Interim Results

Thames Water Utilities Finance PLC

05 December 2023

 

Thames Water Utilities Limited

Interim results for the six months to 30 September 2023

5 December 2023

Thames Water Utilities Finance Plc announces that Thames Water Utilities Limited has announced its interim results for the six months to 30 September 2023.

Operational highlights

·    49% reduction in customer complaints backlog; total complaints up 13%

·    90% reduction in CRI

·    6% reduction in leakage

·    60% reduction in supply interruptions

·    Thames Tideway Tunnel on track for commissioning, the third phase of improvements that will increase the health of the river by reducing combined sewer overflows by c.95%

·    10% increase in social tariff support for customers in vulnerable circumstances

Financial highlights

·    Underlying Revenue up 11% to £1.2 billion

·    Underlying EBITDA[1] up 22% to £627 million  

·    £1.0 billion invested in assets, a 30% year-on-year increase

·    £3.5 billion of committed liquidity[2], underpinning our AMP7 investment programme

Refocused Turnaround Plan approved

·    New three-year turnaround plan to deliver a step change in performance

·    Six key operational priorities aligned to what our customers care about the most

·    Builds on the good progress and foundations laid in the last two years

·    Underpins delivery of our ambitious £18.7 billion PR24 business plan submitted to Ofwat

Interim Co-CEOs, Cathryn Ross and Alastair Cochran said:

"Today, we have announced a solid set of results with improvements in our key operational priorities and underlying financial performance in the first half. We've also invested a record £1 billion in the period to increase resilience in our network, improve customer service and environmental performance, and mitigate the impacts of climate change and population growth.

"We have also submitted our business plan for 2025-30 to Ofwat as part of its PR24 price review and had our refocused Turnaround Plan approved by our Board.  These plans build on what we have achieved over the last two years, and will deliver a turnaround in performance and step change in investment in the areas that matter most to our customers.

"Our shareholders support this much needed investment, underscoring their commitment to delivering Thames' turnaround and life's essential service for the benefit of our customers, communities, and the environment. At the same time, we recognise our customers are continuing to face cost-of-living challenges. We've therefore further increased our social tariff support in the first half of this year and our plans for the next regulatory period set out an expectation that we will provide over 530,000 households with meaningful support with their water bills.

"Turning around Thames will take time. We simply cannot do everything that our customers and stakeholders wish to see at a pace and for a price that everyone would like. We will continue to make the tough choices required to deliver what matters most to our customers and the environment. By being honest about what we can deliver and transparent about what we are doing, we believe we will build the trust and support we need from our customers and stakeholders if we are to succeed in our ambitious plans."

 

Key financials

£m	30 September 2023			30 September 2022
	Underlying	BTL1	Total	Underlying	BTL1	Total	Total % Movement
Revenue	1,210.9	58.8	1,269.7	1,092.8	42.4	1,135.2	+12%
Operating expenses	(1,053.0)	(0.3)	(1,053.3)	(968.6)	(0.1)	(968.7)	+9%
Operating profit2	227.6	58.5	286.1	174.5	42.3	216.8	+32%
EBITDA3	627.1	58.5	685.6	513.3	42.3	555.6	+23%
Net finance expense	(208.7)	-	(208.7)	(261.0)	-	(261.0)	(20%)
Net gain on financial instruments	169.0	-	169.0	580.0	-	580.0	(71%)
Profit before tax	187.9	58.5	246.4	493.5	42.3	535.8	(54%)
Profit after tax excluding exceptional items4	141.8	43.9	185.7	331.7	65.9	397.6	(53%)
Profit after tax	128.4	43.9	172.3	331.7	65.9	397.6	(57%)
Operating cash flow excluding exceptional items4	584.8	4.9	589.7	581.8	0.6	582.4	+1%
Operating cash flow	579.1	4.9	584.0	581.8	0.6	582.4	+0%
Capital expenditure including intangibles	1,049.0	-	1,049.0	808.4	-	808.4	+30%
Net debt (statutory)	14,738.7	-	14,738.7	13,776.2	-	13,776.2	+7%
Gearing (%)5	79.5	-	-	80.0	-	-	(1%)
Credit Rating6	Baa2 (stable) / BBB (watch negative)			Baa2 (stable) / BBB (stable)			-

