Brilliant. Good morning, everybody. I'm James Jesic, Chief Executive of Severn Trent. I just want to welcome all of you to my first results announcement, obviously Severn Trent's annual results announcement. I'm joined here today, obviously, with Helen and the rest of the executive. I hope you've all had a chance to look through our results presentation, and we're looking forward to some really interesting questions. Before we start, there is a raise hand function. That is the best way to get yourself onto the system. We look forward to the questions. I think there's already somebody in the queue. Julius, good morning. How are you?
Good morning. All good. Thanks a lot for taking my questions. I have two, unsurprisingly, on the topic of reopeners. The first one is, how did you come to this, like, GBP 600 million number that you've announced today? How should we view this going forward for the next reopeners in the next coming years? Is that, like, a number that we could expect every year? Does it depend on basically clarity on the remuneration of this? That kind of leads me then to the second question. How do you think about funding from here? I mean, I guess the GBP 600 million is fully funded with your balance sheet. Do you believe there would be equity needs down the line if more opportunities like this come along? That would be quite useful. Thank you.
Thank you, Julius. Well, I'll give an overview, and then I will hand to Shane to cover some of the specifics within the RIIO re-opener submission. First and foremost, we've got a really strong track record of delivering RCV growth, and you've seen just from this AMP in terms of our final determination, the GBP 15 billion will deliver 60% RCV growth over that period. When you compare that to the sector average of 50%, that's really strong. The way we've approached the re-opener process is really taking into account all the things obviously that we've already got in flight. Let's not forget, as part of our final determination, we secured funding for cyber, for PFAS, and for growth. The re-opener process includes considerations around asset health, cyber, PFAS, and growth. A lot of those we have already got covered through our business planning process.
What we are thinking about, and how we arrived at the GBP 600 million, is how do we prepare our thoughts and our plans for the future? We've already cognizant of AMP9 and transition spend and all that other good stuff. We're really thinking about how the Reopener process may actually help us in terms of that particular, that particular plan, and our focus has really been on how do we use particularly the asset health aspect to provide further information and details to support those plans going forwards. In terms of what might happen for round 2s and 3s, we're not going to comment on that at the moment today. I'll come back to the equity answer in a second after Shane's just put some more color on the Reopener submission.
Yep, thanks James. Yeah, whilst the GBP 600 million extra investment is really important, the real prize from the reopening is unlocking investment in asset health, and that's critical for three reasons. The first is that all stakeholders from Jon Cunliffe, the government's white paper, the National Audit Office have all called for more investment in improving asset health. Second reason is the price review mechanism hasn't traditionally allowed companies to increase funding to improve asset health. Third, which is relevant for Severn Trent, is we are one of the largest companies. We have the largest water network, we have the most water treatment works and distribution service reservoirs. On the waste side, we have the second largest sewage network outside, after Thames Water, and again we have the second most treatment works. All up, there's a lot for us to go at.
That has really driven our approach in terms of the reopeners. If you go to the specific cases, distribution service reservoirs, we have 479 and we're proposing to invest GBP 221 million to renew 2% of those. Again, a lot more opportunity in the future. On sewers, we have 93,000 km of sewers, we're proposing to spend GBP 175 million on renewing 172 kilometers. Perhaps the most exciting part is we'll be doing AI-enabled inspections of just under 10,000 km of sewers, and that will define the future renewal rate at PR29 and onwards. On boreholes, we'd be renewing 11% of our boreholes at a cost of GBP 25 million. On growth, as James said, we had GBP 700 million at PR24 for growth at sewage treatment works.
Whilst the world hasn't moved on that much in the 15 months since the FD, we have identified a bit more growth in 8 catchments. We're spending just over GBP 50 million in those 8 catchments to expand the treatment works.
Brilliant.
Thank you very much, Shane. In terms of the equity question, Julius, now we raised equity, as you will all be well aware, just prior to the start of AMP 8, and we were very clear that that would see us through to 2030. Those plans haven't changed. If you look at our performance over a period of time, we've not only been able to give gearing guidance at the end of the AMP, which obviously was in the range of 65% by 2025.
I've got a windscreen to be done.
Is that you guys or is that ODI?
We've also got some real choices through that outperformance. If you think about ODI performance since 2021, we've delivered half a billion pounds worth of upside. On top of that, if you overlay things like the capital efficiency program, it really does give us choices. More to come at some point in the future around our plans for 2 and 3.
