Ameresco, Inc.

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for standing by. And welcome to the AmeriSco Inc. Third Quarter 2021 Earnings Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we conduct the 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 hosts, 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 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 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, Lila, and good afternoon, everyone. The third quarter was another strong quarter for Amoresco. A 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 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 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 can experience from quarter to quarter in our project's business. Of note, we were very pleased to add an additional four R&G sites, and innovative battery systems to our assets in development during the quarter. Given our deep and wide expertise in advanced energy technologies, Maresco 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 project's business proposal activity has been robust, as we expected. We experienced a considerable increase in our 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 MResco'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. MRSCO'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 transformation 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 three battery energy storage systems for Southern California Harrison. In total, The project will provide the California grid with four 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, 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. MRSCO'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?