29th Jul 2005 10:15
UNITED UTILITIES PLC ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING 2005 Addressing shareholders at the company's annual general meeting at theBridgewater Hall, Manchester, on 29 July 2005, the Chairman of UnitedUtilities, Sir Richard Evans, commented on the group's performance for the yearended 31 March 2005."I'm pleased to report another year of good progress, underpinned by theconsistent strategy that the group has pursued for the last five years. Oursupport services businesses delivered substantial growth, particularly in theutility and public sectors, and secured new contracts worth around ‚£3.3billion."In line with our target of maintaining dividends in real terms during the lastregulatory period, the board is proposing to increase the final dividend, by2.5 per cent."Commenting on current trading and the progress of the business, John Robertssaid:"Current trading across the group is in line with our expectations. Havingaccepted the regulatory price determinations in December 2004, our licensedmulti-utility operations will benefit this year from allowed price increases,including inflation, of 8.4 per cent in our water business and 11.5 per cent inour electricity business."With plans in place to meet our operating and capital efficiency targets, ourregulated businesses have started their new five-year regulatory contracts ingood shape."The group successfully completed the second stage of the rights issue in June2005 and raised a further ‚£508 million to help fund the capital investmentrequirements of our regulated businesses. Qualifying shareholders took up 98.4per cent of their entitlement by 29 June 2005 and the balance was sold in themarket early the following day."The success of our support services businesses in securing new contracts inthe latter part of 2004/05 means that we are now heavily engaged in mobilisingoperations on these contracts."In United Utilities Contract Solutions, the new contracts with Southern Waterand Northern Gas Networks were mobilised successfully in the first quarter, andin Vertex a good start has been made on the ‚£427 million contract with ThurrockCouncil to provide business process outsourcing services to help the councilserve its citizens. This last contract is being managed in partnership withUnited Utilities Contract Solutions which enables a wide scope of services tobe offered. The customer contact centre went live in June and thetransformational programme is making good progress with around half theservices having so far migrated across. As anticipated, start-up costs willmean that first year contributions from these contracts will be modest."Vertex recently formed an alliance with IBM to provide business transformationservices to the North American energy and utility market. The first deal was toteam with IBM as part of its $1.6 billion contract with US multi-state energycompany NiSource. This is an important development for Vertex. The scope of theservices the alliance can provide is very broad and this should help Vertextransfer its core customer management skills into a market which presentssignificant opportunities."The integration of Marlborough Stirling is well underway. As expected,performance in the first half year will inevitably reflect the weak tradingposition on acquisition, but we have already established a new managementstructure and identified immediate opportunities to achieve synergies of around‚£6m on an annual basis. The combination of Vertex and Marlborough Stirlingshould provide the financial services market with an attractive outsourcingproposition."Trading conditions in the telecoms sector have weakened in the first quarterand Your Communications' underlying revenue growth has slowed, reflecting theseconditions. However, our sales mix has shifted further away from low-marginpremium rate service activity towards higher margin business customer activity.The business continues to target operating profitability for the year as awhole."Based on the predictable, index-linked income streams inherent in thefive-year regulatory contracts we accepted in December 2004 and our confidencein the group's strategy, our target is to increase dividends in line withinflation over the next five years. This is dependent on the group meeting itsregulated cost savings targets and our non-regulated businesses continuing toperform at least in line with current levels." -o0o- For further information, contact:John Roberts, Chief Executive +44 (0)1925 237000Simon Batey, Finance Director +44 (0)1925 237000Evelyn Brodie, Corporate and Financial Communications +44 (0)20 7307 0309ENDUNITED UTILITIES PLCRelated Shares:
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