Thank you.
Okay, thank you, Julius. Right, [Sarah], welcome. I understand you're calling from New York, I dread to think what time it is there.
It's perfect time of day for a Severn Trent call, that's what it is. good morning, good very early morning.
Appreciate you joining us.
Of course, of course. A couple of questions from me, please. The first one's on the upgraded FY 2028 EPS guidance. Just wondering if you can walk us through the drivers of that. Obviously today you've posted a very strong yet again ODI result and that may contribute given the T+2. Secondly, on that ODI result today, just wondering if you can walk us through a bit more color on the areas of strength, the areas that remain development areas, work in progress. Obviously that contributed today to a very strong ROE versus the guidance you gave in November. Any more color on the building blocks there as well? Thank you.
Okay, brilliant. Thank you very much, Shara. I'll tell you what I will do. I will give a bit of an overview from an ODI perspective. I'll then hand to Steph to cover, I mean, Steph's area does the bulk of the ODI delivery and she can cover off some of the highlights from her perspective and some of the areas she's focused on. Then I will let Helen cover off the upgrade on guidance and perhaps the impact from a RoRE perspective, if that's okay. In terms of ODIs, we are genuinely delighted with our performance. 78% of our metrics were green, which shows the strength of performance delivery across the business and across a whole suite of metrics, both for waste and water. That really does mean we are delivering for the customers and for the environment.
Obviously nowhere near resting on our laurels, and there's always more that we want to do, but we're delighted with the GBP 73 million worth performance. We're also really pleased to set a guidance number of at least GBP 50 million in nominal terms for next year. Again, just credit to the strong performance-driven culture that we've got within the business. Now that, bear in mind, is also against the backdrop of some subtle changes. We're seeing some shifts in pollutions, and the Environment Agency are changing the classifications of pollutions, and of course there will be an impact from how Ofwat then treat those. That aside, we are still committing to deliver that level of performance, which just shows the strength and depth we've got across the business. I'll let Steph cover off some of the highlights.
Hi Sarah, thanks for the question. At Capital Markets Day last year, we said that we were going to go big on leakage, pollution, and spills, and that's what we've done. We've reduced pollutions by a third, we've reduced spills by 41%, and we've improved leakage by 8% year-on-year, which is absolutely fantastic. We've also had some really big wins on D-MEx and biodiversity, we've met the cap, which is great. As James said, there's some change in targets this year, standing still actually costs us GBP 20 million. We're already on the front foot and we're going after every single measure. This year we've reduced floodings by 12%, we're excited about what more we can do there, particularly using AI. We've got StormHarvester, which monitors the waste network. We think we've got some excellent improvements to make in that space.
We've also now got 600,000 smart meters in the ground, which is going to help further with leakage and with PCC.
Brilliant, thank you very much indeed, Steph. I'll let Helen cover off the growth.
Thank you, James. Hi, Sarah, good to see you. Really, really pleased to be able to upgrade our guidance for FY 2028, and there's a few key drivers. Number one is obviously we've delivered much more strongly on ODIs than we were anticipating earlier when we gave the guidance. You'll see that come through our revenue. We've obviously had a stronger exit this year. We're at the lower end of our guidance for operating costs, and part of that is our drive for efficiency. We're really confident that we've got a good program, which is why today we've committed to GBP 150 million of operating cost efficiency on top of the capital efficiencies that we'd already committed to. To put a bit of color on that, we are using AI across the business and that's really helping us.
I'm sure you'll hear some of that today about how we're using that. On our retail costs, we're benefiting from the rollout of our new billing system. We're really focused on removing cost of failure as well. We're really seeing the benefit of the consulting we've done on waste for that. Our waste volumes are down year-over-year as a result of getting things right first time. There's a number of levers that give us confidence to upgrade that guidance. Do you want me to answer the RoRE question? Yes, please. On RoRE, there's a few things that are linked as well. ODIs, obviously. Better performance on ODIs, that flows through to RoRE. On financing, we've had another strong year. We've continued to beat the index on all of our new debt issues.
We've made some significant debt issues this year. We've raised GBP 1.8 billion in total. We've done that all at some of the tightest spreads in the sector and lower than the allowance. There is a benefit from inflation, of course, and one of the big items that we didn't know about in when we gave the guidance was tax. In the RoRE calculation, the Ofwat guidance came out after we'd given the guidance. It's the way we get credit for essentially deferred tax. The RoRE assumes zero. We actually get credit. That's the driver of it. We've just reflected the Ofwat guidance.
