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Intrinsic Value is all-important and is the only logical way to evaluate the relative attractiveness of investments and businesses.
Good morning, and thank you for joining us to discuss UGE International's Third Quarter Fiscal 2022 financial results for the period ending September 30, 2022. On the call today, we have UGE CEO, Nick Blitterswyk; and UGE CFO, Stephanie Bird. [Operator Instructions]
Next slide, please. Before management discusses the results, I'd like to remind everyone 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 caveats about forward-looking statements and risk factors, please see our MD&A for the quarter ended September 30, 2022, which can be found on our company profile at sedar.com and on the company's website.
I will now pass the call over to UGE CFO, Stephanie Bird. Stephanie?
Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the call. Apologies to everyone for the mix up on our PR yesterday. We're glad that you've been able to join us for this 11 a.m. call, not the 10:00 a.m. call. I'm Stephanie Bird, CFO of UGE International, and I'm joined today by our CEO, Nick Blitterswyk.
For today's webinar covering Q3 2022 results, Nick will begin by summarizing key business highlights for the quarter. Next, I'll run through our Q3 2022 financial results. From there, Nick will provide some concluding remarks with a look towards the future before we can take questions and wrap up the webinar.
As a reminder, you can submit a question through the portal on the left-hand side of your screen, and we will run through them after our prepared remarks. As always, our goal is to be mindful of your time and keep this webinar concise and to the point.
We will be speaking relatively high level, and focusing on the areas that we feel are most important to understanding our business and financial results. Our website address is listed here as well where you can download our full financials.
We would also like to remind our listeners that we report in U.S. dollars. So the results in this webinar are presented in U.S. dollars unless stated otherwise.
So with that, let's start talking about our key business results for the third quarter. Nick?
Thanks, Stephanie.
As Stephanie mentioned, I will start by talking about our business updates, and I'll begin with our development pipeline. On this slide, you see the overall project development table as of September 30, 2022. We know it's tiny here, but you can also find it in our MD&A.
In total, our backlog grew 39 megawatts in the quarter versus our prior quarter, and with 241 megawatts in our backlog as of yesterday, we are well positioned to reach or exceed our 250-megawatt year-end goal. As a reminder, our backlog projects are ones where we have a contract to develop a project, we have filed for interconnection and the project has passed our investment committee approval, meaning it's a project that we expect to eventually build. Backlog is a portion of our overall projects in development, which sat at 416 megawatts at the end of Q3 versus 381 megawatts at the end Q2. In addition to our backlog, the remaining projects in development are ones that are in earlier stages of development, but that we are looking to move into backlog in the coming months.
Each quarter, we published a supplemental disclosure file, which can be found on our website's Investors section. The final list of projects in our backlog, along with key financial metrics and forecasted milestone dates. As with last quarter, we are providing a graphical representation of this data as we work towards our medium-term goal of 100 megawatts of operating assets and our longer-term goals as well.
This chart shows the number of megawatts we are forecasting to hit Notice to Proceed, or NTP, in each quarter as well as the number of megawatts we are forecasting to hit commercial operation date, or COD, in each quarter. The dark gray line shows the cumulative megawatts forecasted at each date, and as of this quarter's release, whereas the light gray line is as of last quarter's release. A reminder that this is a forecast of our backlog projects only. It does not include any assumptions for further projects we have in development, in our pipeline or that we will secure in the future. Put another way, we'll continue to win new business and expect to add to these figures. Lastly, we'll mention that project development is inherently variable, and one should expect it to move around as projects mature, but we look forward to sharing our progress towards our goals with you in future quarters as well.
Here, we show a quick snapshot of our backlog by quarter, which really illustrates how strong and steady our growth has been in the last 2 years, say for the blip in Q1 of this year when some of our main projects were downsized. We continue to see very favorable market conditions and even more favorable by the Inflation Reduction Act, and look forward to demonstrating continued growth in this metric over time.
