Legend Power Systems Inc

XTSX:LPS

Earnings Call Transcript 2021-Q1

[Operator]

Good morning. My name is Kenzie, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Legend Power Systems Q1 2021 Financial Results Release and Conference Call. [Operator Instructions]Mr. Vanry, you may begin your conference.

[Steven Edward Vanry, CFO, COO & Corporate Secretary]

Thank you. We know there's a bit of static on the line today so hopefully, you guys can hear us clearly. Anyway, welcome to the Legend Power Systems fiscal 2021 Q1 investor call. I'm Steve Vanry, Legend's Chief Financial Officer. We're pleased to have you join us on the call today to discuss our corporate progress and financial results for the first quarter of 2021, which for the 3 months ended December 31, 2020. Please note that certain statements in this call may be forward-looking in nature. These include statements involving known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied in our forward-looking statements. For more information about Legend's forward-looking statements and risk factors, please see our year-end management's discussion and analysis, which was filed on SEDAR in January under our -- sorry, under our company profile at sedar.com. I will now pass the call over to Legend's Chief Executive Officer, Randall Buchamer, for an overview of our third quarter -- sorry, not our third quarter, our first quarter. Randy, go ahead.

[Randall G. Buchamer, President, CEO & Director]

Welcome to the Legend Power Systems fiscal 2021 Q1 investor call, and we're pleased to have you join us on the call today. Just want to take one moment, I believe Gerry Gill's on the call. Gerry is a founder of the organization, has had some health challenges. On behalf of the Legend team, just want to wish Gerry, you all, the best. And we know that things will turn out great for you, and we'll see it back down to your quarterly lunch at the office. So continued success with that. I'm joined, as you've heard, by Steve Vanry, our CFO; and Mike Cioce, who is our VP, Sales and Marketing. Steve, obviously, as the CFO, will give you an overview of the financial changes during the last quarter and again, summarize how we proactively managed the business through the pandemic. Mike will update you regarding the significant advancements achieved to increase our sales pipeline, improve our sales team and sales processes and reduce the length of our sales cycles. I'm pleased to tell you that despite the pandemic, we are experiencing growth in all aspects of our business. We continue to believe that our opportunity to be a leading energy platform solution has never been better, and we'll continue to do so. We are achieving our intended business activity growth, goals, revenues are growing, Insights service commitments are meeting, all exceeding our targets. Insights to SmartGATE platform conversion targets are being met or exceeded, and reseller and ESCO channels are embracing both Insights and SmartGATE solutions. Now since we may have a few new investors on the call, to quickly step back and bridge the old Legend to the new, and how we transitioned during 2020. We originally addressed the problem of the utilities delivering too high voltage to commercial buildings by optimizing the voltage in a building to achieve maximum energy efficiency, equipment performance and reduce the carbon emissions. Many decision-makers regarded Legend as a simple payback story, what does it cost? How much does it save? And how long is the payback. Although we had no direct competitors, we compete it for budget dollar gains, other energy savings solutions and offerings. Regardless, we installed close to 300 systems with our base value prop. Over the last couple of years, based on the customer feedback, we need to offer more than just energy savings, and we've enhanced the platform to do so much more. We developed a new platform, SmartGATE, saving energy and address the common power problems occurring in the buildings. Over the last couple of years, we've invested several million dollars to develop the new and expanded Legend SmartGATE platform, and we've indicated our targeted markets about our solutions, and we're seeing a significant increase in interest and order flow. During Q1, we introduced our analytics product, Insights, which performs detailed power analysis to identify problems and opportunities to improve power quality and efficiencies in commercial buildings. Insights analyzes over 200 power parameters, which creates a power impact report to present our findings and recommendations to our prospects. In this way, we are called into our customers' business, instead of us trying to push their products on the prospect. It's a huge improvement in our sales process and as we will still help the customers save energy, but we can do so much more to help them operate their buildings and meet their business goals. It's a huge change for us. Mike will highlight the significant progress of Insights acceptance and deployments when he speaks. We set a Q1 Insights services commitment goal of 40 services, and achieved their target. In Q2, we set a target of 90 Insights service commitments for the quarter, and we're tracking on target. We see our business model now as being very simple to understand. Each quarter, we want to put 90 Insights service deployments in customer locations, 90 Insights. East Insights service deployment achieved a [ 50% ] conversion rate from Insights services to SmartGATE platform. So for every 2 Insights that go in, that will lead to one SmartGATE platform. Average SmartGATE sales price of $110,000 and between $1,000 to $4,500 of annual recurring revenue. So very simply, 90 Insights creates 45 SmartGATE backlog per quarter, representing approximately $5 million in revenue and $1,000 to $4,500 million in annual recurring revenue per unit. During 2020, there's a massive shift to the climate environmental initiatives. As we became top corporate objectives, the world started to take serious steps to positively impact climate change. With all of Legends markets, we saw a consistent and systemic change to make buildings less harmful to the environment, combined with improving efficiencies and reducing costs and making a better tenant and experience. The President Biden's inaugural address and subsequent following statements, he has stated that electrical energy saving technologies for commercial buildings will be supported by government programs to incur the adoption. This is exactly where Legend Power plays. This is exactly where Legend Power has no competitors, and it's obviously very exciting for the team -- for shareholders. In regards to the recent company's appointed senior leadership to address ESG and building energy improvement efforts, as everyone is looking for new and innovative energy technologies, leading unique technologies like Legend's SmartGATE platform. So clearly the world is looking for products like Legend's SmartGATE platform. We're poised for significant growth. Combining our new platform with exciting sales progress, which Mike will talk about, all of us have months to look forward to. Quite simply, you may expect to see continued confirmation in press releases that the time is now for Legend and our solutions, and we are making progress. During the difficult financial markets, it's comforting to know that Legend has a sufficient balance sheet and resources to fuel our growth plans. We have invested to grow by improving our sales team and processes and building a strong engineering team that will continue to release leading edge energy management solutions. We'll continue to improve and expand our sales team to ensure we achieve our targets. We continue to earn the respect of our target markets in the ecosystem and make them comfortable that Legend Power is an innovative company to work with. We continue to build our brand by working with key ecosystem players, ensure they're aware of and ultimately support Legend Power in their client buildings. Mike has some great news he'll share today and how excited we are about lowering our reseller and ESCO markets. The Legend Power leadership team is very positive about Legend's future. We're committed to making Legend a leading energy management company, and we're very excited about where we're going. I'll turn the call over to Steve, our CFO, who will provide a financial review; followed by Mike, VP, Sales and Marketing, who will speak about the excellent product and sales improvements we have made in our target markets response to our leading solutions. Steve?

