ESG Criteria In Company Valuation And Prioritization In The Telecommunications Industry

You are required to complete the assessment outlined below

1. Prepare a brief industry overview of ESG-priorities for global telecommunications based on the SASB standard, describing at least 6 specific metrics to measure the ESG-priorities.
   
   
2. Complement the SASB ESG-priority analysis with brief info from (European) telecommunications bodies e.g. the European Telecommunications Network Operators' Association (https://www.etno.eu/home/working-groups/overview), the Global e-Sustainability Initiative (http://gesi.org).
   
   
3. Include a listing of the ESG-priorities as stated by British Telecom OR France Telecom (info from the latest annual reports and websites).
   
   
4. Include issues which are being reported by non-profit stakeholders.
   
   
5. Critically evaluate variances between the ESG-priorities listed in the case and those listed above (part of the variance is due to the fact that the case was written several years ago).
   
   
6. Do you require further information to make a decision? If so, what information and why is it required?
   
   
7. Assume that you must make a decision based on the available data - explain your recommendation.

Provide 2 well-founded arguments - including citations from at least three academic papers per argument - to support the case against the use of ESG criteria in the company valuation process.

Choose one of the following soft commodities and briefly explore the key ESG-priorities, as well as measures being taken to address these priorities. Cite challenges to implement ESG-priorities - operational and investor-related. Information should include insights from industry associations, companies, non-profit associations, and financial institutions.

Wild caught seafood

Soy

Beef

Critically evaluate a green REIT, briefly describing its activity, its financing model, government programs and/or regulations it uses to complement its financial performance, the metrics used to measure its environmental/social impact, the expected impact of environmental/social criteria on the financial performance, and information on the actual financial performance of the REIT.

Critically analyze an Asian impact investing fund, briefly describing its operating model, the financial model (below-market and/or market-based returns), the metrics used to measure environmental/social impact, and the financial performance of the fund against benchmarks.

Arguments Against ESG Criteria in Company Valuation

The telecommunications industry are scored based on three environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors. Accounting standard under SASB (Sustainability accounting standard) for the telecommunication industries provides the companies with accounting metrics for accounting the performance in terms of sustainability. Wire line and wireless are the two main segments of the telecommunication industry. They are heavily influenced by the data resulting from the expansion of electronic gadgets. When the telecommunication industry are required to make disclosure about their performance with respect to the sustainability, there are identified accounting metrics by SASB (Aziakpono et al. 2014). Concerning the sustainability topic, it is required by companies to make a narrative description of any material factors that is considered essential for ensuring comparability, completeness and accuracy of data being reported. For measuring the ESG priorities of the telecommunication industry, following accounting metrics has been provided in accordance with SASB. Metrics comprised of accounting and activity metrics. Activity metrics needs to make disclosure about contextual information and they are deemed generally useful for some accounting metrics (Benjamin 2013).

Activity metrics are as follows:

• Subscribers of broadband services
• Subscribers of wire line services
• Subscribers of wireless services
• Network traffic, percentage on cellular network and percentage on fixed network

• Total energy consumption by fixed and cellular networks, percentage grid energy and percentage renewable energy.
• Another metrics is related to privacy of data and it involves discussion of policies relating to usage and collection of information about customers. Settlement associated with privacy of customers and amount of regulatory and legal fines.
• Metrics concerning technological disruptions involves duration and frequency of average interruption.
• Metrics related to data security number of data security breaches and management addressing security risks related to data.
• Regarding competitive behavior, metrics involves settlement associated with anti-competitive prices, regulatory and legal fines.

European Telecommunications Network Operators' Association has chosen to pursue a systematic approach to integrating environmental, social and governance factors throughout the entire investment cycle for managing risks and enhancing returns. The commitment of association is create a long lasting positive impact and going beyond the business interest and extending themselves as role model in corporate responsibility. It has also adopted the global sustainability reporting guidelines. Organization makes the communication about business and ESG performance in an integrated manner (Berensmann et al. 2017). Social and environmental issues of the association are reported in relation to strategies and concepts explaining business works.

