Good morning. I'm Susan Davy, Chief Executive of Pennon. Welcome to our half year results presentation for 2023-2024. Today, we're at a brand new state-of-the-art research center here in Exeter, a joint venture between ourselves and the university, established to investigate and explore solutions to issues we find in the natural environment. We have recently opened the doors to the first project, so the pipeline ready to come through, helping us tackle the most pressing challenges in the environment and the water cycle right here, right now. We're all excited about the joint venture, a first of a kind in the U.K., and every thought has gone into what it will achieve and how we will work. Even down to the building design. As we look outside, you'll see the representation of the importance of water flowing over Earth, with circular windows reflecting rising air bubbles.
It was also important to ensure we had an example of a living net zero building in operation, which we have achieved through a combination of air source heat pumps, high thermal efficiency panels, solar panels, and LED lighting. Inside the Center for Resilience in Environment, Water and Waste, or CREWW for short, we are bringing together the best minds from across the disciplines of geography, biosciences, engineering, economics, and psychology. Yes, we are here in Exeter, but through the university we have a global reach for the center, with a laboratory working to resolve some of the most pressing global challenges in the sector. Like tackling microplastics with a dedicated microplastics research lab, and understanding how we can better tackle pollution in the natural environment.
I believe that CREWW will become a positive beacon of change in the sector, not just locally, but nationally and globally, and in turn, drive benefit and investment back into the Southwest. CREWW is just one example of how we are investing to grow and develop sustainably, working with partners and collaborating. Our business model ensures we have the headroom and capacity to be fleet of foot, to respond with agility when it matters most, whether facing a challenge or an opportunity to invest, like here at CREWW, and that's what we will continue to do. So moving on to the half year results for 2023-2024, which Paul and I will take you through. First, we are delivering a step up in investment across the group, with capital investment across the water business and Pennon Power's renewable projects up by 87% this half year.
With our ongoing commitment to the U.K. water sector, we are delivering on both the Pennon strategy of both acquisitive and organic growth. Sustainable Bristol acquisition benefits are being realized in line with our acquisition plans, with GBP 16 million annualized synergies to date on track for the GBP 20 million acquisition synergies targeted to 2025. Regulatory capital value for the enlarged water business is forecast to increase over the five years to 2025 by 60%, and further grow to 100% by 2030, outlined in the K8 business plan we have just submitted to Ofwat. Second, while we're investing in a sustainable future, we are also delivering now, making progress on what matters most across our regions. Extreme weather patterns continue to be volatile here in the southwest, given our adjacency to the western approaches of the Atlantic Ocean.
It means we relentlessly must double down to both maintain performance and make sustainable change. We remain focused on four customer priorities as we invest to protect water quality and enhance resilience, tackle storm overflows at our beaches, eradicate pollutions, and protect the environment from climate change. With a laser-like focus on efficiency, we're also focused on ensuring we keep bills as low as possible. Delivery highlights in this half year include 100% bathing water quality for the third consecutive year. A doubling of reservoir levels in summer 2023 compared to summer 2022, as we continue to break the drought cycle across Devon and Cornwall, with the region only very recently moving from drought to recovery status. Upper quartile performance for South West Water on the sector-wide comparative measures, being one of only two companies to improve performance in Ofwat's rankings.
We are targeting to preserve the recovery to two-star we made in 2022 for the 2023 Environment Agency's Environmental Performance Assessment, retaining the focus on achieving four-star for 2024. Third, given the unique topography of our region, we have committed to applying a green first approach to everything we do, given this is a region largely dependent on tourism and agriculture for its economic health. With over 13,000 farms, a large majority of our land use in our region is dedicated to farming. How we work in partnership with landowners and farmers is critical, and with one in six species recognized as at risk of extinction, it's critical we continue to support the wildlife and habitats of our region, too.
Our award-winning catchment management program continues to work with farmers to change the way they manage their land, improve water quality, biodiversity, and climate resilience. The effectiveness of our work is evaluated and researched with the University of Exeter, and will be researched right here at CREWW. Today, our proactive catchment management has delivered water quality benefits for over 6% of rivers, which previously were not achieving good ecological status. That's a third of a reduction for what we need to target, which is good news. Given our topography and power needs, we are accelerating our investment in renewables to mitigate the future impacts of a volatile energy market, whilst also counting towards our net zero plans, and we are on track to generate 40% of the group's energy requirements by 2025 through our new venture, Pennon Power.
