Ameresco - Earnings Call - Q2 2025

Executive Summary

• Q2 2025 delivered a clean beat across the board: revenue $472.3M (+8% YoY), Non-GAAP EPS $0.27 vs a ~$0.05 Street consensus, and Adjusted EBITDA $56.1M (+24% YoY); backlog hit a record $5.1B as Energy Infrastructure opportunities scaled.
• Mix and execution drove margin expansion: Adjusted EBITDA margin rose to 11.9% (from 10.3% in Q2’24) with gross margin at 15.5%, in line with plan; FX and unhedged derivative gains added ~$7.3M to GAAP earnings in the quarter.
• Management reiterated FY25 guidance (Revenue $1.85–$1.95B, Adjusted EBITDA $225–$245M, Non-GAAP EPS $0.70–$0.90) and flagged a more normalized cadence in Federal, while viewing the OBBB Act as immaterial near-term.
• Structural demand tailwinds (rising power prices, grid reliability, AI/data center load) and geographic diversification (Europe ~20% of backlog) remain core to the narrative; data center energy infrastructure pipeline is forming, albeit early.

What Went Well and What Went Wrong

What Went Well

• Record visibility and momentum: Total Project Backlog reached $5.1B, with ~$558M new awards in Q2 and contracted backlog up 46% YoY to $2.4B; total revenue visibility neared $9.8B.
• Margin and operating leverage: Adjusted EBITDA +24% to $56.1M, margin 11.9%; management emphasized “significant operating leverage” and disciplined project screening; Europe margins trending up.
• Strategic progress in Energy Infrastructure: Energy Assets revenue +18% YoY to $62.9M; 7 MWe placed in service; landmark $240M Sweetheart Lake hydropower project and first RNG ITC sale (~$71M proceeds) support financing agility.

Management quotes:

• “Adjusted EBITDA increased 24%, demonstrating the significant operating leverage… while Non-GAAP EPS was $0.17 higher from a year ago.”
• “Contracted project backlog now year over year is 46%… which is unprecedented”.
• “We are pleased to note that our business with the Federal Government is returning to a more normalized cadence”.

What Went Wrong

• Working capital intensity: Corporate debt rose to $294.1M (3.4x leverage) to support growth; CFO called out adjusted cash from operations methodology change and underlying CFO of $(26.9)M in Q2 before ITC/ESPC add-backs.
• Supplier risk: Battery supplier Cowen bankruptcy (Ameresco claim ~$27M) adds uncertainty (early proceedings), though management does not expect project execution impact.
• Ongoing supply chain tightness: Long lead times for large transformers and gas turbines persist; tariffs/FEOC could raise storage costs, requiring contract protections and/or domestic sourcing—managed but still a headwind.

Transcript

Speaker 5

Thank you. I would now like to turn the conference over to Leila Dillon. Please go ahead.

Speaker 4

Thank you, Demi, 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, and Mark Chiplock, Chief Financial Officer. In addition, Nicole Bulgarino, President of Federal and Utility Infrastructure, and Joshua Baribeau, our Chief Investment Officer, will 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 material, 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.

Speaker 2

Thank you, Leila, and good afternoon, everyone. We are very pleased to report that Ameresco delivered another quarter of strong financial and operational performance, building upon the momentum generated from our first quarter. Second quarter revenue and adjusted EBITDA grew 8% and 24% respectively, coupled with very strong earnings per share growth. The Ameresco team continued to focus on profitable execution, leveraging our large project backlog and achieving higher profit margin growth than top line growth. In addition to the contracts awarded in our traditional core business, we also captured significant emerging opportunities to provide energy infrastructure solutions to a number of rapidly growing sectors in both the U.S. and Europe. We believe demand for our diverse portfolio of energy solutions is being driven by the increasing demand for electricity, significant increases in utility rates, and growing grid instability.

While we continue to execute on our traditional energy efficiency and renewable energy projects, we are very pleased to see an even broader need for comprehensive energy infrastructure and microgrid solutions. The increase in global electricity prices continues to be top of mind for many of our clients, along with reliability of supply. I wanted to make some quick comments on that topic. With prices projected to outpace overall inflation for many years to come, we believe this trend will be a meaningful catalyst for our continued growth. Higher power prices drive customer demand for both our core energy efficiency solutions and our integrated on-site generation offerings. This dynamic creates better economics and faster project paybacks for our customers. Diversification has been the foundation of our business model and positions us to take great advantage of the growth opportunities ahead. This comes in three key areas. First, our customer base.

We are well-diversified across a very broad range of public and private customers. Our expertise and focus on energy infrastructure solutions have enabled us to grow our business with both domestic and international utilities and international and independent power producers, which now account for over 20% of our total project backlog. We are also pursuing large and exciting opportunities with the CNI market, which we believe offers tremendous growth potential. CNI now represents over 10% of our total project backlog, and we anticipate continued growth in this segment. Second, our technology portfolio. We offer a complete suite of energy efficiency, storage, and generation solutions. Currently, almost half of our total project backlog is comprised of energy infrastructure solutions, including natural gas turbines and engines, cogeneration equipment, hydroelectric, and other power generation technologies, as well as battery energy storage systems and microgrid offerings.

Finally, in our geographic reach, we cover the U.S., Canada, the U.K., and many key growth markets in continental Europe. Driven by our continued expansion, Europe now accounts for approximately 20% of our total project backlog. We see this as a good balance to the changing policies and regulations in the U.S. In short, Ameresco continues to demonstrate that diversification is not just a hedge, it's our strategic advantage. As we prepare for this growth, we continue to stay ahead of the curve by investing in our most important asset, our human capital. Ameresco is well known for hiring and developing industry expertise in cutting-edge technologies well in advance of full commercial potential. Years ago, we demonstrated this with our investments in battery storage, renewable natural gas, and microgrids.

Those investments have yielded incredible returns, as Ameresco became a go-to provider for these solutions, and they now account for a material part of our business. We are again looking ahead to technologies such as small modular reactors. We recently hired an executive to focus on developing exciting partnerships in this area of huge potential. We're also investing in our continued European expansion with the hire of a key executive to manage the growing opportunities across continental Europe. Before I turn the call over to Mark, I wanted to cover the policy and regulatory changes in D.C. and their impact on Ameresco. At this point, we are pleased to have seen an improved business environment with the federal government compared to the beginning of the year.

Not only do we continue to execute on our many federal contracts, we are also engaged in exciting new opportunities that leverage secure federal land for critical energy infrastructure projects. Along those lines, the White House recently announced an executive order aimed at accelerating the construction of data centers by removing some of the regulatory hurdles, primarily at the permitting level. Importantly, the order also opens the potential for federal land to be used for these sites. We are continuing to evaluate the One Big Beautiful Bill and its expected impact on our business, especially as additional details from the bill are worked out. At this time, however, we do not believe the bill will have a significant near-term impact on our business. Now, I would like to turn the call over to Mark to provide additional commentary on our excellent results and outlook. Mark.

Speaker 0

Thank you, George, and good afternoon, everyone. I'll echo George's excitement around another solid quarter. We continue to deliver strong financial results, with second quarter revenue growing 8% and adjusted EBITDA growing 24%, supported by consistent execution, steady backlog conversion, and expanding contributions from Europe and our energy asset portfolio. Revenue in the quarter exceeded our expectations and reflects broad-based contributions across our business lines. Our projects' revenue grew 8%, reflecting strength across our geographies and customer base, with a notably strong performance from our European-based joint venture with Sinnell. Europe continues to be an exciting growth market for us and is an important component of our revenue diversification strategy. Energy asset revenue grew 18%, driven largely by the growth of assets in operations compared to last year, with our base of operating assets now standing at almost 750 megawatts.

Our recurring O&M revenue maintained steady growth as we continued to win more long-term O&M business. While revenue from our other line of business declined due to the divestiture of our AEG business at the end of 2024, the remaining businesses within our other revenue segment continued to experience growth. Gross margin of 15.5% for the quarter was in line with our expectations and reflected solid improvement both sequentially and year over year. Net income attributable to common shareholders was $12.9 million, or $0.24 per share, with non-GAAP EPS of $0.27, adjusted primarily for certain costs for restructuring activities related to our Canadian operations. Net income and EPS were positively impacted by $4.3 million in non-cash mark-to-market gains on certain unhedged derivatives and $3 million in foreign exchange translation gains. Excluding the impact of these factors, our earnings per share still grew by approximately 30% compared to last year.

