23rd May 2019 07:18
LONDON (Alliance News) - FTSE 100-listed water firm United Utilities PLC boosted its dividend Thursday after annual profit and revenue rose amid a "strong" performance against tough regulatory targets.
For the year ended March, pretax profit widened 0.9% to GBP436.2 million from GBP432.1 million the year prior. This was after revenue rose 4.6% to GBP1.82 billion from GBP1.74 billion the year before.
"We are achieving leading and sustainable results across many areas of operational performance, benefiting from the investment that we accelerated into the early years of the current regulatory period and from our deeply embedded innovation culture that is considered to be the best in the sector," United Utilities Chief Executive Officer Steve Mogford said.
"Our Systems Thinking approach has underpinned a strong performance on our outcome delivery incentives against a backdrop of increasingly challenging targets and maintaining resilient services to customers during the extreme periods of weather in 2018", Mogford added.
United Utilities proposed a 27.52 pence per share final dividend, up 3.9% from 26.49p the year prior. For the full year, the dividend also rose 3.9%, to 41.28p from 39.73p the year before.
"Ofwat's fast-track assessment of our 2020-2025 business plan - that achieved the highest grades for the sector - reflects the quality of our future plans and the performance improvements we have already delivered," Mogford explained.
"We are increasing our additional investment by another GBP100 million, to total GBP350 million, to accelerate the delivery of further performance improvements and facilitate a flying start to the next regulatory period," Mogford continued. "We are well placed for the remainder of the current regulatory period and beyond as we maintain our focus on providing great service to customers and creating long-term value for all of our stakeholders."
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