Brilliant. Thank you very much, Helen. Thank you, Sarah. [Pav], good morning.
Morning, James and team. Thank you for taking my questions and congratulations on a strong set of results. I'll keep my questions maybe a bit bigger picture. Firstly, James, can you talk about your relationship with stakeholders, politicians, given we're now 1 year into the AMP? Do you feel like support has increased or otherwise from politicians, customers in terms of your increased investment, obviously conscious that that's driven bill increases for customers? Secondly, in terms of the follow-through from the Cunliffe review, we had the white paper at the start of the year. Can you remind us what else we should expect in terms of the timeline of the recommendations the review being implemented, what legislation we should look forward to, and when we should expect to see some of those changes being meaningfully implemented. Thank you.
Of course, thank you, Pav. In terms of our relationship with stakeholders, I mean, we've always enjoyed a very strong relationship both with MPs of all parties and of course with regulators, and we see those as constructive relationships that need to being constant dialogue, and we have maintained that and we will continue doing that. That is really positive. In terms of your question around customer support, in terms of our reopeners and of course our ODI performance, we are really conscious of potential bill impacts. We are in a, you know, a cost of living challenge across many areas. We've seen fuel prices increase, we've seen energy prices increase, and we're really, really conscious of that. That was part of our consideration. One of the things we did do is we actually spoke to a number of our customers.
We surveyed the customers as part of our reopening process, spoke to about 2,000 customers, and three-quarters of them actually supported our approach because they could see that our investment proposals really helped growth and development in their particular local areas. We think it's vitally important to make sure that we have strong local connections and really in service of the needs of those particular local communities. That's a big area of focus for us and has been, hence the Reopener process, which we think will be a key to enabling those future investments, as Shane articulated earlier. Very conscious of it, and I'll let Jude in a moment talk about some of the additional support we're providing from a customer perspective as well, just to give a bit more color on that.
In terms of the Cunliffe process itself, We wait and see really. The Cunliffe has been the clear direction of travel for a while now. We obviously saw the white paper come from the government, and you would have all seen in the King's Speech last week that we basically the direction of travel was reiterated. There will be a single regulator, the aim is to get a sector that is a strong performing sector that is investable but delivering for the good of society, and that's absolutely aligned with our values. In terms of timescales, we await the transition plan. Once that's out, we will obviously respond to it. In the meantime, we will carry on doing what we are good at, and that is delivering for customers, for the environment, and of course our shareholders.
I'll hand over to Jude and let her cover off some of the customer support that we've been giving this year.
Hi, [Pav], thanks very much for the question. As James said, we totally understand that higher bills can cause real worries for our customers. We have a great range of support for the most financially vulnerable customers. We've also made some changes to make the access to that much easier. This year we've invested GBP 127 million to support 330,000 customers already. Across the AMP we're committed to spending GBP 575 million to support customers. That's 1 in 6 of the families in our region. We don't just wait for customers to reach out to us if they're worried. We also are working hard to identify those customers who are likely to need that support and then proactively reach them and even passport them to support without them needing to do anything. That's great. It's not just about help with the bill.
We're also really keen to help customers reduce their bill. We know for a fact that many can save money by moving to a meter. We're encouraging more to make the switch, and we really hope that that's a way to make bill rises more palatable.
Brilliant. Thank you, Jude. Thank you, Pav. Does that answer your questions?
Yeah, all clear. Thank you.
Thank you very much. Good morning, [Dominic].
Good morning. Good morning, James, and congratulations on your first set of results.
Thank you.
I'm going to ask three questions if that's okay. Apologies. The first one is on C-MEx, which I don't think you've mentioned much in your ODIs, but it's clearly the customer experience is looking a little bit weak. I think you've got a GBP 28 million penalty this year. Could you explain why customers are not experiencing or not coming across as enjoying the experience of dealing with Severn Trent and what you're going to do to mitigate it? Secondly, can you also confirm whether there's any expected timeline for resolution of the Ofwat and the EA investigation, and whether you see outcomes more likely as financial penalties, enforcement undertakings, or neither? I think we've clearly got a date for a Pennon, I think, with the EA. I'm curious as to what the development is for you.
The final question is, you're always looking very high, clearly being driven by inflation. Do you think that if we have another year of high inflation, which looks likely, and another year of very high ROE next year as well, that there's going to be some form of debate similar to Ofgem where we're going to end up with the sort of a real phenomenal switch at all potentially coming into the water sector? Thank you.
