Integrating environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors into the investment process has become common over the years, but a crucial and missing component within this is corporate culture. Whilst there is strong evidence showing that ESG leaders outperform their peers, we believe that companies with strong corporate cultures provide an additional driver of outperformance in the long term. This factsheet captures the state of the Mobius Emerging Markets Fund’s portfolio at the end of Q4 2022 across four dimensions: environmental, social, governance, and culture.
In Q4 2022, we continued to actively engage with our portfolio companies through the use of video conferencing and in-person meetings. The Portfolio Highlights section below displays some of the progress observed during the quarter.
1. The engagement breakdown is for Q4 2022 and is based on 157 engagements in the fields of environment, social, governance, culture and operations and capital allocation issues.
2. As part of the ESG+C® assessment, four different dimensions are assessed: environmental: entails factors like climate change, natural resources, pollution & waste as well as environmental opportunities; social: refers to factors such as human capital, product liability and social opportunities; governance: refers to the reporting methods, the ownership structure as well as checks and balances; culture: contains factors like the degree of freedom, equality, recruitment, innovation and remuneration.
3. Portfolio companies are assessed on a binary basis whether they do or do not comply with the assessed metric. The number of companies complying with the metric is expressed as a percentage of the portfolio.
4. External CDP Score: The Carbon Disclosure Project increases environmental transparency and accountability of companies and enables progress tracking. The scoring ranges from A, A- to B, B- to C, C- to D, D- and F.
5. Sustainable Development Goals: Out of the 12 portfolio companies reporting on the united nations sustainable development goals, the top 3 goals are selected.
6. The determined company percentages are weighted according to their weight in the portfolio. The weighted average is reported as a percentage of the portfolio.
7. Founder-/Family-owned Companies: Reports the percentage of portfolio companies with the family or founder holding 5% or more.
8. Blockinvestor: Refers to an individual or organization owning a substantial amount of the company’s shares. The hurdle rate is set at 15%.
9. Dedicated Investor Relations Professional: Reports companies as a percentage of the portfolio having appointed an employee responsible for investor relations.
10. External Glassdoor Score: Glassdoor is one of the world’s largest job and recruiting sites providing scores for companies ranging from 0 to 5. The Portfolio score is the average of 22 available scores among the portfolio.
11. Dedicated Sustainability Professional: Reports companies as a percentage of the portfolio having a dedicated employee in charge of the company’s sustainability activities.