Severn Trent H1 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

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November 20, 2024

There are 3 speakers on the call.

Operator

Hello. I'm Liv Garfield. And welcome to the 7 Trent half year results for the financial year 2025. I'm out and about in Coventry today and I'm going to be fitting a water butt as I try to bring to life all of the activities from 7 Trent through our results presentations. Now before I enter the customer's house which is literally just there it's worth perhaps reflecting on the 5 years as we draw AMP7 to a close.

Operator

And whilst we know there's so much more we can do so many more opportunities for improvement nonetheless there have been some pretty big achievements that are worth perhaps calling out as we start today's video. The first one then is around growth. We've really migrated into being a growth organization. We've seen that with RCV growth of around 40% normally which is definitely boosted by the green recovery and puts us in fantastic shape for the next AMP which of course is already equity funded. When we think about the environment, we've seen a 30% reduction in emissions, which is great for our desires and sustainability.

Operator

We've invested and supported 15,000 of hectares to be more biodiverse friendly. And we're on track for over a 1,000 WIMIT projects, which is fantastic for the rivers and the environment in our region. When we think about performance, I think there's a few good statistics there as well. We've been the standout performer for certain on the EPA ratings with 5 years on the bounce of 4 star rating, which is incredible. On ODIs, we've managed to deliver a whopping £420,000,000 worth of cash returns, and all of that has contributed towards a nominal RORI contribution of 13% over the course of the app.

Operator

And When we actually think about what's the wider stuff that we should do as a really fantastic company in our region, it's about giving back. Looking after the communities by giving 1% of our profits to fantastic good causes, making sure that we actually support our colleagues. We've seen engagement scores back again in the top 5% globally which is amazing and of course making sure that we support any customer that is struggling to pay their bill and that's why we're delighted to have contributed about £200,000,000 worth of contributions have supported customers in the last 5 year period. Now with that let's head over there knock on the customer's door and check they're ready for us and I'll also share with you the highlights of the 1st 6 months of the year. So the good news is the customer's in, so we can go through shortly and deliver the water butt.

Operator

But let me first start with the highlights of the 1st 6 months of the year. So we're on track for over £100,000,000 worth of ODR rewards, which is absolutely fantastic. In July, the EA confirmed that we just landed 5 years of EPA 4 star status on the bounce, which is great. We've successfully delivered 900 interventions on our spills program already this year and ahead of the end of December date that we set ourselves. We've, of course, made sure that we landed outstanding status with our price review, and we're well on track for our capital program and actually are indicating towards the top end of our previously guided to range.

Operator

With that let's go and see our customer and I'll hand you over to Helen.

Speaker 1

Thanks Liv. Looking at the highlights of the half year, I'm pleased to share a strong set of financial results with growth in PBIT, which is up 17% and adjusted EPS, which is almost doubled year on year, benefiting from higher revenues, reduced costs and lower finance charges. We expect to close AMP7 with an RCV of £13,600,000,000 growing by over £4,000,000,000 across 5 years. And we're well positioned for future growth with economic regulated gearing at the half year of 58.6%, which we expect to be one of the lowest in the sector. And further supporting our financial resilience, we have over £2,000,000,000 of liquidity extending out to July 26.

Speaker 1

Finally, I can confirm that our interim dividend will be 48 point 6 8p in line with our policy. Running an efficient business is an important part of what we do. And I just want to spend a moment now talking about what we've delivered across AMP 7 and how that sets us up brilliantly for the next AMP. We've delivered so much more than we originally planned and were funded for in AMP7. We've brought more water into supply as demand increased during the 1st 2 years of the AMP.

Speaker 1

We've treated more wastewater as we manage the impact of population growth and wetter weather. And we've worked hard to be green on over 80% of our measures, for example, leakage where we've increased our activity to improve the network by 85%. But beyond the everyday activity, we've also managed our cost base carefully to unlock additional funds and make strategic investments, making our business stronger for the long term. And to call out some examples, our operational and engineering teams have grown by onethree as we in source critical skills and grow our delivery capacity. We've invested over £100,000,000 in enhancing our systems, driving efficiency and resilience across the business.