Okay, brilliant. Thank you very much indeed, Dominic. I'll cover off the first 2 and then perhaps let Helen explain the inflationary impact on RoRE and how we see that playing forwards. First of all, C-MEx, I think you're absolutely right to call it out. C-MEx has been a measure that we haven't performed well enough on. If you look at our ODI performance, ODIs are actually a key driver of the service that customers, the vast majority of our customers, receive on a day-to-day basis. Well over 90% of our customers have no need to contact us because they enjoy that level of service, as we've seen with the GBP 73 million worth of outperformance that we've delivered over this last 12-month period. The vast majority of our customers receive brilliant service every single day.
We do see an opportunity to improve though. It's not just about C-MEx. I've just completed 70 roadshows around the business, and my key priority to the organization has really been how do we make ourselves just a bit more customer-centric. We've got such a strong performance-driven culture. How do we make sure that that is really focused on giving customers the best possible service each and every single day? That's been the theme of the roadshows and that's really starting to make a tangible difference within the business. As I say, it's not just about improving C-MEx. What it's about is how do we resolve failure, prevent failure happening, and also at the same time make ourselves more efficient. Jude can talk, wax lyrical about the sort of stuff that we're doing from a Kraken perspective. I'll hand over to Jude in a moment.
We're also doing lots on the operational side to really continue to improve that service. Again, I'll hand over to Steph in a second. That all that is resulting in a much more customer-centric organization that ultimately will deliver for all customers. I'll hand over to Jude who can just cover off the improvements we've been seeing from Kraken.
Hi Dominic. Yeah, I guess the Kraken implementation has enabled us to replace, you know, an aging asset with a modern and secure CRM platform. That already includes embedded AI. The implementation completed with really great transaction integrity. That simply means is that, you know, we've managed to do that without any bumps to revenue or cash collection, which is good news. You're right now we are turning our full attention to harnessing the power of Kraken to deliver Octopus-type customer service experience improvements. Our portal has just been through a complete refresh. Our customers will see more improvement on key journeys, things like metering and house moves. That's really helping to remove friction and reduce customer effort.
All in all, it's been a great partnership, but you know, we're going to continue to benefit from Kraken right through AMP 8 and AMP 9.
Brilliant. Thank you, Jude. Steph will cover off what we're doing on the operational side, particularly in waste.
Absolutely. On water and waste, we know that 90% of the customers that have to contact us have a really good experience. We also know that when we send an engineer, customers really enjoy that, but there are absolutely some areas that we can improve. We've got a new campaign called One Call Is All It Takes, and we're focusing on three things. The first thing is response times, particularly on floodings. We've already improved that by 80%, but we've still got more to do in that space. The second is around when we need to do follow-on work, we need to involve our customers more. I think in the past we've assumed that we'll just crack on with doing some civils and we don't need to tell the customer about it, but we know now that we need to. The third is around KCI.
I think customers' expectations have changed a lot in that space, and we've been doing the basics and we need to do a lot more around that. I'm really confident now we know the right things to tackle. We've got the right people, we've got the right measures, and we're already starting to see some of our internal measures move in the right direction.
For those that don't know what the acronym KCI means, it's keeping customers informed. Just to bring a bit of color to that. In terms of the Ofwat and EA investigations and the outcomes of those, truth be told, Dominic, we are continuing discussions with Ofwat and the EA, and we are just awaiting what the outcomes might be. We haven't got any timescales for those, so we will just bide our time and see what comes out of those investigations going forwards. I'll perhaps hand over to Helen now to cover inflation impact on RoRE.
Hi, Dominic, good to see you. Yeah, I mean, you're right, we have benefited from inflation being higher than the FTSE in our financing costs, but we shouldn't assume that it's all down to inflation. You know, the fact that we don't tie ourselves to the Ofwat notional company structure in terms of gearing is a benefit. The fact that we've got one of the lowest index-linked debt in the sector also gives us the benefit. That's been a purposeful strategy of ours for a long time, and we see that it benefits us. On your point about the Ofgem sort of semi-nominal thing, I mean, it's not something that I've seen is on the agenda, so it is hypothetical, but we have looked at the Ofgem approach, and, you know, it's not something that concerns us. There are upsides and downsides with that model.
You know, if it happened, then that wouldn't be a problem for us.
Brilliant.