With the 40% from Pennon Power and the energy already generated by the water business, South West Water, we are on track to deliver 50% of the group's energy requirements from renewables by 2025. Fourth, underpinning all our priorities and activities is our financial resilience and strong balance sheet. Gearing is stable at 61%, with sector leading efficient financing in place. Our robust financial outcomes underpin the return on regulated equity, doubling base returns for K7 to date at 7.9%. And at group level, we have profitable B2B retailers, growing through contract wins and margin improvements, with Pennon Power renewable energy projects expected to generate EBITDA from 2025....
Pennon's dividend is in line with our policy of CPIH plus 2% growth, with an interim dividend of 14.04 pence per share, payable to our equity investors, many of whom are customers. So, resilient financial performance underpinning our delivery as we make a smooth transition to K8. With a strong balance sheet and financial resilience, we have already been accelerating investment, whether part of the GBP 82 million Green Recovery initiative, the GBP 45 million WaterFit program, the GBP 125 million to break their cycle of drought, and most recently, the GBP 52 million investment as part of DEFRA's accelerated investment scheme. We couldn't do any of this without the support and dedication of our 3,500 employees, who have continued to show extraordinary care for customers and each other.
I'd like to thank them for what they have achieved and what they will step up to do as we look forward and continue to make progress and grow sustainably. Our recently submitted ambitious K8 business plan to 2030 has had the highest customer acceptability testing we've ever had, and that is why we are not waiting. We are mobilizing now, and we're doing this. And with that, I'll hand over to Paul to take you through the financial performance in more detail.
Thank you, Susan, and good morning, everyone. Our overall financial performance for the group this half year continues to be resilient, and we are well-positioned to deliver investment and growth into the future. In the first half of this financial year, underlying EBITDA was down slightly on the same period last year due to higher costs, but coupled with our continuing sector-leading effective interest costs, this results in our cumulative RORE continuing to double base returns at 7.9%. This strong performance enables the group to reinvest in our asset base, driving operational and environmental improvements, while maintaining a comparatively low gearing level of 61% and delivering on our dividend policy of growth of CPIH plus 2%. The group's overall results are in line with expectations.
As was the case in the last financial year, inflation impacts continue to feed through into both our revenues and our cost base, which I will shortly talk about in more detail. As in previous years, we have a small number of non-underlying items. For this period, these relate to drought costs that continued into the first half of this year, business reorganization costs as we seek to optimize the business post the Bristol acquisition, and acquisition costs associated with our new renewable energy investments. Our underlying profit before tax for the half year is GBP 9.1 million. This compares to GBP 22.5 million in H1 2022-2023, and a loss of GBP 5.7 million in H2 2022-2023.
Comparing to H1 2022-2023, the high inflation environment has had a favorable net impact on our results, driven by a GBP 30.8 million increase in revenue, which is partly offset by higher costs, including employee costs of GBP 9.1 million and higher power costs of GBP 9.4 million. The inflationary impact on our financing costs has been stabilized through our GBP 300 million RPI hedge, entered into last year, that runs through to March 2025. Underlying profits were reduced by a one-off reduction in revenue of GBP 14.8 million in the pass- back of 2021-2022, ODI net penalties and revenue over recovery. Also of note is that our depreciation charges are starting to step up, reflecting the recent increase in the level of capital investment, which drives growth in our RCV.
We are also continuing to see strong profit growth in our non-household businesses, Pennon Water Services and water2business, through contract wins and margin improvements. Our cumulative group return on regulated equity is 7.9%, continuing to double base returns. As we flagged, as we entered this period of high inflation, our outperformance has been skewed into financing and away from TotEx, as key cost lines of power, chemicals, and construction materials have risen by more than the headline rate of inflation. Our strategically positioned financing portfolio includes a low level of index-linked debt compared to the sector average and a high proportion of fixed debt. This has driven significant outperformance of GBP 250 million in K7 to date. This financing outperformance drives our overall outperformance to date of GBP 190 million.
