Record Year for Revenue and Profit
Fourth Quarter Results Reflected Revenue Push-Outs due to Scheduling Changes
Continued European Expansion
Guiding to Increased Adjusted EBITDA in 2023
Reiterating 2024 $300 Million Adjusted EBITDA Target
Full Year 2022 Financial Highlights:
(All financial result comparisons made are against the prior year period unless otherwise noted)
• Revenues of $1,824.4 million, up 50%
• Net income attributable to common shareholders of $94.9 million, up 35%
• GAAP EPS of $1.78, up 32%
• Non-GAAP EPS of $1.87, up 24%
• Adjusted EBITDA of $204.5 million, up 34%
• Fifth consecutive year of record revenue and profit
• Visibility from Projects, Assets and O&M is $6+ billion
Fourth Quarter 2022 Financial Highlights:
(All financial result comparisons made are against the prior year period unless otherwise noted)
• Revenues of $331.7 million, down 20%
• Net income attributable to common shareholders of $17.9 million, down 36%
• GAAP EPS of $0.34, down 36%
• Non-GAAP EPS of $0.35, down 34%
• Adjusted EBITDA of $41.3 million, down 15%
Ameresco, Inc., a leading cleantech integrator specializing in energy efficiency and renewable energy, announced financial results for the fiscal quarter ended December 31, 2022. The Company also furnished supplemental information in conjunction with this press release in a Current Report on Form 8-K. The supplemental information, which includes Non-GAAP financial measures, has been posted to the “Investors” section of the Company’s website at www.ameresco.com. Reconciliations of Non-GAAP measures to the appropriate GAAP measures are included herein.
“2022 was a great year and it marked Ameresco’s fifth consecutive year of record revenue and profit, growing revenue and adjusted EBITDA by 50% and 34%, respectively. This growth underscores the importance of our advanced clean technology portfolio, the strong fundamentals of our expanding markets, and our ability to consistently execute and capture additional market share. We ended the year with over $6 billion in visibility from the combination of our total project backlog, Energy Assets and O&M revenue backlog.
We made great strides in expanding our European footprint by winning of the transformative Bristol City Council decarbonization contract and acquiring a wind farm in Ireland. In addition, today we announced an agreement to acquire Enerqos Solutions S.r.l., a small but meaningful acquisition of an energy services company in Italy to further expand our European footprint. We anticipate further activity in Europe in 2023 as we continue to strategically extend our presence to take advantage of this large and growing market opportunity.
While execution remains strong, fourth quarter results reflected the push-out of revenue related to short term scheduling changes in implementation, supply chain issues and unplanned maintenance at two of our RNG facilities. In addition, utility and permitting delays impacted the timing of assets coming on-line. Despite the delays, we were able to place 24 MWe of Energy Assets in service during the quarter. We also added 32 MWe of new assets to our Assets in Development bringing the total to 470 net MWe.
Market demand conditions remain robust. In addition, we believe the recently enacted Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) will be the most transformational piece of legislation affecting our industry, further expanding our addressable market opportunities. We continue the dialogue with our customers as they assess how to prioritize and time their projects to optimize its impact.
The SCE projects progressed further in the quarter. We are continuing discussions regarding the applicability and scope of any force majeure relief resulting from COVID-19 and weather related delays. Our relationship with SCE continues to be cooperative, and we anticipate the projects to be in service and to achieve substantial completion milestones prior to the summer of 2023.
In the fourth quarter we were honored to be named a finalist in the S&P Global Platts 2022 Global Energy Awards for the Infrastructure Project of the Year and the Corporate Impact and Sustained Commitment categories. Platts highlighted our work at Fort Bragg, in collaboration with Duke Energy, to install the largest floating solar array in the Southeast,” concluded George P. Sakellaris, President and Chief Executive Officer.
Fourth Quarter Financial Results
(All financial result comparisons made are against the prior year period unless otherwise noted.)
Total revenue was 20% lower, driven by a 26% decrease in Project revenue. This decline primarily reflects the difficult comparisons to prior periods when we recognized significant revenue from the SCE projects. Energy Asset revenue declined 6% due to unscheduled maintenance at two of our RNG facilities, combined with lower RIN prices. O&M revenue increased 5% as the company continued to add long-term O&M contracts, especially on larger Federal government projects. Other revenue increased 16% primarily due to strength in integrated PV sales for remote power applications.
