Using Financial and Sustainability Ratios to Map Sectors. An Approach With Compositional Data

ABSTRACT The article aims to visualize in a single graph Spanish fish and meat processing companies with respect to solvency, energy, waste and water intensity and gender employment gap. These financial, environmental, and social indicators are ratios, which require specific statistical analysis methods. We use the compositional data methodology and the principal‐component analysis biplot. Fish‐processing companies have more homogeneous financial, environmental, and social performance. Firms with higher solvency tend to be less efficient in energy use. Firms can be visually ordered along all indicators simultaneously and thus can visually see their areas of improvement in financial, environmental, and social performance compared to their competitors. This is the first time in which visualization tools have combined financial, environmental, and social indicators. The main limitation is the small sample size. As of now, few Spanish firms publish reports according to the EU Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive.