Tag: AMRC

Tom Konrad CFA The climate of uncertainty caused by deadlock in Washington is leading to penny-wise, pound foolish behavior at all levels of government, and Ameresco, Inc. (NYSE:AMRC) felt the pain severely in the third quarter. Framingham, MA based Ameresco helps institutions, mostly government entities, improve their energy infrastructure and reduce energy use without capital outlays or increases in energy budgets.  It does this by using the cost savings from energy efficiency to finance the capital outlays, allowing schools, hospitals, and the like to insulate or install solar panels while sticking to existing budgets, and often producing some savings.  To take three examples...

Tom Konrad CFA A Fat Cat. Photo of "Cauchy" by author. Friday, in a generally positive article about Lime Energy (NASD:LIME), I noted that the top five executives at the company seemed overpaid in comparison to one of their nearest rivals, Orion Energy Systems (NYSE:OESX).  Since this was not based on in-depth research, and is a pretty serious allegation about a company I’m otherwise enthusiastic about, I decided to do some more digging. Who is a Fat Cat? Using data on executive pay from Morningstar, I compared executive pay at...

Tom Konrad CFA Ameresco, Inc. (NYSE:AMRC) reported first quarter (Q1) earnings this morning, missing analysts’ earnings expectations by two-thirds.  While Q1 earnings were only 3 cents compared to the 10 cents expected by analysts, the company slightly beat revenue expectations by $600,000 for overall Q1 revenues of $146.6 million. While the headline was disappointing, President and CEO George Sakellaris confidently reaffirmed revenue guidence for the rest of the year, saying that he expected 2012 revenues to be heavily back loaded.  Sakellaris predicts the second half to account for 60-62% of 2012 revenues, compared to 38%- 40% for...

Tom Konrad CFA May 7: Auction of Uni-Solar Fails to Draw a Qualified Bid As if there weren't enough bad signs for the solar industry these days, Energy Conversion Devices (OTC:ENERQ.PK) is cancelling the auction for United Solar Ovonic LLC (A.k.a. Uni-solar) as a going concern because of the failure to receive a qualified bid in the court-approved bankruptcy proceeding.  The companies have retained an auction services firm to prepare for the sale of Uni-solar's assets. May 8: Earnings Misses Hide Strong Revenue Trends at Ameresco (AMRC) and Pike Electric (PIKE) Ameresco (AMRC) and Pike Electric...

Tom Konrad CFA Picking the best energy services stocks. Fossil fuels are getting more expensive, but so are the industrial metals and other commodities used in the wind and solar farms with which we hope to replace them.   Meanwhile, government and personal budgets everywhere are under strain.  These economic imperatives make energy efficiency the one clean energy sector that may benefit despite rising denial about the existence of climate change among the US political elite and continued economic weakness. Energy efficiency represents the sort of true win-win-win in that it saves money, reduces the use...

Tom Konrad CFA The high upfront cost of efficient buildings (and efficiency in general) is more than offset by the significant long term rewards, as you can see from the McKinsey chart below. Despite the long term benefits, the upfront cost is often a barrier, especially to government entities in today's tight budgetary environment. Performance contracting offers them a way to square the circle between the long term budget benefits of efficient buildings and the often significant capital cost. This works by funding the capital improvement with debt secured by future energy savings. An...

David L. Levy Boston-based Zipcar (ZIP) raised $174 million from its Initial Public Offering in April 2011. It already has operates in 14 big cities and 230 college campuses around the United States, Canada and the UK, and is planning to use the new capital for market expansion. Zipcar is not a high tech business, and its success is not due to sophisticated technological innovation; rather, it’s an example of business model innovation. Zipcar reinvented the traditional car rental business by simplifying and reducing the costs for short-term rentals, and rebranding the service as green car sharing. They...

Tom Konrad CFA I recently interviewed Richard Domaleski, CEO of World Energy Solutions (NASD:XWES).  World Energy is a comprehensive energy management services firm whose core offering is extremely price competitive energy sourcing (that is, finding an energy provider to supply all of a client's energy needs at the lowest possible cost.)  They achieve competitive sourcing using an electronic energy exchange designed to achieve much better price discovery in what is traditionally a very opaque market.  According to Domaleski, a recent KEMA study showed that only 7% of large commercial, industrial, and government customers are sourcing their...