What is interesting about the Innovest ratings for those that don't follow the subtleties of screening methodology, is that they are based on a best in class approach. This means that they don't screen out any particular sector. They search for leading sustainability companies within every sector. You can learn a lot more about the list and the methodology here.
Another pleasant surprise today, was the launch of The Sustainability Yearbook by Sustainable Asset Management (SAM). In addition to providing extensive research and data on the world's leading sustainability companies across multiple sectors, they've also developed some new recognitions for the leaders of the leaders. These are called SAM distinctions.
These new distinctions identify 57 companies as SAM sector leaders. In addition, the companies that focus most on sustainability issues are recognized as Gold Class, Silver Class, or Bronze Class. While Intel has been a Super Sector Leader in the Dow Jones Sustainability Index (built based on SAM research as well) for seven years, these new recognitions we've received as both a Sector Leader and Gold Class company are new for us.
While these new rankings and ratings make our executives and employees proud, they provide very tangible tools for our core CSR team to begin to drive continuous improvement.
So there are a couple things we need to do with all of this information right away. The first one is to congratulate all of the great companies that are included in both of these announcements that were just made public in Davos. And the second one is to begin work on how to improve any areas that we fall short of our new competition.