On Monday, Ameresco (NYSE:AMRC) discussed first-quarter financial results during its earnings call. The full transcript is provided below.
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Summary
Ameresco reported a 14% year-over-year revenue growth in Q1 2026, despite adverse weather conditions impacting some facilities.
The company announced a $400 million strategic investment from HASI in its biofuels business, creating a joint venture named Neogenics Fuels.
Leadership changes include promotions of Nicole Bulgarino and Lou Maltezzos to co-presidents, and the appointment of Mike Bakkett as CEO of Neogenics Fuels.
The company has a strong project backlog, with a 20% increase to $2.8 billion and total backlog reaching $5.3 billion.
Ameresco’s future outlook includes leveraging new partnerships and investments to drive growth, particularly in the biofuels and data center spaces.
Full Transcript
OPERATOR
Thank you for standing by. My name is Jordan and I’ll be your conference operator today. At this time I’d like to welcome everyone to the Q1 2026 Ameresco Inc. Earnings Conference Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker’s remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you’d like to ask a question during this time, simply press STAR followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you’d like to withdraw your question, press STAR one again. Thank you. I would now like to turn the call over to Lela Dhillon, Chief Marketing Officer. Please go ahead.
George Sakellaris
Thank you 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 Mike Bakas, who will become the CEO of Neogenics Fuels Nicole Bulgarino and Lou Maltezzos, newly appointed co Presidents of Ameresco and Mark Chiplock, Chief Financial Officer. In addition, Josh Prue, our Chief Investment Officer, will also be available during Q and 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. In particular, some of the commentary is predicated on the expected closing of the Neogenics Fuels transaction. Please refer to today’s earnings materials, the safe harbor language on slide 2 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 Lila and good afternoon everyone. I am pleased to report that we had a solid start to the year with the Ameresco team delivering 14% revenue growth despite experiencing adverse weather conditions impacting several of our RNG facilities. New business also remained Quite strong with 20% growth in awarded backlog against a backdrop of significant activity, especially with the federal government. We also announced several important corporate actions which we have taken to better position ourselves for substantial future growth opportunities while also maximizing shareholder value. Today, after the market closed we announced the signing of a transformational agreement with hasi for a $400 million strategic investment in our biofuels business. This agreement will create a newly formed joint venture named Neogenics Fuels. Ameresco has been a leader in the biofuels industry for the last 25 years. When completed, this transaction will enable us to monetize a portion of the $1.8 billion enterprise value that we have created in our biogas business. Of the $400 million commitment from HASI, 300 million will be directly invested in Neogenics Fuels to drive business growth and the $100 million will be direct compensation to Ameresco for the existing business which will be used for strategic opportunities, working capital and deleveraging throughout the year. I would like to turn the call over to Mike Backas, a member of of my management team for nearly 30 years and who will become Chief Executive Officer of Neogenics Fuels to comment on this exciting transaction.
Mike Bakas
Mike thank you George. Good afternoon everyone. First and foremost, I very much appreciate the confidence and trust that George and HASI leadership have bestowed on me to take the helm of what we see as a transformative business. As many of you are aware, I have been leading Ameresco’s biogas business since the founding of the company, helping to create one of the country’s largest greenfield developers of biogas projects. We are thrilled to be taking the next step in this evolution along with our long term partner HASI with the creation of Neogenics Fuels which will be 70% owned by Ameresco and 30% by Hassi. As part of the transaction, Ameresco will contribute its operating biogas assets along with one of the most robust development pipelines in the industry. The organization will be staffed by Ameresco’s seasoned team of biogas veterans. Both Ameresco and Hassi recognize a tremendous opportunities to deliver resilient energy and biofuel solutions while building the foundation for renewable molecules and next generation drop in fuels of the future. This transaction represents a combination of Ameresco’s proven history and expertise in successful Biogas development with HASI’s deep sector financial knowledge and scalable capital platform. We see this partnership as positioning Neogenics to to become a global industry leader in the next generation of fuels as our addressable market continues to expand. As noted, we have a signed agreement and expect a timely close to the transaction. George, I’ll turn the call back to you.
George Sakellaris
Thank you Mike. We are very excited about this transaction which I believe not only recognizes the tremendous tangible value of our energy assets but also positions Ameresco to better drive long term profitable growth. Also during the quarter we strengthened our corporate structure to position us to fully execute on our great growth opportunities. We recently promoted proven leaders Nicole Bulgarino and Lou Maltedros to co presidents of Ameresco and Peter Grisakis to Chief Operating Officer. Lou and Nicole both came to Ameresco 22 years ago with our successful excellent solutions acquisition. As co presidents, Nicole and Lou will work closely with me on Ameresco’s continued growth strategy while at the same time maintaining clear and distinct areas of operational focus. The easiest way to understand the operational alignment is to look at our current project business which is split evenly between energy infrastructure and building efficiency. Nicole is responsible for the energy infrastructure half of the business while continuing to guide the company’s federal solutions business. Lou focuses on the building efficiency side, overseeing the core non federal projects. Now I will ask each of them to comment on some of the market dynamics in their respective areas.