As previously announced, we are reinvesting this outperformance into targeted initiatives to meet our biggest challenges: GBP 45 million into WaterFit to improve river and coastal water quality, GBP 125 million on water resilience, the largest element of which will be our new desalination plant in Cornwall, and GBP 20 million returned to customers through our pioneering Watershare+ mechanism to help with affordability. As flagged, our capital expenditure levels are ramping up as we deliver on our K7 business plan, reinvestment of outperformance in the initiatives that I've just set out, alongside delivering accelerated initiatives, including our Green Recovery commitments. In the half year, we have invested GBP 266 million, an 87% increase on the same period last year.
The overall increase on the prior year of GBP 124 million includes an increase of GBP 70 million on clean water resources as we invest in both water resilience, including desalination, and water quality through the two new state-of-the-art water treatment works in our Bournemouth region. A step-up of GBP 22 million in our wastewater infrastructure, including sewer depth monitors, to help deliver improved environmental outcomes. Finally, we've invested GBP 32 million in our new solar development sites that will deliver attractive commercial returns, de-risk our exposure to wholesale power markets, and accelerate our journey to net zero.
Looking at our balance sheet position in more detail, we remain well-positioned in this inflationary environment, with a stable, low effective interest rate of 5.8% and a low level of gearing at 61%, which is well within the historic range of 55%-65% that we have operated in. We continue to access a diverse variety of funding sources, securing over GBP 700 million of new and renewed facilities since March, of which GBP 575 million was secured through our sustainable financing framework. This includes our first syndicated GBP 300 million U.S. private placement that was significantly oversubscribed, allowing the optimization of pricing and upsizing of the borrowing level. I would like to thank all our banking group for their continued support and advice as we look to new markets to secure efficient funding for the group.
As we continue to ramp up investment levels, which we expect to continue at an elevated level into K8, we plan to continue to access the majority of our funding through our sustainable financing framework. In the future, this may include the issuance of public bonds. To optimize any future issuances, we are targeting to obtain two strong investment-grade credit ratings that will be in place prior to the start of the next regulatory period. Looking forward to the second half of this financial year, we anticipate revenue being marginally lower than the first half due to more regularized seasonal demand movements. We expect this, though, to be more than offset by lower operating costs, driven by locking in lower power prices, less drought-related activities, and the full year effect of efficiencies as we optimize performance across the group.
We have been able to secure lower power prices in H2 as we entered the financial year with more open positions in winter and have benefited as forward power prices have steadily fallen. This benefit will continue to improve earnings into the financial year 2024, 2025. Our financing costs are relatively flat to phased through 2023, 2024, in part due to the fixing of GBP 300 million of RPI debt placed last year, and higher base rates impacting new and floating rate debt, which offsets the fall in inflation on our remaining index-linked debt. Turning to the balance sheet, we expect the pace of capital investment to continue to accelerate as we deliver not only on our K7 commitments, but also on the additional accelerated investments we have committed to.
We now expect capital investment in South West Water over the two years to March 2025 to be over GBP 850 million. Finally, with the increased level of investment expected, our opening RCV for the next regulatory period is now expected to be GBP 5.4 billion, which will be a key driving factor of value and revenue growth in the next regulatory period. With that, I'll hand back to Susan.
We continue to be focused on the things that matter most to our customers across all our regions, stretching from Devon to Cornwall, the Isles of Scilly to Bournemouth and Bristol. We know what is important to our customers as we meet them and talk to them every single day. Through our established WaterShare framework, I personally get to meet customers and discuss our services and their priorities on an ongoing basis. We're the only water company to have such a scheme in place. The number one priority for customers is safe, clean drinking water. Water supply across our region is under growing pressure. With the granite coast of the peninsula, we operate across a unique topography, where 92% of our water resources are reliant upon rivers, backed up by reservoirs.
We have seen that acutely in 2022, with the hottest, driest weather on record, culminating in a 1 in 200-year event for the most westerly part of our region. For the first time in over 25 years, we had to implement our drought plan for Cornwall and parts of Devon. With a combination of our interventions and rainfall, we were able to lift the hosepipe ban this September, and in October, the region has moved from being in drought to being in recovery. The second priority for customers is alleviating the use of storm overflows and eliminating pollutions. With a third of the nation's bathing beaches, now 860 miles of coastline, I am also acutely aware of the impacts on our environment in this beautiful region. For our customers, protecting bathing waters is one of the top priorities.
