The study is seeking to answer the question whether there is a connection between companies' ESG performance and their financial performance.
Our previous research examined how consistent, transparent and comparable ESG ratings are. All this was done based on the examination of the companies' sustainability and social responsibility reports and the comparison of their content. The study came to the conclusion that regardless of industry, companies publish sustainability reports of various depth and content. The ESG rating companies largely base their work on this, create and calculate an ESG score for each company, mostly with the aim of influencing market participants, investors, and creditors in their decisions. (Lukács et al., 2023) [7]
Continuing this research, our hypotheses have been formulated. If the company performs well in the environmental, social and sustainability areas and this is "priced" by the rating, then we expect the company to perform well – or at least better than its competitors – financially as well. We examined the return on capital investment in companies, the generated revenue, and we also presumed that a company that performs well based on ESG criteria can attract more investors, i.e. it is less dependent on external creditors.