Lou Maltezzos (Co-President)
Nicole thank you George and good afternoon everyone. Ameresco’s federal business continues to be a core strength of the company. We see strong demand across our traditional federal programs including energy efficiency infrastructure modernization with long term ESPC and design build work. Ameresco’s military and civilian federal government customers remain focused on upgrading buildings, improving reliability, reducing life cycle cost and hardening critical facilities and I am pleased to note a nice uptick in federal government proposal activity over the last year. Ameresco’s long standing relationships, technical expertise and proven execution track record position us well to continue delivering strong results in this important market. In parallel, we are seeing great demand for our energy infrastructure solutions. We have built a strong pipeline of large and complex projects including transformational data center opportunities. This activity is being driven by growing demand for on site reliable power solutions where access to utility power is constrained or delayed. We are approaching this market with discipline, focusing on larger experienced developers and projects where Ameresco’s behind the meter capabilities can provide clear value while still disciplined. In that in what we advance, we are encouraged by the quality and the scope of opportunities we are pursuing and how they are progressing. I will now turn the call over to gleam. Thank you Nicole. It’s been a very exciting time for our project business with our long history and expertise in providing building efficiency solutions for many of our customers, energy represents one of their single largest operating expenditures. More and more our customers are experiencing spiking electricity prices leading to heightened interest in energy efficiency solutions. In addition to these challenges, many customers have older, often outdated buildings with limited capital budgets to pursue new construction. So upgrading their existing facility is not only the best economic option, but it’s often their only option. The cost savings generated from our energy efficiency upgrades can then be reinvested in a laundry list of facility improvements, all done by Ameresco. As electricity prices rise, energy efficiency investments drive much faster returns, allowing our customers to tackle more and more improvements. This enables Ameresco to execute larger, more comprehensive projects. As one of the largest energy services companies in North America, Ameresco should be a main beneficiary of increasing energy costs for years to come. I’ll now turn the call back over to George for a few brief comments before Mark covers our financials.
George Sakellaris
Thank you Lou. Before we turn to the financials, I want to step back and connect the themes you have heard over the last few minutes. We see the creation of Neogenics fuels with HASI as a clear validation of the scale and value we have created in our biofuels platform, while also bringing in a strong long term partner and incremental capital to accelerate the next phase of growth. At the same time, the leadership updates we announced reflect the depth of our bench and our focus on continuity and execution as we scale positioning Mike to lead Neogenics Fuels and elevating Nicole and Lu as Co President to sharpen execution across our energy infrastructure and building efficiency business. Together we see these actions strengthening our operating model, enhancing our ability to deploy capital and talent where returns are most attractive, and keeping Ameresco firmly on the same strategic path, delivering durable growth while creating long term shareholder value. With that, I will turn it over to Mark to walk through the quarter’s financial results and guidance reflecting the Neogenics Huels transaction.
Mark Chiplock (Chief Financial Officer)
Mark thank you George. We had a solid start to the year with total revenue of $401 million up 14% year over year, reflecting broad based growth across our core businesses and led by continued strength in projects in O and M. Project revenue increased 16% to $291 million driven by solid execution across federal and key geographies as well as continued demand for both building efficiency and energy infrastructure solutions. Importantly, business development activity remained very strong. Awarded project backlog grew 20% to $2.8 billion with over half a billion dollars of new awards during the quarter bringing our total project backlog to $5.3 billion. We continue to see a healthy pipeline of opportunities and strong proposal activity, particularly in the federal market. Energy asset revenue grew 7% to $61 million supported by the continued expansion of our operating portfolio. We did see some weather related impacts at certain RNG facilities during the quarter, but the underlying performance of the portfolio remains strong. Our operating energy asset base now stands at 838megawatts with 568megawatts in development and construction, positioning us well for continued long term growth. As we continue to scale this platform, we’re increasingly focused on both the operational performance and and the capital efficiency of our asset strategy. In line with that strategy and as George highlighted, we entered into an agreement to sell a 30% equity interest in our biofuels business. Of the $400 million commitment from HASI, $300 million will be directly invested in Neogenics Fuels to drive business growth and $100 million will be direct compensation to Ameresco for the existing business which will be used for strategic opportunities, working capital and deleveraging throughout the year. This transaction implies a post money enterprise value of approximately $1.8 billion and recognizes the tremendous value embedded within our energy asset portfolio. In addition, it will allow us to retain control of the platform and bring in a trusted partner to help fund future growth which will allow us to continue scaling the business in a capital efficient manner. Turning back to the financials, O and M had another strong quarter with revenue up 22% driven by the continued additions of new long term contracts. Our long term O and M backlog now exceeds $1.5 billion, reinforcing the visibility and durability of this revenue stream. Gross margin of 14.1% reflects project mix along with the impact from adverse weather conditions at certain RNG sites. We continued to make targeted investments in people, project development and execution capabilities to support future growth. These investments drove operating expenses to $46 million during the quarter. Net interest and other expenses were slightly higher than expected, driven primarily by $1.8 million of non cash mark to market impact and approximately $1 million in foreign exchange losses. Net loss attributable to common shareholders was $18.3 million with a GAAP EPS loss of $0.35 per diluted share and non GAAP loss per share of $0.33. …
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