Odyssean Investment Trust plc
Climate Impact & Sustainability Data (2017-12-21 to 2019-03-31, December 2020)
Reporting Period: 2017-12-21 to 2019-03-31
Environmental Metrics
ESG Focus Areas
- Responsible Investing
- Corporate Governance
- Board Diversity
Governance Achievements
- Board comprised entirely of independent non-executive Directors.
- Directors reinvest their fees into the company.
- Portfolio Manager reinvests 50% of performance fees.
- Board acknowledges the benefits of diversity, including gender diversity.
Climate Goals & Targets
Long-term Goals:
- Deliver attractive and differentiated long-term returns to patient shareholders.
Environmental Challenges
- Market volatility due to global and domestic political uncertainty.
- Decline in the quality of sell-side research for smaller quoted companies.
- Temporary decline in cash conversion for some portfolio companies.
- Short-term integration issues with recent US acquisition for Equiniti.
Mitigation Strategies
- Progressive capital deployment.
- Selective investment style and high levels of research.
- Maintaining adequate cash balances for flexibility.
- Constructive corporate engagement to improve portfolio company performance.
- Measures put in place to cover for temporary absence of key personnel.
Supply Chain Management
Climate-Related Risks & Opportunities
Reporting Standards
Frameworks Used: AIC Code
Third-party Assurance: KPMG LLP
Reporting Period: December 2020
Environmental Metrics
ESG Focus Areas
- Governance
- Ethical investing
- Sustainable investing
- ESG due diligence
- ESG engagement
Governance Achievements
- Formalizing and evolving ethical, sustainable, and engaged investment approach
- Integrating E&S reviews into due diligence for new and existing holdings
- Significant broader ESG engagement scope - working with a niche ESG data provider
Climate Goals & Targets
Environmental Challenges
- Lack of resource and understanding by smaller companies of ESG disclosure and rating requirements
- Lack of disclosure by companies - often leads to “empty box” and zero score
- Larger rating agencies focused on providing data for larger quoted companies
Mitigation Strategies
- Working with a new provider of proprietary ESG data, focused on smaller companies
- Communicate with companies the gaps identified in due diligence and relative performance (vs peers and best in class)
- Encourage improved and appropriate disclosure progressively over the long term