet that they had and for their technology and expertise around long-duration energy storage, 10+ hours per day, where you can store power and then use it in the evening time to run whatever the power is needed by, whether it's a data center or an industrial user or other users. That company was founded in 2013, was traded on the Nasdaq originally. Had not had success in the U.S. in deploying concentrated solar projects, but they had an engineering team, cash on the balance sheet, and we acquired them.
During that time, we've been working on projects around data center development, and we recently signed our first partnership with a group called Creekstone Energy. They're building a 1-GW data center in central Utah, and we are working on solar plus energy storage with them to build a 280-MW baseload facility to support their data center. We're excited about that. It's early innings, and we expect to have more progress as we go down with that project and others that we're working on. The energy storage technologies that we are working with are twofold, primarily. One is molten salt storage, where the energy is stored in a very hot solution of molten salt that doesn't lose its energy.
You run a steam turbine off of that hot molten salt. The other is compressed CO2 storage, where you're storing the energy in liquid CO2 in tanks, and then you expand that, and you run a gas turbine to generate electricity. Those are the two technologies that our engineering team has unique expertise in and that we're working on these projects. Data center demand, as everyone knows, is just, it's off the charts. There's a need for resilient behind-the-meter solutions because the grid just cannot keep up with the demand for power. On-site power generation to fuel the data centers is really almost a requirement now for the expansion of these data centers. You get reliable power through these large-scale storage systems, power storage systems.
Our systems are, you know, no emissions, and they provide leverage the opportunity to use some grid power, some natural gas from gas turbines, if that's available, or just expand with 100% off-grid behind-the-meter power storage solutions. The batteries are generally powered with wind or solar. We're a solar company, so our focus is really on solar energy that will power these storage systems to support data center demand. Basically you'll have a solar field, photovoltaic, and you'll be able to provide that energy to the data center. They may have reciprocating engines and other sources of power as well to fuel a gigacenter.
Our focus has been on the solar plus storage solution to support these data center expansions. Again, we're early innings, just made the acquisition in August, but all things are going well from our engineering team and the projects that we're working together on. The project that we did announce recently in February is located in central Utah around Delta. The Creekstone partnership is designed to have 1 gigawatt of power in their first phase, and we're providing 280 megawatts of that through our energy storage and PV systems. The company just recently signed a lease for 13,000 acres. They have at the site natural gas turbines and reciprocating engines that will come online in the first half of 2027.
We're excited about this project and its potential for expansion using our storage systems. Our company generally, we're a small company. We went public with about $110 million in revenue before the high interest rates really took hold. We lost some momentum in 2024 and 2025, being relatively flat through those two years. We expect 2026 to be a rebound year. We're off to a good start. We're sending out our sales team into the field right now. We're typically a summer sales model for our residential solar business, and we have a good group going out starting this month, and they've begun to sell and all prospects make us feel like we're gonna have a good year in the field.
The business right now has been sustainable cash flow positive since we started, and we expect that to continue in 2026. I think if you look at the market trends for solar, residential solar, and solar plus storage, it continues to be high demand. Even though the Big Beautiful Bill curtailed some of the tax credits, there's still a strong demand for solar power, strong demand for residential solar power. The long-term economics make it a cost-effective solution for consumers. Utility price continues to increase, and that's a nice tailwind for solar adoption. There's also a growing demand for virtual power plants through having storage systems, batteries at the home and allowing greater resilience of the grid or tapping into these storage systems that are basically distributed across our customer base.
The market for energy storage continues to grow, and the investment tax credits did not or they weren't curtailed in the big beautiful bill, so you can continue to get credits for putting in battery and storage through 2032 right now. We think that the opportunity to build recurring revenue through leasing and energy storage batteries continues to be a substantial tailwind and a trend that is positively impacting our industry. Zeo has historically grown organically, just growing our sales force and adding states. We have our Heliogen acquisition that we made, expanding into the commercial sector.
We expect to continue to look at strategic M&A bolt-on acquisitions in the coming year, maybe 1-2 acquisitions a year, and then adding additional integrated services such as roofing, and other things that the consumers need. As we have a sales force out and we've made a relationship with the customer, we have upselling opportunities there as well. That's basically just a quick overview of our business. The investor deck is available on our website. Our core business is the residential sales and installation business, and we're expanding more and more into the commercial sector in the coming year, and we expect to see a lot of continued growth.
I'll just run through a little bit of the technologies in our appendix without getting into all of the deck, but compressed CO2 is one of the technologies. What happens in compressed CO2 is you have gas in a gas dome that looks like a tennis court dome that is compressed and stored into tanks as a liquid. Basically, that energy then is available when you need the compressed CO2 to discharge and then as you discharge those liquid CO2 as it comes out of the tank, goes through a vaporization process, expands, and then goes back into the dome, and it's turning a turbine as it expands, and that generates the electricity on demand for the end user. A couple of companies that have developed this technology.
One's out of Italy called Energy Dome. This is one of their sites where you can see how the energy storage system works. Google has invested in their technology. They're deploying a couple of projects, one in Italy, one in Wisconsin right now. Another company using this technology has a 10-MW project in China and a 100-MW project that's just going through commercial authorization, commercial operation. We think this is a promising technology, and we have an engineering team that can do these kinds of development projects, which is what the Creekstone project is looking at. A second technology that we work on is molten salt storage, which I mentioned earlier, and you can have 6, 10, 12-hour storage.
It's a lower cost LCOE below $0.10 that you can build these systems and put them to work. There are, you know, hundreds of systems around the world that use this molten salt storage system, and it's environmentally friendly and can be charged with PV systems or wind or off-peak grid power to provide low-cost energy to end users like data centers. You know, I won't get into the details too much on this, but you're welcome to look at our investor deck on the website. That's basically an overview of our business, Craig, and happy to open it up now for Q&A.