On my last slide before turning things back over to Stephanie, we wanted to highlight a few other important updates. First, right at the end of Q3, we completed the deployment of a project with 0.74 megawatts in capacity after finally receiving equipment from the utility for interconnection. This is our largest operational project thus far, which will be surpassed as our main projects come online next year. As a reminder, the three projects for which we have achieved commercial operation in recent months, each received third-party appraisals in excess of $3 per watt, well ahead of our own prior assumptions, further demonstrating the value of our project development work.
Currently, our supplemental disclosure file shows a gross backlog value in excess of $480 million, which is likely very conservative based on the independent third-party appraisals we have been receiving. The growth in the value of our backlog also continues to provide a strong and growing asset base for our secured green bonds, which we'll talk about shortly as well.
As many of you know, we have several projects expected to hit NTP in the coming weeks and months, as you saw in the last slide with our supplemental disclosure information. To provide a brief update, I will divide this into two categories: our Maine portfolio and a catch-all for our non-Maine projects. In Maine, we are very close with three of the projects, wrapping up last punch list items after one of the projects reached NTP a few months back. Meanwhile, two of the projects had an additional step added by the utility, causing a 3 to 4-month delay, but we expect those projects to reach NTP around the end of Q1 and to make a lot of progress on this portfolio as a whole as we get into spring and summer next year.
For the non-Maine projects, we are in the process of closing a customary construction-to-term project debt facility for this portfolio somewhat similar in nature to the facility we already have in place for the Maine portfolio. This facility had been expected to close around today's date, but was pushed back 1 month due to turnover at the bank we are working with. Some of the projects are merely waiting on this facility to close to declare NTP. So early in the new year, we will start hitting NTP on the projects in this portfolio as well, several of which are in New York and Maryland.
While these timelines have shifted somewhat from our call 3 months ago, rest assured that we are in a very good position to have these projects mobilized and in construction as the spring months roll around, and look forward to our operational portfolio growing significantly in 2023.
Next, it has become customary this year to touch on supply chains. To make a long story short, we have seen comparative [ comp ] in the last few months in this area. We will continue to monitor supply chains closely, but are optimistic about improving costs and availability in the months and years to come.
Another key update in Q3 was our $15 million revolving development capital facility that we closed in September. This facility provides access to capital for projects that have financing needs prior to construction. For example, we drew on it to finance our project acquisition [indiscernible] enter the Oregon market, which is a project that is almost at NTP, just awaiting some upgrades from the utility. As of today, that has been the only draw we have made against that facility.
Lastly, we continue to be pleased with the demand for our project development green bond product. Just yesterday, we closed on our largest green bond yet at CAD 7.4 million, which gives us significant runway to accelerate our development in 2023. As our project continues to grow -- I'm sorry, as our portfolio continues to grow, the collateral that we have continues to grow as well, which opens up avenues such as our green bond product and the development capital facility as attractive nondilutive sources of capital.
And with that, I will now turn it over to Stephanie to summarize our Q3 2022 financial results, and then I will return for some concluding remarks before taking your questions.
Thank you, Nick, and thank you for joining us today. I'm going to review a few key items from our Q3 2022 financial results. Looking at this slide, energy generation rose 79% to 528,417 kilowatt hours in the 3 months versus 295,155 kilowatt hours in the year-ago quarter. For the 9 months ending September 30, energy generation grew 66% to 1,048,359 kilowatt hours versus 633,176 kilowatt hours in the 2021 comparable period. The energy generation increases resulted from the growth in UGE's energy-generating assets.
Note that although the installed base appears to have increased year-over-year by 1.3 megawatts, 740 kilowatts will only start to generate meaningful numbers in Q4. This generation translated to $142,000 of recurring revenue with a 99% margin, which is well above our expectations, which are in the mid-80s and where we believe we will land year-to-date. This was versus $69,000 of revenue and 82% margin year-over-year for the 3 months. For the 9 months year-to-date, energy generation produced $267,000 of revenue with 91% margins versus $149,000 of revenue with 80% margins year-over-year for the comparable period in 2021.