[Steven Edward Vanry, CFO, COO & Corporate Secretary]

Thanks, Randy. I'll try to be brief so we can get on to the exciting stuff with Mike. So during Q1, we proactively managed our operating costs, attained a balance between the companies, then activity level while maintaining the infrastructure and personnel needed to quickly transition back into a growth cycle. And if you've been paying attention to our recent press releases, you know that growth is back as both SmartGATE and Insights engagements and SmartGATE platform sales wins in Q1 and up to today even, have been strong. Our most significant cash [ operating ] cost categories have seen improvement compared to the same quarter of fiscal 2020 and in fact, our most recently completed quarter. Cash used in operations was down by 68% compared with the most recently completed quarter and by 85% compared to the same quarter of fiscal 2020. Revenue for the first quarter of 2021 was comprised of 12 SmartGATE platform sales, and we completed 4 SmartGATE platform installations. During Q1 of fiscal 2021 and an abundance of sales activity very late in the quarter and some specific customizations for an order from a repeat customer caused deliveries and related recognition of revenue to fall outside of the quarter, which is not a horrible thing because this will now be -- is now expected to be booked in Q2 of fiscal 2021, so our next quarter. In the absence of this timing constraint, Q1 fiscal 2021 revenue would likely had been materially higher than that of the comparative period of fiscal 2020. So in spite of heightened diligence around our operating costs, we have managed very effectively around the pandemic, adding significantly to our pipeline of new business opportunities, maintaining existing sales cycles. We're winning multiple Insights engagements and crystallizing sales wins. This resurgence in sales activity for Legend has been broad-based and includes both increases in direct and reseller engagements in several verticals and geographic regions. Based on the activity in our sales funnel and with the stabilized North American economy, we are experiencing a return to growth for the company. In short, we are very happy with where we are at today. And very optimistic about the future. Now over to Mike Cioce, Legend's VP of Sales and Marketing. Go ahead, Mike.

