When an unprecedented heat wave struck California in September, demand for electricity hit an all-time high of 52,061 megawatts, prompting an emergency alert on the risk of outages and the need to conserve power.
The month marked the longest and warmest for the state and other parts of the West, breaking more than 1,000 records in a span of a week.
Amid the disarray, one chief executive was busy delivering solar power to the state. Over eight days, Sunrun, a provider of battery storage and the country’s largest rooftop solar installer, cumulatively delivered more than 1 gigawatt-hour of energy back to California’s grid, helping prevent blackouts.
“This year really put a spotlight on the value our systems can provide to customers, communities, and utilities, and we expect the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act to turbocharge our efforts for many years to come,” said Mary Powell, Sunrun’s CEO.
Powell is among the 44 CEOs who ranked No. 1 within their sector in Institutional Investor’s 2023 All-American Executive Team. She joined the company last year after 21 years with Green Mountain Power, a Vermont utility.
“When I was approached by Sunrun to consider being CEO they had me at hello,” said Powell. “After more than a decade leading radical adoption of distributed energy resources from a utility grid perspective, and being recognized for how innovative and ‘fast’ we were, I had become worn down by how slow ‘fast’ is in the regulated utility world. I felt passionate that I must find a way to have a more direct impact on accelerating the customer-led revolution to a more affordable cleaner way to generate, use, and store energy.”
To select the members of Institutional Investor’s 2023 All-America Executive Team, we surveyed buy-side analysts, money managers and sell-side researchers at securities firms and financial institutions that cover the region, including those who cast and received votes in this year’s 2022 All-America Research Team survey. We asked voters to name the best chief executive officers, chief financial officers, and investor relations professionals at the companies in their coverage universes. Over 3,100 money managers and buy-side analysts and over 330 sell-side researchers provided their candid feedback.
All votes are weighted by rating (five, four, three, two and one). We also asked them to rate the companies’ IR programs on the following eight performance attributes: in Services & Communication, “Authority & Credibility,” “Responsiveness,” “Earnings Calls,” “Business & Market Knowledge,” and “Virtual Meetings/Presentations”; and in Financial Disclosure: “Consistency,” “Granularity,” and “Timing to Market.” These ratings were aggregated to produce an overall IR Program rank for each company. Nominations for Company Board, ESG, and Investor/Analyst Event were also solicited from the voters as a separate distinction.
The overall rankings in each rankings category are based on combined buy- and sell-side votes. Separate rosters (buy side, sell side) are also available for each award classification.
To earn the designation of Most Honored Company, a company must achieve a weighted score of at least 14 for its published positions in the Best CEO, CFO, IRO, IR Program, Investor/Analyst Event, ESG, and Company Board categories. Each first-place position is worth three points; second place, two; and third place, one. In the 2023 All-America Executive Survey, 1,346 companies were nominated across 44 sectors.
Most Honored designations in the Mid-Cap rankings follow the same methodology, but firms must achieve a weighted score of at least 12 points based on their combined buy- and sell-side results. Most Honored designations in the small-cap rankings are based on receiving the highest total weighted score from the seven categories, per category.
To be eligible for inclusion on the 2023 All-America Executive Team, a company must be headquartered or have operational or executive headquarters in the region. We keep confidential the identities of the survey respondents to ensure their continuing cooperation. Voters must meet eligibility requirements, and winners must achieve a minimum vote count.