HA Sustainable (HASI) Q3 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

DATE

Thursday, Nov. 5, 2026

CALL PARTICIPANTS

• Senior Vice President of Investor Relations - Aaron Chew
• President and Chief Executive Officer - Jeff Lipson
• Chief Financial Officer - Chuck Melko
• Chief Client Officer - Susan Nickey

TAKEAWAYS

• GAAP Diluted EPS -- $1.04, increasing from $0.61 in the prior year period.
• Adjusted EPS -- $0.82, representing 2.5% year-over-year growth from $0.80.
• Adjusted Recurring Net Investment Income -- $121 million, an increase of 15% year over year reflecting higher investment yields.
• Managed Assets -- $19.0 billion, growing 27% versus the prior year due to robust investment activity.
• New Investment Volume -- $1.1 billion closed in the quarter, with year-to-date closings reaching $2.8 billion.
• New Asset Yields -- Greater than 11% year to date, supporting the maintenance of investment margins despite higher base interest rates.
• Adjusted Return on Equity -- 16.1% for the quarter and 15.6% on a year-to-date basis.
• Investment Pipeline -- Greater than $6.5 billion, remaining diversified across more than 10 asset classes and three end markets.
• Portfolio Yield -- 9.2% through the first nine months of the year, compared to 8.5% in the same period last year.
• SunStrong Management Gain -- $35 million, reflecting a fair value adjustment due to increased profitability of the solar asset servicing platform.
• RNG Economic Loss -- $21 million, recognized as a charge for estimated remediation costs at a consolidated project.
• Origination Fee and Other Income -- $27 million year to date, up nearly fourfold from $7 million last year.
• CCH1 Assets -- $3.9 billion, increasing more than 230% year over year with $2.0 billion in fee-generating assets.
• Liquidity -- $2.0 billion at quarter end, including $1.9 billion in unreserved capacity under credit facilities.
• Adjusted Leverage Ratio -- 1.8 to 1.0, remaining within the company's target range of 1.5 to 2.0.
• Total Debt Outstanding -- $6.5 billion, with 87% of debt either fixed-rate or hedged against rate volatility.
• 2028 Adjusted EPS Guidance -- $3.55 to $3.65, reaffirmed by management as a long-term target.
• 2028 Adjusted ROE Guidance -- At least 17.0%, underpinned by expected growth in fee income and capital efficiency.
• Dividend Payout Ratio Target -- Less than 50% by 2028 and less than 40% by 2030, compared to current payout levels.
• CarbonCount Score -- 0.34 metric tons per $1,000 invested for new transactions closed during the quarter.
• Managed Carbon Avoidance -- 10.8 million metric tons annually across the full portfolio of managed assets.
• Water Savings Metric -- 900 million gallons year to date, following a new investment in wastewater treatment infrastructure.
• Weighted Average Interest Cost -- 6.2%, up from 5.9% in the prior year due to the issuance of higher-rate junior subordinated notes.

Need a quote from a Motley Fool analyst? Email pr@fool.com

RISKS

• Chuck Melko warned that "while it is still our baseline view that we will recover all of our invested capital, there is a risk to that view," referring to the equipment replacement costs at the consolidated RNG project.
• Jeff Lipson noted that "10-year treasury yields exceeded 5% in the third quarter for the first time in almost 20 years," creating a more volatile capital market environment for the company's financing activities.
• Management reported that 1% of the portfolio is now classified as Category 3, which indicates "substantial doubt regarding our ability to recover some or all of our invested capital" for those specific assets.

SUMMARY

HA Sustainable Infrastructure Capital, Inc. (NYSE:HASI) reported third quarter results featuring growth in recurring income and managed assets despite a volatile interest rate environment. Management stated that the company closed over $1 billion in transactions during the quarter while maintaining asset yields above 11%. The company reported a significant expansion of its partnership with Invenergy and highlighted a fair value gain in its SunStrong Management affiliate. Financial results were supported by a hedging strategy that fixed 87% of outstanding debt.