British telecom are committed to carry out their operating activities in accordance with the ethics and business integrity for maintaining highest standard in corporate governance and financial reporting.  Areas where the telecom is making material impact are measured and managed by organizations. Some of the state’s list of ESG priorities are as follows:

• Reducing the footprint of carbon and assisting the customers in reducing theirs with the help of technology. Cutting the carbon footprint and helping customers to cut their emissions by three times of own carbon impact.
• Extending the commitment to United Kingdom education through the ambition of new tech literacy. Reserving the paradox of people of UK who are growing up as technology consumers by helping children with computer thinking and coding skills.
• Protecting consumers from online threats, supporting human rights and improving conditions with the suppliers.
• Reducing the savings of energy by replacing energy intensive air conditioning with adiabatic cooling units, installation of energy efficient rectifier units and installations of energy efficient lights.

There is a loss of legitimacy, return on investments have affected nonprofits stakeholders, and they are increasingly being questioned about their works and expenses. Non-profits are faced with increased pressure to perform. Human resource is regarded as the most underappreciated element of non-profit organizations. Some of the other issues related to stakeholders of organization includes managing ESG risks in business activities, valuing workplace and people, pursuing products and services through an ESG focus and advancing environmental management. There are also environmental issues relating to investments made by non-profits stakeholders. Issues also exist relating to compliance and integrity.

Key ESG Priorities and Measures in Soft Commodities

The variance between ESGH priorities identified in the case study and ESG priorities listed above is partially due to the timing of case study. The case happened few time back and the above listed priorities are modified and evaluate as per changes in standard resulting from changed business environment. In case study, metrics care generated from the process for constructing ESG scores concerning individual companies. A lower level of quantitative and qualitative metrics have been identified in the case study unlike the priorities mentioned above. Rating the organization as higher or lower ESG ratings was done considering the aspects and facts that are different from facts and aspects considered in today’s ESG priorities.

For making the decisions, it is required by organization to make reporting on data by integrating ESG data in the annual report. ESG raw data along with benchmarkabale data needs to be provided from industries for allowing spreadsheet integration. When making the strategic implementation, there is a need on part of companies to outline ESG importance and gives explanation of considering the aspects. For own business activities of companies, future and current relevance in relation to ESG topics should be determined. Communication of information is relevant and meet the expectation of financial investors and analyst with respect to frequency, scope, completeness and detail. Information needs to be consistent and transparent. It should be explained adequately and quantified. This would assist in comparing the organization with others. The additional information that would assist the investors in making decisions comprise of some sort of non-financial matters as they help in determining the sustainability and future prosperity of business. Information about corporate social responsibility that should be incorporated as they form an integral part of legally and statutorily required financial reporting. Information concerning data needs to be appropriated and methods and assumptions needs to be cited for such information.

ESG data can be collected more efficiently by providing benchmarks for the process of data collection. Recommendation are provided in relation to documentation of data and audit proof collection and suggesting methods for efficiently extrapolating of information from given data. Reliability of data should be done at very high level by making systematic reporting of ESG data. Information incorporated in preparation of ESG report needs to be analyzed, documented, reported and disclosure should be made in way that it helps in reviewing by external and internal audit. Reporting made to capital market of organization should be aligned with ESG reporting. Some of the additional recommendation that can be made relating to reporting of available data for purpose of decision-making are as follows:

• Disclosing of the methods used for calculating figures
• Scope and content of data included in report needs to changes only in event of justifiable cases.
• Annual report of corporates should also incorporates ESG related data
• Respective Key performance indicators should be displayed in table format in annual report. This will help in comparing and extracting the data easily.
• Key financial data should be presented through the presentation slides
• It is required by company to follow the principles of effective financial communication when reporting of ESG information is done externally.

Evaluating Green REITs

It is argued by many people that there can be long-term impact on financial performance of company if ESG factors are considered and the impact can be either better for or worse. Nonetheless, ESG factors are considered to be at the core of business. The management of company and investors does fully value the breadth and depth of ESG factors. It has been believed that company management that long-term intrinsic value of companies are overvalued and under by asset managers as there is a failure on their part to make the integration of ESR factors into decision-making and investment analysis.