[Mike Cioce, Vice President of Sales & Marketing]

Thank you. Appreciate it. And the simple fact is, as Randy and Steve have both indicated that climate change and energy efficiency, ESG and greenhouse gas reductions are on almost everybody's radar. In fact, in a recent third-party -- independent third-party white paper that looked at the active power management space, the authors stated that before a building operator does anything to address electrification or decarbonization for this building, they should start with active power management. They continued on to saying that the savings -- the energy savings and stabilizing or hardening the building to prepare for grid changes should be the first step of an ESG program. We also indicated that we expect active power management systems to be as commonplace in large buildings as electric utility meters. And yes, every building has electric utility meter. They went on to list the SmartGATE as the category leader for energy efficiency, capabilities, footprint and overall costs. There's simply nothing close to Legend's offering on the market. And another critical point to reinforce is as our economy start to electrify and move towards lower greenhouse gas solutions like electric vehicles and more. Our electrical demand will increase, and this increased demand will be met with more renewable sources like wind and solar, which have a dramatically different power profile. This means greater instability for buildings, more of the problems that play havoc on those building systems and more for us to prevent. Simply put, the more we electrify and decarbonize our economies, the need for Legend increases, and we are seeing this increase turn into real results for Legend. We are very excited about the demonstrable results in 3 specific areas of our sales efforts, and we'll cover those off today. As we have said in the past few quarterly calls, Insights is the best indicator of our business's health. It's our customers' way of telling us that they are interested in the broader impact of power on their businesses. Additionally, we believe we will continue to turn 50% of Insights engagements into SmartGATE platform sales, as Randy had indicated. We've also discussed that all 3 distribution channels are growing, direct sold, and channel sales will continue to fuel our sales progress. I'm excited to announce that we have firm demonstrable results on all fronts. First, we set the goal of placing 40 Insights during fiscal Q1 of 2021. And we are pleased to report that we achieved that goal and that all 3 distribution channels contributed to the success. We announced in early February, the completion of the first installation for an ESCO in New York state with second system and progress to be completed shortly. We also announced that an ESCO engaged Legend for 10 Insights with the city of Boston as part of a long-term, multiphase energy efficiency performance contract. And again, we expect the same conversion rates, if not slightly higher since they are repeat customers and slightly higher with our repeat customers. Again, on ESCO channel, SmartGATE installed results and Insights' adoption in new markets and customers, that's demonstrable proof right there. Now we also had a channel partner place an order for 29 Insights for their customers in Eastern Canada in Q1. A few weeks later, we announced that the same partner sold 5 SmartGATEs from the first few engagements presented, that's exceeding the 50% expected conversion rate. With over 20 assessments still in progress from the initial 29, we expect many of these to convert to full SmartGATE platform sales shortly. So that represents SmartGATE sales results directly from Insights engagement, channel sales results as well as our expected conversion results, again, demonstrable proof. We announced at the end of January that we were asked to present the Legend SmartGATE and Insights offering to the Annual Training and Continuous Education Conference with a leading energy solutions partner. This partner has over 1,000 people in the field that are now out talking about the Legend value proposition. We have finalized being the first engagements with that partner, and we'll be announcing the details shortly. On the direct sales side, we are obviously very pleased to announce in mid-January, our largest single purchase ever. This multifamily operator ordered 17 new systems for their portfolio at one time, bringing their total to 33 SmartGATE points. At the same time, they also added Insights to all of their existing platforms to further drive their ESG leadership position, which lowered their cost of capital. We are also exploring a similar-sized purchase for a newly acquired portfolio for them shortly. Again, real demonstrable sales results driven by Insights, the largest deal ever, demonstrating that the new approach leads to more significant sales factor. While this is the largest sale in Legend's history, we don't expect that record to last too long as we are in discussions for larger sales today with several organizations. So between add-on system orders, new direct sold Insights engagements, new channel sales and ESCO sales, we have a lot of results to point to, to demonstrate our new model is working as expected. These are all great signs of real results, and we fully expect more to come shortly. I wish I can share all of the incredible results we are generating, but I can't just yet, and we fully expect to add a lot more results -- releases in the very near future. So again, stay tuned to legendpower.com news feed to see more results as we announce them. Randy, back to you.