The third customer priority, driving environmental gains, whether that is through our catchment nature-first approach, or through driving our trajectory to achieve net zero in 2030. Given our topography and power needs, accelerating our investing in renewables pillar serves to mitigate the future impacts of a volatile wholesale energy market, whilst also counting towards our net zero plans. The fourth priority, affordability. We also continue to deliver for our customers with a focus on customer affordability by keeping those bills as low as they can be and delivering efficiency, alongside supporting those who are struggling with the cost of living crisis. Supporting the activities to tackle the priorities is the largest environmental investment we have seen in decades.
We are well-positioned to deliver for the remainder of K7, and for K8, we anticipate what will be almost a doubling of investment to GBP 2.8 billion, with our 10-year supply chain frameworks already in place and mobilizing. So let me take you through the progress we are making. Turning to customers' number one priority, safe, clean drinking water. Extreme weather patterns continue to be volatile here in the Southwest. It means there is no room for complacency, as we relentlessly have to double down to both maintain performance in often challenging environmental conditions and make sustainable change. Reassuringly for the region, we are starting to break the cycle of drought, investing an additional GBP 125 million in the period to 2025 to ensure underlying sustainability to cope with continuing volatility in rainfall and weather patterns.
For Cornwall and Devon, we are on track to see strategic reservoirs built back to 90% by March 2024, and augment water availability by 45% and 30%, respectively, for those regions by 2025. While we have seen a 45% increase in rainfall so far in 2023 compared to 2022, a third of the reservoir improvement has been as a result of our investments and interventions. We're focused on two sides of a coin. The first, diversifying our portfolio and delivering new water resources. We continue with our pioneering repurposing of disused and abandoned quarries, having recently added a fourth to our portfolio, with work well underway at Blackpool Pit in Cornwall. We're also increasing winter pump storage at Gatherley in Devon, and we are on track to install Cornwall's first-ever desalination plant, due for operation in 2024.
Second, looking at how we reduce demand in two key areas: fixing leaks and reducing usage. We continue to offer customers free leak repairs, with a 65% increase compared to 2022, and we have now issued a record-breaking 250,000 free water efficiency devices to customers to help them reduce usage and save money. We're progressing our smart metering rollout in North Devon, with a third of customers now with a smart meter in place. On water quality, we're consolidating our top quartile water quality position for Devon, Cornwall and Bournemouth with our innovative Quality First program, and have had zero failures year- to- date at any of our water treatment works.
For the regions we have acquired, with the legacy underinvestment on the Isles of Scilly and Bristol, we're replicating the rollout of our Quality First program to deliver a step change in performance and make the necessary improvements to infrastructure. We are focused on what is important to our region, and with a third of the nation's bathing beaches, it's a clear focus for us. 90% of the K7 bathing and shellfish water interventions and investments have now been delivered. For the third consecutive year, we anticipate the Environment Agency bathing water quality assessments, which look at the levels of harmful bacteria in our seas, to report 100% pass rate for bathing waters where our assets may impact.
With 100% monitoring of our storm overflows in place, we have seen a modest increase in average spills today over the bathing season, rising from an average of 5-6, despite a 45% increase in rainfall. Underlying investments ensure we will make sustained change over the midterm. We are progressing 70 interventions focused on 49 of the 151 bathing beaches in our area. Our WaterFit Live website, providing real-time information for customers, communities and visitors about the water quality at their favorite beach, is improving transparency and will be extended to include inland rivers in the coming weeks. We are piloting wider catchment sampling and monitoring, which will pinpoint pollution sources and allow for swift catchment, coordinated intervention, restoring trust and building confidence with our communities.
Turning to our rivers, we were delighted to support recent applications on the River Dart and the River Tavy to achieve the region's first inland designated bathing water status. We are currently funding the monitoring of the rivers, partnering with Hello Lamp Post, creating a talking river, where visitors to the rivers and citizen scientists can record the reasons for use and their observations using QR codes. With the investments we have made to date in K7, we have seen improvements to river quality, with a 6% decrease in impacts as measured by the Environment Agency. Turning to pollution. We continue to target significant reductions by 2025. Our asset health metrics are trending in the right direction, with sewer collapses and sewer blockages ahead of commitments, demonstrating that interventions will have sustainable impacts.