• CEO Lipson stated, "we have not changed our outlook for the business as a result of the election outcome," regarding potential policy shifts in the renewable energy sector.
• Management noted that 10-year treasury yields exceeding 5% has not altered the economic calculation that renewables remain the least expensive source of power.
• The SunStrong Management platform now services more than 5 GW of solar capacity and approximately 450,000 customers.
• Management reported that discussions for CCH2 are progressing and the new vehicle is likely to embark in early 2027.
• CEO Lipson indicated that while common equity was used for the Invenergy investment, the expected IRR is consistent with recent grid-connected projects.
• The company reported no usage of its at-the-market share issuance program during the third quarter of 2026.

INDUSTRY GLOSSARY

• ARNI: Adjusted Recurring Net Investment Income, a measure of recurring income from the portfolio, management fees, and retained interests, net of interest expense.
• BTM: Behind-the-meter, referring to energy projects located on the customer side of the electric meter, such as residential solar.
• CarbonCount: A proprietary metric used to estimate the carbon dioxide emissions avoided per $1,000 of investment.
• CCH1: Carbon Capital Holdings 1, a co-investment vehicle used by the company to manage assets with institutional partners.
• Grid-Connected: Utility-scale energy projects that supply electricity directly to the electrical grid.
• HLBV: Hypothetical Liquidation at Book Value, a GAAP accounting method for equity method investments in partnership structures.
• SunStrong Management (SSM): An operating company providing servicing support for residential solar assets.

Full Conference Call Transcript

Operator: As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Aaron Chew, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations.

Aaron Chew: Thank you, operator, and good afternoon to everyone joining us today for HASI's third quarter 2026 conference call. Earlier this afternoon, HASI distributed a press release reporting our third quarter 2026 results, a copy of which is available on our website, along with the slide presentation we will be referring to today. This conference call is being webcast live on the investor relations of our website, where a replay will be available later today. Some of the comments made in this call are forward-looking statements, which are subject to risks and uncertainties described in the risk factor section of the company's Form 10-K and other filings with the SEC. Actual results may differ materially from those stated.

Today's discussion also includes some non-GAAP financial measures. A reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP financial measures is available in our earnings release and presentation. Joining us on the call today are Jeff Lipson, the company's President and CEO, as well as Chuck Melko, our Chief Financial Officer. Also available for Q&A is Susan Nickey, our Chief Client Officer. To kick things off, I will turn it over to our President and CEO, Jeff Lipson, who will begin on slide three. Jeff?

Jeff Lipson: Thank you, Aaron, and welcome to our third quarter 2026 earnings call. I am pleased to report that HASI has delivered another solid quarterly report, underpinned by robust investment activity, strong asset yields, healthy investment margins, and continued growth in fee income. Our strategy of partnering with clients, providing capital to climate-positive projects, continues to prove resilient. Adjusted earnings per share in the quarter was $0.82, enhanced by a fair value adjustment of our SunStrong Management affiliate. On a year-to-date basis, our adjusted earnings per share has grown 15% versus 2025. Adjusted return on equity is 15.6% year to date, as our balance sheet management strategy continues to result in higher returns.

Through the first three quarters of 2026, adjusted recurring net investment income has grown 23% year over year to $330 million, and managed assets have increased 26% year over year to $19 billion. Supported by our outlook for investment volumes and margins, as well as fee income, we are reaffirming our guidance for adjusted EPS in a range of $3.55-$3.65, and adjusted ROE of at least 17%, both in 2028. To be clear, we have not changed our outlook for the business as a result of the election outcome. Turning to slide four, I want to address the increase in interest rates in 2026 and the impact on our business.

10-year treasury yields exceeded 5% in the third quarter for the first time in almost 20 years. However, we continue to implement strategies that mitigate interest rate volatility and result in a more stable, predictable business. In fact, we closed more than $1 billion of transactions in the quarter, and the year-to-date weighted average yield for balance sheet investments is greater than 11%. Our portfolio yield is up over 70 basis points over the course of this year. On the funding side of the business, interest expense is up only modestly in 2026, as most of our debt is term debt, which is unimpacted by the current rate volatility, and our short-term funding costs actually declined year over year.

Whereas page four details the outcome of our interest rate risk management, page five details the tactics to achieve these outcomes. The single most important tactic that minimizes our interest rate sensitivity is that we issue long-term debt and make long-term investments with a targeted return in excess of these debt costs, locking in the spread for several years. Notably, investment-grade status has reduced both the spread and volatility of our debt costs. Secondly, we reduce any duration mismatch of our assets and liabilities with a hedging program that utilizes forward-starting swaps and other derivatives to extend the duration of our liabilities.