Any questions, Dominic? Thank you very much, [Dee]. Good morning, [Mark].
Thank you. Thank you, James, for taking my questions. My first one, I guess, would be more for Shane, just on, you know, can you clarify where we are on receiving in-period remuneration for the GBP 600 million and potentially more in future years? As I understand it, Ofwat's opening position is no, it has to be funded by companies until 2030, but there are discussions with government and Ofwat to try to put through some bill rises late review. Can you talk about perhaps what you're assuming and where you see that debate going? Secondly, a question for Helen just on capitalized interest. Of course, as you ramp up CapEx, capitalized interest comes through. It's an accounting, not a regulatory construct. Can you remind us what you're capitalizing the interest at?
Presumably, it's the marginal cost of debt. How that credit to the P&L is expected to progress and whether that drives some of the earnings growth over the coming couple of years? Thank you.
Brilliant, thank you, Mark. Shane?
Good. For those of you not familiar with this, the default position for reopeners is that the revenue adjustment will occur at the end of the AMP. If I leave growth to one side, for the asset health business cases, you can have in-period funding. To get in-period funding, you've got to do a couple of things. First, you've got to undertake customer research, that's really about understanding, do they support the bill increase now, or would they prefer to have it at the end. We engaged with 2,150 customers and they, over three-quarters, supported our proposals and found them either affordable or neutral. That three-quarters of support included our ODI outperformance as well. We gave them a forecast of ODI outperformance, inflation, and the reopeners.
We have a really good strong position there and it adds about GBP 8 to the bill by 2030. You've also got to be on track with your delivery program. As we've spoken about in our results, we're not only on track, we're exceeding it, which is why we've got positive PCD performance. Those factors combined gives us the means for getting the in-period funding. The one exception is growth. For your year 2 element of growth, there would be no in-period funding, but Ofwat is going to consult on it next year for years 3, 4, and 5. For the circa GBP 60 million that we've got now, what we'd spend next year wouldn't get the in-period, but the spend thereafter would get in-period funding. We'll be engaged with Ofwat through that process. Yeah, we've met the conditions for in-period funding.
Brilliant, thank you, Shane. Helen?
Hi, Mark, good to see you. I think on capitalized interest, I know others have made some accounting policy changes. None of our earnings growth comes from accounting policy changes. They are as they have always been. Having said that, it will change with capital investment, and as our capital investment grows relative to our operating costs, you'll see a shift. Our underlying policies have not changed.
Brilliant. Happy with those, Mark?
Yeah, sure, I'll come back to you. Thank you.
Thank you very much indeed. Good morning, James. How are you?
Good, thanks. Thanks for taking our questions and for the presentation. I also have three questions. Okay. Hopefully that's okay. The first one, obviously there's been quite a lot of volatility in share prices in the sector over the last few days on the back of prospects of Andy Burnham standing for the PM role. It's a bit of a sensitive topic to talk about, but he's been talking about taking government control or greater government control, and sometimes that's been written up as nationalization, although I don't think that's the language he specifically used. I was wondering whether you could just share your thoughts. I don't know if you've had any contact with him or his team as to kind of what you think he might be thinking and how that affects you. That's the first question. The second is on the ODIs.
You mentioned that it had been a stronger than expected start on ODIs, and also you'd got new targets on operating cost savings. I guess the obvious question is kind of why didn't you increase your cross-period GBP 300 million target for outperformance, given that everything seems to be going much better than expected, or at least certainly somewhat better than expected? Second question. Thirdly, on the ROE, I get that you want to kind of follow the Ofwat methodology, but I was just wondering on your thoughts on this tax slab of the RoRE. It's quite material. As I understand it wouldn't be very likely to be actual genuine economic outperformance, given that Ofwat sets the tax allowance in your revenues in line with the expectations for cash tax.
Assuming it continues to do that, you wouldn't actually be generating any tax outperformance. Should we be kind of stripping that out if we want to look at the kind of underlying economic performance? Thank you.
Brilliant, thank you, James, getting into the meaty questions there. I will hand over to Helen after I've covered off the first two to talk about your words, the tax slab on RoRE. From a political perspective, I mean, let's be quite frank, there's a long way to go, and we've learned over the years that politics can be really noisy. What we are focused on and we remain focused on is a company that delivers for its customers, for the environment, and of course for its shareholders. The words that you spoke about from Andy Burnham's perspective, I think his quote was, better or more public control and well-run companies for public good.