Adjusted EBITDA increased 24% to $56.1 million, with an adjusted EBITDA margin of nearly 12%. With this strong performance reflecting the contributions from our revenue growth, improved gross margins, and strong operating leverage, our visibility of future revenues remains outstanding, and we believe the demand for a diverse portfolio of solutions remains strong. We continue to achieve substantial growth in our total project backlog, which increased 16% to a record $5.1 billion, the first time Ameresco has exceeded this milestone. We added over $550 million of new project awards during the quarter, and as importantly, we continued to convert a significant amount of our awarded backlog into contracts, driving our contracted project backlog up 46% to $2.4 billion. Including the backlog from our recurring O&M and operating energy assets portfolio, our total revenue visibility now stands at almost $10 billion.

Turning to our balance sheet and cash flows, we ended the quarter with approximately $82 million in cash, with total corporate debt of $294 million. Our debt-to-EBITDA leverage ratio under our senior secured facility was 3.4% and remains below the covenant level of 3.5%. We continued to fuel our energy asset pipeline through the use of innovative financing solutions. During the quarter, the company raised approximately $170 million in new project financing proceeds, including a $78 million note issuance, which we are using to finance an energy storage asset currently under construction. The note purchase agreement also includes an uncommitted private shelf facility to support the development of future solar and battery energy assets. Our cash generation continued to be positive, with adjusted cash flows from operations of approximately $50 million.

This included the successful sale of approximately $71 million in investment tax credits generated from three of our RNG projects. Our eight-quarter rolling average adjusted cash from operations was approximately $47 million. I want to briefly discuss an update we have made to our non-GAAP adjusted cash flows from operations metric. Historically, we classified the proceeds resulting from the sale of transferable ITCs as operating activities in our GAAP statement of cash flows. In 2025, to better align with current accounting interpretations, we are now classifying these proceeds as investing activities. We are adding these proceeds back to adjusted cash from operations because we believe it enhances comparability with prior periods and better reflects the economic substance of these transactions. I also wanted to quickly touch on an item that you will see in our second quarter 10-Q. Battery supplier Powen recently filed for bankruptcy under Chapter 11.

Ameresco has a claim of approximately $27 million against Powen related to agreements signed beginning in 2022. We are actively monitoring the proceedings, which are in the early stages, and assessing any potential exposure. Importantly, this event will not impact the execution of any of our projects or energy assets. Now, let me spend a minute on our 2025 guidance. While we continue to evaluate the industry changes brought about by the One Big Beautiful Bill, we do not expect that these changes will have a material impact on Ameresco in the short term. With our strong first-half results and excellent forward visibility, we are pleased to reaffirm our guidance ranges for 2025. Now, I'd like to turn the call back over to George for closing comments.

Speaker 2

Thank you, Mark. The entire Ameresco team continues its excellent execution, delivering strong results. Over 25 years, we have built a unique energy solutions company which has evolved into the resilient business you see today and is well-positioned to serve the dynamic market opportunities of the future. In closing, I would like to once again thank our employees, customers, and stockholders for their continued support. Operator, we would like to open the call to questions.

Speaker 5

Question and answer session. If you have dialed in and would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad to raise your hand and join the queue. If you would like to withdraw your question, simply press star one again. Your first question comes from the line of Noah Duke Kaye with Oppenheimer & Co. Inc. Your line is open.

Hey, good afternoon. Thanks for taking the questions and great to see the business momentum. I'd like to start with asking about cash generation kind of in the back half here. There are always some puts and takes around, I know, project financing, just want to understand how you think about where we may end the year from a net leverage perspective and some of the things that you're watching for and we should be watching for related to finishing up some large projects and any incremental financing.

Speaker 0

Sure. Josh.

Thanks. No, this is Josh. We're not putting out a leverage guidance or a leverage target. I think we've said that we feel comfortable where we are now. Our lenders do as well, as evidenced by the 3-5 and the extension that we did back in January. As EBITDA begins to grow or continues to grow in the second half of the year, and as you pointed out, as we collect things from projects that larger projects are outstanding, we have a lot of project financing still planned. We think we probably should get probably below that level. If something comes up where we need a little bit more working capital to work on an interesting project or something else happens, it might be a little different than that. Either way, we feel very comfortable where we are from a leverage perspective. Thank you.