Absolutely, Tim. Thank you very much for that comprehensive overview of your company. We've been getting a lot of questions. I've been working here to kinda conflate the ones that we've got so that we don't spend too much time. A lot of people are wondering about what I would call the identity shift question. As you mentioned, you started out in Florida. You started out as a residential solar company, but you just signed that massive deal to provide the 280 MW of power for the AI data center in Utah. How should people view Zeo now? Is the residential business still the focus, or is this AI power side the new main growth engine?
Great question. I think the core business, we're a solar company. We're a renewable energy company, and both of these segments are in the renewable energy space. I think you look at us as a diversified renewable energy company. We have a core business that's going well, that we send our teams out, we sell, we help originate, you know, $100 million of financing for some of our financing partners that provide long-term loans. We would like to long-term get more involved in the financing side of the residential space because we think that's a highly profitable business. That's our core operations, and we have an expertise, and I would say we're nimble and, you know, better than our peers in many respects in running that business. The diversification is opportunistic.
I think anybody that's not thinking about in their business how to take advantage of AI, broadly speaking, and in our case, energy that fuels AI, you know, you're missing one of the great opportunities in the last couple of decades. We acquired an engineering team, we acquired an expertise, and now we're deploying that to support that booming industry. I think just having your investors watch us and see how we perform in our first project, plus others that will be coming down the pipeline, is what I would look at as, you know, how we can differentiate ourselves from just a residential solar business or just a solar business.
We really want to be part of the revolution that powers AI data centers and off-grid power solutions that could be in mining industries and cement factories, a lot of other areas that need a lot of power, and the grid just doesn't have the ability to keep up. We think there's enormous growth opportunity long term, and we wanna carve out a little space in that business. As that grows, we expect to continue to grow both sectors.
Perfect that your answer led you there, Tim, because the other heading that I would classify these inquiries under would be something about, like, profitability versus growth, and of course, that's common to micro-cap companies, of course. You know, people ask you've narrowed your losses recently, as you've talked about. You've seen the revenue growth. But as you move into these much larger industrial projects, Tim, are you confident that you can keep your $6 million-$10 million, correct me if I'm wrong, expense line under control while chasing these multi-billion dollar opportunities?
I think we'll need to partner. We're in conversation with partners, people that have can bring other components to these projects, their experience on large scale utility projects. I think we're a component. We're the engineering team, the development partner in the project, so we're not Bechtel or some large EPC company per se. We're really the owner operator's engineering partner, carving out a section of that. You know, you're talking multi-billion dollar projects on each of these just to build the power resources. There's a huge demand for capital. We're building, I think, a development expertise around long duration storage versus typical lithium-ion battery. There's plenty of people doing lithium-ion batteries, and they're doing them well.
We have, I think, a longer duration storage niche that we believe will attract other partners and projects coming down the pipeline. You know, it's a loss. You're gonna spend a lot more money. It's gonna take longer till you get to revenue on these projects, but the potential is enormous, and we're excited about already the inquiries that we're getting and the projects that we're looking at to become a part of, like the Creekstone project.
Does being a public company give you a benefit, i.e. in things like cheaper project financing compared to a smaller private competitor?
It should. I think as we get more and more project development under our belt in the commercial side, you know, we'll be able to access the public markets more easily than a private company would. Again, we're quite small, so we have a lot of growing to do. We went public because we saw an opportunity to consolidate in our industry and other complementary industries, like roofing and other home services businesses. I think we're hoping to see good progress, good growth. We're careful, conservative in our approach. We acquired this engineering team based on the cash that they already had on their balance sheet, plus the project pipeline that they were working on.
We're looking to have a very positive year on the Creekstone and other similar projects who have this absolute demand for energy that they have to find a solution for, and we're a part of that solution. We're a solution provider for behind-the-meter power.
Got less than two minutes left, but that should be enough time for two more important questions here, Tim. Data centers, they don't turn off, of course, as you know, when the sun goes down. Now that you own Heliogen's storage technology, can you explain how you plan to provide baseload power, that is 24/7 electricity using only solar and batteries without relying on the traditional grid? Then save some time for the last one. We got about a minute and a half left.
Sure. What we do right now in residential solar is behind-the-meter solutions for a home. You put solar on the roof, battery inside. You could run off the grid if you wanted to. Most people stay connected to the grid in the case of those homes. We have an expertise, I think, at designing and developing standalone power systems, and the molten salt and compressed CO2 are large-scale industrial solutions that will allow you to get power from. You might have natural gas, so you can run gas turbines a little bit to charge the systems. Solar is what our primary focus is. Wind, other things that will hold that power in the storage system and then allow 24/7. That's the design of the solution that we provide. Hopefully that helps answer the question, Craig.
Thank you. 15 seconds or less if you can do it. If you were an investor looking at Zeo right now, do you think this market is still looking at you and pricing you as a small Florida solar company, or do you think they are starting to realize the value of the 2 gigawatt pipeline and the AI data center angle?
I don't think the market recognizes yet. We need to have more substance in our commercial side, and as we do, I think the market will reward us for the development on the AI data center projects. We need to get further down the road. I don't think it's valuing us with that in place.
Much appreciated. I know you could have gone on for that one, but I appreciate your conciseness there, Tim. Tim Bridgewater, Zeo Energy, Zeo on the Nasdaq. If you want more information on Zeo Energy, please reach us at 1-800-RedChip or email us at zeo@redchip.com. Tim, thank you.