To be quite frank, that aligns absolutely with the values of Severn Trent, we are a company that prides ourselves on being a well-run organization, and you will see from all the work we do outside of just providing water and wastewater services that public good is really front and center of everything that we try and do each and every single day. We're well on board with that. I think in terms of the direction of travel, we saw that the King's Speech, I've already referred to it, was referenced last week, and that sort of cemented the direction of travel in my mind. In terms of we are heading for a new independent regulator and what the whole purpose of it is to again ensure that we've got well-run companies that are financeable and can deliver and support the long-term growth trajectory of the U.K.
That is where and how we remain from that perspective. In terms of the ODIs, I think it's a really good question. Obviously we are delighted with the GBP 73 million, unbelievable performance across the business, a testament to again this really engaged, highly performance-driven culture that we've got in the organization. We will continue to push the boundaries wherever we can. As Steph alluded to earlier, just by staying still, there will be a GBP 20 million reduction on our ODIs. The targets ratchet up each and every year, so the fact that we've committed to at least GBP 50 million in nominal terms, I think, is testament again to the culture and the ambition inside company.
We are in year one of a five year regulatory period, you know, we're not going to be bold enough to say the GBP 300 million is up for an upgrade yet. We also have to take into account the fact that things have moved and the Environment Agency have changed the classification of pollutions, and of course we're waiting to see how Ofwat may then flow that through from an ODI perspective as well. All of that is uncertain. Where we are, we're really confident with what we've committed to and look forward to delivering again next year. Now I'll hand over to Helen to discuss tax on RoRE.
Thanks, James. Hi, James, good to see you. Great question. I think it's, I think it's a great question and we've had that debate ourselves internally. I think if I think about the returns that we're delivering, you know, you hopefully will have seen the presentation and we've got this track record of constantly delivering above the base return and those double-digit returns that you can see this year and in previous AMPs. Obviously, our ODI performance is leading. We've delivered so much outperformance from that. We've also got the 30 basis points from our outstanding plan, which we get on our whole GBP 15 billion that we secured in the FD. Of course, in financing as well, benefiting from both our capital structure but also the fact that we've got tight spreads and a really high demand for our debt.
All of those multiple levers that we've got to outperform, we see that continuing. In terms of the tax, you know, we want to be consistent with what you'll see in the APR and the measure that you'll see through the APRs that we will give to Ofwat. It's not our focus. It is a function of the math, and our focus is on all of the other things that are driving those double-digit returns.
Brilliant. Happy with that, James? Thank you very much.
Yeah, thank you. Thank you.
Thank you.
Good morning, [Alex]. How are you?
Morning. Well, thank you. Hope you're all well as well. Two from me, please. Just 1 is a little bit of a follow-up on the ODI point from James's question. Just in terms of what you were saying about the GBP 20 million charge for standing still, can you just clarify, is that from where you outturned on ODIs or where you thought you were going to outturn when you set the original guidance? I'm just trying to understand whether the performance that you've done in year one is giving you some carry into next year in terms of underpinning that at least GBP 50 million? My second question is just on the GBP 150 million of cost efficiencies, GBP 36 million in FY 2026. I guess two parts to this. One is it fair to assume a relatively linear run rate on those cost efficiencies to 2030?
Then secondly, just on where the easy wins are and what might be more challenging. Thank you.
Brilliant. Thank you very much indeed, Alex. Just, I will cover off the ODI piece. I'll give a bit of an overview on in terms of the efficiencies, and then I'm going to hand to Steph to talk about how we're using AI, particularly in her space. Then we might hear from Bob as well in terms of some of the innovations that will also contribute to those efficiencies. First and foremost, on the ODIs, I probably wasn't very clear. In terms of what I meant was, from an ODI perspective, the targets ramp up each and every year. If you stand still, effectively you don't outperform to the same degree. Even if we delivered the same level of performance as we have this year, effectively our ODI outperformance would be GBP 20 million lower.
By setting our guidance, what we're effectively committing to is everything's basically been reset. We're committed to delivering that GBP 40 million, sorry, GBP 50 million in nominal terms outperformance against the backdrop of a particular change in pollution. That's where we are from that perspective. In terms of the efficiencies, I spoke earlier about the customer centricity we're going to drive in the business. That will obviously lead to a real attack on failure that we do sometimes see, not obviously for the vast majority of our customers, but when we do get it wrong, by addressing that failure, we will actually start to deliver some real cost reductions as well around the cost of failure. We're looking forward to seeing that come through in the business. We are really committed on the artificial intelligence journey and that is well embedded in the organization.
