The expected returns of ESG excluded stocks. Shocks to firms costs of capital? Evidence from the World's largest fund

Oct 2023

We investigate the link between ESG-based portfolio exclusions and the expected returns of excluded firms. The exclusions of Norway's ``Oil Fund,'' the world's largest SWF, provide a sample of stocks that face widespread exclusions by institutional investors. The portfolios of excluded firms have significantly superior performance (alpha) of about 5%. Excluded stocks have a return premium, as predicted by e.g. Pastor et.al (2021). Investigating the corporate reactions to exclusion, we find that the majority of firms do not take actions sufficient to get their exclusion revoked. A small group of companies get their exclusion revoked. We find that companies with low ESG scores at the time of exclusion (scope for improvement), and higher revenue growth (investment needs) are more likely to get their exclusion revoked, which we interpret as evidence of dynamics: Firms improve their ESG to revoke exclusions and achieve lower cost of capital. In fact, firms that get off the exclusion list do not have superior performance going forward.

Keywords: ESG; Ethical investing; Exclusion; Cost of Capital

JEL Codes: G10; G11; G20

Paper

• Paper
• Paper Appendix

• A4 Poster (one page summary)
• A4 Poster (in Norwegian) (one page summary)

• talk at World Finance Conference, Kristiansand, Aug 2023
• talk at Hanken Conference, Finland, Aug 2023 (Bernt Arne Ødegaard)
• talk at FMA, Aarhus, June 2023 (Bernt Arne Ødegaard)
• talk at Norways ministry of Finance (Bernt Arne Ødegaard)

The paper at SSRN