United Utilities Group PLC

Good morning everyone. Looks like we've got most people filing in, so terrific. Thank you very much and good morning. Welcome to the United Digital Fiscal 26 Interim Results Q&A session. My name's Chris Lavert, as you all know, and I'm delighted to play the role of host for this session. Today I'm joined by Lou Beardmore, CEO, Phil Aspen, CFO. We'll stick with the usual format, so if you'd like to ask a question, please raise your hand or shoot through an email or a Bloomberg. And I think leading us off this morning is Julius. You were first off the rank, so please go ahead.

Thank you for taking my questions. I guess two for me. The first one is you mentioned in the presentation that the emergence of new investment drivers that I think There's also P first mentioned on the slides. So just wondering, are you referring to this more like for after AMP 8, like to AMP 9, or is that something that we could already see now through the reopeners in AMP 8? And if so, can you give us any indication on how sizable that could be? And then secondly, I mean, given that I'm the first on the line, obviously, I have to ask on your expectations on Canlis and the white paper that comes out in December, just in terms of which recommendation do you think we'll be taking and what's the process, what's the timeline? Any color would be appreciated. Thank you so much.

Fantastic. And nice to see you this morning, Julie. So thanks for the question. Let's take the reopeners and the growth first. I think, you know, as we went through up seven, there were a number of opportunities for additional growth items. We saw that with green recovery. And we've been really clear both when we spoke at the capital markets and also in terms of interactions with regulators that we see lots of opportunities for growth drivers as we move forward, both in terms of additional housing, new legislation that's coming through, whether that be new drivers that we can see emerging, data centres, additional areas of growth from the government. And we are engaging with regulators, as you'd expect us to, in terms of those opportunities. And we expect them to play through just like they did in AMP7. You're absolutely right. With AMP8, there were a series of reopeners that were actually stated in addition to those. And they're particularly around asset health and the opportunities to drive asset health improvements. And so we are engaging with regulators with those conversations. In relation to Cunliffe and the white paper and the timeline for the white paper, I think, look, in terms of when the recommendation or the report that came out in the summer, there were lots of recommendations, 88 in total, many of which very investor-friendly in terms of the things that Cunliffe was promoting and suggesting. And we're now obviously waiting for the government's response. We expect that to be in December. But what I think is probably useful is to just look at what am I seeing and feeling in relation to intent. And I think there's a couple of things that I'd point to. The first is, you know, Emma Hardy, when she spoke at the Moody's conference, was very, very clear about her desire to drive those recommendations and also for the white paper to be out before Christmas. I met with Emma Reynolds last week as the new Secretary of State, and again, she is very, very clear. She's picking up the recommendations. She's driving those hard with the team in terms of coming out with both the white paper and the implementation plan. And also, you may not have seen, but she was also at the EFRA committee this week, and again, on record, was very clear about her intent in terms of driving those recommendations through. So I think what we can expect to see in December is that white paper and transition plan. And at the same time, I think what we're also expecting is that we will also see a strategic policy statement for both Ofwat and the EA.