I want to ask a little bit about the contracted backlog. I think a trend now for several quarters has been the accelerating conversion to contracted backlog. It was up again very substantially. Can you talk a little bit about the driving factors there, maybe some of the factors that are helping the increase in conversion, and then also talk a little bit about the margin profile here, whether these could potentially be comparable to or better than the margins on the mix that's converting now.

Speaker 2

Yeah. Because the services that we are in and the expanded offerings for the infrastructure upgrades, there's more demand out there in the market, so you see people moving from the awarded category to the contracted category. That's why our contracted projects backlog now, year over year, is 46% up, which is unprecedented, but a great position to be in. That's why we feel pretty good where we are at the end of the year numbers. As far as the margin, and Mark can comment to this a little bit better, but we are very pleased to see a slight uptick trend on the projects. Even in Europe, we started early on in order to establish a good footprint there. We had some lower margin projects, but we established great credibility in the marketplace. Even there, we have established guidelines that we will not take projects below certain margins.

We still continue to be very successful in getting projects. I don't know if you want to add something.

Yeah, no, that's great. I think we feel really good about the quality of gross margins in the project backlog. As George said, we've even seen a bit of an uptick. I think the diversity in that backlog helps to create a little bit of a stabilizer, but we're encouraged to see that they're actually trending slightly up. That's been great. George mentioned the margins on the projects where we're seeing a lot of growth in Europe, and again, we're really pleased to see those margins heading in the right direction. I think the margins themselves, it's a reflection not only of the way we execute on our projects, but we also have taken a more disciplined approach to how we screen projects. We're obviously continuing to focus on developing projects that have better gross margins.

Speaker 0

Yep. Yep. That's great to hear. I just got to ask one more as a tack on to this. You highlighted the improving permitting environment for data center infrastructure. I think we'd all love to understand a little bit more how you see this playing out for Ameresco. Talk a little bit about your exposure in data center, what may be in the backlog, what may be in the pipeline, and what do you think this means to you?

Speaker 2

Nicole has been spearheading that particular effort, so I will let Nicole take this question.

Speaker 1

Sure. We've been working with a variety of players in the data center space, from data center developers, end users for data centers, commercial developers. Our role in this is certainly focused on the energy center for these data centers. As you can be well aware of the power shortage across the country, especially for this new AI load that's presenting itself, we're well positioned to be able to provide services for the energy supply, similar to what we do for the federal government. We've got several projects that we're working on, and a lot of them are in the early stages and different types of projects or different sizes of projects. We're excited about the opportunity for Ameresco.

Great. I'll follow up offline about that, excited to hear it. Thanks so much.

Great.

Speaker 5

Your next question comes from the line of George Gianarikas with Canaccord Genuity Corp. Your line is open.

Hey, everyone. Good afternoon, and thank you for taking my questions.

Speaker 0

Sure. Hey, George.

I'd like to ask about equipment supply as it relates to either natural gas turbines or battery cells. How's that potentially impacting your growth trajectory over the next couple of quarters to years?

Speaker 2

I mean, it's tight, especially on transformers. Electrical equipment is very tight. On gas turbines, I think, you know, much, much longer timelines. Some of the gas engines, though, reciprocating engines and so on, the timeline is not as long, and we have much better availability. Some of the clients that we work with already have some of the gas turbines in order, and they just want us to basically implement the project, provide the turnkey installation of the project. Transformers, and again, even the transformers, they are bifurcated. The large ones, the really large ones, you know, we're talking long, long delivery schedules, a couple of years and if you can get them. The smaller ones, which are more suited for the smaller projects that we do, the distributed generation projects, the 5, 10 to 15 megawatts and so on.

Sometimes we have to double up on the transformers to get the smaller size. Somehow, some way, we get into the other side, and we have been successful so far. We don't see any particular delays on projects that we have in the implementation schedule right now over the next 6 to 12 months.

Thank you. Maybe as a follow-up, given the success you've had in Europe, can you just sort of talk about your strategy there to potentially beef up operations? Are there additional acquisitions you're looking at on the continent? Thank you.

