Stakeholder Engagement & Materiality Analysis

Our ongoing dialogue with stakeholders is a key part of Prysmian’s sustainability strategy and their feedback is essential to the Group’s success in achieving overall sustainable growth. The Group interacts with the different stakeholders during the annual events, welcoming their feedback on sustainability matters and analyzing, mapping and prioritizing their expectations to define both impacts and actions.

Create value with stakeholder engagement

Stakeholder needs and expectation and the resulting materiality analysis are the starting point for defining our ESG priorities.

The sustainability strategy of the Prysmian Group is founded on continuous dialogue with our stakeholders. The pursuit of corporate goals requires the development of forms of dialogue and ongoing interaction with both internal and external stakeholders. This is necessary in order to understand their needs, interests and expectations, and to anticipate changes and identify emerging trends, thus enabling the Group to pursue its own sustainable development goals and generate shared and consistent added value in the long run.

Creating value for shareholders and other stakeholders is a key priority for Prysmian, whose policy of strategic and financial communication is directed towards the highest standards of accuracy, clarity and transparency. Actions and procedures are designed to provide the market with credible information about the business, with a view to boosting confidence in the company and facilitating a long-term approach to investments in our shares. Every effort is made to avoid biased disclosures and ensure that all current and potential investors receive the same information, so that balanced investment decisions can be made.

Upon publishing its quarterly data, Prysmian organises conference calls with institutional investors and financial analysts and also invites specialist media representatives to take part. In addition, the Company promptly informs existing and potential shareholders about any action or decision that could have a material impact on their investment. Relations with the financial market were intense during 2022, with more than 500 conference calls and one-on-one or group sessions. Some were held virtually, while others were held in person at the parent company’s Milan headquarters and in the world’s main financial centres such as London, Paris, New York, Sydney and Milan. Prysmian also participated in numerous industry conferences organised by leading international brokers, as well as in road shows and topic-specific events focused, for example, on Energy Transition, Digitalisation, Innovation and Sustainability.

In addition, the Group is increasingly devoting special attention to its relations with ESG investors, meaning those that focus their investment strategies on environmental, social and governance matters. Continuous engagement with them by the Company and top management - with various organised activities, as well as the Sustainability Week and dedicated meetings - has helped to further increase the weighting of these investors within Prysmian’s shareholder base. In fact, the weighting of ESG investors has increased substantially in recent years, rising from about 13% in 2019 to over 48% at present. This latter percentage is well above the average for both the industrial sector and the Italian market.

 

 

500

conference calls or one-on-one or group sessions

+48%

Prysmian Group ESG Investors

2022 Stakeholders Engagement Activities

Creating value for stakeholders is an essential element of the Prysmian Group’s Sustainability Strategy.

 

This commitment  is reflected in stakeholder engagement projects and activities throughout the value chain, with active listening, the promotion of sustainable behaviours and the creation of innovative, green products and services capable of meeting their needs and expectations (see the “Sustainable innovation for products, applications and processes” section of this document for more about sustainable products and services and the related risks).

Dialogue with the Group’s Stakeholders

Events dedicated to dialogue with those Stakeholders whose interests are, or might be, impacted by our activities, are an integral part of the Group’s growth strategy and provide an effective communications channel. The purpose of these initiatives is to:

• identify ideas for improvements that lead to product and process innovation;

• map the impacts generated and felt by the Group, in order to ensure better management of reputational and other risks;

• inform, engage and raise the awareness of Stakeholders regarding various aspects of importance to the Group and the societies in which it operates;

• identify the needs, problems and expectations of Stakeholders in order to embed them in the Group’s strategy and develop a relationship based on trust and transparency.

 

These engagement initiatives are pursued in various ways and via multiple channels, to identify:

• the main impacts (positive and/or negative, real and/or potential) of the Group’s activities throughout the Prysmian value chain, including additional new actions that the Group could implement to contribute to sustainable development, considering their magnitude and probability of occurrence;

•  the major impacts felt by the Group with reference to two financial parameters - Free Cash Flow and Adjusted EBITDA - considering two time horizons – short-medium term (3 years) and long term (by 2030);

• to assess and prioritize the impacts;

• to cluster the impacts into material topics and their subsequent prioritisation via surveys and one-on-one interviews;

• to assess, via interactive workshops, their perception of the Group’s initiatives and activities regarding the targets of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

 

The main external Stakeholder Engagement activities were:

Prysmian Group Sustainability Week, organized by the Group for the first time and held on a virtual basis in order to reach a global target

• Topic workshops;

• External Stakeholder Survey;

• Interviews with major investors.

 

The main internal Stakeholder Engagement activities were:

• Interviews with Top Executives;

• Senior Leaders Survey;

• Sustainability Steering Committee.

Materiality Analysis

In order to report non-financial information in line with the requirements of the main international and national Standards, integrate the expectations and needs of stakeholders into the organization’s activities, and identify relevant trends in sustainability, Prysmian in 2022, started a process of analysis to define material issues, through the identification of the most significant impacts generated by the company for its business.