It's becoming increasingly popular for investors to "vote their values." One way they do this is by investing in companies that make a demonstrable effort to improve the world. This is creating a category of stocks known as ESG stocks.
ESG stands for Environmental, Social, and Governance and it covers a broad range of issues. The environmental component is relatively straightforward. This analyzes and measures how companies address issues such as carbon emissions, deforestation, and green energy initiatives including sustainability efforts built into their supply chain.
The social component covers issues such as an organization's commitment to issues like the gender pay gap and diversity but also areas such as data security, sexual harassment policies, and fair labor practices. The governance component touches on areas like diversity within the corporate board of directors and executive pay.
The focus of this presentation is to give you seven companies that are giving more than just lip service to ESG initiatives. One of the criteria used in selecting the stocks in this presentation was the company's Net Impact Ratio. This is calculated from data produced by the Upright Project's Net Impact Model.
The Net Impact Model is a mathematical model of the economy that produces continuously updated estimates of the net impact of companies by means of an information integration algorithm. MarketBeat captures key insights and presents them under the "Sustainability" tab on the company's profile page.
Click the "Continue to Slide #1" button to view the first company.