In addition, it is critical to note that we have structured our company with a focus on the IRR of our investments and the long-term cash flow of the business, and not on moment-in-time measurements such as net asset value. Finally, I will also note that we generally minimize our floating rate exposure, both on the asset and liability side of our balance sheet. On average, more than 90% of our debt has been fixed rate or hedged over the last two years, and only around 5% of our investment portfolio is in floating rate receivables. Now turning to slide six, we examine the impact interest rates have on renewable energy project economics.

There's often a perception that renewable energy is disproportionately exposed to interest rates relative to other sources of electricity. While it's true the cost of renewables is naturally impacted by higher interest rates, particularly because the vast majority of lifetime costs of a renewable energy project is incurred upfront, this impact is not disproportional to other sources and does not change the calculation that renewables remain the least expensive and fastest-to-market source of power. This slide utilizes Lazard's annualized levelized cost of energy report to confirm these conclusions, and we at HASI are not seeing any reduction in activity from our clients related to renewables development, and continue to observe higher PPA prices, reflecting continued strong demand.

Turning to slide seven, we highlight a significant new investment we closed last quarter in a portfolio of projects developed by Invenergy. This investment includes 10 utility-scale solar plus storage, and wind projects totaling 2.7 GW across seven states. It represents a major expansion of our partnership with Invenergy that originally began more than 10 years ago, and we look forward to building on this partnership in the years ahead. We also note on this slide our substantial activity in grid-connected investments, particularly over the past two years, which reflects both the large volume of renewables development activity and HASI's strong presence as a leading capital partner.

Turning to slide eight, even after closing more than $1 billion in new transactions, we successfully replenished our pipeline so that it remains greater than $6.5 billion as of quarter end. The pipeline also remains highly diversified across our three largest end markets and more than 10 asset classes. We also include an other sustainable infrastructure category, which encompasses many of the new opportunities we are considering, similar to our recent announcements related to water infrastructure and enhanced rock weathering. There are also several trends noted on this slide, including a robust PPA market, expected growth in resi and community solar and storage, and continued development of RNG, all of which support ongoing pipeline growth.

Turning to slide nine, I would like to provide an update and overview of our investment in SunStrong Management. As a reminder, SunStrong was a joint venture created by HASI and SunPower in 2018 for the purpose of owning and financing residential solar systems and leases. Following the SunPower bankruptcy, SunStrong was split into SunStrong Management, known as SSM, which is an operating company primarily providing servicing support for solar assets, and SunStrong Capital Holdings, which continues to own the solar systems and securitized cash flows. As you may recall, in the third quarter of 2025, we were able to generate a meaningful distribution from SunStrong Capital Holdings due to a prudent senior debt refinancing.

In the third quarter of 2026, we were able to take a meaningful gain on the SSM investment, for which we utilized fair value accounting treatment. As we turn to slide 10, we display the tremendous progress the SSM team has achieved in terms of assets under management, volume of customers, revenue, and profitability. As of the end of Q3, SSM services more than 5 GW of solar energy capacity, more than 160 EV charging systems, and approximately 450,000 solar customers. Revenues exceeded $100 million in 2025 and have grown significantly in 2026, and the company is now EBITDA positive.

Given all this progress and an independent third-party valuation, we are increasing the book value of our SSM investment to $41 million this quarter, and we believe SSM offers even greater potential for appreciation and income generation in the years ahead. With that, I will ask Chuck to discuss our Q3 results in greater detail. Chuck?

Chuck Melko: Thanks, Jeff. Before I get into our financials, I should highlight that we are realizing the expected benefits from putting in place the building blocks for a solid foundation of recurring earnings and equity capital efficiency that is allowing us to thrive in a backdrop of volatility in the capital markets. Let us take a look at our key profitability metrics. For the first nine months of the year, adjusted EPS has grown to $2.34. Adjusted earnings is up 21% to $309 million. Adjusted ROE increased from 13.4% to 15.6%. This performance is driven by the success we continue to see in our transaction closings, maintenance of investment margins, increased asset management fees, and our equity capital efficiency.

