Telefónica is among the companies that are distinguished in the Top 10% for their commitment to sustainability on a global scale, and is included, for the fourth consecutive year, in the Sustainability Yearbook 2024, which is produced annually by S&P Global. Telefónica and Telefónica Brasil are two of the 21 global telco companies included, of which only four are European.
The 2024 Sustainability Yearbook has considered more than 9,400 companies that participated in the S&P Global 2023 Corporate Sustainability Assessment (CSA), although in the end only 759 companies have been included in the Yearbook. To be included in the Top 10% of its industry, a company’s score has to be above 54 for environmental, social and governance, and must be in the top 5% to 10% of the highest performing company in the industry.
Telefónica obtained a score of 87 out of 100 in the S&P – Corporate Sustainability Assessment (CSA) 2023, published on December 8, 2023, and serves as a reference for inclusion in the Sustainability Yearbook, which led it to share the first position in the ranking of Spanish companies, along with two others, and remains for another year in the group of leaders of the Dow Jones Sustainability Index (DJSI) Europe. This new edition highlights its position as the world’s leading telco in several areas of analysis such as Privacy, Materiality and Tax Strategy, achieving the highest score.
Catherine Bohill, Director ESG Development and Impact at Telefónica, said: “The ratings demonstrate our strength in sustainability. To ensure they create value for the Company, we aim to lead the top ESG ratings, so their assessment encourages us to continue to improve our business management and our positioning to investors in an increasingly demanding environment”.
Advancing sustainability (ESG)
For Telefónica, sustainability is a cross-cutting element throughout the Group and its commitment to social responsibility has also been recognised by the Workforce Disclosure Initiative (WDI) 2023, which aims to improve the transparency and accountability of companies in terms of their workforce and supply chain to help increase the supply of good jobs worldwide, with an average score of 90% – more than 20 points above the sector average – and 28 above the average for all participating companies.
In fact, out of thirteen items assessed, Telefónica scored 100% on seven of them, such as Governance, Human Rights Risk Assessment and Due Diligence, Pay Gap, Stability, Value Chain Working Conditions, Worker Representation, etc. The WDI is an investor coalition of 50 institutions, with $9 trillion in assets under management.
On the other hand, Moody’s Analytics has also recently updated its ESG rating and consolidates Telefónica in third place out of 29 European companies, with 66 points. In addition, in the FTSE4Good rating, a series of London Stock Exchange (LSE) stock market indices designed to measure the performance of companies around the world in relation to their environmental, social and governance practices, Telefónica scored 4.6 out of 5, widening the outperformance versus the sector.