For customers, we continue to drive down internal sewer flooding incidents, coupled with an 18% reduction in external sewer flooding incidents as well. The number of serious Category Two pollutions to watercourses continue to show underlying improvements, dropping from eight in 2021 to one year- to- date in 2023, with zero Category One incidents. That said, the overall number of Category Three pollution incidents to watercourses is elevated on last year, and I'm clear this needs to recover. With 355 hotspot interventions delivered and having completed 60% of our rising main program, we are progressing the sustainable improvements required for the longer term. In addition, we have now installed 75% of the sewer depth monitors to increase proactive maintenance and management of the networks.
Given this, we are targeting to preserve the recovery to two- star we made in 2022 for the 2023 Environment Agency's Environmental Performance Assessment, and we are retaining our focus on achieving four- star for 2024. But there is much to do. In 2021, we established our net zero program to 2030, with three pillars: sustainable living, championing renewables, and reversing carbon emissions. We're on track to deliver a 50% reduction in our carbon footprint to 2025. We're also focused on championing renewables with a GBP 145 million investment as we invest to mitigate the wholesale power market risk by developing our own generation and supply. And we're on track to providing 40% of the group's energy requirements by 2025 through this.
I talked earlier about our award-winning catchment management approach, which has secured a GBP 20 million ODI benefit for K7 as we take a green first approach to investment and apply natural solutions to reduce the agricultural impacts on biodiversity and water quality. Activities range from installing waterside fencing, building ponds, improving farm tracks, slurry storage, under sowing maize, and planting trees and buffer strips to catch and filter water. This has had the benefit of increasing the water table to the equivalent of 100 Olympic-sized swimming pools. It's very much a partnership approach, working with 20 businesses, NGOs, 2,000 farmers and communities, and we use the science-based expertise here at CREWW to evaluate and identify solutions and benefits using pioneering satellite data to understand habitats. To date, we have improved the management of over 115 hectares, equivalent to the size of Dartmoor National Park.
Given globally that peatlands store more carbon than all the world's forests combined, yet once disturbed, this is released alongside other greenhouse gases. We are working as part of the South West Peatland Partnership, and have restored over 1,100 hectares of peatland to date, with one of our innovative approaches involving the use of sheep wool to create bungs. Having worked in our catchments for the last 15 years, we have the science to back up the improvements, with a 30% reduction in raw water discoloration and measured quantifiable reductions in phosphates. This is good news. One of the benefits of taking a nature-based approach is reduced costs for customers over the long term, and with that, I'll talk more about how we support affordability.
In tackling affordability, it is about two things: keeping bills as low as they can be for all customers, and secondly, supporting those who are struggling. The first priority, keeping bills as low as they can be. We have always been focused on being as efficient as we can be in delivering our services. During this cost of living crisis, we are keeping bill increases to 2025, well below inflation for all our customers. It is very clear, though, that for a number of customers, rising prices have weighed heavily, and it is critical that we continue to support customers and communities. To date, we have provided over GBP 90 million of customer support, with a 35% increase in customers benefiting from our social tariffs, as we continue to focus on eradicating water poverty in our region, building awareness of our customer outreach and engagement programs.
As a result, 100% of customers in Bristol find their bills affordable, and 97% across other regions, with our bad debt charge at 0.9% of household revenue. We're innovating to do more as we look ahead with tariff trials planned for 2024, ahead of introducing a range of fair tariffs to help customers use less and save more, and recognizing the unique demographic of our region, with its high dependency on tourism, where the prevalence of second homes can be as high as 40% in hot spots. We continue to play our societal role in communities, supporting neighborhood initiatives and water efficiency projects, with 273 community projects supported to date.
Unique in the sector, given you can't choose your water provider, we believe you should have a say, which is why we intend to grow our unique WaterShare + scheme to one in every 10 households, and continue to share financial gains with customers. Overall, we continue to deliver improved outcomes for customers with OGI performance of 75%, either on track or ahead of target across a range of bespoke, common, and comparative measures, with the industry upper quartile performance in this area to date. Areas of excellence continue to be the things that our customers and communities care about most, including bathing water quality, biodiversity enhancements, and internal sewer flooding. Bristol Water's C-MeX continues to perform strongly, where we continue to focus on sharing the learnings across the rest of the group.
As we are delivering sustainable change for the region, our focus on EPA and pollution performance remains. Given we are one of the largest private employers in the southwest, our investments in people and communities really matter, too. Over K7, we have created 500 additional jobs with a further 2,000 planned as part of K8 directly, and as part of the wider supply chain. While our investments in people are locally focused, they are receiving national acclaim. We are the only water company to have been recognized for our earn and learn approach, twice running with Gold Status Accreditation in the 5% Club, and recognition as a Top 100 Employer for Apprenticeships. Our graduate programs are growing in popularity regionally and nationally, oversubscribed each year.
This is ensuring we can pick the brightest and most diverse talent for the future, with our cohort to date, two-thirds female and 40% ethnically diverse. Our work with local schools has meant that we've engaged with over 12,000 pupils as part of our engagement program and part of a wider plan to provide 5,000 work placements. Finally, and as part of our award-winning health and safety strategy, Home Safe, we have invested over 23,000 person-hours in ensuring we support physical and mental health support for all our employees, ensuring they go Home Safe to families and loved ones every day. All this means, as we look ahead to PR24, we have a robust base on which to build, and you will see that in this slide. Our financial resilience means we are well-placed as we look ahead to PR24.
Our draft PR24 business plan includes GBP 2.8 billion of capital investment, a 50% increase on K7. Together with OpEx, this results in TotEx of GBP 4.5 billion over the five-year period. While ongoing operational cash flows will also step up and help fund some of this spend, we expect to need to raise new funding over K8 of GBP 2.5 billion. This includes GBP 700 million to refinance maturing debt. We plan to continue to utilize diverse funding sources, including public bond issuance, utilizing our new credit rating that will be in place for K8. We anticipate raising the vast majority of these funds through our sustainable financing framework, as the investments in our infrastructure will all be deemed eligible spend.
Our K8 business plan results in our gearing levels staying within our established gearing range of 55-65, averaging 63% over the period. It is an ambitious plan. We will be investing, but investing efficiently. Total expenditure in the plan will be GBP 4.5 billion, up from the GBP 2.9 billion to 2025. We have pushed ourselves to be efficient, assuming 12% efficiency, which in turn keeps bill increases to a minimum. Bills will be rising in real terms by an average 4% per annum for Devon, Cornwall, Isles of Scilly, and Bournemouth, on an average 3% per annum for customers in Bristol throughout the K8 period. In a cost of living crisis, we know any bill increase can be unwelcome. We have tested our plan with customers, and we have good support at 74%.
For investors, there is growth in nominal terms of 38%, and we have put forward an ambitious set of outcomes that will see the opportunities to gain from good performance, with an ability to share this between investors and customers, with up to 8.6% as a return available. Using Ofwat's assessment of the cost of capital, gearing is forecast to remain within a well-established range at circa 63%. Having submitted our plans in October, draft determinations are expected in May, June next year, with a final determination in December 2024. In summary, our half-year results reflect resilient performance focused on what matters most today and in building our capabilities for the future and in preparing for PR24. We are stepping up investment across the group with our largest investment in decades, delivering both organic and acquisitive RCV growth.
While we are investing for the future, we are also delivering now, making progress on what matters most across our region. For the water businesses, we remain focused on four customer priorities to 2030, as we invest to protect water quality and enhance resilience, tackle storm overflows at our beaches, eradicate pollutions, and protect the environment from climate change. With a laser-like focus on efficiency, we are also focused on ensuring we keep bills as low as possible and are committed to applying a green first approach to everything we do, ensuring we do it in the right way. The way we do business is supporting our profitable business-to-business retailers and our growing Pennon Power renewables business. We can do all this underpinned by a financial resilient, strong balance sheet and a strengthened supply chain.
Delivered with talented people, doing great things for customers and each other, and delivered in the right way as we continue to make progress and grow sustainably. As a final point, this is Paul's last results presentation before his planned leave at the end of December. I wanted to thank Paul for his contribution to Pennon, the support he has given me personally, and I wish him and his family the best for their future. Next time you see us, I will be alongside our new CFO, Steve Buck, who takes over the reins from Paul in December. Thank you.
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