Speaker 1

We've grown our tanker fleet by 75%, which gives us crucial resource to manage incidents, protect customers and continue to deliver strong operational performance. And we've delivered all of that as well as absorbing above inflation increases and, of course, investing to deliver £420,000,000 in ODI rewards over AMP7. All of this combined means we have a strong platform to continue to grow efficiently, which is one of my key priorities. It's been a strong half for the regulated business as we see the benefits of higher inflation linked revenue, lower power prices and tight cost control flowing through to PBIT growth of over 20%. I'm pleased to have maintained bad debts at 2% of household revenue, reflecting our efforts in providing affordability support to customers who can't pay.

Speaker 1

Overall, pricing impacts are positive with energy costs over £40,000,000 lower in the 1st 6 months, partially offset by our annual pay increase as well as above inflation increases in both business rates and regulatory fees. We've seen a reduction in IRE and depreciation with a change to the mix of work, meaning there has been more capital jobs carried out this half. And we continue to invest in people, resources and reduce our reliance on the supply chain for critical activities, which we believe is an important driver of our operational performance. And of course, we've seen higher green recovery costs compensated in revenue with the program in its final substantial year of delivery. Our Business Services division has made a valuable contribution to the group this month, adding almost £250,000,000 of EBITDA up to date.

Speaker 1

The biggest contributor is operating services, which continues to deliver long term stable contracts. Our property development business is on track for its 15 year £150,000,000 PBIT goal with a healthy pipeline of sales to be delivered by 2,032. In Green Power, despite falling energy prices, EBITDA is broadly flat partly due to a 24% increase in power generation following our acquisition of And Digestion as well as asset improvements at the food waste plant in Derby. Over the last 5 years as a group, we've increased our self generation to 66% of current consumption, giving us a unique position in the sector and supporting our net zero goals. Our financing strategy continues to serve us well and I'm pleased we're in a strong position.

Speaker 1

This was highlighted in the last week with both Moody's and S and P reaffirming our credit ratings and stable outlook even with tightening metrics. This puts us in a unique position in the sector. Our debt book is in good shape with 2 thirds fixed and an average tenure of 13 years, giving us a good degree of certainty on our debt costs as we head into the next half. We maintain a very prudent liquidity position, giving us the flexibility to choose the optimal time to access the debt markets and we've also focused on diversifying our sources of finance giving us access to new investors and supporting the demand for our debt. This combined with our strong track record gives me confidence that we can continue to raise finance at competitive rates.

Speaker 1

We're proud to be consistently recognized by Ofwat as a leader in financial resilience. Our shadow gearing is around 60%, comparing very favorably with the sector. And when you include the full impact of RCV adjustments earned to date, our economic regulated gearing stands at 58.6%. We have a strong track record on financing performance, contributing 3.4% of real Rory so far this AMP. Whilst we've benefited from high inflation this AMP, it is important to remember we have outperformed in each of the last 8 years in a range of different market environments, highlighting the strength and agility of our financing strategy.

Speaker 1

We have one of the lowest proportions of index linked debt in the sector and the lower inflation this year has had a significant impact on our finance costs which are down 30% year on year having been heavily weighted to the first half last year. This reduction brings our effective rate to 4.4%. And importantly, this compares favorably to the sector average, putting us in a good position on embedded debt costs for AMP 8, strengthening our confidence in continued outperformance. In ANT7, we will have delivered real RCV growth of 12% through delivery of our core investment program and boosted by our Green Recovery program. That increases to 40% when you include the impact of inflation, growing equity RCB by around 60% in 5 years.