Revenue in Q3 from client finance EPC agreements was $1.46 million and $2.03 million in the 3 and 9 months of 2022, which marks an increase from $427,000 and $1.3 million in the prior year. This line of business is less of a focus, and the increase marks the progress of the opportunistic EPC projects in the quarter.
Consulting and engineering services revenue was $199,000 and $446,000 for the 3 and 9 months of 2022 versus $33,000 and $95,000 for the prior year with gross margins year-to-date improving from 37% to 43%. We're happy with the continued growth of this business unit. Looking forward though, we expect its third-party services to level out as it divides its time between external clients and UGE's increasing internal engineering needs to service its own backlog.
Operating expenses were $1.85 million and $5.33 million for the 3 and 9 months, a 25% and 36% increase year-over-year. The increase was due to the increased employee and contractor headcount from 50 at the end of Q3 2021 to 64 in this past period as well as larger annual raises this year given the inflationary environment.
Our 3-month net loss, adjusted net loss and adjusted EBITDA increased $148,000, $62,000 and $38,000, respectively, year-over-year; while our year-to-date increased by $1.27 million, $869,000 and $577,000. The predominant reasons for these differences are the investments we are making to scale our team and portfolio ahead of our project portfolio reaching scale. That said, we're confident that the investments we are making will be rewarded by strong cash flows from our projects once deployed.
As a reminder, we are in the process of transitioning from a onetime revenue model to a recurring revenue model, and losses are expected until the company's self-finance portfolio reaches a larger scale of project deployments and operational projects. While this transition occurs, developing and building projects creates positive cash flow through the retention of a developer fee. This will become more noticeable as our deployments scale up.
Moving to the next slide, let's look at our financial position. As of September 30, 2022, UGE had $1.2 million of cash and working capital of $328,000. Our cash used in operations year-to-date was $4.3 million, which included $2.3 million in the quarter. Demand to capitalize the company was and remains robust. In September, we closed a [ USD 15 million ] credit line, as Nick mentioned, to be used for acquisitions and development expenses. The first draw against the credit line was used to fund the Oregon acquisition. On July 28, we also closed a [ CAD 2.225 million ] private placement of project development venture units, which followed the $25 million project debt and tax equity facility we announced June 29 to finance six projects in Maine. Post quarter end, on October 25, we announced a green bond private placement, which closed yesterday with gross proceeds of CAD 7.4 million.
Our balance sheet has been growing as projects progress through our backlog. Of note for this quarter is the increase for solar facilities in use, together with their associated project debt. Project debt was also impacted by the green bond raise in the quarter and the draw on the development capital facility to fund the Oregon acquisition. Additionally, there was an increase in capitalized project development costs, which is an indication of the progression of our projects through the backlog towards construction.
The increase in ROU assets and their associated lease liabilities as well as accrued liabilities for the related commissions saw us continue to increase site securement with a further four leases being signed in the quarter. It should be noted that there is a significant increase in deferred revenue toward December 31 balance. This is associated with the delta between customer receipts and the timing of revenue recognition for our EPC projects. It's also a sign that we expect near-term onetime revenue to increase as those projects reach their milestones, as was evident in Q3 as we recognized EPC revenue and the balance was reduced from its June 30 height of $1.4 million. Operating debt increased $454,000 primarily as a result of final COVID-related [ advance ] in Q1.
That concludes my prepared remarks. I will turn it now back to Nick.
Thanks, Stephanie.
As you can see, we continue to make solid progress towards our goals. Our operating portfolio is starting to grow more quickly, a trend that will accelerate in future quarters. We are especially excited that we will have several projects reach NTP throughout the rest of the year and into early 2023, which will see our portfolio grow much further in 2023.