As Jeff already mentioned, we are on track to deliver on all of our guidance metrics. Slide 12 provides the key components of our earnings growth. The largest contributor is our adjusted recurring net investment income, or ARNI for short, which has grown 23% year-over-year to $330 million through the first three quarters of 2026. Included in ARNI is a $35 million gain from SunStrong Jeff just discussed. This gain was offset in part by a $21 million charge we took in Q3 related to the RNG asset we consolidated in Q2.

Work is underway, and the equipment replacement is proceeding as planned, and we continue to expect the plant to come online in the first half of 2027, with a potential sale to be completed before the end of 2027. While it is still our baseline view that we will recover all of our invested capital, there is a risk to that view, and we believe it is appropriate for a reserve to be taken. Gain on sale was $46 million through the first nine months of the year, compared to $51 million in the same period last year.

Based on what is currently in the pipeline for the remainder of the year, we expect gain on sale to be between $50 million and $60 million. Due to the growth in our ARNI, we still expect 2026 adjusted EPS to be in line with our long-term adjusted EPS growth target of 10%. Lastly, origination fees and other income was up almost four times from the same period last year to $27 million, driven by both CCH1 origination fees as well as other one-time fees. Slide 13 provides an overview of closed transactions for the first nine months of the year.

We have closed a total of $2.8 billion of transactions so far this year, $2.5 billion of which will be held on our balance sheet or at CCH1, a meaningful step up from our pace of investments over the prior three years. For our new balance sheet or CCH1 transactions, we are already at the midpoint of our target of $2 billion-$3 billion, and expect to be at the higher end of the range for the full year. Our new investments continue to be diversified, and their related yields are supportive in maintaining our margins and have been on average greater than 11% so far this year. On slide 14, we provide a summary of our base of earning assets.

Managed assets have grown almost $3 billion for the year and have nearly doubled since 2022 to $19 billion, while our portfolio has grown 20% from the end of last year to more than $9 billion. Assets held at CCH1 have grown more than 230% from the same time last year to nearly $4 billion, where half of that is fee-generating assets. Discussions and work related to CCH2 are still progressing, and we remain optimistic on a smooth transition. On the diversification of our portfolio, you can clearly see that we continue to not be concentrated in any one particular asset class.

While we may have new investment concentrations in an individual quarter, our pace of closings eventually balance out the distribution of our investments and is a driver in the strong performance of our portfolio. On slide 15, we highlight our capital markets activity since our last call. CCH1 priced its third note offering in October, $400 million of 20-year fixed rate amortizing notes due in 2046. Spreads were consistent with the prior issuance in May of this year at 195 basis points. This was achieved despite an increase in market spreads and volatility across fixed income markets at the time.

In addition, we closed on a new secured term loan facility with a spread to SOFR that improved 100 basis points from a secured term loan it replaced. On the equity capital front, we have had another quarter with no ATM usage to fund our growth, and we continue to expect minimal ATM share issuance in 2026. As mentioned before, future growth in our transaction opportunities may require equity issuance, but we will be more efficient with how much earnings are generated for each share of equity issued. We ended the quarter with $2 billion of liquidity, and our adjusted leverage ratio was well within our 1.5 to 2x target at 1.8x debt to equity.

Lastly, we ended the quarter with a slightly higher mix of floating rate debt to total debt. This largely reflects amounts outstanding on our commercial paper program. The higher short-term borrowing balance is timing-related, as our funding strategy is to initially fund with short-term borrowing and refinance with longer-term unsecured notes. Moving on to slide 16. Given the volatility in the credit markets, it is helpful to spend a few minutes on our credit spreads, which have narrowed considerably over the last few years, helping to offset the increase in base rates over the last few months.

From our last issuance earlier this year in February, there has been a meaningful improvement in our credit spreads in secondary market trading relative to issuance. We previously issued a 10-year note with a spread of 195 basis points at pricing, and it is now trading 15-25 basis points lower on the spread. With the improvement in our spreads, as well as a positive outlook recently announced by Moody's, we are positioned for success on our next issuance. Additionally, as I mentioned earlier, we have a commercial paper program that has seen improvement in cost with an 80 basis point reduction over the past year. I will now turn the call back to Jeff for his closing remarks.