¹ Refer to page 25 of the Thames Water Utilities Limited Interim Results for information about the Bazalgette Tunnel Limited ("BTL") arrangement

² Operating profit includes revenue and other operating income, offset by operating expenses

³ EBITDA calculated excluding exceptional items

⁴ See CFO section for more details on exceptional items

⁵ Ratio of covenant net debt to Regulatory Capital Value ("RCV"), defined on page 12 of the Thames Water Utilities Limited Interim Results

⁶ Representing the consolidated Corporate Family Rating assigned by Moody's / S&P Class A debt of the securitisation group

For further information

Investors and analysts
Head of Investor Relations: Sarah Davies - [e-mail]

Media
Head of Media Relations: Suvra Jans - [e-mail]

Our Interim Chief Executives' Review

Cathryn Ross and Alastair Cochran

Our refocused turnaround plan

Thames Water is privileged to provide life's essential service across our region.  We supply 2.6 billion litres of clean drinking water to more than 10 million customers every day and treat 4.6 billion litres of sewage for more than 16 million customers.  Across many areas of performance, we are in line with water industry averages.  But in some other areas our performance needs to improve, including some areas of operational and environmental performance that matter most to our customers and communities. Our financial performance also needs to improve. It is clear that immediate and radical action is required.

It is not possible to address all the challenges facing Thames Water at the same time. Delivering a turnaround in performance requires a focus on the priorities that most matter now.  We need to focus our resources on those outcomes that will evidence to our customers, regulators, shareholders and other stakeholders that Thames' leadership is able to navigate a way back to sustainably delivering our purpose to deliver life's essential service so our customers, communities and the environment can thrive.

We have therefore undertaken a structured and rigorous process during the first half of this year to develop a refocused, three-year Turnaround Plan. It focuses on six key operational priorities - health and safety, customer complaints, water quality, leakage, supply interruptions, and pollutions.  And it will provide a springboard to deliver our ambitious plan for customers and the environment during the next regulatory period spanning 2025 to 2030 ("AMP8"). It is based on a resolute focus on understanding root cause issues and prioritising improving key outcomes.  We will measure incremental progress through leading - as well as lagging - indicators, so that we know we are heading in the right direction, enabling us to build momentum before we see the material, sustained improvements in outcomes that will take time to deliver.

It also builds on good progress in recent years in building back some core internal capabilities that had been lost, in areas such as health and safety, capital delivery, some aspects of operational performance, customer contact, asset maintenance and stakeholder engagement. Basic operational performance has been improved in many areas, with significant reductions achieved in customer complaints and network blockages, whilst the ongoing Public Health Transformation Plan has reduced water quality risks (as measured by CRI).

Whilst business resilience remains fragile with frequent failures in our ageing infrastructure, we have taken a risk-based approach to improve reliability by more closely managing core assets and we have started to bring greater rigour to maintenance practices. We have also developed long-term asset plans to build resilience and redundancy that will ultimately restore operations to a level our customers expect.

Making progress

In the first half of 2023/24, we delivered improvements in several of our key operational priorities and underlying financial performance has largely improved year-on-year.  However, our performance is still not where it needs to be.

Health and safety: people matter more than anything else. It is why the health, safety and wellbeing of our colleagues and customers remains our most important priority. Notwithstanding this, our health and safety performance remains an area of concern, particularly as we've experienced an increase in lost-time frequency rate in the first half of the year to 0.19 per 100,000 hours worked. In response, and as part of our refocused Turnaround Plan, we're defining a long-term measurable plan that ensures health, safety and wellbeing is at the forefront of all our activity.  It addresses foundational capabilities that are essential for delivering an improvement in performance, focusing on competency, visible safety leadership, and understanding and learning from incidents, as well as supporting a reduction in work-related injuries and illnesses.