With this growth, we are in a solid position to meet our 2024 goal of having 100 megawatts of operating assets. As we have said before, we see 100 megawatts of operating assets as the tip of the iceberg for this business and have longer-term goals to reach 500 megawatts of operating assets in the next 5 to 7 years.
With that, we'll wrap up the prepared remarks by pointing you to where you can find more information. As mentioned earlier, our website is regularly updated and contains all of our financial filings and other updates. You can also find our financial filings on sedar.com. You can also visit Sophic Capital's website for additional information and follow us on Twitter to get links to announcements and other media. Thanks again for tuning in today. Marcel, back to you.
Thank you, Nick and Stephanie. We've collected the questions investors have submitted since issuing the financial results, and we've also collected the questions submitted through the webinar's Q&A tab. We'd like to thank all participants for your questions.
Our first question comes from Sameer Joshi at H.C. Wainwright. How much additional EPC revenue should be expected over the next few quarters?
Nick, I'll take that one, if you like?
Yes, good.
And basically, this is our opportunistic business line. And so we -- the projects that we got are tailing down, and it's about the same amount in this quarter, but then tailing down fairly shortly after that.
And G&A expenses seem to be more or less stable. Could we expect increases during 2023 as activity ramps up? Are you hiring new people for geographic expansion as well?
And again, Nick maybe I'll take the first one on that one, and then you can embellish as you see fit. We are taking a look at hiring additional people as we scale up, mainly because to service the backlog that we have. So there will be some measured approach to SG&A as we look into the future [ and be ] very much attached to our NTP and COD plans.
Yes. I think you said that well, Stephanie. We're definitely aggressively growing, but the growth in SG&A is a bit more, maybe I'll call it linear these days as we continue to tweak the team, add to the team, et cetera, over time.
How are the supply chain issues, if any, impacting your progress on projects?
Yes. So this is Nick. I touched on that a little bit in the prepared remarks. But to make a long story short, it's been, I think I called it comparative comp. Based on -- I think -- earlier in the year, there was the tensions around potential tariffs from Southeast Asia. That, right now, is about 6 months in the rearview mirror. And so as a result, we've seen panel prices coming down. We've seen supply chains easing up a little bit.
I think over the next couple of years, you'll probably see a little bit of fits and starts. I think you will see costs coming down. But what we're really looking for now is a couple of years out from now as more domestic supply gets brought online, which is related to the Inflation Reduction Act. So we've seen a lot of announcements about plans for that. And with the size of the incentives in the Inflation Reduction Act for manufacturing in the U.S., we expect that to be a major theme a couple of years out from now. So we'll continue to watch it closely, manage it accordingly, but increasingly optimistic about the medium-term time frame there.
And Nick related to the Inflation Reduction Act, can you just elaborate on any additional insight you have, not just the law, but the way it's being planned to be implemented?
Yes. So the biggest thing that folks aren't completely waiting for it, but the IRS provides guidance on this. And the expected time frame is like very early 2023 is when the IRS guidance will come out, and that will add a little bit meat around the bones in terms of some of the way that some of the tax credits are used, et cetera. So that's going to be the, more or less, definitive guidance on how to use the IRA.
But in the meantime, ourselves and the industry, as a whole, are increasingly seeing opportunities for the energy communities and things like that, that are touched on in the Inflation Reduction Act that's going to see that average ITC that companies get access to be materially above, I think, the 30% baseline rate that it was extended at.
So it's a little bit -- and I guess I also mentioned that on the manufacturing side of things, of course, we're not a manufacturer, but panel manufacturers and [ burger ] manufacturers, et cetera, you're seeing a lot of announcements about their plans to bring on significant manufacturing capacity in North America, which will give us access to the 10% domestic content at or over time as well.
So bit of a long-winded response. But I think from our perspective, we're heads down on lining up projects that are going to provide really good returns for us. And in the meantime, the rest of the industry is, I think, also evolving to make use of it.