Jeff Lipson: Thanks, Chuck. Turning to slide 17, we display our sustainability and impact highlights. We note HASI improved its S&P Corporate Sustainability Assessment, was named one of America's Greenest Companies for the third year in a row by Newsweek, as well as a Low Carbon Leader by Morningstar Sustainalytics. As always, we also highlight our CarbonCount and WaterCount figures for our investments year to date, in particular highlighting the 900 million gallon increase in water savings so far this year, driven in large part by our latest investment in wastewater treatment infrastructure we announced last quarter.

Wrapping up on slide 18, we are reiterating our guidance for adjusted EPS, adjusted ROE, and payout ratio for 2028, as well as our guidance for transaction volume in 2026. The outlook for our business continues to be underpinned by a healthy pace of new investment activity in both our existing end markets as well as new opportunities. We also continue to achieve attractive asset yields, improvement in our debt spreads, an increasing level of fee income, and impactful capital efficiency. All of these positive outcomes are due to the hard work, dedication, and talent of our growing team that has been the key to our success.

We look forward to a strong close to 2026 and starting off 2027 with great momentum. Operator, please open the line for questions.

Operator: Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question and answer session. Should you have a question, please press star followed by the one on your touchtone phone. You will hear a three-tone prompt acknowledging your request, and your questions will be pulled in the order they are received. Should you wish to decline from the polling process, please press star followed by the two. If you are using a speakerphone, please lift the handset before pressing any keys. One moment, please, for your first question. Your first question comes from Noah Kaye with Oppenheimer. Your line is now open.

Noah Kaye: Well, good afternoon, and thanks for taking the questions. Congratulations on the investments within Invenergy. Would love to get a bit more color on the nature of that. Is it structured as pref equity or common? Does it vary across the different types of assets? I assume it's at that sort of yield that you talked about for the investment profile overall, but just a little bit more color would be helpful. Thank you.

Jeff Lipson: Thanks, Noah, for the question. In this case, this investment is common equity. It is an investment where we had a very strong sponsor, we had very strong contracts, we had equipment we were comfortable with, and there were several other elements of the transaction of the investment that made us comfortable being common. In this case, we are common. As you point out, often we have pref equity, but in this case, we are common. We have more upside, and I would say our expected IRR is consistent with where we have been investing in grid-connected recently.

Noah Kaye: Excellent. Then, this is sort of a victim of your success question, but indicating that the company is on track to reach near the high end of the targeted closed transactions, you are effectively already there, right? So, understanding that timing can always be lumpy, is there anything that we should read into for the fourth quarter to make that a relatively low amount of activity, or is that just some conservatism on your part?

Jeff Lipson: Just for clarification, when you say we are almost there, what our guidance is for balance sheet. For instance, on page 13, it is the $2.5 billion number, not the $2.8 billion number that would be the guidance number we are guiding towards. But yes, we are relatively close to the high end already, but I would not read anything into that. I think the fourth quarter pipeline still looks good. It is always difficult to predict timing of closings, but there is nothing to read into it around fourth quarter perhaps being slow in any way. We are expecting a good fourth quarter, but if things slip into the first quarter, that is not actually a big deal either.

So no, I would not read anything into that.

Noah Kaye: Great. Maybe just one quick last one. It looks like CCH1, if I have the math right, added about $200 million net quarter-over-quarter. Please correct me if that is not the case, but just how to square that with the +$1 billion of transactions closed in the quarter.

Jeff Lipson: Well, a couple things. First of all, the billion closed does not necessarily mean funded, and the CCH number is the funded number in CCH. Another clarification is I do not have the number right in front of me, but I do think funded balance in CCH did go up much more than $200 million in the quarter. Scrambling for that number now, but I think it is closer to $1 billion. Is that right, Chuck?

Chuck Melko: Yeah, $1 billion is the total increase in CCH1, and that is the number that is inclusive of KKR's funding portion, a little bit of debt funding, as well as our equity commitment funding.

Noah Kaye: Okay. Thank you for clearing that up. I will turn it over.

Jeff Lipson: Thanks, Noah Kaye.

