Ameresco, Inc.

Thank you for standing by and welcome to the first quarter 2021 MRSCO Inc. Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you'll need to press star 1 on your telephone. As a reminder, today's program may be recorded. And now I'd like to introduce your host for today's program, Lila Dillon, Vice President, Marketing and Communications. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Jonathan, and good afternoon, everyone. We appreciate you joining us for today's call. Joining me here are George Sakolaris, MRSCO's Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer. Doran Hull, 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 predictions 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 gap to non-gap reconciliation, as well as an explanation behind the use of non-gap 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.

Thank you, Lila, and good afternoon. I hope everyone is staying healthy and safe. The first quarter marked another excellent quarter for MRSCO as we posted great financial results and completed our first equity raise since our initial public offering over 10 years ago. Well, the first quarter began slowly with inclement weather in some of our project sites and operating plants. Our focus on execution, coupled with the improving weather conditions, led to improved performance throughout the period. The results far exceeded our expectations, with revenues increasing 19%, net income increasing 80%, and adjusted EBITDA up 40%. With this strong start, we are raising our annual guidance. And now, I also want to take this opportunity to thank our employees for their tremendous dedication and hard work despite these challenging times. Our project business had another strong quarter, while our energy assets again posted solid results. And while we continue to focus on project execution, we were very pleased to see a meaningful pickup in awards during the quarter, which will lead to future growth in our contracted backlog. We were also very pleased to have successfully executed an equity offering bringing in over $120 million in proceeds to the company. While we historically have funded our long-term growth primarily through internally generated cash flows and non-recourse project financing, we decided the timing was right to accelerate our growth by raising additional outside capital. For many years, we have been growing our energy asset portfolio to provide highly profitable recurring revenue that increases our long-term visibility and profitability. Over the last few years, our team has been so successful that our assets in development and construction are now greater than our current operating asset base. In particular, we will accelerate the development of a number of financially compelling renewable natural gas, RNG, assets. With this new capital, we now anticipate building three RNG plants for commissioning during 2022 and another four during 2023. Over the last few years, we have seen a tremendous increase in interest in using RNG from a number of event customers, including large transportation and logistic companies, natural gas utilities, and distributed energy resource owners. Just the other day, Washington State announced a low-carbon fuel standard, joining Oregon, California, and British Columbia. Back in 2010, Maresco became one of the first companies in the country to commission an RNG plan. Currently, RNG is the most natural path to reaching a reduced or zero-carbon footprint for many of these companies. With our current operating RNG assets and those that we will be adding over the next few years, Maresco will remain a leader in this environmentally important and profitable technology. Many of the early policies, actions, and statements from the new administration in Washington support this increased interest in RNG. Additionally, we believe that Maresco is in an excellent position to benefit from the new administration's focus on low-carbon future. Already, we have seen the U.S. rejoin the Paris Climate Accord and, most recently, the announced goal to cut U.S. green gas emissions greenhouse gas emissions by up to 52% from 2005 levels by year 2030. Also, the administration plans to directly fund and invest in the country's low-carbon future through a number of bills currently working through the legislative process. A good example of this targeted investment is the approximately $1 trillion dollars of the $2.3 trillion infrastructure package, which will target projects designed to mitigate climate change. This includes expansion of solar and wind power, charging stations for electric vehicles, technologies to capture and store carbon pollution, and equipment to make infrastructure more resilient against severe weather and other contingencies. These new government priorities are beginning to filter through the economy. We have already seen traction with state and local governments and in the commercial and industrial markets where we have filled in a number of requests from companies looking to report and demonstrate progress on ESG initiatives to reach carbon reduction targets. Maresco is well positioned to thrive in this new environment. We were recently ranked the number one energy as a service provider in the GuideHouse Insights Leaderboard Report. This highlighted our ambitious energy as a service vision, expertise in technology solutions, track record of success across customer segments, and our ability to provide financing for energy as a service projects. The strong Amoresco brand and our reputation as the industry's leading provider of distributed energy resources should enable us to benefit from the very attractive growth opportunities in our clean technology markets. I will now turn the call over to Doran to provide some comments on our financial performance and our increased guidance. Doran?