[Randall G. Buchamer, President, CEO & Director]

Thanks, Mike, and thanks, Steve. A lot of exciting stuff going on. And when Mike says, we'd like to share more, believe me, Mike would like to share more. All in due time, though. Can we take a look, though, just for a moment to discuss our outlook? The systemic changes recurring to address climate change and energy efficiency, they are now mainstream and long-term [indiscernible] and tremendously positive for the company. Target markets are looking for innovative entrepreneurial technology companies like Legend, and our message is strongly resonating. We're securing business with many of the most successful organizations in our target markets. We're meeting or exceeding our Insights service commitments. And as Mike confirmed again, Insights really is the barometer in those targets, and we continue it with the conversion rates, and we're going to [indiscernible] contour numbers or exceeding it. The reseller and ESCO channels continue to accept and adopt Legend SmartGATE solutions as core resellers and ESCO offering through our markets. And again, with no direct competitor offering for the ESCOs, Legend is the game. We've opened relationships with the best resellers in ESCOs in North America, and writing business with many of them. The ESCOs alone are $15 billion industry. And you can expect constant proof that we're growing these massive partners and markets. Our investments in people and building relationships in New York is bearing fruit. We're an accepted energy solution with all the agencies, both state and civic, that make technology decisions. We also have established a presence within site deployments and other major eastern U.S. cities, like the 10 Insights with the ESCO in Boston, as an example. Really exciting, it's going to be a big year for Legend in the U.S. expansion. And the next generation of our SmartGATE platform is being delivered to market, and we're establishing a strong positioning as the leading electrical energy management technology provider. We continue to enhance our SmartGATE platform to address additional power quality challenges. And unlike our previous generation, we can remotely download and add feature sets to the SmartGATE platform as customers require them. Government, free enterprise and sellers, ESCOs and senior ESG leaders in business throughout North America need Legend's solutions to achieve their goals. They need Legend, and we'll provide Legend. Appreciate the opportunity to speak with you. We believe to be happy now to take questions.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of [ Jeff Callow ], a private investor.

[Unknown Attendee]

I got a couple of questions surrounding these ESCOs. You mentioned in your press release this morning that there's a joint project with an ESCO Fortune 100 global corporation. Is this a new ESCO opportunity for you? I guess that would be the first question. And the second part is, could you maybe frame sort of the ESCO universe? And give us an idea of how many ESCOs there are that are potential partners for you in North America?

[Randall G. Buchamer, President, CEO & Director]

Thank you. So I just put it back, is that your question is about the ESCOs. So the joint project that we announced, your question is new ESCO and to expand a bit on the ESCO universe and what might be possible with that. And we've got our star salesperson with the ESCO channel, Mike, on the line. So I'll pass it over to Mike to address that question.

[Mike Cioce, Vice President of Sales & Marketing]

Thank you very much. Appreciate that. As far as the existing projects, we have multiple ESCOs that we're working with currently. When we look at the ESCO market, there are 5 companies that provide ESCO services. And when we look at the top 10, they typically cover off about 80% to 90% of the business. So we are focusing on those top 10. We are in current conversations with 4 of those top 10 and expect to be adding 2 more back very shortly as well. So we look at the big regional -- at the big players, there are ones that play at the national level, depending upon the markets. The federal market is one, the state market, the local city market as well as the school boards. So we're focusing our efforts on the large national players that have that very large footprint. And part of the reason why we're so very excited about that is that obviously extends our sales capabilities. As we're working with an ESCO that has several hundred or several -- or up to 1,000 sellers in the field, that actually increases the number of people -- number of feet on the street, so to speak, that are out telling the Legend story. Does that answer the question?

