Industrial Goods & Services: Largest sector, largest five-year score drop

By Karolin Jansson

The Industrial Goods & Services sector is the largest of the super sectors included in Webranking by Comprend, accounting for 177 of the nearly 900 ranked companies. However, it is also the sector that has shown the largest drop in its Webranking score in the last five years.

While the average score has increased by 3.7 points among all sectors, the Industrial Goods & Services sector has scored 2.1 points less.

Is this a time to be worried that larger companies are getting worse at communicating with their stakeholders? Not necessarily, but there is certainly room for improvement.

Large gap between top and bottom performers

As mentioned above, the group is large and, naturally, includes companies that have scored at both ends of the spectrum. The average result among the 177 companies was 41.6 points, with scores ranging from 2.5 points to 88.7 points. The lowest scores were generally given to companies that did not include any information in English, while the top performers were incredibly dedicated to comprehensive digital communications.

Competitive advantages to be taken

For the companies finding themselves in the middle of the ranking, there are competitive advantages to be taken.

When it comes to shareholder information, investor relations, and careers, companies in the Industrial Goods & Services sector scored 3% below the overall average across each of those sections. Many of these companies would benefit from presenting more information about diversity in their careers section, something only 48% of them currently do. Diversity information is not only useful for attracting future employees, but could also be of interest for other target groups, such as journalists and analysts.

The company’s funding status also stands out as an area to improve. As of the 2019-2020 ranking, only 21% of companies took steps to clearly presented their debt, which means that people following them have a hard time getting detailed information about financial obligations. However, the companies within the Industrial Goods & Services sector have also done better than average by including investment stories. This gives potential investors easy accesses to an overview of reasons to invest in that specific company.

Top performers

For inspiration, one can look to the top performers. These are companies that are especially good at presenting information for investors in a way that is accessible and transparent.

The top 30 companies in the Industrial Goods and Services sector are listed below. Finnish Wärtsilä was unchallenged as the top performer in the sector for the past year, while Italian Leonardo has climbed from eighth to third place in the same amount of time. Valmet, another Finnish company, is found on the second place. 

If you would like to get detailed information on your company's results in Webranking 2019-2020, do not hesitate to get in touch!

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