Also, we have both. The person we hired, the great, very seasoned executive, he worked for various American companies, so it's very good from that perspective, and especially public companies. His mission is to start hiring people, and he already has hired, I think, at least one. He's got a couple more to hire. Our strategy will be organic growth, and we have done very, very well so far as well, especially in the markets that we picked up, like Greece, Italy, Spain, and some of the Balkans, like Romania and so on. We have a very, very good track record. The other thing that's emerging a lot that they haven't done much with is battery storage in Greece, Italy, or wherever it is, Germany. They are in the very, very early stages of battery storage.

I think you will see us making a concerted effort to build up or develop a great reputation in Europe as we did over here on battery storage, as well as solar, of course. Acquisitions, we're always looking for good opportunities. If they present themselves, we will do it. Right now, the organic expansion that we have underway, it's working very, very well.

Thank you.

Speaker 5

Next question comes from the line of Stephen David Gengaro with Stifel. Your line is open.

Thanks. Hi, everybody. I think two from me. If I could start, when we're thinking about the deployment of energy assets, can you talk about how we should think about the back half of the year and sort of energy asset deliveries, and kind of where you think the energy assets, deployment assets look at year-end?

Speaker 0

Yeah. Josh.

Sure. Hey, Steve. We guided, I think, 100 to 120 megawatts. That's still our guidance. It seems like that would be a little bit light given how many assets we've put in service for the first two quarters, but the next two will be pretty chunky. Mark indicated that we've got a battery asset that we just financed that's in construction. It's actually in very late stages of construction. We had the press release about the Lee County renewable natural gas facility, which went COD in July, so that was not in the June numbers. We still feel really good about that number, the 100 to 120. Was that the answer to the whole question, or do you have a question about the pipeline as well? No, no, that was helpful.

Just kind of how you, yeah, and I imagine there was no change to the guide as far as the deployed assets for the year. I was getting at that. The other quick question I have, and I think it's a follow-up on one of the earlier questions. You talked about, in the last quarter, the success you're having in Europe on the project side from an order flow perspective. I believe that the margin profile in Europe was a little bit lighter. I'm just curious how that's evolving and if you think we've got to ultimately get to parity there as operations scale up in Europe.

Speaker 2

We started out, like you indicated, the margins were lower, but now the projects we have signed, let's say the last six months and going forward, the margins are considerably higher than when we started out with. We established the reputation there, then we established the guidelines, and we brought in the talent in our group. The organic growth, the people that we have developed in projects are doing an excellent, excellent job. I mean, there's no shortage of responding to requests or proposals. Our efforts, and that's why it's a good counterbalance to what's going on in the U.S., that we will put a special focus in Europe, especially in what I call high-growth areas in continental Europe, and to grow that particular unit to a good size. Basically, the strategy that we will use is not different than what we did in the U.S.

Start organically, and when we find a good acquisition, we take it in and grow from there. Especially when you go to a new country, you got to learn their culture and so on and so forth. Sometimes even if you buy a very small company, it helps you hit the ground running. The people that we have, that we have as partners, they know Romania very well because they worked there before. They know Italy very well, and they know Spain very well. Of course, Greece, because they are from Greece. It has worked out very, very well with this particular team up with Sunel.

Great. Thanks. If I could just ask one other quick one, have you had any proposals or looked at battery storage that's not lithium-ion and things that are more domestically sourced? I'm thinking of one in particular, but has there been any progress outside of that as far as opportunities on a more U.S.-manufactured product in the U.S. market?

Yeah, we have. Josh, because he's working on the financing, I'll quote a view of the image, and then we'll talk about it.

We have, and it was maybe two years ago that we had a pilot project up in Canada with a non-lithium technology. We got a little bit of experience with it back then, and we're in active discussions with that, with similar types of technologies and similar vendors for projects in the future as well, with some pretty large industrial C&I customers.

Yep.

Great. Thanks. Appreciate the color.

Speaker 5

Next question comes from the line of Ryan James Pfingst with B. Riley Securities. Your line is open.

Thanks for taking my questions. Not sure if Michael's on, but how are you thinking about the RNG business broadly following the legislation and the EPA's recent proposed role for cellulosic biofuel requirements over the next couple of years here?

