Thames Water nearing the cliff edge.

[JohnD]

"Water companies pay £2.5bn in dividends in two years as debt climbs by £8.2bn.

In 32 years since privatisation £78bn has been paid out of utilities"

FT.com

"Gill Plimmer and Ella Hollowood in London 11 HOURS AGO


Water companies in England and Wales paid £2.5bn in dividends and added £8.2bn to their net debt in the two financial years since 2021, according to research by the Financial Times.

The updated figures mean that the 16 water monopolies have paid out a total of £78bn in dividends in the 32 years between privatisation in 1991 to March 2023, according to the research, which is based on regulatory data and then adjusted for inflation.

The £78bn payout is nearly half the £190bn the companies spent in the same three decades on infrastructure. The utilities meanwhile chalked up more than £64bn net in debt over the same period, despite being sold at privatisation with no borrowings"

 

[Mottie]

Water companies pay £2.5bn in dividends in two years as debt climbs by £8.2bn.

In 32 years since privatisation £78bn has been paid out of utilities"

Did you get any water company dividends from your European investments that you boasted about - the ones that returned you 40% in a year - or do you only invest in ethical companies? Care to share?

Damn! Just remembered again that I'm on your question ignore list.

 

[JohnD]

Hooray for the taxpayer

"Some lenders to Thames Water would lose up to 40 per cent of their money under government contingency plans to nationalise Britain’s biggest water company dubbed “Project Timber”.

The utility, which supplies 16mn people — or about 25 per cent of the population of England and Wales — is struggling to stay afloat after its shareholders refused to put more money into the heavily leveraged business, which has been hit hard by higher interest rates.

The government first drew up contingency plans last year for the possibility of the company’s failure — although officials insisted on Thursday that a collapse was not imminent.


Under those plans, drafted by the Treasury and the environment department (Defra), Thames Water would be managed by an arms-length body — modelled on the one that built London’s Crossrail project — while ministers try to deliver it back into the private sector in the medium term."

FT.com

 

[JohnD]

"Meanwhile, the majority of bondholders, owed about £13bn, would take a lighter “haircut” of 5-10 per cent.

William Wade, a credit analyst at JPMorgan, warned earlier this month that haircuts of 15-25 per cent on the ringfenced debt were now a “plausible” outcome that investors should be wary of.


Shareholders, which include the pension funds Omers and USS as well as the Abu Dhabi and Chinese sovereign wealth funds, would take losses estimated at £5bn, a fact they acknowledged in March when they refused to put money into the company, which they now consider “uninvestable”.

Their resistance to rescuing the company by refusing to invest a further £3bn into the business — including £500mn due at the end of April — precipitated Kemble’s default earlier this month."

 

[Odds]

Thames Water could be renationalised, with the bulk of its £15.6bn debt added to the public purse, under radical plans being considered by the government, the Grauniad can reveal. The blueprint, codenamed Project Timber, is being drawn up in Whitehall and would turn Britain’s biggest water company into a publicly owned arm’s-length body. Some lenders to its core operating company could lose up to 40% of their money under the plans.

The contingency planning, which is at an advanced stage, reflects the deep concern in Whitehall about the state of a company that has become a symbol of the failure of privatisation in public utilities. It had no debt when it was taken out of public ownership in 1989.

 

[JohnD]

"The UK’s water regulator has lashed out at the country’s water utilities for paying “significant dividends” to shareholders while failing to fix their poor environmental record, in comments that pile more pressure on the industry battling with high debt and pollution incidents.

In a letter to the utilities’ chairs seen by the Financial Times, Ofwat boss Iain Coucher said the number of serious pollution incidents was “still too high” and “the pace of reduction not fast enough”. “Some companies are still paying significant dividends while failing to meet their environmental targets, having unacceptable combined sewer overflow spills and being subject to ongoing legal cases,” Coucher wrote in the letter dated March 25.

Ofwat confirmed the letter and said: “This sets out our expectations on water companies’ obligations to adhere to our dividend policy licence condition. We will take action against companies that fail to meet the licence condition.”

FT.com

The water companies have been getting away with it for too long. I fear the owners will have sucked out all the money they can and left an empty shell. Already they have run up enormous debts that will land on the public's shoulders.

 

[Mottie]

"The UK’s water regulator has lashed out at the country’s water utilities for paying “significant dividends” to shareholders while failing to fix their poor environmental record, in comments that pile more pressure on the industry battling with high debt and pollution incidents.

In a letter to the utilities’ chairs seen by the Financial Times, Ofwat boss Iain Coucher said the number of serious pollution incidents was “still too high” and “the pace of reduction not fast enough”. “Some companies are still paying significant dividends while failing to meet their environmental targets, having unacceptable combined sewer overflow spills and being subject to ongoing legal cases,” Coucher wrote in the letter dated March 25.

Ofwat confirmed the letter and said: “This sets out our expectations on water companies’ obligations to adhere to our dividend policy licence condition. We will take action against companies that fail to meet the licence condition.”

FT.com

The water companies have been getting away with it for too long. I fear the owners will have sucked out all the money they can and left an empty shell. Already they have run up enormous debts that will land on the public's shoulders.

Anything happen similar to the companies you invested in that showed a 40% increase in 12 months or did you only invest in ethical companies?

Oops, forgot. Again. I’m on your special 'question ignore' list, aren’t I?

 

[Odds]

Thames Water could raise bills to as much as £627 a year to pay to fix its leaky network, after promising to invest up to £3bn more over the next five years.

The Grauniad

I should think so, too. We've been paying more to Severn-Trent for years.

 

[Mottie]

Thames Water could raise bills to as much as £627 a year to pay to fix its leaky network,

We only have Thames Water deal with our waste. Our water supply comes from Essex and Suffolk water. Before we went on a meter and our drains backed at Christmas 2022. Thames water refunded us the cost of a whole years waste supply as compensation for the overflow. It came to £200.