Our next question comes from Nick Boychuk from Cormark Securities. Nick, can you please discuss the COD timelines provided in the supplementary disclosure. What is causing some of the projects to be delayed? How comfortable are you about what you've currently articulated? And what could potentially delay those?
Yes. So I touched on this, too, in terms of the Maine portfolio and also the non-Maine projects. And so if I use that same categorization again there, the Maine market, in particular, has been one where the utilities are kind of coming to grips with the very fast increasing solar market in that state. And so it's been quite common that they'll tell us one thing and then a few months later say, we forgot that we also need to do this one more thing.
And so we've been managing through that as best as we can and making sure that we're fully prepared to deploy those projects as quickly as we can as we hit NTP on those sites. So I think that, more or less, sums up that. But I will say like as we get increasingly close to NTP, or hit NTP on those sites, it then becomes something that we can control. And so that gets really exciting for us because it's heads down for us on building out those projects and reaching commercial operation. And so that's where that's at. There's just less and less hurdles that can be thrown in our way.
On the non-Maine projects, the main thing there has been working with our financial party, which is a bank. We haven't announced what bank it is yet, but it's a bank on a customary construction-to-term debt facility. And in this a, competitive labor market; and then b, of course, just with the interest rate market that's out there as well. What we've seen is that their timelines to close haven't been maybe up to some of our past standards as well. And the most recent thing was a couple of weeks ago when a couple of their underwriters that were working on our case both happened to leave at the same time, and that pushed back the closing time on that. So there are some projects that are ready to declare NTP as soon as we have the facility closed on that and other projects that will be pretty soon thereafter.
So I think to answer more succinctly in terms of that question, increasingly confident on the commercial operation dates that we have forecasted for those two portfolios, but also recognize that it's been a little bit painful waiting for that to occur.
What is UGE seeing from power prices? It appears that the price per kilowatt hour is high. Should we expect these levels of prices to maintain going forward?
Yes. So the power price increases that we've seen, and this is a reminder to everyone that in our community solar projects, as retail prices go up, our revenue goes up because our revenue is tied to those retail prices. And what you've seen is historically high rate increases within 2022. And in both Maine and New York, for example, they were historically high numbers.
In Maine, those rates are published around this time each year, and they are in effect for the following calendar year. And so in Maine, we actually got those rates for 2023 just over the last couple of weeks. And once again, those rates are actually very similar increases to last year, which if you take the 2023 rate increase and the 2022 rate increase and you combine them, you're looking at about a doubling of rates over those 2 years. So that is painful for customers, but also I really expect will drive people towards community solar because it really is, in our eyes, the best way to save on your bills and so on.
So in the short term, at least, we're seeing continued rises in those rates that's upside to the revenue profile that we were expecting on those projects to start with and so on. In our longer-term forecast of how that will impact things, if I look at the 2022 rate increase, we had held back a good portion of that rate increase as conservatism. And then 2023, not only continued last year's increases, but increased them quite substantially above that. So I think we'll continue to be conservative in terms of those expectations. But what we are seeing is that our prior expectations on revenue rates and the inflation rates around that were definitely conservative. So there will be upside to our revenue and our returns on those projects.
There was an article written in the quarter about UGE, considering the potential sale of the business with a possible deadline by Q1 2023. Can we please get an update on this process? And what would it take for management to have to take such an offer to the Board and disclose it to the public?
Yes. So there's a lot in there, Marcel. The first thing I'll say is that on the last webinar, and I believe it was the last two webinars, we did field questions about this. And I think that some of our closest investors, and this feeling is mirrored by the management team here as well is that, a, we're undervalued; and b, we're undervalued considerably versus some private market comparables and comparable transaction that we've seen in terms of acquisitions and so on of private developers. And I think that as that gap has existed, we've received pretty substantial interest from potential co-private partners or acquirers of the business.