Operator: Your next question comes from Ben Kallo with Baird. Your line is now open.

Ben Kallo: Hey, good evening, guys. Congrats on the quarter. Just maybe on CCH2, I know it's still early, but do you expect this going to be still just KKR as a partner, or are you bringing in other investors in that? I have a follow-up as well.

Jeff Lipson: Thanks for the question, Ben. We are talking to other parties as well. I think we mentioned that on our call. But nothing definitive to report yet. We remain very confident there will be a CCH2. At this point, it's likely to embark early next year, and it may have some other partners in addition to KKR.

Ben Kallo: Great. Thanks, Jeff. Just, as you think about the pipeline, and just with the election and worries around data centers, could you just talk about the exposure to data centers regionally or however you think best to explain it to us? Thank you.

Jeff Lipson: Sure. We don't have direct exposure to data centers. Of course, data centers do drive much of the demand for electricity. That's driving much of the development that we see and invest in. We don't foresee that demand curve changing. I think the demand expectation from most of the consulting companies has not changed, and therefore, as a downstream impact of that, we don't envision development in renewables changing much from what we had expected prior to the election.

Ben Kallo: Thank you.

Jeff Lipson: Thank you.

Operator: Your next question comes from Chris Dendrinos with RBC Capital Markets. Your line is now open.

Chris Dendrinos: Great. Thank you, and good evening. Maybe to start, I will follow up on Ben Kallo's question there in regards to CCH2, and you mentioned additional partners. Are there thoughts around changing the structure of, I guess, the overall funding? I think right now with CCH1, it is 50/50, and maybe just how are you thinking about that commitment level and maybe flexing it down or up? Thanks.

Jeff Lipson: Thanks for the question, Chris. I think from an overall structure point of view, CCH2 is unlikely to look much different from CCH1 in that the structure has worked particularly well. In terms of the other portion of your question, which is what percent of the vehicle will HASI own, I think that, again, will be derivative of how many parties participate in CCH2, and there may be more participants down the road too. So whoever participates at closing may not be the full universe of those that participate. So HASI's percentage ownership may change over time.

But yes, it could be lower than the 50% that we own in CCH1, and we do view that as an interesting balance sheet efficiency item.

Chris Dendrinos: Got it. Thanks. Maybe just separately, I think it was a week or two ago, you all announced that you closed a transaction with Terradot for carbon removal, and I think it is the first time you have done a partnership on the carbon capture vertical. So maybe just overall, how are you thinking about the size of that market opportunity? As you jump into these kind of newer asset classes, is it kind of a situation where you make one investment and then step back and watch its performance for some time? Or is there the opportunity to kind of have these follow-ons to this going forward? Thanks.

Jeff Lipson: Sure. Good question, and I think you touched on some of the ways in which we think about it. We generally wouldn't invest in an area where we didn't think there was scale. So carbon removal broadly is an area where we do think we may be able to become active over time. How much of that is specifically enhanced rock weathering, it remains to be seen, but I think carbon removal more broadly is very interesting to us. Then, yes, investing in small amounts, watching it, learning, using that knowledge to make further investments is typically how we have expanded into new markets. So, I think that is consistent with the way we think about this investment.

Chris Dendrinos: Thank you.

Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, as a reminder, should you have a question, please press star one. Your next question comes from Julien Dumoulin-Smith with Jefferies. Your line is now open.

Anuhea Elliott: Hey, everyone. This is Anuhea Elliott on for Julien. Thanks for taking my question, and congratulations on the strong quarter. I guess just to start out on portfolio performance, I noticed that about 1% of the portfolio is now classified as significantly below metrics compared with none in 2Q. So I guess just can you discuss at a high level what drove that change, and how are you thinking about the potential for maybe stabilization or improvement here?

Chuck Melko: Yeah. Hi, this is Chuck. So, the asset that had moved to the, what we call the category three of investments, is the investment that we mentioned last quarter that we moved to category two, where there were some challenges with completing construction of the project. We took it on, we're consolidating it, and now we're working to manage it to complete the project and then ultimately sell it. So, we think there is a little bit of risk here on getting our invested capital back, which we felt prudent to move to category three as a result.