Customer complaints: our overall objective is to improve the service we offer to customers, evidenced by a reduction in the overall number of complaints, the complaints backlog, and improving our cost to serve as a result. We successfully reduced the backlog of customer complaints by 49%, a key priority in the first half and have moved up the CCW (Consumer Council for Water) performance ranking for the first time.  However, work to clear the backlog has generated an increased volume of second stage complaints, which has contributed to the overall inflow increasing by 13% year-on-year to 38,872. We are undertaking detailed root cause analysis and end-to-end customer journey mapping to target improvements in billing and customer side leakage, which generate the highest proportion of complaints. In addition, investment in our digital systems and data platforms next year will deliver further sustainable improvements in customer satisfaction and complaint reductions, continuing the good progress we have made in the last two years.

Water quality: at the heart of our purpose is delivering a reliable supply of safe, high quality drinking water to our customers. Following the successful launch of our Public Health Transformation Plan last year, we have delivered a 90% reduction in our water quality compliance risk index ("CRI") to 1.19 in the first three quarters of this calendar year.  This plan has been supported by complementary programmes, including improvement works at our large water treatment works in London. We are committed to maintaining these high levels of water quality performance, recognising that the CRI measure is susceptible to very small increases of risk at our large water treatment works or service reservoirs.

Leakage: performance benefitted from more benign weather conditions this year compared to last summer, with leakage down 6% year-on-year to 557.1 Ml/d. We are targeting a sustained reduction through better understanding of consumption, improved targeting of detection activities, better prioritisation of repairs (including "fixing bigger leaks faster"), improving DMA operability and availability, and driving greater productivity in our field operations. We believe that a focus on delivering sustained improvements in key leading indicators will drive down leakage over time, although we are cognizant that performance remains highly sensitive to extreme weather events and the 3-year average performance commitment target measure makes recovery from major events, such as last year's drought, difficult. We are also realistic about the scale of the challenge we face given the vulnerability of our ageing infrastructure, which is why we have proposed to invest c.£1.9 billion during the next regulatory period to start to address the decline in the health of our assets.

Supply interruptions: we made a solid start to the year, reducing supply interruptions by c.60% year-on-year to 2 mins 52 seconds, within our performance commitment target. Our Turnaround Plan targets maintaining improvements made year to date and rolling-out our Supply Interruption Strategy, which includes nine initiatives focused on addressing trunk mains bursts and inefficiencies in mains repairs, as well as improving our response to unexpected events.  This will reduce underlying performance as much as possible to be able to better absorb the impact of major incidents, which are extremely difficult to forecast and mitigate, and the inherent risk associated with high levels of asset debt in our portfolio. 

Pollutions: overall performance deteriorated in the first half, with category 1-3 pollutions increasing year-on-year from 217 to 257. Our Turnaround Plan addresses and mitigates the major drivers of pollutions across our wastewater network and sewage treatment works, including more proactive network cleaning and monitoring, and better prioritised reactive responses.  Consequently, blockages, which cause over 40% of network pollutions, reduced by 5% in the first half of the year. As we look ahead, changes our regulators are making to the definition of pollutions are expected to increase the overall number of pollutions we report, even if there is no change in the impact we have on the environment.  Notwithstanding this, we are committed to tackle the root causes of pollutions to meet the expectations of our communities and the needs of the environment.

Investing to improve performance

In the first half of this year, we increased investment in our network and assets by 30% to £1.0 billion. This material year on year increase reflected the planned increase in investment in our infrastructure to increase resilience in our network, improved customer service, and to help mitigate the dual impacts of climate change and population growth.