We've seen some exciting stuff already and there's a lot more to go. I'll hand over to Steph to cover some of that off first.
Yeah, fantastic. We've got loads of insight about our water network, but when we insourced our waste network team 2.5 years ago, we realized there was a huge opportunity on waste. We've put 1,000 more sensors in the network and we've really embraced Storm Harvester. Our control center here in Coventry uses the data across the network, across rising mains and pumping stations to predict and proactively attend before things happen. That means that we can get to problems before they impact on customers, but also before they become too costly. We don't have to put reactive measures in place. We're ahead of the game and we've got teams dedicated to go and fixing those things before they actually cause a problem.
Brilliant. Thank you, Steph. I'll let Bob in a second talk about some of the things that he's seen from innovation perspective. Let's not also forget that we're delivering GBP 500 million worth of capital efficiency. After Bob's covered it, I'll hand to Paul Baxter, who will cover off some of the stuff that we're doing from capital delivery perspective also. Bob.
Great. I'm going to talk about two AI examples. The first one is actually around how we predict the weather using AI at the moment, which actually is really helpful in us using our cheapest sources of water. For example, last summer we were able to deploy the cheapest sources from some of our gravity-fed areas rather than the pump sources. That's a big efficiency win. Another area I'm looking at is sewage pumping station efficiencies. We've got over 200 installations live now using machine learning which optimize how pumping stations work together and optimize pump curves. That's a brilliant example of that.
Brilliant. Thank you very much indeed, Bob. Paul, would you share some stuff you're doing in capital delivery?
Yeah, thanks, James. We're covering a whole range of opportunities in capital delivery to deliver that GBP 500 million. If I just take on the theme of AI and just take that a little bit further, an example of the sorts of things we're doing with AI is we've got a number of cross-country pipelines that are being delivered this AMP. Big pipes over long distances, and we're using AI to do route selection. AI can do thousands and thousands of options on route selection, and things that would take months can be done in hours literally now, which takes a lot of time out of the design process. The route selection is to try and avoid things like canals and motorways and all of the other things that make delivery of cross-country pipelines expensive.
Brilliant. Happy with that, Alex?
Yeah, that's great. Thank you.
Thank you very much indeed. Dominic, is that legacy, or have you got some more questions?
Hi there.
Yeah, no, I've got a couple more. Sorry, you can't get rid of me that easily, James. That's okay. 2 questions. Firstly, you've mentioned it a couple of times, in this presentation about the change in the EPA scores going forward. You had two serious incidents through 2025, two serious pollution incidents. Do you think that on how it's currently panning out that you'll still be able to maintain a top sort of score? I know that Liv was going to be upset that you might have been a five star CEO rather than a four star CEO, but whether or not you'll be able to maintain sort of the top score. Secondly, looking at your Re-opener again, and one of the major sort of growth themes that we see in the water sector is water resources.
You talk about population growth and climate change, but is there nothing in your, in your submission sort of pre-FEED very big sort of DPC-type assets here? Do you have any sort of lined up, or is this going to be year two, year three type projects? Thank you.
Brilliant. I'll cover off some of your EPA question, and I'll perhaps hand to Steph to give a bit of color on our pollutions aspiration, how we're really going after that as a measure. Then from a reopening perspective, I will give you a bit of color on our new treatment works, which we've opened, and perhaps Shane could share some of his views on where we're going from a water resource perspective. First of all, we are genuinely delighted to be on course. We're highly confident to achieve EPA 4-star for a 7th consecutive year. For context, the next best company in the sector did it three years in a row 10 years ago. We have continually sustained the highest level of performance, which we are absolutely delighted about.
Now let's not forget that EPA is a number of key metrics that there were six metrics for 2025, and effectively you have to perform well against all of those metrics. One of those metrics is overall pollutions, and one of those metrics is serious pollutions. We've enjoyed a 35% improvement in our pollution performance due to some great work across our operational teams, but also some of the key investments that we've been making across some of our key assets such as pumping stations. We're delighted with that. From a serious pollution perspective, serious pollution is effectively a function of duration, length, and impact. Our whole plan is really focused on, first of all, how do we prevent things happening?
