- Head of Sustainable Investment
Switzerland, Institutional
ChangeThe views expressed are those of the author at the time of writing. Other teams may hold different views and make different investment decisions. The value of your investment may become worth more or less than at the time of original investment. While any third-party data used is considered reliable, its accuracy is not guaranteed. For professional, institutional, or accredited investors only.
This week, the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) organization published the first two Sustainability Disclosure Standards. Developed by the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB), the new standards provide a comprehensive global baseline centered on financial materiality. The focus on financial materiality addresses a critical issue: the need for market participants to accurately assess the enterprise value of individual companies with information on sustainability topics most relevant to financial outcomes, industry by industry.
Accurate, comparable information about corporate enterprise value is essential to our ability to make informed investment decisions on behalf of our clients. For too long, investors have lacked the data necessary to price sustainability-related risks and opportunities, which can feed directly into the assessment of enterprise value. Without this information, investors run the risk of paying too high or low a price for an issuer’s securities. The ISSB’s efforts to standardize sustainability-related financial disclosures should improve data quality and enable national securities regulators and industry groups to adopt and support internationally comparable reporting.
Some Wellington investment teams have already seen the value of these disclosures, where they are available. For example, climate-related information has been a key input to several recent investment recommendations:
- One portfolio management team increased its holdings in a real estate investment trust that had expanded its investments in certified “green” office buildings, which typically command a premium relative to noncertified buildings.
- A research analyst reported improved financial outlooks for several mining companies, based on both structural demand from the transition to a lower-carbon economy and the allocation of capital spending to decarbonize the metals supply chain. The analyst’s view that these companies’ efforts could improve the mining industry’s long-term positioning may be underappreciated by the market.
- One investment team identified a semiconductor manufacturer as more attractive relative to peers based on the dispersed locations of its fabrication plants: The company can draw water — large amounts of which are essential to the chip manufacturing process — from diversified sources.
- A team developed a negative assessment of a hydroelectric power utility, based on its exposure to drought risk.
Establishing a baseline for sustainability disclosures will also help companies, which currently face a barrage of demands for reporting amid a fragmented, complex, and confusing landscape of disclosure expectations. By homing in on the issues most pertinent to investors, the new ISSB standards should provide clarity for companies and allow them to disclose material information with greater efficiency and accuracy. The interoperability of the ISSB standards with others, including the anticipated climate-disclosure framework from the US Securities and Exchange Commission and the EU’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), should reinforce the role of the ISSB standards as the global baseline for sustainability disclosure for capital markets.
We encourage companies to adopt these standards voluntarily, even if their securities market regulators do not yet require them. While meeting these disclosure expectations will require reporting entities to deepen their knowledge of the sustainability topics most material to their business, we believe greater transparency will have significant long-term benefits for financial markets, including for the issuers of securities themselves, investors, and the millions of beneficiaries who rely on them.
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