Now of course, like the management team and the Board as well, we are completely focused on like the long-term growth of UGE, the long-term success of UGE and doing what's right for all shareholders, et cetera. As we've had those increasing conversations, our feelings about the fact that we're undervalued has only continued to be established.
And so I think the last part of your question on, Marcel, was about taking it to the Board. We have had indicative numbers and things like that shown to us. And at this point in time, like we just haven't felt like there's been something that matches what ourselves and shareholders would feel is fair, even though we have seen numbers well in advance of [ where ] our share price currently exists. So we'll continue to build the best business that we can and create value here, and continue to consider the best interest of everybody involved as those conversations continue.
Next question comes from Devin Schilling of PI Financial. Can you please provide an update on the battery storage opportunity in Massachusetts?
Yes. So that's a portfolio that we're really excited about. The -- to give a brief background there, the Massachusetts, like the state of Massachusetts, has long been a good solar market and had favorable solar policy. And so therefore, there's a lot of solar on the grid there already. And so to see like the next leg of growth for the renewable energy industry in Massachusetts, they've come out with guidelines and policy and incentives around adding energy storage to the grid there.
We feel like we have jumped on that earlier than most and have built a really good portfolio. I think including backlog and then a few projects that are in development stage, it's in the neighborhood of 100 megawatts of projects that we're developing in Massachusetts, most of which are our energy storage projects.
We have NTP dates, if I'm not mistaken, from the supplemental disclosure file that are in 2024. So still a little ways out before those projects reach NTP and then commercial operation, but it's a market we're quite excited about.
Returns that we're seeing are pretty similar from an IRR perspective on an unlevered after-tax basis to our solar projects and fairly similar value on like a per watt basis to our solar assets as well. So I think the traditional economics we've seen in our solar projects serve as a good proxy there.
And then the last thing I will say is that we have started to leverage that experience that we're getting in [ mass ] already to some of the other states that we operate in as well. New York being one of them, but California being a really exciting one, too. So I didn't mention anything about this in the prepared remarks. But from a policy perspective, we continue to see really good tailwinds upside of the IRA. One of those opportunities is in California, which in Q3, Governor Newsom did sign a community solar bill paving the way for community solar program in California as well. So we already have some sites under site control in California, and we're expecting battery storage to play a really important role in that market as well.
Next, we have a bunch of questions from investors. The first one goes back to the increased electricity prices and project economics. Can -- is the expectation still for EBITDA to fall within the range of $15 million to $18 million per megawatt of operating assets given the increased electric...
Yes, that's -- yes, sorry, Marcel, I cut you out there. But that is correct that, that is the correct range to be thinking about as of now. We haven't -- I think underlying that question is the possibility that our revenue expectations per megawatt could probably increase. We haven't provided updated guidance on that as of yet. So as of now, that $15 million to $18 million range is correct.
Okay. And can you talk to the $3-plus per watt valuation you're receiving on operating assets and what this means for UGE? What does it imply for project values at NTP?
I'll try my best to answer that, Marcel, and both Marcel, feel free to ask a follow-up, or I don't have the name in front of me, but whoever asked that question, please feel free to ask a follow-up to, if I don't -- if I missed the mark on this response. But -- so number one is that we've turned on three projects in the Greater New York City area. Those ones had valuations by the third-party appraisal firm north of $3 per watt.
We had announced when our first Maine project reached NTP that, that one was, if I'm not mistaken, $2.62 per watt, somewhere in that range. That was before this year's power price increases, I will say. But that kind of gives a range in terms of what we're seeing on the third-party appraisal for different projects that we're reaching NTP and COD on.
In terms of what that means for us, a couple of things. So number one is that's what the investment tax credit is based on. So if you take that 30% base rate, if we were holding a value of $2 per watt in our backlog, based on the quick mental math that we could do based on my prepared remarks, and that value becomes $3 per watt, well, that's 50% more tax credit that flows back to the project. So for $3 a watt, that is times 30%, $900,000 per megawatt investment tax credit more or less. And like I said, also, we are expecting that we'll receive much higher ITCs in that on average for many of our projects.
