Ameresco, Inc. 2026 Q2 Earnings Call

Please go ahead. Thank you, Tina, and good afternoon, everyone.

We appreciate you joining us for today's call. Our speakers on the call today will be George Sakellaris, Ameresco's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Nicole Bulgarino, Co-President of Ameresco, and Mark Chiplock, Chief Financial Officer. In addition, Josh Baribeau, our Chief Investment Officer, will also be available during Q&A to help answer questions. Before I turn the call over to George, I would like to make a brief statement regarding forward-looking remarks. Today's earnings materials contain forward-looking statements, including statements regarding our expectations. All forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties. Please refer to today's earnings materials, the safe harbor language on slide two of our supplemental information, and our SEC filings for a discussion of the major risk factors that could cause our actual results to differ from those in our forward-looking statements.

In addition, we use several non-GAAP measures when presenting our financial results. We have included the reconciliations of these measures and additional information in our supplemental slides that were posted to our website. Please note that all comparisons that we will be discussing today are on a year-over-year basis, unless otherwise noted. I will now turn the call over to George.

George? Thank you, Leila, and good afternoon, everyone.

Q2 was a transformational quarter for Ameresco, highlighted by exceptional execution and strong financial performance. First, we had a record of $1.8 billion of new awards, driven by $1.2 billion for data centers and $600 million for our other key markets. Second, we closed our Neogenyx joint venture with HASI, providing us with significant external capital to accelerate growth in all of our business lines. We announced our first successful delivery of RNG into the European compliance markets. Third, we repositioned Ameresco into two core market pillars, and we are releasing a new rebranded corporate identity to reflect the updated position. Finally, we successfully brought online the 250-megawatt Napanee battery energy storage system, one of the largest energy storage projects in Canada. We energized the 560-megawatt solar project in Greece, one of the largest projects in Europe.

Many of you have been anticipating updates on our involvement in the data center market. There is a growing demand for reliable power infrastructure and increasingly favorable policy for on-site power infrastructure, encouraging hyperscale customers to secure dedicated on-site power solutions. Combined with Ameresco's integrated capabilities, we are well positioned to deliver solutions that provide speed, reliability, and the energy independence that these customers need. During the quarter, several opportunities advanced to the point where they met our criteria for inclusion in our awarded backlog. Importantly, the projects we added to our backlog represent only a portion of our broader pipeline. As we continue to advance additional data center opportunities, we will remain highly selective in our partnerships and disciplined in our approach. We expect the amount of backlog added from these opportunities to increase as development progresses, project scopes are finalized, and they convert to contracted backlog.

As you will see in our updated corporate presentation, the company is well positioned to flourish in the current market environment. With our recent promotions of Nicole Bulgarino and Lou Maltezos to co-presidents, we have positioned the company to address two core market pillars: power infrastructure and building and public infrastructure. This strategic positioning reinforces Ameresco's standing as one of the world's leading energy infrastructure companies, focused on delivering integrated solutions to provide reliable power and modernized infrastructure. With a powerful combination of market catalysts and a robust pipeline of opportunities, we are confident in our ability to drive exceptional long-term profitable growth. With that, I would like to turn the call over to Nicole to provide some additional details about the exciting data center activities, as well as other notable project wins and business opportunities.

Nicole? Thank you, George, and good afternoon, everyone.

As George highlighted, Ameresco made significant progress with our power infrastructure business during the quarter. The backlog additions we announced today are the results of months of working to secure, develop, and advance opportunities with leading partners across the data center ecosystem. Our strategy remains highly focused and selective, partnering with experienced developers, operators, hyperscalers, and capital providers while concentrating exclusively on on-site power data solutions. This landscape is dynamic and often requires persistence and flexibility with solutions due to permitting, gas supply, and specific tenant needs. This is where Ameresco's decades of experience developing, delivering, owning, and operating critical energy infrastructure provides us with a clear competitive advantage. During this quarter, we added three new data center projects to our awarded backlog, bringing our total to five data center projects in addition to the Lemoore Data Center in our energy assets portfolio.

These projects further expand our presence in the nation's most active data center markets, adding both Texas and Arizona to our existing footprint of data center projects. Collectively, they will represent more than one gigawatt of power generation and showcase the breadth of Ameresco's capabilities. The solutions we are providing include a combination of reciprocating engines, gas turbines, fuel cells, battery energy storage systems, and integrated microgrids, designed to deliver the reliability required by today's most demanding data center customers. These awarded projects also only represent a portion of the opportunities we are actively developing. We continue to see exceptional demand for on-site power solutions and are encouraged by both the scale and the quality of our growing pipeline. We are engaged with many of the industry's leading data center partners, and we believe our differentiated capabilities position us extremely well to capitalize on the significant opportunities ahead.

We look forward to sharing additional developments as we continue to convert this momentum into backlog and long-term profitable growth. While the data center activity was certainly a highlight of the quarter, it is also important to note that our momentum extends well beyond this market. We also secured a significant amount of new project awards across a broad range of geographies, customers, and end markets, underscoring the strength and diversity of our business. These wins reflect continued demand for Ameresco's comprehensive energy infrastructure solutions and demonstrate our ability to capitalize on the opportunities across multiple verticals while maintaining a balanced and resilient growth profile. I'll now turn the call over to Mark to cover our strong Q2 financial performance.

Mark? Thank you, Nicole, and good afternoon, everyone.

Q2 was a strong quarter across the board. We delivered revenue of $515 million and made meaningful progress on the priorities that matter most: executing well, expanding our growth visibility through record awards, and strengthening our capital position to support the opportunities ahead. Q2 demonstrated the strength of our current operating model and the increasing visibility we are building as we work to execute the next phase of our growth strategy. Our total revenues grew by 9%, while project revenue increased 6% to $381 million. This reflects solid execution across our core project business, with strength in federal and North America, and continued strong performance from our European JV. This was not just a strong quarter financially, it was also an outstanding business development quarter.