Notable capital programmes in the period included the renewal of critical water mains in Finsbury Park and Seven Sisters using innovative new 'Die Draw' technology, which enables water mains to be replaced without digging up the whole length of the pipe to be replaced.  We're also replacing 3km of rising main at Haydon End, near Swindon, which moves sewage uphill under pressure and has experienced several bursts in recent years. As we focus on improving our wastewater performance, we've also started work on our major new sewage treatment works in Guildford, which will construct a 'state of the art' facility to accommodate population growth in the area as well as enabling development in the town.

Cleaning up rivers also continues to be a key focus and we are on the final countdown to the commissioning of the landmark Thames Tideway Tunnel, London's "super sewer".  This is the third phase of improvements that together will increase the health of the River Thames by reducing combined sewer overflows by an estimated 95%, the largest ever storm discharge reduction project in the UK water sector.

Looking further ahead, we are fully committed to deliver a step change in investment and performance. This is why, between 2025 and 2030, our PR24 business plan proposes to invest a record £4.7 billion in our network and other assets to improve water security for our customers in London and the Thames Valley and deliver environmental improvements. This investment is critical to building greater resilience in the face of an ageing asset base, climate change and population growth.

Financial resilience

We continue to maintain high levels of liquidity, diversify sources of funding, pre-fund maturities and maintain a balanced debt maturity profile. 

A step change in investment is being funded through a combination of customer funding, debt capital and new equity. Consequently, and as expected, both net debt and regulatory capital value increased in the first half. This resulted in senior gearing of 79.5% as at 30 September 2023, below the maximum allowed under our covenant of 95.0% and the 85.0% lock-up level. 

Furthermore, the TWUL Group had total liquidity of £3.5 billion as at 30 September 2023, as well as £550 million of other undrawn liquidity facilities that can be drawn in limited circumstances.  In addition, after the period end, we completed £625 million of funding transactions that further extended our liquidity runway.

As previously disclosed, our shareholders have agreed to provide a further £750 million in new equity funding across AMP7 subject to satisfaction of certain conditions. We continue to have constructive discussions with all stakeholders to satisfy these conditions and look forward to securing a PR24 price control that, in the round, allows us to both deliver record levels of investment for the benefit of the customers, communities and environment we serve, and offer investors an opportunity to earn the returns required to finance it.

Caring for customers

For over three decades Thames Water's bills have been below the industry average, despite us having the oldest network. And they are no higher today than a decade ago. To deliver water security and environmental improvements, our bills will need to rise but also be affordable. We are therefore committed to do more than ever to support customers who struggle to pay their bills.

Since launching new eligibility criteria for our social tariff, we have increased support to a further 30,000 households taking the total to 335,000 in the first half. This represents a more than doubling of the level of support provided in three years.  We're proposing to increase this support further in the next regulatory period, to over half a million households, as we balance affordability with the need to ensure water security for today's customers and those of tomorrow. 

A new Chairman

On 10 July, Sir Adrian Montague joined as our new Chairman. Sir Adrian is a highly experienced Chair of large infrastructure businesses and was Chair of Anglian Water Group Limited for five years between 2010 and 2015. From 2003 to 2010 he was Chair of British Energy, and he is currently the Chair of Cadent Gas Limited and Porterbrook Holdings Limited.

Chief Financial Officer's Review
Alastair Cochran

Underlying financial performance has largely improved year-on-year with material increases in revenue and EBITDA in the first six months of the 2023/24 financial year. At the same time, we've delivered record levels of investment as we ramp up our AMP7 investment programme to improve environmental performance, customer service, security of supply and the resilience of our ageing water and wastewater infrastructure.

We have also continued to maintain financial discipline, focusing on delivering operational efficiencies and maintaining strong liquidity.  This has required us to make tough choices, including focusing resource and spend on the most critical areas, reducing headcount, and reprioritising capital spend.  These have helped mitigate ongoing inflationary headwinds and ensure we have the committed funding in place to continue to deliver our ambitious capital programme that will benefit the customers, communities, and environment we serve.

