A Sustainable New Year – 5 ESG Stock Highlights for 2025

Happy new year! It’s the first days of 2025 and with a new year comes new year’s resolutions. While many of us will be focussed on improving ourselves as individuals, as a global community we should resolve to take care of our shared home and to live in a more sustainable way.

The drive for sustainability is the primary factor encouraging many public corporations to adopt ESG (environmental, social, and governance) practices as part of their everyday operations. Collectively, these companies are known as sustainable businesses, and they have attracted enormous attention in the investment industry. Starting in the mid-2000s as a niche opportunity, the ESG investments market has exploded to include more than 50,000 indexes and a projected market cap of $40 billion by 2030.

Making Sense of Sustainable Businesses

For investment professionals who want to get in on the action, that’s a lot of ground to cover. Obviously, the learning curve starts by knowing the basics of ESG analysis. But even ESG wizards are challenged by the fact that a large portion of companies are not covered by the popular indexes. 

Any informed investor wants to know what’s happening inside the index. Are individual stock picks clustered around a shaky foundation? Having the ability to analyze the ESG performance – and other indicators – of specific companies is vital for selecting the right risk level for your clients. 

That’s where AI in finance makes its mark. The Bridgewise platform uses artificial intelligence to:

• Analyze financial factors of companies across the globe, regardless of language or reporting standards
• Provide both quantitative and qualitative analyses across industries and deep into the data
• Minimize paradox of choice issues with a customizable, user-friendly dashboard that boils down all that information into something understandable

Bridgewise has applied all of these capabilities to ESG analysis, on top of traditional investor metrics. 

Five Factors, Five Choices

To illustrate, let’s take a look at just one of the ways in which Bridgewise investment intelligence segments stocks. The “screener” dashboard can be filtered to highlight ESG performance, but that comes with four other dimensions that every investment professional needs to know about. As a result, you can quickly glance at top performers per category, and then drill down from there.

5 Leading ESG Stock Profiles

With the new year, we’ve highlighted below five leading sustainable companies to watch in 2025. We identified them by adjusting the filters on the Bridgewise screener dashboard to “Very Good,” according to each category.

Top ESG Performer

Microsoft (MSFT) needs no introduction. With all other factors being equal, Microsoft looks pretty good overall. It is average across growth, value, and cash flow, with a fundamental rating of “Hold”. If you are a conservative investor who wants a strong ESG effort, MSFT is a great pick.

Strong Growth

Prosus N.V. (PRX) is a Dutch company that operates Internet platforms across a number of industries such as fintech, retail, and food delivery. In addition to a high ESG score, Prosus’ growth numbers (e.g. ROE and share price performance) are very healthy, leading to an “outperform” recommendation. 

Value

If you’re looking for a nice jump in stock price, Abbott Laboratories (ABT) might be the game for you. It has both outstanding ESG ratings and value factors, indicating that the share price looks a bit too low at the moment. Bridgewise gives it a “Hold” rating.  

Cash Flow

Standard and Poor’s Global (SPGI) brand means financial stability to a lot of investors, and so it is with their excellent cash flow numbers. Combined with great ESG stats, SPGI looks good for investors who are interested in stability, reflected in its “Hold” rating. 

Fundamental Rating

Remember Ericsson (ERIC B), the hot-then-not stock of the early mobile phone boom years? It’s back. Aside from an outstanding ESG score, Ericsson gets a very high “Buy” rating from Bridgewise’s AI-powered analysis. It also looks good for value and cash flow. 

What Are Your Top Five?

No matter what you’re looking for in sustainable stocks, the Bridgewise platform will expand your choices, optimize your analysis, and make great investments easy to pick. Get started by viewing our demo.