Concerning ESR factors, there are various misconceptions between investors and companies along with financial materiality. The information presented by the sustainability report of the organization is difficult to be used by asset managers when valuing the company. Intrinsic value of company can be materially impacted by ESG factors along with affecting the market capitalization. It has been thought by many investors that ESG is narrowly concerned and they focus only on corporate governance matters rather than reputation and brand issues.  Integrating the ESG criteria is regarded as valuation tool for decision-making and improving investment analysis. ESG is still not included in the mainstream between asset manager and company mangers. The reason attributable for not integrating into financial valuation model is little direct communication between asset and sustainability managers. Gap concerning ESG communication between investment firms and individual companies have become deeper. Value of integrating ESG criteria is still not fully understood and they are not uniformly accepted (Ortas et al. 2015).  Some of reasons attributable for not considering ESG factors for valuation of companies are as follows:

• Lack of complete understanding on ESG factors influence on company’s financial performance is preventing integration as an overall investment philosophy.
• There has been a complete focus on short-term performance and this has been responsible for hindering the demonstration of ESR value integration. Integration of ESR criteria in valuing the companies generally focusses on long-term performance.
• Lack of quality ESG data is another factor responsible for not considering them in valuing the companies. Investors are mainly concerned about the quality of data when such information are gathered from third party. Existence of less disclosures and information about measurement possess a limit in ability of investors for making a comparison about companies across sectors (Volz 2016).
• Capacity of investors for integrating and analyzing ESG criteria is considered to be low on average

Sometimes, there is no proper disclosure made by companies, they also do not align with the Global reporting initiatives and international integrated reported council, and they lack proper organizational arrangements. ESG criteria are considered external to the process of investment. The fair value o company cannot be valued by integrating the ESG factors and inclusion of such factors in the investment analysis are likely to have material impact on business model of company and their share performance. One of the crucial thing for understanding whether any portfolio has outperformed based on ESG criteria. ESG practices are not appropriately prices in markets and this leads to generation of abnormal returns. The reason is also attributable to the fact that the benefits of ESG criteria is not accounted appropriately in price of stocks and considers that profits will be generated by mainly investment in the company (Kaltofen et al. 2013).  Some of the sustainability factors are relevant in financial performance of companies; however, there are other ESG factors are not involved in valuation of company.

Asian Impact Investing Funds

Market data for return and volatility forms the basis of sustainability issues incorporated in the prices. Capturing of environmental and social risk by measures of standard volatility is not clear and the reason is that uncertainty source relating to environmental risk and impacts on financial performance is an open questions.  Materiality of sustainability risk is thought to be low and they are not incorporated into financial volatility measures (Rambaud and Richard 2015). There has not been any best practice for valuing the company using ESG criteria.

The investors are increasingly interested in understanding and analyzing the impact of ESG issues. This will help in the management decision making of the business.  The range of factors influences it including the new regulations, evolution of the practice of the management and there is mandatory development in the disclosure. The company identifies, assesses, manages and reports ESG related risks. This helps the investors for providing the valuable information for the management that is helpful in oversight of the business. Accountability and governance mechanism helps the investor to determine and understand the risk at the senior level management.  Lack of discloser on the issue related to the ECG indicates that there is no understanding in the part of the management (Sedla?ko et al. 2014). The information in the ECG discloser provided indicates that the company is indicated the position of the company to indicate the issues related to the regulatory standard, trends of the market, development of the product and growth opportunities in future. It should be noted that this influences the long-term performance of the business. The companies are required to determine the manner in which the companies need to report and provide details of the report. The priorities of the ESG report related to reporting of soft commodity beef is discussed below.

The report is divided into categories related to environmental and social issues. The companies should develop and report so that they can report their purpose. The companies that are reporting for the social and environmental issues should report the commonly reported indicators. The relevant indicators that are report vary according to the materiality and sectors. The social and environmental issues are of same importance as that of corporate governance. The incorporation of this guidelines helps to highlight the issues related to the corporate governance (Mats et al. 2014). The reporting priorities are:

Environment
The report should highlight the effect of soy production and consumption on the climate change. The company should priorities the highlighting of implementation of the management system and the compliances. The company should report the efficiency related to the management of water, energy and waste relating to the production of soya (Jitmaneeroj 2016). The other environmental issues should be reported.

ESG Prioritization and Metrics in the Telecommunications Industry

Social

The priority of the company includes that the company should report the impact of the soy production in the soy. It is a priority for the company to report the information related to management of the human resources. The corporate conducts should be highlighted and the stake holders should be managed.

Corporate Governance

It is the priority of the company to highlight the corporate governance related issues.

Challenges

 The challenges for the implementation of the ESG are discussed below. The successful implementation for the ESG requires that both the parameters and the goals should be clear. Therefore, if there is no clarity then the implementation is a difficult task. It is important to identify the goals for the implementation of the ESG. The work should be divided into small groups. It is challenging for dividing the work into small groups for the management and the implementation of the ESG. It is important to develop a process for identifying the resources warranted across the organization for successful implementation of the ESG. The challenge here is to identify the resources that are needed in the different part of the resources.  The successful implementation requires that the best practices should be implemented in the organization (Hafenstein and Bassen 2016). The challenge in this case is to identify the best practices that are suitable for the entire organization and communicating the best practices to other part of the organization is also an important part but it is also challenging. Therefore, these are the implantation challenges for the ESG.