Gross margin of 18.6% reflects an increase from 17.1% in the previous year given the reduced contribution from the lower margin SCE projects. Net income attributable to common shareholders and adjusted EBITDA were $17.9 million and $41.3 million, respectively. The company ended the quarter with approximately $116 million of available cash. During the quarter, the Company also secured $137 million in project financing bringing the year’s total financing to over $468 million to continue supporting our growth.
Project Highlights
In the Fourth Quarter of 2022:
• The Company continued to expand its streetlight portfolio by signing new contracts in Philadelphia, PA, Memphis, TN, and Chandler, AZ. The Philly Streetlight Improvement Project is a comprehensive 120,000 LED streetlight, controls, and networking project. The street light modernization project in Chandler will replace their high-pressure sodium fixtures across the city with state-of-the-art LED fixtures and provide control and monitoring on these fixtures.
• Ameresco continued to expand its K-12 footprint across New York, adding more energy efficiency and solar projects to schools in Lakeland and Ossining. These schools will benefit with optimized learning environments for their students and teachers while saving money and reducing their carbon footprint.
• Ameresco’s team in Canada continued to expand its federal footprint with an 8.8MW solar project with the CFB Gagetown, and a 40+ facility energy efficiency project with CBSA and Transport Canada National.
• Ameresco continued to expand its C&I footprint with a new solar carport project in Buckeye, AZ. This project contracted with H&M Company will build solar carports for shaded parking and energy offset for a new distribution center for Ross Stores, Inc.
Asset Highlights
In the Fourth Quarter of 2022:
• Ameresco’s Assets in Development ended the quarter at 530 MWe. After subtracting Ameresco’s partners’ minority interests, Ameresco’s owned capacity of Assets in Development at quarter end was 470 MWe.
• The Company acquired an operating three-turbine 5MW wind farm in West County Cork, Ireland.
• The County of Maui awarded Ameresco the rights to the landfill gas at the County's Central Maui Landfill. Ameresco will build a landfill gas electric generating facility using 100% of the landfill gas available. Ameresco will design, engineer, construct, operate and maintain the 3.2 MW facility, which Ameresco will own.
• The Company and Bright Canyon Energy broke ground on the Kupono Solar Project at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam. The 131-Acre 42MW solar plant and 42MW/168MWh battery storage project is designed to deliver clean, renewable energy to Hawaiian Electric’s (HECO) grid on the island of O‘ahu.
Summary and Outlook
“2022 was an outstanding year of record performance across key financial metrics. Our future opportunities remain compelling, and we expect the number and complexity of projects to continue to increase as the IRA’s incentives are expected to lead to an estimated $3.5 trillion in investment in new energy supply and infrastructure onto the grid, the majority of which will be renewable sources. Ameresco is well positioned to capture an increasing share of this opportunity given our proven track record of execution on these types of large and complex solutions as shown by our SCE and Bristol projects. These secular growth drivers, together with the breadth of our technological expertise and proven track record, underpin our confidence in Ameresco’s prospects. As we continue to position the company to capture the global growth opportunities on the horizon, we are pleased to reiterate our $300 million adjusted EBITDA target for 2024.
2023 guidance, included in the table below, anticipates adjusted EBITDA growth of 5% at the midpoint. We are pleased to be guiding to growth in adjusted EBITDA even as we face difficult revenue comparisons due to the large SCE projects. Our ability to continue to grow our adjusted EBITDA is a testament to our long term diversified business model, designed for our profitable and growing Energy Asset and O&M businesses to offset potential short-term timing-related volatility in the Projects business. We anticipate placing between 80 and 100 MWe of energy assets in service. This includes the three RNG plants we had expected to be mechanically complete by the end of 2022. Several additional RNG assets are in the late stages of development and we expect that 4 or 5 of these will come online during 2024. Our expected capex for 2023 is $325 million to $375 million, the majority of which we expect to fund with non-recourse debt.
We estimate first quarter revenue and adjusted EBITDA to be in the range of $220 million to $240 million and $20 million to $30 million, respectively and slightly positive non-GAAP EPS. We expect the remainder of the year to follow our normal cadence with progressive improvement throughout the year.
We look forward to welcoming analysts and institutional investors on May 11th to our London Investor Day. This event will feature presentations and panels by key executives from our leadership team. The conversations will focus on main growth opportunities. We also will be discussing Ameresco's existing European footprint and plans for expansion in that geography,” Mr. Sakellaris concluded.
The Company’s guidance excludes the impact of any redeemable non-controlling interest activity related to tax-equity partnerships, one-time charges, asset impairment charges, changes in contingent consideration, restructuring activities, as well as any related tax impact.
