ESG Development in Mexican Energy & Capital Goods

This week, as promised, we are sharing our ESG Development Heatmap for 2 new sectors in Mexico: Energy and Capital Goods. As in the first heatmap we shared for Mexican FIBRAs, we are focused only on (1) companies listed in the Mexican Stock Exchange and (2) publicly disclosed materials.

Energy

Capital Goods

What can we read from these heatmaps?

1. Energy is a good example of how stock liquidity is likely to be positively related to ESG development (the more investors asking for ESG performance, the more likely companies are going to react).
2. ESG KPIs goals still appear to be pretty elusive in the Mexican market. So far in the 3 sectors we have analyzed we haven’t seen a company that has publicly disclosed at least 1 KPI goal for each one of its material topics.
3. Every single company in the Capital Goods sector has published in the past couple of years either a sustainability report or an integrated report. All of them have mapped their contribution to the UN’s SDGs. 5 out of the 8 companies in the table have gone through a materiality exercise in the past 5 years (we recommend going through this exercise every couple of years, especially after a world-shocking event like COVID).
4.  SASB adoption is still clearly not high in Mexico. Considering both sectors, only 1 company reports SASB metrics.
5. TCFD is even less popular in this group. Not one company has aligned with TCFD.
6. GRI on the other hand seems pretty popular as all companies but one that have an ESG or integrated report use this methodology for reporting.
7. 40% of these companies have an ESG committee or a dedicated resource for the ESG strategy.

Overall Capital Goods seems to be as an industry more advanced in terms of ESG development than FIBRAs or Energy (although Energy is tough to read as there are only 2 listed companies – excluding FIBRA E structures which we haven’t analyzed yet – and one extremely recent IPO which we left out of the analysis). We look forward to sharing more heatmaps with you to paint the full picture of ESG Development in the Mexican market.

Clearly the heatmap has its limitations. Companies that tick a lot of ESG boxes are not necessarily truly implementing ESG in day to operations, and of course companies that do not tick such boxes may in fact be doing great ESG things. But we are strong believers in making ESG policies and practices as transparent and measurable as possible, so notwithstanding such limitations, we believe there is significant value in the exercise.

I hope you found this interesting. As usual, if there is anything we can help you with, please reach out.

Best,

Marimar

Partner, Miranda ESG

P.S. We want to highlight that this week Coca-Cola FEMSA, subsidiary to FEMSA, sold its anticipated green bond to investors. According to company data, the US$705m senior notes due in 2032 priced at a 120bps spread over comparable Treasurys. Interestingly, the deal’s original size was US$500m, and the initial guidance was a spread of 155bps over Treasurys.