Speaker 1

This growth is before taking into account our £450,000,000 of transition spend which will take our closing RCB to £13,600,000,000 and on which we'll earn a return from the 1st April next year. And when we look forward, we know there is significant growth still to come. The draft determination gives us confidence in real growth of at least 28% based on the Totex approved so far, increasing to 40% taking into account inflation. And as a reminder, that growth is fully equity financed. Looking beyond Ampe, Ofwat's approval of the need for all 13 of our PR24 enhancement cases means we have good visibility of growth drivers and our multi AMP investment program to 2,050.

Speaker 1

Finally, I just want to highlight a few key points on our technical guidance, and you can find all of the detail in the appendix. For the regulated business, our guidance remains unchanged with revenues up, costs down and over £100,000,000 of ODIs, bringing our AMP total earned to almost £500,000,000 in nominal terms before any sharing with customers. We are updating our guidance to lower year on year finance costs. It won't be the 30% reduction we've seen in the first half with finance costs more equally weighted across half 1 and half 2 whereas last year they were heavily weighted to the first half. This means we expect single digit percentage reduction across the full year.

Speaker 1

And finally, we will deliver another record year of capital investment towards the upper end of our range of £1,300,000,000 £1,500,000,000 And now I'll hand back to Liv.

Operator

Thank you, Helen. So the good news is the customer said yes, I could come to their back garden and we can begin to fit this fantastic water butt in a second. Now water butt installation is all part of our spills program. We've got a whole range of activities that we know make a real difference to reducing spills and we're really pleased with the progress we've made during the course of this financial year. Now we've actually just passed our 9 hundredth successful intervention, which is amazing and we're committing to a further 600 further interventions by next summer.

Operator

And in terms of types of solutions, then in a second I'm going to hand over to a video for the colleagues to really bring it to life. But broadly think of it as 3 types. You've got treatment, you've got storage and you've got separation. And the part that water butt plays is it plays basically a bit of storage and a little bit of separation. So effectively, when you have wet weather, like we've got today, then this water butt would fill up.

Operator

And then effectively, the customer can use it on another activity, maybe gardening, looking after washing their car, which means that we gain the benefit of storage when it's particularly wet and that's not running into our network. But then we also gain that they reuse that water down the line. So it helps us, of course, with a little bit of reduced water usage as well. So I'm going to get ready by first of all finding a level piece of ground, not where it is right now, and I'm going to hand over to my colleagues on the video.

Speaker 2

We are tackling storm overflow spills at pace, going further and faster to reduce spills as quickly as possible. Storm overflows were designed to release excess flow during heavy rainfall to protect our homes from flooding. But as important as they are, we need to tackle spills. Across our patch, we have 2,472 storm overflows, all of which have been fully monitored since 2022. Each monitor records a reading at least once every 15 minutes, collecting over 300,000,000 data points each year, allowing us to have identified 923 priority sites as well as determine the best interventions We've gone big and supersized our capacity to store and treat stormwater with a whole range of innovative new tanks, such as these 2 tanks at Hurley that hold stormwater until it can be safely returned to our treatment works, Or this submerged aerated filtration tank we installed at Frankton that expands our treatment capacity by processing greater flow.

Speaker 2

Or these 3 large auxiliary tanks at Codsall, which increase the storm capacity on this site by around 50%. And we've been enhancing existing assets in place, such as at Hathaway, where we have core drilled into an active tank, allowing it to overflow into a repurposed asset, providing around 180 cubic meters of additional storm capacity. In other places, we have found ways to deliver smaller interventions that have a big impact on spills and can be rolled out at pace, such as here in rugby where our team have installed an inline non return valve or here in Witherley where we have installed a flap valve, both of which help prevent river water going back up the pipe and overload in the system, or here in Derby where we have fitted a rear wall extension plate as well as a large iron bar screen, allowing the works to handle a greater flow as well as removing solids from the sewage. And we've been looking at our underground assets too in places such as Checkley, where we've been enhancing parts of our sewer system to prevent groundwater infiltration, something we will be doing all over our network, like here in Matlock, here in Shrewsbury, and here in Normanton on Soar.

