Ameresco, Inc.

Good day and thank you for standing by and welcome to the Q4 2021 MRS-Co Inc. Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After this speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 1 on your telephone or touch-tone key. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. If you require an operator assistance, please press star zero. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Lila Dillon. Thank you. Please go ahead, madam.

Thank you, Nika, and good afternoon, everyone. We appreciate you joining us for today's call. Joining me here are George Sakalaris, Amoresco's Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer. Doran Hull, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. And Mark Chiplock, Senior 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 fourth quarter capped an outstanding year of growth and profit for Amoresco, as our dedicated employees, in cooperation with our customers, executed in a difficult operating environment to deliver record results. We achieved excellent growth across our entire platform this quarter. led by very strong increases in both our projects and energy asset business lines. In addition to these excellent results, we have entered 2022 with a record of $5 billion in revenue visibility across our lines of business, including over $3 billion of total project backlog. This, coupled with over 400 megawatts of assets in development, supports our tremendous confidence in Maresco's multi-year growth trajectory. We continue to see proposal activity picking up as customers seek solutions that address their increasing energy costs, resiliency needs, and carbon reduction goals. With the addition of the Southern California Edison Battery Project, our contracted project backlog ended the year at $1.5 billion. almost doubling sequentially and increasing 68% compared to last year. And while the Southern California Edison contract was a major win for the company, there are several other large opportunities with complex solution requirements that we are pursuing and winning. Our energy asset business has another exceptionally strong core, with revenues up 35%. We ended the year with 343 megawatts of assets in operation, growing our base by 22%. We also continued to aggressively backfill, bringing our assets in development and construction to 414 megawatts. The clear acceleration in our growth is being driven by expanding addressable market opportunities, both related to continue industry trends, as well as MRS investments in energy experts and new technology and solution offerings coupled with flexible financial solutions. A good example of this expanding addressable market is demonstrated by our increased partnership opportunities with electric and gas utilities. In addition to provide renewable electricity utility industry clients to help them reach their renewable portfolio standard goals, we are now also helping them increase the resiliency of their grid through the use of innovative microgrids and energy storage solutions. The Southern California Aerosol Project, the largest in Maresco's history, is a perfect example. At Maresco, we continue to invest in people and advanced technology solutions to ensure that we are in a strong position to capture these emerging opportunities. For instance, in the last six months, we made an opportunistic investment in hiring over 20 seniors biogas engineers and construction managers in our renewable gas group, more than doubling the development staff in this business unit. With 17 RNG plants in development, we believe these additional resources could help us accelerate the number of plants that could reach mechanical completion in 2023, from four plants to potentially as many as five or six, depending, of course, on permitting. As a reminder, we do not expect any meaningful revenue from these plans in 2023, but it provides a foundation for continued visibility and future growth. Over the years, we have built MRSCO organically and through opportunistic acquisitions. Our recent acquisition of PlugSmart is a great example of this strategy. This acquisition expands our existing solutions and pipeline in the smart building sector. We see a rapidly growing opportunity to provide a complete portfolio of smart building solutions to our existing and future customers by integrating controls and automation with our core clean tech solutions. An integrated smart building. is the best solution for our customers seeking to maximize employee productivity while minimizing their costs and their environmental footprint. Our continued investment in the large and growing smart building market further expands Maresco's addressable market opportunities while also providing our customers with a one-stop shop for their needs. I also want to highlight that we recently published our 2021 ESG report, entitled Doing Well by Doing Good, Innovation, Action, Integrity. ESG is core to our corporate DNA, and there are many company-wide efforts underway to achieve our ambitious goals. Well, great attention is paid to all aspects of ESG, I want to note some major environmental achievements and, more importantly, goals that we set out in the report. Since going public in 2010, MRSCO's renewable energy assets and customer projects have delivered a cumulative carbon offset of 60 million metric tons of carbon dioxide. We expect this number to grow significantly as a result of the energy efficiency solutions we deliver and the renewable assets we place in service. We also have pledged to achieve net zero carbon operations by 2040 for both scope one and scope two emissions. Third, we will establish a goal for greenhouse gas emissions reductions through the science-based targets initiative by 2025 to validate net zero targets with objective certification. We are very proud of the positive impact that Maresco makes every day in providing clean tech solutions to a broad range of customers, and we are committed to adhering to the highest standards of corporate citizenship. During the quarter, MRESCO was also the recipient of a number of awards and recognitions, highlighting the strength of the MRESCO team. Our excellent work was again recognized by SFP Global Plats and by the U.S. Energy Storage Association which highlighted MRESCO strategies and accomplishments in the battery energy storage systems market. I will now turn over the call to Doran to provide some comments on our financial performance and guidance.