The Calvert Ratings indicate a company’s performance in five separate issue areas including the environment, workplace, business practices, human rights, and community relations. The Calvert Ratings and methodology are available on www.calvert.com.
A recent study commissioned by Calvert, conducted by The Segmentation Company, a division of Yankelovich, supports the notion that investors are interested in corporate responsibility information. For example, 62% of investors said they would like to have information ranking companies in terms of their social performance; and 56% said they do not feel adequately equipped to identify companies that are engaged in socially responsible business practices. Moreover, 71% of investors indicated that knowing a company is rated higher in terms of its social performance would make them more likely to invest in that company; and 77% said they are more likely to purchase their products or services.
Reggie Stanley, Calvert’s Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer, explained that the Ratings are designed to provide transparency about Calvert’s method of analyzing social, environmental, and governance performance of companies. Calvert hopes the Ratings will foster dialog and increase awareness of social issues among financial professionals and their clients, as well as institutional investors.
“We believe that not only financial indicators, but also social, environmental, and governance factors are all important indicators of quality of management.” Mr. Stanley said. “Our experience has shown that companies that do not meet our social criteria often turn out later to have financial problems as well. These include such companies as WorldCom, Tyco, Choicepoint, and Qwest.”
The Ratings are determined by Calvert’s Social Research team who evaluate the social performance of companies using a rating of one to five, with five representing top performance and one representing poorest performance in each category. Among the list of companies just released, the analysts have noted seven companies that demonstrate leadership in several of the five issue areas. The Calvert Leaders(tm) (in alphabetical order) are Applied Materials, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMAT), Colgate-Palmolive Company (NYSE: CL), Dell Inc. (NASDAQ: DELL), Intel Corporation (NASDAQ: INTC), Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT), The Procter & Gamble Company (NYSE: PG), and Texas Instruments Inc. (NYSE: TXN). Short profiles of the Calvert Leaders are available at www.calvert.com.
“Investors understand that these so-called ‘intangibles’ or social, environmental, and governance factors are frequently just as important as traditional financial metrics in evaluating the risks, prospects and investment potential of particular companies,” said Dr. Julie Fox Gorte, Vice President and Chief Social Investment Strategist. “The Calvert Ratings provide the most comprehensive publicly available information about the social, environmental, and governance performance of the nation’s largest companies,” she added.