Water company profits nudging £623m

United Utilities

United Utilities is reporting 3% growth in its underlying profit to £622.9m.

Revenue for the Warrington-based water giant stayed mainly static at just above £1.70bn in the year to March 31, compared to £1.730 in 2016. Reported operating profit was up 7% to £605.5m.

Meanwhile, in the period the company ploughed £804m into AMP6 (asset management programme) taking its investment to £1.6bn over the first two years.

The company also reported a “robust capital structure and effective pensions hedging”.

Chief executive Steve Mogford said: “We have delivered a strong performance for our customers, shareholders and the environment in this second year of the 2015-20 regulatory period.

“This performance combined with our confidence in delivering a net outperformance over the regulatory period has enabled us to commit to a further £100m of additional investment in the region.

“This will support our resilience projects bringing additional customer benefits over the next three years.
“We have achieved our best ever customer satisfaction scores under Ofwat’s Service Incentive Mechanism (SIM) ending the year in ahead of our peers.

“We introduced a number of innovations enhancing our customer service offering. One of the most successful, Priority Services, provides dedicated support to customers experiencing personal or financial difficulties.

“The acceleration of our investment programme continued delivering the early benefit of operational efficiencies and means we have de-risked a number of our Outcome Delivery Incentive (ODI) measures.

“This contributed to another net ODI reward and improves our likely cumulative outcome over the five-year period. Our Systems Thinking approach is unparalleled in the sector and is delivering a radically different way of managing our business.

“Our performance in the early part of this regulatory period puts us in an industry leading position and demonstrates that we are well placed to deliver further value for customers, shareholders and the environment. This is supported by a robust capital structure and good credit ratings.”

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