Water firm Severn Trent has seen an uptick in turnover, profit before tax and adjusted earnings per share in the year to March.
The company also hiked its dividend despite rising numbers of sewage spills.
Turnover at the water company, which provides water to much of Wales and the West of England, rose by eight per cent from £2.16bn to £2.34bn, thanks mainly to rising revenues in the firm’s regulated water and wastewater business.
This helped it to a profit before tax of £201m, 19.9 per cent higher than the equivalent period last year.
Basic earnings per share fell from 52.7p to 51p, which reflected the higher number of shares in issue after the firm raised cash from investors to fund a £1bn investment in its infrastructure.
The firm said adjusted earnings per share rose from 58.2p to 79.4p, thanks to growth outweighing the share issue.
Liv Garfield, the CEO at Severn Trent, said: “I’m proud of the performance our brilliant teams have delivered this year, whether for our customers, the environment or the wider region. We have achieved our best ever leakage performance and we’re very confident of keeping the highest 4* status from the Environment Agency for an unprecedented fifth consecutive year.”
The firm’s proposed final dividend of 70.10p represented a 9.4 per cent increase on the previous year. This is despite sewage spills at the firm rising by a third over the course of 2023.
The water company was responsible for more than 60,000 sewage spills last year, a number that Garfiled admitted during an interview with the BBC’s Today programme “doesn’t make [her] feel good”.
Relative to competitors, however, the firm has the second best record of the water companies for average spills, averaging only 25 per outflow.
Last week, Garfield was forced to defend her multi-million-pound pay packet of £3.2m, which took her total remuneration up to nearly £13m over the past four years.
Towards the end of last year, the utility provider saw profit fall thanks to what it called its ‘largest ever’ investment in its services.