 The three aspects for the company that are challenging are:

• The quantification of the non financial factor using the measurement of the key performance indicators.
• The context is provided to the corporate reports.
• The report should require information related to forward looking information,

There are certain challenges that are adoption of the stakeholders than the shareholders as the model for corporations. The shift indicates that there is a change in the commitments that are made to the suppliers, customers etc.

Goal of Green Real estate investment trust to provide valuable opportunities for investors to make participation in construction projects and real estate for improving the standard of living of society. Their activities comprised of building, designing and providing consultancy services for various types of green building projects across the regions. The certified green building will have scope to make the expansion of sustainability options. They also helps in promotion of green building certifications that is indicative of the fact that that industry has made progress in increasing water, waste and energy efficiency. Green Real estate trust intends to mitigate the risk and improve the performance of property by incorporating greater transparency into the real estate portfolio sustainability performance (Place 2013).

Challenges of Implementing ESG Priorities in the Telecommunications Industry

Financial model of dealing with properties is considered as much more granular and timing factor is considered to be of crucial importance. Method of financing is different and the funding required is higher as compared to normal business as the interest rate is capitalized when the property is under constructions.

The financial model of Green Real estate investment trust is based on making the accurate estimation of present value of future cash flow that will be generated by property. Financial model that is employed in real estate investment trust is net asset value model and relative pricing model. As per the relative pricing model, there are equal number of sell rated and buy rated stocks within each property sector. Whether the property is underpriced or overprices is determined using this particular mode. Methodology of NAV is considered good when estimating net asset value. A great deal of or making effort is required for making estimation of marked to market valuation. Systematic assessment of key variables such as balance sheet risk, franchise vale, overhead and corporate governance is provided under this model (Weber et al. 2014).  Investors for assessing overall allocation of the property and detecting whether properties are overpriced or underpriced can employ Green street analytical tools. Net asset valuation model is considered as the most usual intrinsic valuation methodology for Real Estate investment trust. The reason is that there is a frequent move in the private real estate market so that valuation is done by valuing real estate assets by subtracting liabilities and adjusting other assets (Wood et al. 2013). Another financial model that can be incorporated in valuing the properties is discounted cash flow analysis.

Regulations have been put into place by government for driving the sustainability options and thereby financial performance by green commercial buildings. It is required by companies to comply with zoning regulations and green building codes and some sort of financial incentives are also provided by government for driving compliance with the regulations.

REIT base their investment decisions using some key valuation metrics and this involves funds from operations and adjusted funds from operations.

The financial performance of Green REIT is measured sing two instrumental variables that is environmental government policies and locational greenness. From an environmental perspective real estate sector is considered of specific interest. Environmental and sustainability performance is aligned with the financial performance through reduced portfolio risk and lower operational cost. In real estate, investigation has been done at asset level when considering the effect of sustainability and energy efficiency on real estate financial performance (Soanes et al. 2015).

Financial performance sustainability of the Green Real estate Investment has been investigated at asset level. The performance is the real outcome of interplay between benefits and cost from making investment in green properties. Financial performance may be impacted by the extent of portfolio risk and operational costs. Financial performance of company has been enhanced by reduced risk of portfolio and lower operational costs. Commercial buildings with energy efficient ratings command higher rents. The fact that whether greenness helps in creating vale for property investors ate some of the question that needs to be addressed while determining the performance of real estate investment trust. Real estate are featured mainly as monopolistic competition where the entities are focusing on producing green buildings and healthy level of profits are provided in such competitive market. Making investment in property sustainability and energy efficiency will help in providing ancillary benefits of corporate governance. This will led to generating of lower operating costs and consume less resources. Asset value and rent are reflected in efficiency of energy. Energy efficient properties have lower exposure to energy price shocks through lower market risk and lower consumption of energy (Fatemi and Fooladi 2013).

