JUSTness Undervalued: The Market Valuation of JUST Companies
We studied the historic and current equity market valuation of the winners of JUST Capital’s 2016 rankings, the JUST 100. Based on more than ten years of average forward price-to-earnings, price-to-book, and forward enterprise value-to-EBITDA ratios, the JUST 100 trade at a small valuation discount to their industry peers. This discount persists as of January 2017. Despite their leading performance on the environmental, social, and governance issues that matter most to the American public – as well as shareholder returns – investors don’t systematically need to pay a valuation premium to own a diversified portfolio of JUST companies. This suggests the market may be undervaluing these increasingly-critical corporate attributes.