When things do start to go wrong, how we catch them early so we can proactively intervene and prevent it happening in the first place. When things do happen, how we respond even better than we currently do to mitigate any potential impact. Steph can share some of those thoughts.
Yeah, fantastic, thank you. In terms of preventing, we've invested more in proactive work on our network, particularly planned cleansing, which means that we've had fewer pollutions related to blockages. I've also mentioned all of the sensors that we've got on our network too, which means that our new Waste OCC, our Operational Control Centre, that operates 24/7, can respond faster. We've also invested in a fantastic Pollution Response Team who work around the clock to go and prevent and mitigate pollutions when they do happen. We know that every serious pollution is one too many. We review, myself personally and the waste team, every pollution that we have in order to learn from that, improve our processes, work out what we need to do differently, but more importantly, make sure that pollution never happens again.
Brilliant.
In terms of the water resources. Good question, Dominic. We have just, or we will be commissioning, or we are in the middle of commissioning, sorry, our newest water treatment work. I think it's that it might even be the newest water treatment works in the U.K. at a site in Derby, which will give us an additional 89 million L of water each and every day at peak. That will be available for us in the summer should we need it and will obviously be a key asset for us going moving forwards in the future. On top of that, you will have heard, and we've talked previously about strategic resource options, and that sort of stuff is still continuing in the background. I'll hand over to Shane now to share some of our thoughts for PR29 and beyond.
You're right to focus on water resources. We will have roughly a quarter of a million new houses every five years. That's a city the size of Leicester connecting to our network. We've also got a program called Environmental Destination where we need to reduce groundwater abstractions, so that means we're going to have to replace about 20% of our water sources. We do have a lot of investment required on water resources. I think where you go though from a regulatory process is we've got RAPID, so that was the EA Ofwat DWI process set up to fund water resources. We have three large new schemes going through that process, so it's not through the reopeners, it's through a slightly different process. We've got a scheme working with the Canal & River Trust on one of our, a big water resource option.
We've got one with the Mining Remediation Authority to take, because they've got excess water, so we'll obviously want to take it. We've got one in South Yorkshire as well. If we need more water resources, we can go through the [RAPID] process. I think from a reopening perspective, the one avenue where you could get more water resources is through mains renewal. Obviously we're ahead of our target, in round two you can put in a proposal for more mains renewal. Obviously that has a longer-term leakage benefit.
Brilliant. Happy, Dominic? Thank you very much indeed. Julius, obviously Dominic set the trend now for people to come back and ask another question. Over to you, please.
No, I'm sorry to be a pain, I think two things. Just the first one was, I think, in my previous question on equity, there was some background noise. Apparently, it was not just for me. I got some feedback from investors as well. If you could maybe just repeat the message that you put out, just to be absolutely sure. I was thinking, well, you know, I'll raise my hand again. I can ask another question. I was just wondering, the above GBP 2.50 guidance now that you put out, how dependent is that on inflation normalizing over the years? I mean, I know you have your inflation assumptions going forward, if inflation would stay at the current levels, would you still be comfortable of reaching that? Thank you. That's the last question.
Okay, thank you, Julius. I'll cover the equity question again and then I will hand over to Helen. Equity, I said before that effectively we raised equity prior to AMP8 and we were very clear from the off that that would see us through to 2030 and that position hasn't changed. Over the years we've been able to outperform from an efficiency perspective. Paul talked about some of the work he's doing within capital delivery, which is leading to GBP 500 million efficiency, but also the work that we've done through ODI delivery over all the years. We've delivered GBP 500 million worth of ODI benefits since 2021. All that outperformance gives us real choices. As it stands, we are not raising any further equity for this AMP period at all. That is clear.
I hope that's clear despite me stumbling, that is clear. Then in terms of the guidance, I'll just hand over to Helen.
Hi Julius again. I've probably said before, we're always cautious and prudent with our inflation views. We look at a number of indices. I wouldn't put something into the market that I wasn't confident of delivering in any scenario. You can rest assured that we've looked at that hard and are confident with the earnings. You'll also notice there it's at least GBP 2.50.
Okay, great.
Brilliant.
Very, very clear.
Thank you, Julius. I appreciate you picking up that equity question wasn't necessarily heard first time round, so thank you for doing that. Much appreciated. Right, I think that is all the questions. Right, I just want to say a huge thank you to everybody that's dialed in. I appreciate all the questions, and thank you to all of the Severn Trent team as well. Much appreciated, and look forward to seeing you all soon on roadshows. Thank you very much.