Financial performance

Our financial statements include the amounts billed in relation to the construction of the Thames Tideway Tunnel, which are passed to Bazalgette Tunnel Limited ("BTL"), the independent company responsible for the construction of the tunnel. As this money is not retained by Thames Water, we exclude it from our underlying results.

Revenue

Total revenue in the first half of the financial year increased by £135 million to £1,270 million.  Our revenue primarily relates to the essential water and wastewater services we provide to our customers. Our economic regulator, Ofwat, determines the amounts we charge in our bills every five years through a price review process, which is driven by the costs we expect to incur to invest in and operate our business over that five-year regulatory period. Our current regulatory period covers 1 April 2020 to 31 March 2025 ("AMP7").

Underlying revenue for the six-month period ended 30 September 2023 increased by 11% to £1,211 million driven primarily by inflation-linked tariff increases.

Bad debt

We have a range of support options for customers in vulnerable circumstances and increased our social tariff by 10% in the period to help those who cannot afford to pay their bill in full.  This means that we now support over 335,000 households with paying their bills, a 126% increase since the beginning of 2020.

Notwithstanding this extra support, our overall bad debt cost increased by £12 million to £48 million reflecting the impact of declining real wages on cash collections.  The current period charge is split between a deduction of revenue of £22 million and operating expenses of £26 million.

Overall, the continued pressure of the cost of living resulted in our total bad debt charge increasing to 4.9% of underlying household revenue, a 0.9 ppts increase year on year. We are continuing to work diligently to improve bad debt performance and have implemented a range of initiatives to reduce the overall charge as a percentage of gross revenue over the medium and long term.

EBITDA

Total EBITDA (excluding exceptional items) in the first half of 2023/24 was £686 million, a 23% year-on-year increase. This was driven by revenue growth exceeding the increase in operating expenditure, as well as £22 million of other operating income from the sale of land and compensation for the relocation of assets. Exceptional items of £18 million incurred in the period related to business restructuring and transformation costs.

Underlying EBITDA, excluding amounts related to BTL and exceptional items, increased by 22% to £627 million.

The increase in underlying operating expenses (excluding depreciation, amortisation, impairment and exceptional items) was primarily driven by:

·    A £29 million increase in employment costs as we invested to improve customer service by insourcing, and supported our employees through the cost-of-living crisis

·    A £15 million increase in bad debt costs (excluding amounts deducted from revenue)

·    A £7 million increase in rates, driven by a new valuation period

·    A £5 million increase in raw materials and consumables, driven by chemical prices

Increases in operational costs were partially offset by cost efficiency initiatives, as well as higher operating income and recharges to capital as we ramped up our capital programme.

Profit before tax

Total profit before tax declined 54% to £246 million in the first half reflecting lower fair value gains on financial instruments, which more than offset a reduction in net finance expense.

A £52 million reduction in net finance expense to £209 million principally reflected the benefit of higher interest income on swaps and cash invested in money market funds and deposits, which more than offset higher interest costs on borrowings.

Non-cash net gains on financial instruments fell by £411 million to £169 million. This year-on-year decrease was driven by lower fair value gains on swaps that more than offset exchange gains on foreign exchange borrowings.  We use swaps to hedge the interest rate risk, inflation risk and foreign exchange risk of our borrowings, enabling us to manage our financing risk. Fluctuations in market variables such as interest rates, inflation and foreign exchange rates, together with cash settlements during the period, generate changes in the balance sheet value of these financial instruments with the associated accounting gains or losses impacting profit.

Underlying profit before tax (excluding amounts related to BTL and exceptional costs) decreased by £288 million to £206 million.

Taxation

A total tax charge of £74 million was recognised in the first six months of 2023/24 comprising a current tax charge of £97 million, reflecting the use by TWUL Group of tax losses from other Kemble group entities, and a deferred tax credit of £23 million, which arises on the net reduction in timing differences primarily relating to fixed assets and cash flow hedges.