Speaker 2

As environmental leaders, we aim to implement nature based solutions where possible, like this innovative modular reed bed at Clavily, which slows down and partially treats the flow by 100% natural natural process. We've done similar interventions across our patch, like this reed bed at Golby and this one at Hungerton, which has been recently refurbished and will take around 6 to 8 weeks for the reeds to grow to full size. And our innovation center in Redditch has also been busy. For example, developing Ballard Panels, an innovative pump station control system that's connected to local weather stations to prepare our assets for high flow conditions, allowing us to better manage the network. And all of that's before we even mention Stroud, where we have recently installed the lid on our largest ever storm tank that can hold a whopping 7,400,000 liters of stormwater, providing the capacity to cope with a 1 in 100 year storm.

Speaker 2

These really are just a handful of the 900 interventions we've delivered this year, and our preliminary analysis suggests that this work has already prevented 24,000 spills. But our efforts won't stop there. We'll be delivering a further 600 interventions in 2025 as we plan to reduce average storm overflow spills to under 18 in the year. In total, in Ampeight, we will be investing £1,200,000,000 as we aim to halve spills by 2030, and we will keep going every single day until we get to global best practice of under 8 average spills per year. Every single person at 7 Trent is committed to going further and faster to reduce spills.

Speaker 2

We look forward to sharing our progress with you.

Operator

So the great news is I found a perfect location completely flat to put the water butt on so that makes my life a little bit easier and it's perfectly located next to the drainpipe so we're good to go in a second. Now this is just one tiny part of our scale capital program and as you know we're doing really well in terms of getting ourselves ready to end the AMP strongly on capital but also start AMP 8 in brilliant shape. And we think there's a couple of things that have made this transition so smooth for us. Part of it is the £600,000,000 green recovery program. There's no doubt that winning all that work, the expertise, the resource has really supercharged our capital investment internally.

Operator

Added to that the decision to invest £450,000,000 early as part of the transition spend has also given us another extra piece of oomph as we prepare ourselves to start Amped in the best possible position. We've been doing in sourcing for some years, whether it's our design activities or actually more physical activities in the last couple of years, and that again gets us in that prime position. So to give you just two stats to give you real confidence, we've got about £3,500,000,000 worth of work that already were live and active with our supply chain and actually over £2,000,000,000 that is locked in with a particular contractor which shows you a sense of the great shape that we're in. So the next part of installing a water butt is in a second I need to basically saw through about 2 and a half centimeters of the downpipe behind and then I fit this very very clever device called a diverter cap and that will make sure that the water no longer goes straight into our drains and straight actually into activities but instead stores itself into the water butt until the rain passes. Now talking of water, it's a perfect time for me to bring you up to speed with our performance this year.

Operator

It's been a really strong year across all of our water business, about 90% green on the ODIs, which is excellent. Another strong performance financially in that space. If you actually look at some of the measures, what that means we're going to hit green on every single year of the AMP for some key measures like water quality complaints and leakage. And when you think about leakage, one of the most deterministic activities in the sector, it's not through chance that we're going to effectively smash our target this year and get through that 15% reduction. It's through big decisions we made some years ago, whether it was the technical academy that we invested in to make sure we could then in source the roles or whether it's the amount of investment in monitors, making sure we could look at the data and understand exactly where to send our brilliant new water technicians.

Operator

Now a big new announcement from today is the next phase of investment in our water business. And we're so pleased to have made the decision to in source our mains reel activities. That means we're going to double the rate of mainslay over the course of the next 5 years. That's a wonderful new 4 47 renters that are going to be live recruiting in the marketplace, and we can't wait for them to join us and kick start an extra dynamic in terms of technical skills within our business. Right then, I need to get to work.

Operator

I'll see you in a second when I've got a 2 and a half centimeter, hopefully beautifully cut element out of the pipe behind. Well, I'm actually pretty pleased with that. That was my first ever sawing job for water butt, and I think it looks pretty good. And you can see more importantly the diverter cap is in place and that means that's now already protecting our sewer network straight away which is fab. Now talking of waste we've been strong performers on waste for a number of years and you'll see once again we've had a strong performance this year on a range of activities.

