Applied Materials Ranks Highly in Global 1000 Sustainable Performance Leaders
Recently the Global 1000 listing of Sustainable Performance Leaders was released by CRD Analytics and the nonprofit JustMeans. Applied was ranked #64 on a relatively new screen called the Global 1000 Sustainable Performance Leaders. CRD Analytics uses a fairly rigorous statistical approach with 200 metrics to rate the top 1000 companies globally (i.e. market cap of $1 billion or more). The screen is used by a number of other indices and funds, most notably some of the NASDAQ indices such as the Global Sustainability Index 50.
The list also includes sectoral rankings and Applied Materials was rated #3 in the Semiconductor and Semi Equipment Sector, behind only Intel (#8) and Texas Instruments (#21). We are pleased to be keeping company in this sector with many of our customers, such as STMicroelectronics (#109), TSMC (#109), AMD (#193), Samsung (#388) several others. The top ten overall were:
- Merck
- IBM
- Novartis
- Baxter
- Credit Suisse
- Banco Santander
- H-P
- Intel
- Toronto-Dominion Bank
- GlaxoSmithKline
Note that IBM and H-P are in the Computers, Information Technology sector. You can view the entire list at the JustMeans web site.
Just how valuable and meaningful these types of ratings are is a question I have posed in a previous blog post. The Global 1000 purports to be an especially data driven index, with over 200 key performance indicators in the areas of environment, social performance, financial performance and governance. Nevertheless, it still seems rather difficult to make legitimate comparisons across industry sectors, geographies, company sizes and so on.
You might also be interested to know that there are efforts underway to create sustainability standards in order to communicate a company’s status with greater ease, to enhance comparability and to serve as a management systems guide. Underwriters Laboratories and Greener World Media have collaborated on UL880E, a standard for Sustainable Manufacturers.
“Weighing in” at a hefty 70 pages, this is a very ambitious and comprehensive document. The nonprofit Green Seal organization has released a pilot Sustainability Standard for Product Manufacturers. Whether these types of standards are useful to companies and, more importantly, useful to their customers remains to be seen.