And I think the other way to look at it is from a value creation standpoint, there is a fair market value in terms of, hey, here's like the DCF around what the NPV of this project's worth. And then if you, in essence, subtract the CapEx of what it costs us to build the project from that, you really get the sort of delta in terms of the value creation. And so the higher FMB, the more value that you could deduce that we're creating there as well.
What's the biggest risk to advancing [ projects ] through your backlog and into operation?
Well, so as projects make their way through, generally speaking, the risk "decreases" fairly substantially, right? Like if you have interconnection approval on a project, you're quite close to being able to build that project. And the building of the project, we would see nowadays as almost like a given, like the actual value addition from the time you've got from NTP to COD is fairly marginal versus the value that you're creating, getting a project from origination up to NTP.
Some of the risks that we've seen relate to getting interconnection and also the cost around interconnection. There can be a variable there in terms of what the utility is going to quote in terms of the cost of connecting and some of the upgrades that might be needed there.
Policy can always change. We're seeing pretty strong tailwinds about increasingly favorable policy around community solar in particular, but that's a variable there as well. The best example of that probably would be the Maine market, which grew so quickly that they felt they needed to put the brakes on things and decrease the size -- the maximum size of projects there from 5 megawatts AC to 2-megawatt AC earlier in the year.
But I think that we were already, I'd say, quite good at developing a couple of years ago. But over the last couple of years, I think we've become increasingly good at when a project enters our backlog having a pretty strong sense about how things are going to turn out by the time that, that project reaches NTP and COD.
Okay. Two questions from the next investor. What is the forecast on cash on hand in 12 months? And what are your thoughts about potentially uplisting on to the TSX?
So we don't provide a forecast on, like, for example, cash 12 months from now type of a thing. So if I understood that question correctly, I'll dance around that a little bit to say that we don't -- or Stephanie and I don't have a specific number on that. But what I will say is a couple of things, and I'll take the uplisting question thereafter.
But in terms of the kind of like the cash flow of the business, as an increasing number of projects go into construction and then into operation, that means that we're earning increasing developer and EPC fees as we build those projects and then cash flows from the projects after commercial operation. So we're really excited to see the number of NTPs and CODs increasing here in the quarters to come. And that's going to quarter-by-quarter, be decreasing the net burn for the business as we work towards getting the cash flow positive.
Of course, we had this 100 megawatts goal in 2024, so in essence, 2 years from now. And as we get to and pass that goal, the business will become increasingly cash flow positive before that market. But certainly, as we turn through that number, it will increase from there.
In terms of the uplisting question, it is our goal to uplist to the Maine [ board ] in Canada by the end of 2023. So 1 year from now, and I'm not sure if we mentioned that publicly. So Stephanie hasn't yanked my Ethernet cord here yet. But we've been doing all the work in the background to get ourselves into that position in terms of as Stephanie and Stephanie's team have led, for example, a company-wide ERP rollout here over the last several months and things like that. And then that also matches of course, they're increasing operational portfolio as well. So we feel like we're, as a company, in an increasingly strong position to make that uplist in the not-too-distant future here, and we look forward to doing so.
And a final question is a follow-up question from Nick Boychuk at Cormark Securities. Nick, can you please expand upon the new emerging opportunity in California? What's driving the growth in projects there? And how fast could that expand?
Yes. So to make a long story short, so California is probably a state that we all think of as being a solar state, right, quite favorable in that regard. And it was, in many ways, like the real leading residential state for solar for quite a long time. And it's been quite a strong utility scale market as well.
From a community solar perspective, and from a commercial perspective as well, in essence, because California has been quite a front of -- like a leading state in many respects, it brought in a form of community solar -- before it was as economical as it is now, I think, 6 or 7 years ago. And at that point in time, the norm was if you weren't going up at solar on your own house, you could subscribe to it and you would pay extra.