[Unknown Attendee]

Yes, that was great, Mike. One follow-up to that. How are -- so a lot of the improvements have been done in buildings, not the easy things, but things like lighting, things of the boiler room, windows, et cetera, have been done. Because you guys were sort of paving the road here, I guess, you're first-in-class in this category, are you finding the ESCOs are coming to you because this is a new solution for their suite of customers? And can you talk maybe about is there any sort of competitive -- healthy competitive tension between ESCOs?

[Mike Cioce, Vice President of Sales & Marketing]

Yes, absolutely. When we look at the fact that we are a net new category and they are in the business of aggregating energy conservation measures [indiscernible] a new tool in the arsenal, it's net new that doesn't cannibalize other sales, is incredibly interesting to them. So no 2 ways about it. It's a big differentiator. What we're finding is that the ones that we're working with are seeing that as a competitive advantage. They're actually winning more deals because of the fact that they have additional energy savings. So -- and of course, when one ESCO alludes it to another ESCO, and they review what's included and they see Legend Power, then the natural reaction is that they do reach out to us as well. So we are seeing some of that momentum just naturally coming from the fact that we are with the winning ESCOs. So that's one piece of it. One of the other things that's also very interesting, and we were working with a major ESCO in New York state, and we were working with them at 10 specific schools. And when we looked at those 10 specific schools and looked at 3 of them, in particular, the power that was coming in was so atrocious that they were getting ready to put about $10 million worth of new equipment into these schools that we're not going to lap the duration of their contract. So we were able to identify that for them and then also show them how one of the additional values of the Legend platform is that we can extend the life of those. So for that particular ESCO, not only did we help them win and get them -- get their customers some additional energy savings, but we also protected their profitability. Because now all of a sudden, 10 years into a 15-year agreement, they weren't going to have to replace the stuff that they put in at the beginning. So definitely a lot of momentum coming from the success in the market, and the fact that other ESCOs see it as competitive advantage and if they don't offer Legend that they need to in order to be competitive.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from the line of Horst Hueniken with Hueniken Asset Management.

[Horst Hueniken]

I'd like to start with your reference in your MD&A that describes the impact of COVID-19 on your business. I noticed that most of the language is backward-looking. How would you describe the impact on your business today? Are you seeing anything change yet?

[Randall G. Buchamer, President, CEO & Director]

So since the key author of that MDA was Mr. Vanry, Steve, would you like to take that?

[Steven Edward Vanry, CFO, COO & Corporate Secretary]

Yes, I'm happy to. Although I think perhaps what Horst is digging into a bit, what might be more interesting is on the business development side, the sales side, the sales wins and the growth. Correct me if I'm wrong, Horst. But I -- this is my...

[Horst Hueniken]

Yes. No, no. That is my focus, correct, if you could address that.

[Steven Edward Vanry, CFO, COO & Corporate Secretary]

Since you've got me now and because I know you like hearing my voice, the -- just from my seat, I mean I'm seeing the incremental growth in activity, which although COVID, we're seeing that it's being wrestled slowly to the ground in North America for our 2 key markets. Our growth trajectory and our wins, particularly with the SmartGATE, Insights, and again, with platform sales, seems to be moving at a much quicker growth rate than, if you will, than the decrease, I guess, and the concerns about COVID and its impact on economic activity, if that's fair? But Mike, maybe you have some more color to add to that.

[Mike Cioce, Vice President of Sales & Marketing]

Yes. I'd be happy to. As far as the COVID impact, it's having a -- where we are today, it's having multiple effects. So for example, we have some deals where we're looking at doing the installation in order to be able to rev rec, where we're still having some challenges accessing so from a standpoint of rev rec, there is some slight delays because of that. From a deal bookings standpoint, we're not seeing the delays that we were earlier. And again, we never saw customers walk away. What we saw was, during the height of COVID, was customers saying not yet, but we are seeing those customers come back and say, yes, now is the time, let's get the conversation rolling in again. So that's also part of the driver of our increases as well. So from a customer adoption standpoint, a number of customers are -- have been putting a very high-tech system into their buildings to protect the safety of the occupants of the building. And obviously, our ability to protect those assets is of interest to them as well. Now the last thing you want to do is that put in a very expensive air purification system and then have that system knocked off-line because of power challenges. So we are seeing some interest from that standpoint as well. So it is multiple. It's accelerating in some cases. The interest for bookings, in some unique cases, there are some slight rev rec plays because of access to buildings.

