Reporting

We were commissioned to support a listed company in the creation of an integrated reporting system – with a particular focus on the conception and realisation of an independent Sustainable Development Report (SDR). This report was to make the company’s development transparent in all sustainability dimensions and at the same time be closely interlinked with the traditional annual report in order to provide external stakeholders – especially investors – with a well-founded, decision-relevant overall view. 

The demands on the design of the SDR were high: on the one hand, the report was to make a substantial contribution to the information situation, while on the other hand it was to remain concise and focussed in order to avoid a potential overload of information. The aim was not merely to fulfil reporting obligations, but to create a truly useful basis for decision-making that is oriented towards professional capital market participants – in particular the basic idea of the DCF model as the dominant valuation logic: the addressee should therefore be able to make adequate cash flow expectations and risk assessments. 

An initial challenge was therefore the systematic selection and structuring of the content: Which sustainability aspects are actually relevant to investors’ valuations? Where do ESG factors influence future cash flows, capital costs or risk profiles? Where do differentiations from competitors arise? Our reporting concept was consistently geared towards these questions and organised the report content along the three central management perspectives: Impact, financial relevance (materiality) and strategic positioning. A second focus was on reducing complexity while at the same time increasing the density of information. This was achieved through a modular structure in which the individual sustainability areas – environment, social, governance – were each summarised along concrete indicators, measures and progress indicators. In addition, specific links to the traditional annual report were integrated for each topic block in order to create consistent cross-references. 

We paid particular attention to the visual design and data presentation. Numerous contents were prepared in the form of clearly structured tables, indicator dashboards and compact visualisations that guide the reader through the report narrative. We deliberately avoided purely descriptive text and instead focussed on figures-and-graphics supported argumentation logic – with the aim of making the report experience not only readable, but actually interpretable. 

Our entire approach was based on the basic IFRS principle of “decision usefulness” – but extended to non-financial reporting content. By linking ESG topics with the company’s actual value drivers, an investor-orientated information system was created that overcomes the traditional separation of financial and sustainability reports. This was reflected not least in the positive response from institutional investors, who used the report not as a mere appendix but as an integral part of their decision-making models. The result of this cooperative work was a fully thought-out reporting concept that positioned the SDR as a decision-relevant management and communication tool – not as compliance fulfilment, but as an expression of future-oriented corporate management. The link between sustainability and economic value generation was thus not only made transparent, but also methodically integrated into the corporate management logic.