United Utilities
Group PLC

Annual Report and Financial Statements for the year ended 31 March 2022

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land and forest

We're committed to being a responsible business

We are in a unique position to make a real, positive contribution to society. We have proven to be resilient over the past year and will continue to rise to the challenges that lie ahead, playing our part in contributing to a sustainable water future.

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Our purpose is to provide great water and more for the North West.

As the water and wastewater service provider for the North West region of England, our purpose is why we exist and it drives us to focus on what matters to our stakeholders.

Our purpose is to provide great water and more for the North West.

As the water and wastewater service provider for the North West region of England, our purpose is why we exist and it drives us to focus on what matters to our stakeholders.

We do this by:

supporting communities to be stronger;

caring for customers through trusted relationships;

protecting and enhancing the environment;

creating a great place to work for all our employees;

delivering a sustainable return to investors; and

innovating in partnership with suppliers.

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Our purpose drives us to deliver ‘more’ for our stakeholders, which means creating value by understanding what matters to them through strong and constructive relationships.

steve-mogford-sir-david-higgins

Chair and Chief Executive Officer's review

We are helping over 200,000 households currently struggling with their bills, and maintaining a high level of service for customers. We are earning higher outperformance thanks to strong operational performance against customer outcome delivery incentives as well as financial outperformance. As a responsible company, we are sharing our success with customers, like we did in 2010–20, by investing an additional £765 million to help accelerate further enhancements for customers and the environment.

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£280m

affordability support being provided over 2020–25, helping 200,000 households in the North West

£765m

additional investment being made over 2020–25 to deliver customer and environmental improvements

£25m

net reward earned this year against customer ODIs, the highest we have achieved in any year to date

Our operational highlights

In line with our purpose, we measure our operational performance by reference to the value we have created for six key stakeholder groups, and we monitor one operational key performance indicator (KPI) for each of these groups.

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Underlying operating profit*

£610m

Met expectation/target

No externally disclosed target (see note 1)

Underlying-operating-profit

Underlying earnings per share (EPS)*

53.8p

Met expectation/target

No externally disclosed target (see note 1)

Underlying-eps

Dividend per share

43.5p

Met expectation/target

CPIH inflation growth per annum over AMP7 (2020–25)

Dividend-per-share

Gearing: net debt to RCV

61%

Met expectation/target

55–65% gearing range

gearing

Total shareholder return

+27%

Close to meeting expectation/target

We assess our performance each year against listed peers in the utility sector and against the FTSE 100

Total-shareholder-return

Low dependency pension scheme

£nil

deficit repair contributions

Met expectation/target

Maintaining low dependency pension schemes, meaning no deficit repair payments are needed

* Underlying profit measures have been re-presented for prior years so they are presented on a consistent basis to the years ended 31 March 2021 and 31 March 2022.

Note 1: For both our operational and financial KPIs, where we have declared external targets we assess our performance against the most recent public targets. Where there are no externally declared targets we assess our performance against our internal budget; however, our internal budget is not disclosed.

Note 2: In some instances, the remuneration committee has used metrics with similar names but calculation methodologies which they consider more appropriate for executive remuneration.

Our financial
highlights

We have delivered a solid set of financial results in a volatile market over the year to 31 March 2022, helped by our prudent financial risk management and efficient operational performance.

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United utilities AR front cover

Annual report 2022

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United utilities Strategic front cover

Strategic report

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United utilities Governance front cover

Governance

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United utilities Financials front cover

Financial statements

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