The new ESG Leaders & Laggards

This week we are sharing the updated tables with sector leaders and laggards for ESG development, using the data we collected for our recently updated ESG Development Heatmaps. You can find last year’s Leaders and Laggards here.

Before we get into it, a quick reminder on our ESG Development Heatmaps. Measuring and comparing ESG performance in companies in different industries (or even within the same industry but with different business structures) is no easy task. Ideally companies must focus on their material topics (i.e., the sustainability topics that matter the most to the stakeholders of that particular company in that particular industry). Therefore, it is only natural some industries will have made more progress in some ESG topics than others. So, if you try to compare them all with the same ESG topics, you will have a bias towards the industries that are more exposed to the topics you chose to grade. In our heatmaps we tried to avoid this by focusing on the process of developing an ESG strategy and the communication efforts of ESG initiatives.

Having said that, by only focusing on the process, we understand that companies that tick a lot of ESG development boxes are not necessarily truly implementing ESG in day-to-day operations. Also, companies that do not tick such boxes, may in fact be doing great ESG things. But as we have said in the past, we are strong believers in making ESG policies and practices as transparent and measurable as possible.

So, without further ado, congratulations are in order to all the leaders in our tables below!

Mexico – ESG Strategy Development Leaders and Laggards by Industry

How does this compare to last year?

The line-up stayed the same for most sectors, with a few notable exceptions:

• In Consumer Discretionary, Nemak surpassed Sports World to join Hoteles City Express as a leader.
• Terrafina caught up with Fibra Uno at the top of the pack for FIBRAs.
• Note laggards in FIBRAs are now the only companies in the sector which haven’t started developing ESG strategies yet.
• Qualitas took first place in the Other Financials sector.
• GAP and Traxion took the front seat in Transportation, slightly outperforming Aeromexico and G Mexico Transportes, last year’s leaders.

Mexico – ESG Communication Leaders and Laggards by Industry 

How does this compare to last year?

• Rotoplas caught up with Orbia as a leader in Capital Goods.
• Elektra joined Hoteles City Express as a leader in Consumer Discretionary.
• Terrafina, Fibra Danhos and Fibra Hotel also became leaders along with Fibra Uno in FIBRAs.
• FEMSA became the leader in Food&Bev

As we said last week, all sectors in the Mexican market are making progress on their ESG strategies and communication efforts. This should incentivize companies who are still undecided on ESG to start developing a strategy, except for companies that despite being listed in a stock exchange are not that dependent on investors (and that maybe will be delisted at some point) and are still not recognizing the benefits of broadening risk management to cover sustainability topics. We would expect that over the next 5 years, these companies are the minority in the market.

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

Best,

Marimar

CEO, Miranda ESG

P.S. Another reminder that we removed all companies that have formally delisted from the Mexican markets in the past year to be able to have a like-for-like comparison across the data (Lala, Farmacias Benavides, Bio Pappel, Ienova, Elementia and Maxcom). Ienova’s exit caused the Energy sector to be represented by Vista Oil and Gas only, which is why the sector was removed from the analysis. To see Vista’s 2020-2021 performance, please read here. Vista Oil improved its ESG Strategy coverage from 33% to 44% and ESG Communication from 14 to 86% in the last year.