Operator

We can genuinely see the fruits coming through of the call to in source our reactive wastewater frontline teams last year. We've seen reduced complaints, improved speed to respond and some really pleasing signs coming through on our waste CEMEX as well. That's led us actually to decide to invest further in our waste business. We're actually investing in operational command center which went live literally just a couple of weeks ago and is definitely worth a visit in the future. Now even on the waste metrics where we are actually in penalty, as you can see on the graph from the chart, actually frontier performance in the sector, and we're really looking forward to the restart of AMP 8 to be able to drive our performance on and show that comparative performance versus the rest of the sector.

Operator

Right. I need to get ready for the next phase, which is to fit the water butt into place. Come back in a second. So my next job in a second will be to drill into our water butt and connect the pipework. And I need to get it right because we need to make sure it's a 5 out of 5 customer experience.

Operator

We're going to make sure that every single customer moment with us is absolutely fantastic. And if you look at the actually the last 12 months, you've had some really pleasing progress on a number of customer metrics. So for example, when you look at our Trustpilot score, we're joined highest in the FTSE at a 4.8 out of 5. If we look at complaints, been named as in the top 3 for 7 Trent and Half Windsor, which is great last year. And we can see over the 5 years of this AMP, a 40% reduction is within our grasp by the end of the financial year, which again is fantastic.

Operator

But we know there's more that can be done and we want to do even better. And that's why we take an example of our latest customer system. We're investing in Kraken, which is a huge upgrade from our current internal target system. And we're also making sure we bring in more in house billing colleagues by making sure that we actually in source a whole range of new activities. And a few weeks ago, we announced a brand new contact center in Leicester, which is part of that investment in keeping improving CEMEX year on year.

Operator

Now get ready. I now get to begin drilling as the next part of the job. Alright. Let's put that there and let's get ourselves ready. Good, okay I'm going to finish off in a second and we'll come back to you and you'll see it's fully connected very shortly.

Operator

So you'll see I've made a nice little bit of progress since we last spoke. I've now connected up the pipe into our water butt and also into the diverter cap and we're almost ready. There's only one stage left to go. Now of course I've had some help today. I've had some lovely colleagues who've been training me making sure I get it spot on and I love 7 Trem for that.

Operator

I love the fact that actually as an organization we're a super helpful joined up bunch And I think it's our culture that makes us so special. When I look at the work we've done on spills this year, I genuinely don't think we could have made that kind of progress without the kind of 7 Trent family pulling together in that one direction. Now the things that I think stand out for us, first of all, we have absolutely fantastic technical skills. We've made some really strong decisions on the academy, on insourcing to bring more technical experience in house. The second thing is that culture part, the fact that it does feel like that kind of warm culture where we want everyone else to thrive and do well.

Operator

And the last thing is, of course, that when you look at us, we're actually quite a long tenured organization. We have really high engagement, super high energy, and that means people want to stay. They want to make their careers here. And on average, people are around 10 years on average tenure, which is absolutely fantastic. I think this makes us primed for the next amp.

Operator

I'm going to talk to you now in a second about the key dates between now and the launch of Ramp8. But before I do, let me first of all fit the one last thing I need to on the water butt. Now this is basically slows the release down, which means it even further protects our network and that's what's super clever about this particular water bath. One second. So it's almost here isn't it the final determination.

Operator

We'll be given a copy of it 7 am on the 19th December. We're going to quickly read it and we'll do a host of call with all of you on 20th December to share our first impressions. You can get the full in-depth situation at our Capital Markets Day on 5th March. And of course, we'll be ready and raring to go on the 1st April as the start of AMPA 8 begins. Now, don't forget to join us shortly.

Operator

I'll have all of my executive team to answer any questions that you might have for all of us. Thank you very much.

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Earnings Conference Call
Severn Trent H1 2025
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