United Utilities reports stable annual performance
North West water and wastewater group United Utilities (UU) increased revenues for the year to March 31, but saw pre-tax profits slip compared with the previous year.
The Warrington-based operation reported turnover of £1.736bn, compared with £1.7bn for 2017.
Reported profit before tax was £432m, £10m lower than last year, partially affected by a £22m profit on the disposal of its non-household business the year before.
The group’s reported operating profit of £636.4m was up from £605.5m a year ago.
UU said it continues to improve customer services and efficiency, helped by greater use of innovation and advanced technology.
It posted leading customer satisfaction scores for the year, as well as environmental and water quality performance scores.
Chief executive Steve Mogford said: “We continue to put customers first.
“Our approach to vulnerability and affordability is setting new benchmarks for the industry and our sustained improvement in customer satisfaction positions us as a leader in the sector.
“This year, we achieved our best ever scores against Ofwat’s qualitative Service Incentive Mechanism (SIM), positioning us first in the industry in the final survey of the year.
“Our best practice in this area has received external recognition through several awards, many of which look beyond the water sector.”
He said: “Our approach to innovation and systems thinking is radically changing the way we operate and leading the way for the industry.
“We are using advanced technology from around the world and across different sectors to deliver better service, greater resilience and improved efficiency.
“This is contributing to outperformance in the current regulatory period which we are sharing with customers in the form of £250m of additional investment in resilience projects.
“The significant progress we have made positions us well as we look towards the next regulatory period and gives us confidence that we can rise to the longer-term challenges resulting from a growing population, affordability concerns and the impact of more volatile weather.”
He added: “We will build on the trust our customers place in us to provide an outstanding service, invest wisely and efficiently, driving further innovation and creating value for all our stakeholders.”
UU revealed that it has also managed to cut customer debt costs, despite being one of the worst affected utilities.
It said: “Our region suffers from high levels of income deprivation and we offer wide-ranging schemes to help customers struggling to pay.”
There are now more than 100,000 customers on affordability schemes, almost double the commitment the group made at the start of its current five year regulatory period.
It added: “Notwithstanding our industry-leading debt management processes, deprivation remains the principal driver of our higher than average bad debt and cost to serve, and we expect this to continue to be a challenging area for us.”
However, it revealed that, through initiatives like its affordability schemes, its household bad debt expense has reduced to 2.3% of regulated revenue from 2.5% last year.