Profit after tax

Profit after tax was £172 million in the period, a decrease of £225 million compared to the prior comparable period, largely reflecting lower non-cash fair value gains on financial instruments.

Underlying profit after tax (excluding amounts related to BTL and exceptional items) was £142 million in the period.

Operating cash flow

Operating cash flow increased by £2 million to £584 million in the first half, with higher EBITDA offset by an increase in working capital due to the timing of billing schedules.

Underlying operating cash flow (excluding amounts related to BTL and exceptional items) increased by £3 million to £585 million in the period.

Capital expenditure

In the first six months of the financial year, we invested £1,049 million in our assets, including £97 million relating to capitalised borrowing costs. The £241 million year-on-year increase reflects the ramp up in our AMP7 investment programme to increase the resilience of our network and to help mitigate the impacts of climate change and population growth.

This included:

·    £303 million invested through our in-house Capital Delivery vehicle, including: £41 million on water distribution mains replacement and rehabilitation in London and the Thames Valley; and, £20 million on the installation of new water trunk mains, including the Faringdon to Blunsdon route

·    £125 million invested in our water network to reduce leakage and improve our trunk main network 

·    £77 million on major projects, including £34 million upgrading our major sewage treatment works at Beckton, Mogden, Greenwich and Crossness

·    £16 million on connecting our network to the Thames Tideway Tunnel, including the Beckton Inlet works 

·    £46 million on our metering programme 

Dividends

During the six-month period ended 30 September 2023, no dividends were paid to Thames Water Utilities Holdings Limited ("TWUHL"), our immediate parent company.

In October 2023, following the period end, TWUL paid dividends of £37.5 million to TWUHL. These proceeds were subsequently distributed by TWUHL to Thames Water Limited and then through to Kemble Water Finance Limited ("KWF"). KWF retained the proceeds to service its - and its subsidiary Thames Water (Kemble) Finance plc's - external debt obligations.

No distributions were made to external shareholders of the group, who own shares in our ultimate parent company, Kemble Water Holdings Limited.

Pensions

We operate three pension schemes for our employees: a defined contribution scheme, to which we contributed £16 million during the first half; and two independently administered defined benefit schemes, both of which are closed to new employees. These two defined benefit schemes are the Thames Water Pension Scheme ("TWPS") and Thames Water Mirror Image Pension Scheme ("TWMIPS"). TWPS was closed to future accrual as of 31 March 2021.

The triennial valuation as at 31 March 2022 for our defined benefit schemes is currently in progress. Our defined benefit schemes' accounting valuation has been updated to 30 September 2023 on our behalf by independent consulting actuaries, Hymans Robertson LLP. The total net pension deficit for the two schemes as at 30 September 2023 was £173 million (31 March 2023: £176 million). The decrease in deficit was primarily due to the Internal Inflation Mechanism payment made in April 2023 into both schemes, offset by changes in actuarial assumptions in this period.

Credit ratings

There has been no change in our Moody's credit ratings during the current financial year, which remain: Baa2 with a stable outlook (Corporate Family Rating); Baa1 with a stable outlook (Class A); and Ba1 with a stable outlook (Class B) debt rating. In June, S&P put our credit ratings on negative watch but they are otherwise unchanged. Our S&P ratings are: BBB on CreditWatch negative (Class A); and BB+ on CreditWatch negative (Class B). 

Under the terms of our Instrument of Appointment, we are required to maintain investment grade credit ratings, as assigned by external rating agencies. This supports our ability to access efficiently priced debt across a range of markets to fund our investment programmes, whilst keeping bills affordable for our customers.

Financing our investments

As we increase investment in our infrastructure, our financing strategy is to diversify our sources of funding, pre-fund maturities and maintain a balanced debt maturity profile.

