01
About the Utility
Companhia de Saneamento Básico do Estado de São Paulo, known as Sabesp, provides water supply and sewage collection and treatment to communities across São Paulo State, where its corporate profile records 376 municipalities served. The company completed its privatisation in 2024, a step it links to bringing forward universal sanitation coverage in its service areas to 2029. Its core territory is organised as a regional unit, URAE Southeast, in which 371 of 375 municipalities signed a single unified concession agreement with the company. The state regulator, ARSESP, sets tariffs under that concession contract, which moved periodic tariff reviews from a four-year to a five-year cycle.
02
Water System
Sabesp operated eleven water systems in the São Paulo metropolitan region at the end of 2025. Its network of water pipes and transmission lines expanded every year through 2023. Losses remain the central operating test: the total distribution losses index fell from 34.6% in 2012 to 30.5% in 2025, and the company reports meeting that year’s loss-reduction targets in 323 municipalities under the regional concession. ARSESP has set a further regulatory target for the concession, expressed in litres lost per connection per day and phased across two tariff cycles.
Water loss per connection
Litres lost per connection per day, calendar years 2016–2023, as reported in SABESP’s Form 20-F annual reports
All values are company-reported actuals on one measure, published as whole numbers; lower is better.
Sources: SABESP Form 20-F annual reports FY2016–FY2023 (SEC EDGAR).03
Wastewater System
Sabesp also collects and treats sewage across its service areas. Universal coverage is the defining obligation: federal law requires 90% sewage collection and treatment by the end of 2033, and Sabesp has set itself an earlier 2029 horizon. Its universalisation results to August 2026, still awaiting validation by ARSESP, show urban sewage connections ahead of target, while informal and rural areas and new sewage-treatment units remain behind. Connection is a further gap: more than 350,000 properties have a sewer in the street but are not connected, and an availability tariff for the sewage network has applied since May 2025.
04
Investment & Priorities
Sabesp’s investor materials describe a plan to invest around R$70 billion between 2024 and 2029, focused on water availability and water security, while its availability-tariff leaflet presents a figure above R$70 billion as investment in sewage collection and treatment. ARSESP fixed the equilibrium tariff for the concession’s second year from January 2026, a 6.81% tariff variation. At the end of 2025 domestic ratings stood at AAA, while global ratings were BB from S&P and BB+ from Fitch.
05
Sustainability & Resilience
Water security in the metropolitan region rests on scarce local resources: a 2012 assessment put availability in the Alto Tietê basin at 146 m³ per inhabitant per year. Sabesp has prepared a climate adaptation plan for the water-resources management that supplies the metropolitan region, and its Metropolitan Water Sources Control Centre was a finalist for the national water agency’s innovation prize. Energy is a material input to these operations: the company used 2,657 GWh in 2023.
06
Key Challenges
- Delivering universal sewage collection and treatment in informal and rural areas, where results still trail targets.
- Reducing distribution losses, which stood at 30.5% at the end of 2025.
- Connecting more than 350,000 properties that have a sewer in the street but no connection.
- Securing metropolitan supply from scarce basin resources amid climate variability.
- Funding a plan of around R$70 billion within ARSESP’s concession tariff framework.