‘Sustainability is embedded in everything we do.’
That’s Best Buy’s BBY, +0.15% CEO, Hubert Joly, talking about the big-box electronics and appliance chain’s commitment to environmental and other progressive practices.
It’s a claim endorsed this week by Barron’s, which ranked Best Buy — dubbed the last man standing in consumer-electronics retailing — No. 1 for sustainability among publicly traded U.S. companies.
Barron’s: The 100 most sustainable U.S. companies
Said Barron’s of Best Buy’s bona fides: “It helps customers recycle old appliances and electronics, to recover rare earths, gold, copper, and plastic. Its Geek Squad helps extend the lives of old devices and appliances. Geek Squad members now drive to clients in a Prius TM, -0.68% , cutting the firm’s emissions footprint. The retailer scored 100 on the Human Rights Campaign Foundation’s corporate equality index. It’s on [climate change] A List of the CDP, formerly known as the Carbon Disclosure Project, and made it onto the Dow Jones Sustainability Index for the eighth year in a row.”
Barron’s writes that it found while researching this year’s sustainability roundup that “quite a lot” of companies’ performances on associated metrics is linked to their chief executives’ personal preferences. Joly, for example, developed an early concern for the environment while growing up in France and witnessing the receding of Alpine glaciers.
A year ago, Barron’s handed Cisco Systems CSCO, +1.05% its sustainability crown. Best Buy ranked No. 3. Cisco moved down a notch to second place this year.
Best Buy’s stock is down more than 16% in the past year, as compared with an S&P 500 SPX, +0.07% advance of 3.4%, but, Barron’s notes, the stock is up some 200% since Joly became CEO in 2012.
