Water companies have been given the green light to increase bills for customers by an extra £3.4bn in coming years to meet increased pressures on infrastructure and the environment.

Nearly a third of the extra funding provisionally approved for 13 water companies in England and Wales is earmarked for making sure water services are maintained.

Some of the rest will be used to meet rising demand from housebuilding and data centres and to address pollutants known as “forever chemicals”.

Prime Minister Andy Burnham said the proposal was “real money out of family budgets at a time when they are struggling with the cost of living”, and an environmental group described the decision as “an insult”.

Customers of five water companies – Severn Trent Water, Southern Water, Thames Water, Wessex Water, and South East Water – are facing additional bill rises over the next two years, on top of increases that were already announced in 2024.

The new increases will vary between firms.

Southern, for example, will charge £43 extra next year, while South Eastern will only charge £1 more in 2029. The increases will only come into effect if they are given final approval later this year.

The other eight water firms identified – Anglian Water, Dwr Cymru Welsh Water, Hafren Dyfrdwy, Northumbrian Water, Wouth West Water, United Utiliites, Yorkshire Water, SES Water – would recover their additional spending through customer bills after 2030.

Many consumers are angry at being asked to pay anything more against a backdrop of interruptions to supply sometimes lasting for days, and rivers, lakes and beaches too polluted to use safely.

But water companies argue that these problems can only be solved by boosting spending to replace pipes, build treatment plants and establish new reservoirs.

Climate change has also increased pressure on the water infrastructure by making heavy rains and heatwaves more frequent.

TAIPEI — Shares of Asustek Computer surged Thursday after the Taiwanese electronics maker reported second-quarter earnings that nearly doubled from a year earlier, extending a rally that has made the company one of the standout performers of Taiwan’s ongoing artificial intelligence-driven technology boom.

Asustek shares, traded on the Taiwan Stock Exchange under ticker 2357, climbed to 937.00 Taiwan dollars as of 1:30 p.m. local time, up 85.00 Taiwan dollars, or 9.98%, from the previous close of 852.00 Taiwan dollars. The move pushed the stock close to its 52-week high of 964.00 Taiwan dollars, a level reached earlier this year, and firmly within reach of a fresh record following Thursday’s earnings-driven rally.

Asustek reported second-quarter 2026 earnings per share of 25.64 Taiwan dollars, nearly double the 13.20 Taiwan dollars reported in the same period a year earlier. Revenue for the quarter came in at 257.7 billion Taiwan dollars, up 37% from the second quarter of 2025, while net income reached 19.0 billion Taiwan dollars, an increase of 94% year-over-year. The company’s profit margin expanded to 7.4%, up from 5.2% a year earlier, with the improvement driven primarily by the strength of revenue growth outpacing the rise in costs. Both headline figures topped analyst expectations, with revenue exceeding consensus estimates by 4.8% and earnings per share surpassing forecasts by roughly 65%.

The results extend a run of strong performance for Asustek that has been building for much of 2026. The company’s first-quarter results, reported earlier this year, showed record brand revenue of roughly 194.05 billion Taiwan dollars, or about $6.19 billion, a 44% increase from the prior year, driven by surging demand for AI servers alongside stable notebook computer shipments. That first-quarter report also showed net profit climbing 34% year-over-year to 4.82 billion Taiwan dollars, or roughly $160.9 million, underscoring a consistent pattern of accelerating profitability across the company’s recent quarterly results.

Asustek’s rapid growth has been anchored heavily in its expanding artificial intelligence server business, a segment that has grown from a relatively modest contributor to the company’s overall revenue into one now approaching a fifth of total sales, according to earlier company disclosures. The company has continued to emphasize strong order visibility and margin resilience in its guidance to investors, even as component shortages and rising input costs have weighed on parts of the broader global electronics manufacturing sector throughout the year.

Wall Street analysts have offered a mixed, evolving picture of the stock heading into Thursday’s results. JPMorgan analyst Albert Hung upgraded Asustek to neutral from underweight earlier this year, raising his price target to 750 Taiwan dollars from 525, even while remaining cautious on the outlook for consumer PC demand specifically. Morgan Stanley, by contrast, had previously downgraded the stock to underweight from equal weight, cutting its price target to 500 Taiwan dollars from 625, citing concerns about growing margin risk across hardware companies more broadly as component costs have climbed. Despite that split in analyst sentiment, the stock’s overall rating from covering analysts has remained a buy, with five analysts recommending purchase against a single sell rating heading into this week’s results.

Asustek’s share price performance has significantly outpaced broader regional benchmarks over the past year. According to data compiled by Stockopedia, the stock had outperformed the FTSE Developed Asia Pacific Index by more than 36 percentage points over the trailing six months even before Thursday’s earnings-driven gain, with shares trading nearly 29% above their 200-day moving average heading into the results. Simply Wall St separately noted that the stock has risen roughly 40% over the past year, even as some analysts have observed that the company’s earnings per share growth, averaging 45% annually over the past three years, has significantly outpaced the stock’s own price appreciation over the same period, suggesting the shares may not have fully caught up to the company’s underlying earnings growth.

Asustek’s rally forms part of a broader surge across Taiwan’s technology sector this year, fueled by explosive global investment in artificial intelligence infrastructure. Other major Taiwanese technology names, including chip foundry giant TSMC, have similarly posted strong gains throughout 2026 as global demand for AI-related hardware, from advanced semiconductors to servers and specialized computing equipment, has continued accelerating.

Looking ahead, Asustek’s next scheduled quarterly earnings report is due November 5, giving investors roughly three months to assess whether the strong order momentum and margin improvement seen in Thursday’s second-quarter results can be sustained into the back half of the year. With the stock now trading near its 52-week high following the earnings beat, market participants are likely to watch closely for any further signals on AI server order backlogs and pricing trends as the company works to build on what has already been one of its strongest years of growth in recent memory.