Juno News - June 23, 2024


Study finds no link between ESG scores and financial returns

Topics
ESG Investing and Financial Returns
Mentioned
Steven Guilbeault Andrew Lawton Show
Liberals cover up $25 billion cost of carbon tax Liberal desperation showing on Toronto byelection day

Episode Stats


Length

9 minutes

Words per minute

141.7

Word count

1,330

Sentence count

72


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

A new study from the Fraser Institute casts doubt on the link between environmental sustainability (ESG) ratings and stock market returns. The study author, Stephen Globerman, joins me to talk about his research, and why he thinks there's no link at all.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 I do want to talk about ESG because this is something we hear a lot of environmental social
00:00:13.880 governance. It's often done by companies that want to look woke and say that they're being
00:00:18.780 progressive and you see it tied in with things like the sustainable development goals and all
00:00:23.540 of these other things. And you often hear people sell ESG because every company wants a good ESG
00:00:29.260 score. People saying that it actually is good for business too, that it's not selling out the bottom
00:00:35.400 line. It's not negative to the shareholders. Well, a new study from the Fraser Institute casts doubt on
00:00:40.500 that. It says there is not in fact any evidence supporting a positive correlation between ESG
00:00:45.540 ratings and stock market returns. This looks at 310 companies on the Toronto Stock Exchange. The
00:00:51.800 study author joins me now, Stephen Globerman, senior fellow at the Fraser Institute. Stephen,
00:00:56.960 good to have you on the show. Thanks for coming on today. Thank you for having me.
00:01:01.040 So just for people that aren't as familiar with this, what is an ESG score and what are companies
00:01:06.140 doing to boost their number?
00:01:10.780 That rate companies' performance along those dimensions, environmental activity, social activity,
00:01:20.000 which is related to who you're hiring, how much you're paying your employees, and governance, which
00:01:28.600 is related to how the company is run. And the rating agencies use different specific measures along those
00:01:38.180 three dimensions and then aggregate these measures to come up with an overall rating for a company. And
00:01:45.520 companies pay for these rating services because in part they use it to promote their performance,
00:01:55.820 their sustainability performance, just to use a broad term to cover those dimensions. Investment
00:02:04.760 managers use those ratings to promote their ESG mutual funds and exchange traded funds to generate business
00:02:16.520 from investors who are concerned about those issues when they place their money in different types of assets.
00:02:24.520 And you've looked at 310 companies on the TSX. You've looked at their stock market returns and find
00:02:32.340 no correlation whatsoever, positive or negative, between the two, correct?
00:02:36.520 Well, let me just clarify one point, which is an important point. What we look at is the change in the ESG rating
00:02:46.180 and then we relate that to stock market performance going forward. And the reason that's an important qualification is that a stock price will change
00:02:58.180 because new information about the company's ongoing prospects have changed. So the change in the rating is important because that really can be considered new information about a company's
00:03:14.180 ESG profile. And if investors are really concerned about ESG profile, then it's the new information that they're going to react to. And yes, what we did was we looked at the relationship between the change in the ESG rating of across our sample of companies and the performance, the stock performance, which includes, by the way, dividend payments and any stock splits over the next up
00:03:44.160 to 12 months, up to 12 months beyond the rating change, which seems a reasonable amount of time to expect investors to react to that new information.
00:03:54.160 And as you said, there's no statistically significant relationship, meaning any relationship we saw could be due to chance with relative confidence.
00:04:08.160 As we know, stock market returns themselves can be very fickle. They're often influenced by a company's profitability, but not exclusively so. And you're not looking at, you know, a company's financial, you're not looking at a company's profitability, specifically, you're looking at the stock market return.
00:04:24.160 So have you in other studies you've seen in the US because I know this hasn't really been done in Canada, seen a relationship between changes in ESG scores and how much a company is making one way or another?
00:04:36.160 Well, you're quite right that the focus of most of the studies, including our study, our recent study, is on stock market returns.
00:04:46.160 But the reason you want to look at stock market returns is because you can't observe future changes in profitability looking at accounting statements.
00:04:56.160 The stock market returns, the stock market returns, and particularly the change in the price of a stock reflects what the broad, you know, millions of investors think is the future profitability outlook for the company.
00:05:12.160 And so looking at the stock market change in the stock market price is really effectively looking at expectations about future profitability, which are not observable if you look at the accounting statements.
00:05:26.160 Now, you might say, well, why not do a very long time series study and look at changes in future profitability?
00:05:33.160 Well, that could be another piece of research, but it's not just the stock price change.
00:05:40.160 Stock price changes also because many ESG proponents argue it reduces the risk of a company.
00:05:47.160 And so it's the risk adjusted returns that you want to look at.
00:05:50.160 And that goes beyond profitability.
00:05:53.160 And we have controls for that in our study, controls for the risk profile of the company.
00:06:01.160 So what we're looking at is the stock market's expectation of future profitability adjusted for expected risk.
00:06:09.160 One of the things that and I realize you're a scientist, you're following the numbers here.
00:06:14.160 You're not trying to, you know, make the numbers fit a thesis, but there are going to be people that are very hostile to the ESG score and the whole regime there that say, OK, well, there's no point.
00:06:23.160 And there are going to be people that are supportive of it that say, OK, well, it doesn't cost them anything, so it can't hurt.
00:06:29.160 Well, it does cost.
00:06:31.160 And that's an important point.
00:06:33.160 In fact, there was a piece yesterday in Globe and Mail where a CEO of a small Canadian company was referencing the significant cost to his company of complying with ESG reporting requirements.
00:06:52.160 So, yes, the issue really does ultimately boil down to what are the costs and benefits of setting up a regulatory environment where all this reporting has to be done so ESG ratings can be created if there doesn't seem to be a relationship between ESG ratings and basically the efficiency performance of the company.
00:07:18.160 Yeah, and I think that's a very significant point.
00:07:22.160 And you have, I mean, I've seen this covering the World Economic Forum meetings in Davos.
00:07:26.160 You have all of these companies that are bending over backwards to meet these targets and they're, you know, integrating with all of these different agencies.
00:07:33.160 And you've created this entire industry on ESG consulting and ESG, like all of this, and people are making huge money on this.
00:07:41.160 The shareholders aren't, though.
00:07:43.160 Well, the shareholders are not.
00:07:46.160 And, of course, it raises an obvious question.
00:07:49.160 Why are people investing in ESG-themed mutual funds?
00:07:54.160 They're paying higher fees to invest in those funds.
00:07:58.160 They don't appear to be getting the net returns that people are getting who are investing in conventional asset categories.
00:08:07.160 Why do they do this?
00:08:08.160 And really, all you can say, I think, with any kind of reasoned analysis is that there are non-financial benefits that are being realized by these investors, whether it's feel good that we're doing something good for the environment or we're addressing income inequality or racial discrimination.
00:08:32.160 That really is very hard to test.
00:08:37.160 Surveys suggest that people do expect to earn higher rates of return, but they're not.
00:08:44.160 And I think that fact needs to be made more widely known.
00:08:50.160 If people continue to want to get psychic benefits or warm glow feelings from how they're investing, that's their business.
00:08:58.160 But they should be informed about what the expected returns will be.
00:09:02.160 Very well said.
00:09:03.160 People can check out the study for themselves over at FraserInstitute.org, ESG Investing and Financial Returns in Canada.
00:09:10.160 And, Stephen Globerman, good to talk to you.
00:09:12.160 I appreciate your time today.
00:09:13.160 Good to talk to you, Andrew.
00:09:14.160 Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show.
00:09:17.160 Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.