Now people that have been following the business know that like every single project that we're developing, 1 of the 2 main goals is to save people money. And so from that perspective, California was a setup in a way that people paid a premium to go green to community solar, which is outdated versus every other state that has community solar nowadays.
So what California has done is they've updated the way the community solar program works in California. There is still like policy being written here. So the final regulations haven't been posted yet, but we have a pretty strong sense about how that's going to turn out. And so on that basis, we've been lining up projects to take advantage of that market. And so maybe I think hopefully that provides a good high-level answer to that question. But I think if I'm not mistaken, from the supplemental disclosure file, I think our first California projects have NTPs that are in the range of 18 months from now.
And Nick and Stephanie, we have two more questions that I've got in after the bell here. So the first one is, what is the expectation on magnitude of developer fees per watt with the increase of project valuations in ITC?
I'll do my best to take a stab at that. And I'll just say that it does vary a fair bit by market. And the different variables at play there are -- if your revenue profile is higher, if the value of the project is higher, if the value of the investment tax credit is higher, those are all favorable. And then we, of course, have been in an inflationary environment on the CapEx, and also to a degree on the interest rate side of things.
I'll say that, especially on the interest rate side of things, we've been able to offset largely those rate increases based on the increasing size of our portfolio, which has been giving us better access to terms there as well. But those are the different variables at play.
But in essence, I think that we kind of hold as an assumption somewhere in the range of 10% of project value as like an all-in developer/EPC fee for us to extract from projects as we build them out. That's probably conservative in a number of the markets that we're in, but we think that, that's a good proxy to use.
Okay. Any plans to uplist in the U.S. as well?
Yes. Good question. Obviously, like virtually all of our projects are in the U.S. these days. I'll add two caveats to that in 1 second. And the majority of our employees are in the U.S. these days as well.
So cross listing to the U.S. or in some way, shape or form, getting access to the U.S. capital markets is something that we plan to do in the more medium term. So I talked about the uplist to the TSX being a more like a 12-month goal. I would consider the NASDAQ or NYSE goal being probably the year that follows that, really linking up with the growth of the business here. There's obviously things that could accelerate that growth, and we'll see what happens there. But all else considered equal, that sort of more medium-term time frame is what we're expecting there.
If I back up for 1 second, I'll just briefly mention that two other things from a market perspective that happened in the last little bit here. One is that Canada actually has announced a very similar kind of investment tax credit like incentive in Canada, which we're quite excited about. So that's in the early stages, but that should hopefully give access to a broader array of projects in the Canadian market for us in the coming years.
And on the flip side, the Philippines market, we've talked about this on the last webinar too, but that's a market that we've really been downplaying. And so over the last couple of quarters, two of our projects, we actually sold back to the building owners, and the two remaining operational projects that we have in the Philippines, we're looking at potential for selling those projects in the not-too-distant future here as well. And then other backlog or pipeline projects we have in the Philippines, we're also looking quite seriously about selling those projects as well. We just think it really makes sense for us to focus on North America with all the tailwinds and growth opportunities that we have here right now.
Okay. Nick and Stephanie, there are no further questions, so I'll pass the call back to you for closing remarks.
Yes. Thank you, Marcel, and thank you for everybody who tuned in today and asked those questions. Like Stephanie said, we apologize for the mix up on the time of the webinar, but we're really thankful that so many of you were able to log in here today. We'll post a recording of the webinar, too, in case anybody wasn't able to take the time.
But thanks again for the interest in the company. We're super excited about the rate of growth that we're experiencing, the value of the backlog that we're developing and the opportunities here in front of us and so we'll continue to work really hard at building value here for all of the shareholders that are involved.
And with that, happy holidays to everybody, and I hope everyone has a really good end of the year here, and we look forward to touching base again in the New Year.
This concludes UGE International's Q3 2022 Conference Call. We thank you for joining us.