Speaker 2

I mean, we still feel very, very good about the renewable natural gas business, and we continue to be very excited about it, especially with the ITC being able to monetize it. It's important to note that 10 plants that we plan to put in service over the next two to three years, we already have a safe harbor in order to be able to, by the end of last year, 2024, in order to get the ITC from them. On the RVO, the way they established it recently, I think it very much matches the growth of the industry, which is why the renewable identification number prices have not moved that much. We're excited about it. I think that we started early. We did the first plant back in 2003, and we learned a lot, and here we are.

Yeah. The 45Z, just to add, which also creates another opportunity. We were really encouraged to see that extended as part of the One Big Beautiful Bill. Once we get clarity on that, I think that's going to be another great opportunity for us with the renewable natural gas.

Speaker 0

Appreciate that, guys. George, you mentioned the SMR opportunity, understanding it's very early days there. Could you talk about the partnership you announced with Terrestrial Energy and what Ameresco's role might look like in potential projects there?

Terrestrial.

Speaker 4

The SMR technology.

Speaker 2

Since Nicole has been running that particular effort, Nicole can talk about it.

Speaker 1

Yes, this is part of our next-generation firm energy potential. One of the things with Terrestrial, we've been following their technology and working on part of a bridge solution, especially for in the data center energy, as we believe that in the later years, they'll be able to provide a more answer to firm clean energy potential for these customers. This is still a few years out. However, these projects take a while to get off the ground, large energy projects in general. The collaboration needs to start now to be able to start getting us that and go through all the steps that we need to get there.

Speaker 0

Great. Appreciate it, guys. I'll turn it back.

Speaker 5

Next question comes from the line of Benjamin Joseph Kallo with Robert W. Baird & Co. Incorporated. Your line is open.

Speaker 6

Hey, thank you, guys. Congratulations on the results. I'm following up to George's question earlier about the type of the turbine cells. I heard the turbine and the equipment piece, but just on the battery side, is there any kind of... Do you have any thoughts in being able to get batteries? I saw that, you know, in your owned assets pipeline, that also increased the % of batteries. I'm just wondering, with the new rules with tariffs, as well as the foreign entity of concern, if you're still able to, in the bankruptcy of someone like Powen, if you're still able to get batteries. That was my first question. Thank you.

Speaker 2

Yeah, we can get the batteries, especially in the U.S. The broader question, I think Nicole can answer it because she knows the mix of the various particular assets that we are working on. Nicole?

Speaker 1

Yes, sorry, the first part of that is just you're asking if there's potential supply, the timeline on that. You were breaking up for the very first part of the question.

Speaker 6

Yeah, sorry. Just more on being able to, you know, with tariffs and impact potentially impacting battery supply in the U.S., and then also around, you know, being able to get the ITC with foreign entity of concern. People have suppliers of their foreign entity of concerns. If that's disrupted at all, you know, not this year, but out-year type of supply chain for you guys.

Speaker 1

Sure. I think it's more where, I mean, first, we're closely monitoring what is going to come out related to the foreign entity and seeing how that impacts us. The first focus is really the ones that we have in construction right now that are being delivered still within this calendar year. We haven't had issues on the ones that are currently in construction. Just being strategic about the planning of the ones that we're starting ahead. We're confident that, with the different battery suppliers that we're using now, there will be supply for those. I'm working through to see how we need to have adjustments for tariffs, like through our contracts with customers, making sure that the tariff adjustment language is in there on our contracts as well to protect us from different price impacts that we can't capture at this point.

Just making sure that we're keeping that active in those contracts and on timing. At this point, the short outlook that we have is still trending in the right direction for us on timing and being able to protect through existing contract price adjustments. Does that answer your question?

Speaker 6

Thank you. On the bill, the reconciliation bill, you know, creating a shorter timeline in some areas and longer timelines in other areas. Could you just talk about the tightness of engineering construction, the engineering construction market, and that should be a positive benefit on margin, which you guys have already said margin is trending in the right direction. Could you also talk about how you can shift between the different areas of your diversification? Meaning like if you're going to do less mix in solar, can you move those employees more to energy efficiency or into another area? Maybe just talk about your ability to move your own employee force into the most lucrative areas. Thank you.

