Water company Severn Trent PLC (LSE:SVT) upped its dividend and guided to a strong profit growth for the coming year.
This comes against a background of growing public ill-feeling that the industry is not doing enough to stop sewage spills.
Days after the water industry issued a public apology for sewage spill issues, promising to up investment, the FTSE 100 company declared an increased shareholder payout 5% to a total of 106.82p per share for the year, estimated to amount to at least £260mln.
It reported turnover up 11.4% to £2.2bn and underlying profit just above flat to £508.8mln.
On its environmental credentials, it said it hit 100% of its performance commitments and is "highly confident" of achieving the Environment Agency's highest rating in its annual assessment for the fourth consecutive year, which it said no company has achieved before.
However, it did not also mention the figures from the Environment Agency showed that, out of the 301,091 total sewage spills in the UK last year, Severn Trent was responsible for 44,700, or 122 a day.
It did acknowledge that "as a sector, we recognise that we should have given sewage activations much more attention and acted faster, and we want to be a driving force for positive change".
The company said it has accelerated the installation of sewage spill duration monitors across its storm overflows.