Ratings and indices

CDP is an international rating agency and provider of non-financial information for investors with a focus on climate-related disclosure of governance, strategy and risk management. It represents more than 590 investors with over 110 trillion USD in assets and scores over 13,000 companies worldwide with 64% of global market capitalization. Zalando has participated in CDP’s Climate Change Report since 2018. In our 2023 participation, our company’s climate efforts continue to be recognized with the rating score A-, placing us among the 25% of companies that reached leadership level in our activity group Discretionary Retail. In addition, Zalando was again included in the CDP Supplier Engagement Leaderboard for its engagement with suppliers to tackle Scope 3 emissions.

Sustainalytics’ ESG Risk Ratings are designed to help investors identify and understand financially material ESG risks in their portfolio companies and how those risks might affect performance. Sustainalytics' ESG Risk Ratings span more than 12,000 companies and encompass most major global indices. In the 2023 rating update, we were once again placed in the "Low Risk" category with a score of 13.0 points.

ISS ESG provides ESG research and ratings delivering climate data, analytics, and advisory that help financial market participants understand, measure, and act on climate-related risks across all asset classes, enabling its clients to identify material social and environmental risks and opportunities. In 2023 Zalando maintained its Prime Status in the ISS ESG Corporate Rating, reaching a B-score, a very high transparency level as well as Decile Rank 1. in the category Industry Retail, which means we are among the Industry Leaders in our category.

MSCI ESG Ratings are designed to measure a company’s resilience to long-term, industry material ESG risks. The rating uses rules-based methodology to identify industry leaders and laggards according to their exposure to ESG risks and how well they manage those risks relative to peers. In  2023, Zalando maintained the overall MSCI ESG rating score AA (in a range from CCC to AAA). In the MSCI Universe this places us among the 20% best performing companies worldwide in the category Retail – Consumer Discretionary.

FTSE Russell ESG Ratings provide a multi-dimensional measure of environmental, social and governance exposure and practice.  It provides the investment community with a tool for portfolio design and management to investigate ESG criteria, as well as as a framework for corporate engagement and stewardship. Pillars and themes are built on over 300 individual indicator assessments. In 2023 Zalando achieved an absolute ESG rating score of 3.7. 

In 2021 FTSE Russell again included Zalando in its FTSE4Good Index Series. FTSE International Limited confirms that Zalando SE has been independently assessed according to the FTSE4Good criteria, and has satisfied the requirements to become a constituent of the FTSE4Good Index Series. Created by the global index provider FTSE Russell, the FTSE4Good Index Series is designed to measure the performance of companies demonstrating strong Environmental, Social and Governance practices. It is used by a wide variety of market participants to create and assess responsible investment funds and other products.

Since 2020 Zalando is included in the STOXX Global ESG Leaders indices. The index family offers a representation of the leading global companies in terms of environmental, social and governance criteria, based on ESG indicators provided by Sustainalytics. The index is made of the following three ESG sub-indices: the STOXX Global ESG Environmental Leaders, the STOXX Global ESG Social Leaders and the STOXX Global ESG Governance Leaders indices.

The DAX® 50 ESG tracks the performance of the 50 largest, most liquid German market stocks that have comparably good performance based on their Environmental, Social and Governance criteria. Further, the stocks must have passed standardized ESG screens related to Global Standards Screening, as well as the involvement in controversial weapons, tobacco production, thermal coal, nuclear power and military contracting. The base universe of the index is the HDAX universe which comprises the joint set of companies included in DAX, MDAX and TecDAX.