National Grid 2016 Annual Report Download - page 210

Cautionary statement
This document comprises the Annual Report and Accounts for the
year ending 31 March 2016 for National Grid and its subsidiaries.
It contains the Directors’ Report and Financial Statements, together
with the independent auditors’ report thereon, as required by the
Companies Act 2006. The Directors’ Report, comprising pages
08 to 81 and 174 to 202, has been drawn up in accordance with the
requirements of English law, and liability in respect thereof is also
governed by English law. In particular, the liability of the Directors
for these reports is solely to National Grid.
This document contains certain statements that are neither reported
financial results nor other historical information. These statements
are forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A
of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the
Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. These statements
include information with respect to our financial condition, our results
of operations and businesses, strategy, plans and objectives. Words
such as ‘anticipates’, ‘expects’, ‘should’, ‘intends’, ‘plans’, ‘believes’,
‘outlook’, ‘seeks’, ‘estimates’, ‘targets’, ‘may’, ‘will’, ‘continue’, ‘project’
and similar expressions, as well as statements in the future tense,
identify forward-looking statements. These forward-looking
statements are not guarantees of our future performance and
are subject to assumptions, risks and uncertainties that could
cause actual future results to differ materially from those expressed
in or implied by such forward-looking statements. Many of these
assumptions, risks and uncertainties relate to factors that are beyond
our ability to control or estimate precisely, such as changes in laws
or regulations, announcements from and decisions by governmental
bodies or regulators (including the timeliness of consents for
construction projects); the timing of construction and delivery by third
parties of new generation projects requiring connection; breaches of,
or changes in, environmental, climate change and health and safety
laws or regulations, including breaches or other incidents arising from
the potentially harmful nature of our activities; network failure or
interruption, the inability to carry out critical non network operations
and damage to infrastructure, due to adverse weather conditions
including the impact of major storms as well as the results of climate
change, due to counterparties being unable to deliver physical
commodities, or due to the failure of or unauthorised access to or
deliberate breaches of our IT systems and supporting technology;
performance against regulatory targets and standards and against
our peers with the aim of delivering stakeholder expectations
regarding costs and efficiency savings, including those related to
investment programmes and internal transformation and remediation
plans; and customers and counterparties (including financial
institutions) failing to perform their obligations to the Company.
Other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially
from those described in this document include fluctuations
in exchange rates, interest rates and commodity price indices;
restrictions and conditions (including filing requirements) in our
borrowing and debt arrangements, funding costs and access
to financing; regulatory requirements for us to maintain financial
resources in certain parts of our business and restrictions on some
subsidiaries’ transactions such as paying dividends, lending or levying
charges; inflation or deflation; the delayed timing of recoveries and
payments in our regulated businesses and whether aspects of our
activities are contestable; the funding requirements and performance
of our pension schemes and other post-retirement benefit schemes;
the failure to attract, train or retain employees with the necessary
competencies, including leadership skills, and any significant disputes
arising with our employees or the breach of laws or regulations by our
employees; the failure to respond to market developments, including
competition for onshore transmission, the threats and opportunities
presented by emerging technology, development activities relating
to changes to the energy mix and the integration of distributed energy
resources and the need to grow our business to deliver our strategy,
as well as incorrect or unforeseen assumptions or conclusions
(including unanticipated costs and liabilities) relating to business
development activity, including assumptions in connection with
joint ventures.
For further details regarding these and other assumptions, risks and
uncertainties that may affect National Grid, please read the Strategic
Report and the Risk factors on pages 183 to 186 of this document.
In addition, new factors emerge from time to time and we cannot
assess the potential impact of any such factor on our activities or
the extent to which any factor, or combination of factors, may cause
actual future results to differ materially from those contained in any
forward-looking statement. Except as may be required by law or
regulation, the Company undertakes no obligation to update any
of its forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date
of this document.
The contents of any website references in this document do not form
part of this document.
208 National Grid Annual Report and Accounts 2015/16 Additional Information