Investors see major opportunities in sustainability

 “At ASSA ABLOY there is an opportunity in the growing demand for sustainable buildings,” says Alistair Wittet, Portfolio Manager, European Equities, Comgest, who is one of a selection of investors that addressed these questions in conjunction with our 2022 Sustainability Report.

“There is a huge trend in global legislation for the certification for green buildings. ASSA ABLOY offers solutions to help achieve this, through its products that have an Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) because this helps a building achieve certification. The EPDs help with transparency for the customer because they are shown information about, for example, the percentage of recycled material in the product and the origin of the materials.”

Closely related to this is the fact that “buildings are big energy consumers and improved energy efficiency is crucial to CO2 emissions,” says Patrik Sjöblom, Senior Global Equities Analyst, Bell Asset Management.

“France and Spain have environmental legislation coming for businesses to have automatic closing doors which opens up business opportunities for ASSA ABLOY. In our opinion, its product portfolio overall is well-suited to improving energy efficiency in buildings.”

A good example of this, Alistair Wittet says, is that “ASSA ABLOY’s solutions that embed IoT-based aspects can provide customers with data to reduce their energy consumption based on user behavior and patterns for opening and closing doors.”

At ASSA ABLOY we have set ambitious sustainability goals in terms of our operations – from the efficiency of our sites to how we package, manufacture and transport our solutions and the performance of our suppliers.

“In our materiality assessment of ASSA ABLOY on the energy efficiency side, its delivery stands out really well,” Patrik Sjöblom says. “In 2021 the Group’s total energy consumption was essentially the same in megawatt hours as in 2014 and during that time the company has grown by 47 percent, so that is a real achievement. We note that water usage and waste have gone the right way, so we believe ASSA ABLOY is doing a very good job.”

“We appreciate the urgency shown to embed sustainability into the business, with examples including the re-use of products, recycling and more in general the efforts to make its solutions more sustainable,” says Marco Kisic, Head of ESG Research at Nordea Markets.

One major challenge is reducing Scope 3 emissions, that is, emissions that are not produced by the company itself but by organizations within our value chain, such as our suppliers.

“For some areas, such as supply chain, a systemic approach involving collaborations with other parties is required, which will take time, but we are already seeing promising steps in that direction,” Marco Kisic says.

“ASSA ABLOY is one of the few companies with a Scope 3 target, and we can see that there is significant effort around this. We look forward to seeing the results of its Scope 3 assessment and disclosure, together with any changes this may lead to.”

Marco Kisic concludes that “ASSA ABLOY has a high quality sustainability set-up. We value companies that have a detailed and structured strategy, and targets which are diversified and easily trackable.”

Read more in our sustainability report.