This month's quarterly earnings season offered the first real glimpse into how seriously the COVID-19 crisis is affecting the financials of publicly quoted water companies. While the big US investor-owned utilities sailed through largely unscathed, maintaining full-year earnings guidance and healthy dividend payouts (see story p20), Veolia and Suez both trimmed their dividends significantly, while quantifying in detail the effect the coronavirus had on first-quarter revenues and pre-tax earnings (see table, facing page). Meanwhile, Brazilian utility Sabesp posted a quarterly sales rise, although it swung to a deeper than expected net loss as COVID-19-related volatility saw the Brazilian real weaken against the US dollar and the Yen, resulting in a much higher debt service bill for its foreign currency-denominated obligations. At the same time, the company increased its bad debt provision by more than 1,900% in anticipation of increased ratepayer delinquency.
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