Yeah, I think I'll take, you know, certainly on the point about maybe pivoting from solar, we are already proactively with some of that team that was developing more on the solar side, pivoting to more on the battery storage. We can certainly do it there. I think within the projects business in the call, you might be able to speak to that a little bit more, but again, I don't think we're seeing as much impact there, so we won't need to shift as much with respect to the labor resources there.

Speaker 2

I mean, so far, we have been able to execute and execute very well, even though whether it's material supplies or labor constraints and so on, I cannot say that we have a particular project being delayed because of any shortages. That's why the numbers indicate they are what they are.

Speaker 6

Yes, thank you very much.

Speaker 2

Thank you.

Speaker 5

Next question comes from the line of Eric Stine with Craig-Hallum Capital Group LLC. Your line is open.

Hi, everyone.

Speaker 0

Hi, Eric.

Hey. Maybe we could just touch on the federal business. I know, if we go back to earlier in the year, you'd called out the three projects, then you fast forward a quarter, and two of them kind of were back to normal, and one, I think, was being rescoped. You clearly sound more optimistic about it, but it doesn't sound like you're necessarily ready to sound the all-clear. I'm curious, would you agree with that characterization? If so, what do you kind of need to see to where you think everything that was going on in late January and February was kind of noise, but in actuality, the business is kind of where it would have ended up all along?

Speaker 2

Basically, I'll let Nicole answer it, put more color to it. We are very pleased where we are. You know, like I said, the federal government is moving much, much better than it was at the beginning of the year. We pretty much, I think we are at the level that we were under the previous administration, and probably a little bit better because of the larger projects and the data centers developing in the federal basis and so on. Nicole, you want to add a little bit more to it?

Speaker 1

Yeah, I think that's right, George. I think just to add to that, like we said earlier in the year, our value proposition of energy savings, especially in our energy savings performance contracting for the federal government, provides bipartisan value in that it's giving infrastructure upgrades at these military bases, at GSA buildings. We are working through, even with the GSA projects that we mentioned back earlier this year, just rescoping some of those that may have had, for example, a solar looking at, have been replacing with natural gas solutions. The value that's still is still inherently there in the contract. I think we're still, as new people come in with this administration, there's always an education that has to go, has to happen, and that advocacy.

Certainly in a much better place than we were in January as they learn and become more familiar about these types of projects and the value they provide.

Got it. I guess in the context of early in the year, rescoping, you know, many, including me, kind of took that as maybe less content, but it doesn't sound like that's the case. It might just be, as you said, just changing some of the characteristics of the project itself, not necessarily the value to Ameresco.

That's correct. That's exactly right. We are trying to, I guess the money's still not there for the federal government, so it's still a very unique tool that can be used, and it's just how you're using it and what the scope actually will be.

Got it. Okay. Thank you for that. Maybe last one for me, just when you think about just high-level second half of the year, whether it's based on, you mentioned some assets coming online, the renewable natural gas plan, which will start to impact third quarter, project backlog. Any thoughts on kind of linearity of third quarter and fourth quarter, you know, relative to each other?

Speaker 2

Mark here.

Yeah. Hey, Eric. This is Mark. I think, you know, with respect to the revenue, I'd probably expect Q4 to be a bit heavier than Q3. I think we've been, with the strong execution, certainly in the first half, we've been able to execute a little bit faster on some projects, and we certainly saw that again in Q2 as we were able to pull some revenue ahead from Q3. I would expect Q4 to be a bit heavier than Q3 just from a shaping standpoint.

Speaker 0

Okay. Got it. Obviously, continued energy asset growth, especially since you are bringing on the, well, the renewable natural gas plant, which that'll start to impact third quarter.

Yeah, remember, those plants take a little bit of time to ramp up. We'll start to see some of that, but probably not as much of an impact in Q3. It'll start to really hit its stride in Q4 and beyond.

Speaker 5

Next question comes from the line of Joseph Amil Osha with Guggenheim Securities, Inc. Your line is open.

