Ameresco's second quarter delivered the cleanest version of the bull case the company has been building for two years. Revenue of $515.5 million rose 9% year over year, gross margin expanded to 17.7% from 15.5%, operating income jumped 59% to $44.2 million, and adjusted EBITDA grew 12% to $62.8 million. The headline GAAP earnings per share of $0.18, down from $0.24 a year ago, looks like a stumble until the rest of the income statement clarifies the picture: the difference is almost entirely higher interest expense from a larger energy-asset portfolio, an unfavorable swing on a lower tax benefit, and $10.2 million of net income attributable to a new non-controlling partner. Strip those mechanics and the operating quarter is one of Ameresco's strongest. The company increased its full-year non-GAAP EPS guidance by $0.05 on both ends to $1.15 to $1.35.
The real story sits in the backlog. Total project backlog grew 32% year over year to a record $6.73 billion, and the awarded component - projects under exclusive arrangement but not yet contracted - surged 65% to $4.4 billion. The driver is the new Power Infrastructure pillar, where Ameresco won $1.8 billion of new awards in the quarter, with $1.2 billion tied to behind-the-meter data center power. Three new data center projects advanced to awarded status, bringing the count in the pipeline to five, and management says only a portion of those projects' total value is currently booked. The thesis the company has been selling - that aging grid infrastructure and the explosion of data center power demand will make integrated behind-the-meter solutions a multi-year, multi-billion-dollar category - now has the numbers behind it.
Two corporate actions frame the rest of the quarter. The May closing of the Neogenyx Fuels joint venture with HASI brought in $233.8 million in cash, of which $57.9 million paid down project-level debt; the Renewable Fuels segment now consolidates with a 30% non-controlling interest, which is why net income to common shareholders looks compressed even as operating profit at the segment level improved. The capital commitment - $400 million total from HASI, with the remaining $166.2 million to be contributed over time - gives Ameresco a balance-sheet partner to scale the energy-asset portfolio without straining corporate leverage. Corporate debt-to-EBITDA sat at 3.2x against a 3.5x covenant at quarter-end, with $42.8 million of revolver capacity available and a fresh $45 million term-loan increase in March already drawn. The second frame is the unanswered SCE dispute, where as much as $89 million of liquidated damages remain at stake on the third of three California battery storage projects; that overhang is real but bounded, and management is still arguing that force majeure and SCE's own conduct should release them. The setup going into the back half is unusually coherent - record backlog, a capital partner to fund growth, and a tax-credit accounting change that lifted the year's EPS guidance.