[Randall G. Buchamer, President, CEO & Director]

And I would just add...

[Horst Hueniken]

Yes. Go ahead, Randall.

[Randall G. Buchamer, President, CEO & Director]

I'm just going to add the aspect of the safety, I think, is one we should just take just a quick testing on. Seeing it wasn't really a major topic if you go back a year ago, we're hearing that much more now. In fact, statements like energy savings is fine but I can't have a building that has challenges on the safety side when rates go back or I don't operate. So I think it's just important to note that, that's a new -- almost a new category, as Mike mentioned, sensitive equipment for safety. What's important there is it validates, again, that if we were just in energy savings side where we used to be, we wouldn't to be able to help in some of that sensitive equipment buying and [indiscernible]. It's just another leg of the value prop that we didn't have before, that really carries a lot of weight right now.

[Horst Hueniken]

Perfect. To put it in my own words, what I'm hearing is that bookings are not being affected by COVID or being a -- your bookings are ramping up even in the face of COVID. And the only thing that you're still struggling with is getting the actual market unit installed. Am I interpreting that correctly?

[Randall G. Buchamer, President, CEO & Director]

As a general statement, that's accurate. There will be some impact or delays, but that seems to be easing further as we get a lot here.

[Horst Hueniken]

Perfect.

[Mike Cioce, Vice President of Sales & Marketing]

And one other thing...

[Horst Hueniken]

Yes. Oh, sorry, go ahead. Go ahead.

[Mike Cioce, Vice President of Sales & Marketing]

Yes. Those delays are not across the board. We are seeing a normal cadence to installations for many customers. There are some that are experiencing those delays.

[Horst Hueniken]

Okay. Perfect. One of the things that I just want to table, part of the attraction behind your -- or the investment thesis I have for Legend Power is that you have no competition. However, in an article titled Active Power Management at the Grid Edge, which was issued in January, they talked about Schneider Electric, Utility Systems Technology, or UST, and PowerSines also being in the business. I recognize that they have different power levels than your equipment does. But can you just help me reconcile what this article is saying that there are 4 of you, and you saying that you're alone?

[Randall G. Buchamer, President, CEO & Director]

So why don't I take the first part of that, and Mike, you can follow along with a couple of points I know you'll have. First of all, we always compare, if you will, the transportation business, a large semi-truck, moves people, moves things. So is it like a Honda Civic? The answer is they're in category vehicles, but they're not direct competitors. What you talked about in the article was independent third-party that did an assessment of who could [indiscernible] impact power management in buildings. And then in that category listed out, the PowerSines, the company based in Israel. And as we approach this about 3 years ago to buy them, their average price of unit is about $1,200 to $1,500. They do mainly home and small convenience stores or a small location, not a competitor. Technology is different, how it operates, and it isn't scalable. Schneider actually was a product designed for the process market. It's about 4x larger than our unit, we'll not fit in a commercial building electrical room. It does not save energy. It does not save energy. It wasn't designed to do that. It was to address some power issues in the [indiscernible]. We have [indiscernible] people design that product as a special product, [indiscernible]. And the fact, Ali, who runs our engineering department, who was one of the key engineers for Schneider at the time that, that was not a direct competitor. Now we see it in the market place. UST, same thing again, very expensive products. Large, it doesn't do what ours does. It doesn't save energy, just cuts the power management pieces. So the other side of that [indiscernible] that individual components of piece you can [ apply there ] to address individual pieces of equipment in a building. But what Legend does is, we analyze it, solve the problem or significantly reduce problem buildings, and we do not have a competitor. And the article as it states that and ranks the different capabilities of the building solutions. So hope that gives you a little bit better idea of where we're at. The other example I would use is when IKEA went worldwide out of Sweden, we secured the business in Canada. They came back and looked at UST. They looked at PowerSines, they looked at Schneider, and they come back and said, they're not in your category, you don't have a direct competitor. We secured the business. So I'll let the customers voice beat that, and I'll let the third-party report speak that. Mike, you have anything you want to add?