Anuhea Elliott: Okay, got it. Makes sense. I noticed that the pipeline mix changed a lot this quarter. Grid connected shrunk, and then BTM, and then fuels, transport, and nature increased quite a bit. Can you explain what drove that shift and what other kinds of projects you are now seeing as more interesting? I know we just touched on the carbon capture, but just any more color there?

Jeff Lipson: Sure. I think the grid connected as a percent of the pipeline shrank primarily because we closed the Invenergy deal. I would definitely not read anything into that. I think our grid connected pipeline is as strong as ever, and we are continuing to build that pipeline further. As we showed on one of the slides, our grid connected activity has been particularly strong in the last two years. It just so happened we just closed a large transaction, and then the behind the meter and FTN pipelines grew, so proportionally it became smaller.

In terms of the second part of your question related to some of the other sustainable infrastructure, again, I think last quarter we talked a little bit about water infrastructure. We talked a little bit about sustainable agriculture. Just a few moments ago, we talked about carbon removal. I think those are some of the areas that would comprise that other sustainable infrastructure slice of the pie.

Anuhea Elliott: Gotcha. Thank you.

Operator: Your next question comes from David Rule with Bank of England. Your line is now open.

David Rule: Hey, guys. Thanks for the question. Understanding that they are very different assets, was wondering if you could just compare and contrast the situation with both, I guess, the RNG assets and the category three project, relative to the SunStrong situation at the time. As part of that, I am wondering how much the evolution of your company over the past couple years might expand the degrees of freedom you have with respect to remediation, and I guess the extent to which SunStrong is a better case study for one of those situations versus the other.

Jeff Lipson: Thanks for the question. I think there is zero relevance between the SunStrong investment and the RNG project. Again, one is, as it relates specifically to SunStrong Management and operating company in which we are an owner. I think I gave a little bit of the history, and the company is performing very well, continuing to sign contracts to service additional portfolios, and has a strong management team, and we are able to recognize a gain on that investment this quarter. Completely separately, we had, as Chuck talked about, made an RNG investment in which there were some equipment problems, and we foreclosed, and now we are fixing the equipment and going to sell the project.

But those two things have absolutely nothing to do with each other.

Chuck Melko: I think the one thing I would add here that is a consistent theme between two that can be used in both cases, we did have to step in and help stabilize the operations to protect our investment. If there was one common thing here, that is the one that I would pull through on both.

David Rule: Okay. That's how I was getting it. All right. Thank you very much.

Jeff Lipson: Thank you.

Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, as a reminder, should you have a question, please press star one. Your next question comes from Ryan Pfingst with B. Riley Securities. Your line is now open.

Ryan Pfingst: Hey, guys. Thanks for taking the question. Just wanted to ask a follow-up on the opportunities in water, following the investment in the wastewater treatment infrastructure that you announced last quarter. What other kind of verticals within water are you looking at? Do the yields make sense relative to what you're earning in other markets? Just curious if we'll see more investments announced here in the coming quarters within water.

Jeff Lipson: Thanks, Ryan. I would say we are still in the very, very early innings of what our water strategy is going to be. We had this opportunity. We did a significant amount of research and diligence around that opportunity to understand the broader water infrastructure market, and this particular investment was very attractive to us. As it relates to following investments, as I said earlier, we would not have done it if we didn't think there was additional opportunity.

But by the same token, I don't think we have framed that opportunity precisely enough to articulate a water strategy just yet, but it's something we're spending a lot of time on and figuring out exactly how we want to attack that market.

Ryan Pfingst: Appreciate that, guys.

Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes your conference call for today. We thank you for participating and ask that you please disconnect your lines.

This article is a transcript of this conference call produced for The Motley Fool. While we strive for our Foolish Best, there may be errors, omissions, or inaccuracies in this transcript. Parts of this article were created using Large Language Models (LLMs) based on The Motley Fool's insights and investing approach. It has been reviewed by our AI quality control systems. Since LLMs cannot (currently) own stocks, it has no positions in any of the stocks mentioned. As with all our articles, The Motley Fool does not assume any responsibility for your use of this content, and we strongly encourage you to do your own research, including listening to the call yourself and reading the company's SEC filings. Please see our Terms and Conditions for additional details, including our Obligatory Capitalized Disclaimers of Liability.

The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.