Many companies optionally choose to publish ESG data in an excel or a supplementary PDF. These have many names seeing: ESG Factbook, ESG Performance Data, ESG Data Book, ESG Addendum, ESG Report, ESG FAQ (and more). 

For this article, I looked at the publications of 4 companies who chose to do an additional publication around ESG. The featured companies are Bae Systems, HSBC, Sydbank and Corbion. In my analysis, I saw a combination of both excels and PDF’s published. In this article I share what I view as the strengths and weaknesses of the respective companies as well as some screenshots from their disclosure. Some key summaries: 

• Bae Systems: The best for historic data. Their excel publication has data going as far back as 2016. 
• HSBC: The best for reader choice. I was happy to have access to both an excel and PDF sharing the same data. 
• Sydbank: The best on qualitative disclosure. Their excel shared fast links to many of their stances around policies and more.  
• Corbion: The best for communicating their ESG story alongside the data. Their PDF opens showcasing SDG alignment and targets. 

Learnings to help other companies:

• Use a consistent table format, please don't jump around
• Publish both a PDF and and Excel to provide readers options, it can be the same data
• Make sure your fiscal year end that the data relates to is clearly stated
• Host your PDFs on a publicly available URL, don't force a reader to download
• Name your PDF / Excel with your company name (I found many companies beyond this list that have a pdf name "untitled" or that clearly looks automatically generated

Want to learn how Nossa Data can help your company with their public ESG disclosure? Get in touch with our team. 

What companies did I look at and how are they rated by the major rating agencies? 

• Bae Systems
  
  • MSCI: AA
  • ISS: C-
  • Sustainalytics: 25.0 (Hasn’t been re-rated since 2023)
  • CDP: B
• HSBC
  
  • MSCI: AA
  • ISS: C PRIME
  • Sustainalytics: 22.4 
  • CDP: C (Recently downgraded)
• Sydbank
  
  • MSCI: AA (Recently upgraded)
  • ISS: C-
  • Sustainalytics: 19.4 
  • CDP: Not listed
• Corbion
  
  • MSCI: A
  • ISS: C+
  • Sustainalytics: 18.3 
  • CDP: A-

Bae Systems

Bae publishes an ESG Performance Data with records for many data points going back to 2016. They also indicate at the data point level whether a data point was assured. Around a dozen total data points are assured. 

• Strengths: Historic data covers nearly a decade for a number of metrics. A detailed methodology tab explaining key calculations methodologies in a very comprehensive way. Shows if data is assured or not at the data point level. 
• Weaknesses: Their governance tab in general is very light versus other companies offering no information on the board and little around policies.

Example of BAE Systems historic data

Example of BAE Systems methodology tab

HSBC

HSBC offers readers the same set of information in both an Excel and a PDF. The combination of reports is very helpful as it allows someone to see their information across x2 formats. They also highlight both reported and re-calculated metrics when a data correction was made. 

Strengths: They publish the same data in multiple formats. A very extensive amount of data is published across E, S and G. In particular I was impressed by the detailed information on employee engagement. 

Weaknesses: I wanted to open the PDF in a new tab but they forced me to download it. This would make it hard to reference the public URL of this report to stakeholders like rating agencies versus those who host on a public link. Table formatting jumps around quite a bit making it hard to use scraping to quickly extract figures. 

Sydbank

Sydbank publishes an ESG Factbook that makes it easy to find both quantiataive and qualitative data. They do a specific focus on sourcing data around employee training. 

Strengths: Their Factbook offers fast answers to some qualitative questions such as around employee training or cyber security. For key areas, they offer a helpful combination of both annual report as well as policy links. Their format and language reminds me of a specific rating agency and likely led to a ratings upgrade in Q1 2025 (Reach out to the Nossa Data team if you would like to discuss what we see here) 

Weaknesses: It is a bit hard to digest as an excel and would be great to see this via a pdf format as well. I also don’t understand why employee training got its own tab as the E, S and G categories are already quite long. 

Corbion

Corbion published a PDF summarising their performance across ESG. It also includes a summary of their ESG targets and their double materiality results. 

Strengths: Tells a bit about the company's ESG story overall, it is not purely a data dump. Visuals help inform the user, in particular I like their visual around direct and indirect emissions (screenshotted below). Links you to all of their policies found on a different part of their website. 

Weaknesses: Table structure jumps around quite a bit and some key figures are embedded within infographics. I would prefer a more consistent approach as it would prove hard to extract all of their quantitative data. I would also love to see an excel too. 

Want to learn how Nossa Data can help your company with their public ESG disclosure? Get in touch with our team.