[Mike Cioce, Vice President of Sales & Marketing]

No, Randy, you're spot on. When we look at the whole solution, there's nothing that compares. And that's one of the things that's a clear takeaway from that. Again, when you look at the categories, there's 5 categories, Legend is the clear leader in 4 of those categories and those -- the categories that matter. From the standpoint of some of the competitive equipment, it doesn't save energy, and it's substantially larger than our platform. It doesn't fit in the buildings. If it doesn't fit in the building, and it doesn't save energy, people aren't going to pay attention to it. From a standpoint of, is it somewhat in the same cap? Yes. Again, it's the truck versus a Honda Accord or a Honda Civic comparison there. So one of the other things to keep in mind is that we're one of the -- we are the only solution that looks at the entire load of a building and save energy while protecting equipment as well. So from a standpoint of the categories that matter to a customer, the leader in those. So we don't have any direct competition. Hope, that [Audio Gap].

[Horst Hueniken]

Oh, yes. No, that's very helpful. At least it helps me reconcile the article to your competitive position. And my final question, if it's sensitive, don't answer it, but the energy savings company, you're clearly dealing with the Fortune 100 ESCO and doing very well. So I congratulate you on that. But you also disclosed in your MDA that you're in discussions with several other leading U.S. ESCOs. I'm wondering if you can comment on how advanced those discussions are.

[Randall G. Buchamer, President, CEO & Director]

Yes. So I think what we should be is careful here. We haven't announced any particular partners. Although one can look at the roster and figure out what [ ties ] in, pretty much who we're speaking with. That marketplace is a $15 billion a year market. It's all net new for us. And why we're excited about it and where we see it growing is because they've got a relationship that's been established over many, many years with a lot of [indiscernible]. In markets we're not even in, the Department of Defense, as an example, military. So we're really pleased. Mike and Mark Peterson have held webinars, and we've had terrific response from the ecosystem per ESCOs. Response has been really, really strong. And it's that we've always stated that we expect to lead being a direct marketing company and working through partners, we believe ESCOs could be -- well, be one of our top 2 channels over the next couple of years, but could be #1. Huge opportunity. We're excited about it. Great progress, exceeding expectations at this point. And you can expect to hear continued news on a quarterly basis of wins and further expansion into that marketplace. But we can't really go deeper on it out at this time, names, et cetera, but we are very pleased where it's going and excited about where we believe it's going to go, and we believe it will add significant value to the company over the next year or 2.

[Operator]

We have no further telephone questions at this time.

[Randall G. Buchamer, President, CEO & Director]

Okay. We'll just give it 20 seconds if anybody else just wants to ask a question before we wrap up.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions]

[Randall G. Buchamer, President, CEO & Director]

It sounds like there are no other questions. Anything coming through?

[Operator]

We have no telephone questions comes.

[Randall G. Buchamer, President, CEO & Director]

Okay. So just as a wrap up, the pandemic has affected most businesses and their revenue streams. We're now seeing the sales growth coming out of that. We expect to see accelerated sales growth, as we said. We're excited about the channels that we have. We've committed a great team that's getting strong wit their new hire, and we are upgrading our average Legend Power Systems team members' capability and experience. We're bringing a lot of people with energy experience, prudent experience and the markets are looking at high energy costs. They're looking at power challenges, they're looking at ESG, initiatives and goals, they're are looking at tenant requirements that have changed, looking at safety, client change objectives, the list goes on, and they're seeking creative ways to reduce their business challenges that are power-related, and they want to improve the quality of the buildings' energy. But we believe future looks really good for Legend and our stakeholders. We're excited about where we're going. Although we believe the time is now for Legend. Thanks for your time today. We look forward to continuing those that we believe will show the [indiscernible] the progress where we're [indiscernible]. Thank you, and have a great legendary day.

[Operator]

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.