As at 30 September 2023, the TWUL Group had total liquidity of £3,481 million comprising cash, short term investments and undrawn committed facilities. Separately, TWUL Group has £550 million of undrawn liquidity facilities that can only be drawn in limited circumstances.

In the six-month period ended 30 September 2023, a total of £371 million Class B Revolving Credit Facilities were repaid and then redrawn in September 2023. In addition, a £300 million Class B bond was repaid in May 2023, and £11 million of amortising debt was repaid in April and May 2023.

In October 2023, after the first half period end, we completed the following funding transactions:

·    a total of £530 million Class A Revolving Credit Facilities were drawn and a total of £371 million Class B Revolving Credit Facilities were repaid

·    a £99 million Class A loan agreement due 2029 was fully drawn

·    a £65 million Class B loan agreement due 2027 was fully drawn

·    a £100 million Class A RPI loan agreement originally due 2025 and with accreted principal of £145 million was extended to 2033

·    a £125 million Class A RPI loan agreement originally due 2026 and with accreted principal of £180 million was extended to 2033

·    a £300 million Class A bond due 2040 was issued

Further information is provided in Note 10 Borrowings in the Thames Water Utilities Limited Interim Results, line items "secured bank loans and private placements" and "bonds".

Financial Instruments
Our borrowings, revenue and totex ("total expenditure") are exposed to fluctuations in the external market such as changes in interest rates, inflation and foreign exchange rates.

We manage these exposures by entering into derivative contracts to hedge against future changes in these rates. We only use derivatives for risk management and both the debt and derivative contracts are generally held until maturity, so there is no cash impact due to market value changes.

We have £13,270 million (notional value) of derivative financial instruments. A total net gain on financial instruments of £169 million was recognised in the income statement during the six-month period ended 30 September 2023. The gain for the current period has arisen primarily due to higher GBP interest rate expectations as well as the depreciation of Sterling against USD and CAD, partially offset by appreciation of Sterling against JPY and EUR, as compared to 31 March 2023.

During the six-month period ended 30 September 2023:

·    £58 million of accretion was settled on index-linked swaps when falling due in August 2023 and September 2023.

·    £101 million of accretion was prepaid on index-linked swaps (£94 million cash outflow due to £7 million discount for early repayment), bringing the settlements forward to September 2023 from October 2024 and February 2025

Gearing

As we continue to invest in the business, significantly beyond the PR19 Final Determination ("FD") allowances, our statutory net debt (as defined on page 34 of the Thames Water Utilities Limited Interim Results) increased by £780 million to £14,739 million.

The increase in net debt was accompanied by an increase in the Regulatory Capital Value ("RCV") of £641 million to £19,586 million (31 March 2023: £18,945 million), which means that senior gearing (on a covenant basis), as at 30 September 2023, was 79.5% (31 March 2023: 77.4%), below the maximum allowed under the covenant of 95.0% and the 85.0% lock-up level. The increase in gearing is mainly a result of the increase in capital investment and accretion on RPI-linked debt and swaps, partially offset by the impact of higher inflation increasing RCV.

As previously disclosed, our shareholders have agreed to provide a further £750 million in new equity funding across AMP7. This further funding is subject to satisfaction of certain conditions, including the preparation of a business plan that underpins a more focused turnaround that delivers targeted performance improvements for customers, the environment and other stakeholders over the next three years and is supported by appropriate regulatory arrangements. We continue to have constructive discussions with our regulators on the scope of both our plan and proposed regulatory arrangements. These discussions could influence the scope of our plan, the bill impact and bill profile.  We continue to look forward to securing a price control that, in the round, allows us to both deliver record levels of investment for the benefit of the customers, communities and environment we serve, and offer investors an opportunity to earn the returns required to finance it.

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[1] Calculated excluding exceptional items

[2] As at 30 September 2023; excludes £550 million of additional undrawn liquidity facilities that can be drawn in limited circumstances

 

END