Thank you. Hello, everybody. I wanted to return a little bit to the line of questioning on storage. Obviously, we're waiting for some resolution, but we do know it's going to be pretty hard to claim an ITC if you're using Chinese cells because of the fiat issue. I'm just wondering, in your conversations with your customers, is the intention basically to tell them that they have to eat that cost, or are there real plans to source cells from the U.S. or what? I'm just trying to get a sense of what's happening here because we do have some decent level of understanding as to what the challenges are going to be here.

Speaker 0

Yeah. Hey, Jill. This is Josh. I'll take the first stab. You're right. There was, I think, a line of questioning about domestic supply, and we are investigating that from new suppliers as well as existing. One of the larger suppliers here in the U.S. is working on a domestic solution. You can probably figure out who it might be. We are exploring domestic solutions. We have other places where our customers can absorb some costs. It's really just a mix. I think we're going to do as much as we can to safe harbor responsibly projects that can start construction this year, of course, pending guidance of what that really means from Treasury. Where we can get domestic supply, we'll explore that, and where we can share or even pass on the full price increase to customers that are a little bit less price-sensitive, we'll do that as well.

It's not really a one-size-fits-all. All of our projects are so different.

Thank you for that, Josh. I guess that latter point is the most interesting one. You are in such a strong position here and people need storage. It sounds like in some cases, there are situations where you're, are you saying you're simply just going to take Chinese cells and tell your customers, you know, deal with it? Is that part of the solution here?

I don't think from a customer service perspective, we'd ever say deal with it. I think everything's a negotiation, and we have good relations with our customers. I think if there are levers to pull on price, maybe we can add value somewhere else or they can extend a contractor. There are 100 different things we can negotiate with customers in every deal. That is one potential possibility, especially if it's time-sensitive. If we can get, let's call it, Chinese cells quicker, they might be willing to pay for that speed versus waiting for something domestic, right? Everything is a little bit different. It's all very, we'll call it cordial, professional. I don't think we're taking any position with our customers, take it, leave it, deal with it, anything like that. They are active negotiations, and we're in good standing with all the customers.

Speaker 2

To follow up on that, we have a couple of customers that if this happens, this is the price. If that happens, this is the price. It's a back and forth.

Excellent. Thank you very much, guys. Thank you.

Speaker 0

Thanks, Joe.

Speaker 5

Next question comes from the line of Craig Kenneth Shere with Tuohy Brothers Investment Research. Your line is open.

Good afternoon. Thanks for taking the question.

Speaker 2

Hey.

I understand the One Big Beautiful Bill is not impacting near-term guidance. I guess a two-part initial question. Do you see this potentially having a moderating influence on U.S. growth? In light of the European, I mean, like over multiple years, and with the strength in Europe, could you envision the geographic mix kind of moving over time more towards a 50/50 rather than, you know, a third or so?

Look, Europe is 20% of the backlog right now, and most likely it's going to grow much faster than the U.S., no question about it. The market in the U.S., because of the energy prices, the electric rates going up as they are doing for the next several years, and the resiliency issues associated, especially with some of the commercial and industrial customers, what we've seen in the market, they are concerned about reliability. We have several heavy industrial customers that are looking for battery storage combined with solar or some kind of a cogeneration. The markets in the U.S. have expanded. That's why we feel very good where we are.

Great. I just wanted to dig a little more into the timing of SMR deployments and maybe your ideal size project there, both domestically and internationally. Do you see Ameresco's role more of a supportive function, like transitional generation until the modular nuclear comes online? Could you ultimately get into some EPC work around actual SMR infrastructure?

I mean, we have been drawn into the actual infrastructure, and this is nothing new. I mean, if you go back to the Savannah River project, that was a $200 million infrastructure project, a cogeneration project with a wood chip factory there, as well as a wood burning facility with fluoride boilers and so on. Many of the projects we've been doing with the federal government involve cogeneration turbines, engines. If you look at the renewable natural gas plants, it's about a $100 million project. Each one of them, they are more complex than anything else anybody can do. I think that the best projects for us will be in the $100 million to $200 million, maybe $300 million projects, especially on the battery size or the turbine or the engine size projects. We will probably, on those projects, be the EPC contractor.

Great. Thank you.

Speaker 5

Seeing no further questions at this time, that concludes our question and answer session and today's conference call. Thank you all for joining. You may now disconnect.