Impact investment needs to be delivered at large and the potential policy avenues to explore comes with establishing the needs of funds, innovative financial mechanism and consideration of environmental and social dimension by investors. Impact investing are achieved through various class of asset and that comprise of equities, bonds and real estate. Impact investing involves buying of shares in organization having meaningful business strategies and they are designed for creating positive impact on environment and society (Lean and Nguyen 2014). In order to deal with the companies for making investing, this platform helps in creating libido market. Financing or re financing of products can be done by using bonds and conventions for accelerating bonds are not being universally accepted. There can be impact real estate fund for which the parameters are set to make the investment in real estate having social purpose that is social hosing, green buildings and schools. Impact investing Lotus funds endeavors for facilitating shared learning on business learning and practice for spurring a robust and diverse network that would affect the business, policy makers an government (Loehr 2016).

 The impact-investing fund in Asia for discussing is the lotus impact that is the first indigenous impact-investing fund that intends to target social entrepreneurship across Southeast Asia. Lotus impact is a regional social impact fund targeting small   and medium enterprise for strengthening their environmental and social values and thereby generating sustainable employment and income. This imp act investing fund come with two component that is venture capital fund and incubator. Incubator does strategic value in creation of high commercially sustainable investment and high social impact and they merely look after early stage companies (Hill 2015). Series A and seeds are provided are provided by venture funds that is USD 25 million funds. Another areas where Lotus impact is active is in area of building ecosystem across region and this mainly relates to formation  of regional network of foreign and local angel investors for making co investment in social enterprise. Creation of institutional financing with practical incubator services are performed by lotus impact and this helps in accelerating building up of successful social enterprise. It is built on the model that helps in spurring economic development for creation of long-term impact benefits for improving overall economy in emerging economies. Investment by lotus impact is executed by creating strategic and local partnership for creating opportunities and sharing risk and generating ecosystem-building approach for collaboration with many partners (Elderson 2015).

Lotus influence capital into high transformative business for creating transformative growth and lasting social impact and invests incubation services. Lotus fund II provides a transformative approach for leveraging capital and incubation services in order to generate return to enterprise and investors across South-East Asia. Evaluation of new opportunities by Lotus impact is done by using performance metrics that helps in measuring the financial, environmental and social performances of portfolio companies. Resources from leading organization as IRIS are used for determination of appropriate metrics and thereby quantifying the performance (Busch et al. 2014).

Financial model of the impact-investing fund incorporates both sustainability and financial data for arriving the value of funds at fair value. Financial model is based on approach that there is no trade of between social impact and financial return.  Fundamental paradigm of business are transformed into viable investment strategy and this resulted in creation of value. It has been observed that there is a positive relation between financial return and environmental aspects (Chen et al. 2014).

Lotus is a venture builder and impact fund that collaborate with partners of ecosystem for building robs network of solutions and resources that enable the organization to take deep root. Such work necessitates an in depth understanding of enterprise development, entrepreneur growth development that helps in setting stage for seed developments.

Lotus impact integrates IRIS metrics into the environmental and social performance practices and measurement system. Metrics of IRIS are used in the prices of due diligence and post investment target setting. Environmental metrics involves natural resource conservation, sustainable energy, biodiversity conservation, water rescore management and prevention of pollution and waste management (Bocken 2015). This metrics helps Lotus impact in categorizing the objective of environmental impact in some standardized format.

Some of the social metrics used by the impact-investing fund for measuring social performance involves are capacity building, agricultural productivity, food security, empower and equality, health improvement, community development, access to energy, access to sanitation, access to water and sanitation, health improvement, human  rights protection and growth in productivity. Using and incorporating these metrics helps Lotus affect in categorization of their social impact objective in the standardized format. It is encouraged by IRIUS to incorporate these metrics with theory of change so that supportive details are provided on output, incomes and various impacts (Amatucci et al. 2015).

Lotus funds are not intended for short-term investors and it has been viewed by fund managers’ that growth of such funds in Asia will be continued as large parts of investment is made in stocks only.  There are certain investment themes for making investment in single stocks. Since there will be sharp decline in Asian equity market, the investment will be done in Asian absolute return funds. An interesting investment opportunity is provided in Asia by making investment in Lotus funds despite higher volatility in Asian market.  It has not been guaranteed that a higher average return will be generated by funds in future and the value of investment in funds will witness fluctuations. The five-year overview of performance of Lotus funds are depicted in the table below:

Performance (€ 1000)	2013	2012	2011	2010
Asset at year end	3.3%	5.2%	-13.85%	16.64%
Profit	8920	9196	9561	14527
Expense	572	1023	-1682	2261
Total Expense ratio	3.09%	3.06%	2.52%	2.30%

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