“Sustainable Responsible Investment (SRI)” is more than ticking boxes. It’s about making a difference – for your business and our world. Creating sustained outcomes that drive value and stimulate growth, whilst strengthening our environment and societies.
SRI is more than good intentions. It’s about creating a tangible, practical plan that achieves real results. Success is not only about climate change mitigation, social responsibility, and governance related disclosures. It’s about embedding these principles across all businesses, from investment to sustainable innovation.
Cemex Ventures is the Open Innovation and Corporate Venture Capital leader in Construction Technology. We are part of Cemex, a leading global building materials company founded in 1906 that helps society build a better future. With a global focus, we invest and partner with the most innovative, sustainable, and promising entrepreneurs and startups to drive the construction industry revolution. Cemex Ventures believes that nowadays corporations should not limit to achieve financial returns but enhancing and contributing to society and all stakeholders around our business.
We present this document to describe Cemex Ventures’ Responsible Investment principles, as well as the framework and process to enforce Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) principles. It describes how we incorporate sustainability risks, on the consideration of adverse sustainability impacts, on sustainable investment objectives, or on the promotion of environmental or social characteristics, in investment decision-making and in advisory processes, according to the EU Regulation 2019/2088 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 27 November 2019 on sustainability‐related disclosures in the financial services sector.
We acknowledge that, as a minority stake investor, we will be limited to apply or enforce all our principles in our portfolio companies. Nonetheless, we will always provide best advice and support to drive responsible and sustainable businesses.
Our purpose is to build a better future. To do so, we must address humanity’s most pressing issue, climate change. We are supporting Cemex in leading the industry toward net-zero CO2 while promoting a circular economy, achieving environmental excellence and preserving biodiversity.
Cemex seeks a better future for employees, customers, shareholders, investors, suppliers, and the communities in which we live and work. We foster employability, diversity and inclusion, resilient and sustainable cities and communities, health and safety, respect human rights to help safeguard our people, communities, supply chain, and everyone who interacts with our company. We put Health and Safety first, with a high impact social strategy to drive economic health, inclusion and climate justice.
We are committed to achieving superior performance reflected in strong and sustained economic growth, with a high degree of integrity, adopting high ethical standards and best practices in corporate governance that go beyond simple adherence to laws and regulations.
Cemex Ventures believes that Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) principles are crucial to develop robust business models, enhance our risk assessment and identify better partners and opportunities. The integration of ESG factors into our investment decisions helps us create great value for Cemex while achieving its strategic priorities.
Cemex Ventures believes that Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) principles are crucial to develop robust business models, enhance our risk assessment and identify better partners and opportunities. The integration of ESG factors into our investment decisions helps us create great value for Cemex while achieving its strategic priorities.
As an actor in the Venture Capital (VC) industry Cemex Ventures says “yes” to promote ESG factors in our investment process.
Acknowledgement of PRI principles it is not only signing up, but establishing a commitment with society and the environment through our investment activity. Becoming signatories allows us to publicly demonstrate our commitment to responsible investment.
We are PRI signatories to be part of a global network, to implement top ESG strategies and to have an independent auditor of our ESG policy who can ensure we are in the right path and guide us towards the adoption of best practices.
We select investments carefully in accordance with our investment focus and policies. As Cemex´s Corporate Venture Capital we have a well-defined investment scope within the construction industry, excluding per se opportunities from controversy sectors.
Negative screening is the process of rejecting investment opportunities from controversial industries (weapons, gambling, tobacco,…). At Cemex Ventures, we don’t limit ourselves to simply performing negative screening, but rather, look for opportunities that bring sustainability, innovation, and efficiency to Cemex’s core business. We bring high value solutions to Cemex; we practice positive screening!
Our focus starts with the strategic fit of each startup: if there is no match, we do not continue the investment process. Then, we look for opportunities that enhance Cemex’s market position and its role as a global player for all stakeholders (employees, shareholders, clients, suppliers, education centers, governments, etc).
Lastly, we evaluate the financial and sustainable return of the company.
Cemex Ventures has defined a well-structured ESG evaluation process. We use a comprehensive and broad approach to identify ESG risks and opportunities to complement the investment process from a non-financial perspective. We provide the startups a tailored questionnaire that allow us to analyze different aspects of the business. This information is compared afterwards with all findings of the different due diligences as a double-check mechanism. We consider the following topics:
The ESG Committee is responsible for the analysis of each startup when an opportunity is raised to this stage of our investment funnel. The committee oversees for the correct application of the ESG policy and the interpretation of all findings in the questionnaire.
The purpose of the committee is to determine an internal ESG score to each startup based on the DD questionnaire. The committee will also identify risks, opportunities and will define potential actions and recommendations for this company aiming an inclusion of ESG issues in their operations and business model.
Low initial ESG score won’t be a reason to decline investments but for follow-on investments the company must prove a serious commitment and improvement on ESG metrics.
We monitor financial and non-financial performance of our portfolio companies, including ESG issues using a data collection process. Cemex Ventures uses this data to track ESG issues, together with financial performance. Cemex Ventures conducts a holistic overview of the yearly progress of each portfolio company by revaluating their ESG score for internal use.
We also report the evolution of our portfolio to comply with PRI ESG reporting requirements to lead the continuous improvement of our portfolio companies’ internal processes.
Cemex Ventures aims to enforce the importance of periodically reporting obligations as a good practice for investors relations and transparency while measuring the impacts of ESG factors to understand where each portfolio company stands in terms of its ESG journey.
We want to start and boost a great relationship with our portfolio companies since the very beginning! First, we will start with an effective ESG onboarding program to help startups understand the basics and the important role of all these principles to Cemex. This is an opportunity to communicate Cemex Ventures expectations and share what we have to offer. WE ARE HERE TO HELP!!
The ESG committee will share with the startups all findings, concerns and opportunities identified during the ESG due diligence. We will translate those findings into actions to empower the startups governance and strengthen their business trying to tackle these pain points by turning them into growth opportunities.
Cemex and Cemex Ventures will also provide access to Cemex University to help with specific ESG and sustainable training. In addition, we will share certificates, labels, courses or public commitments that help in continuous improvement and guarantees best industry practices.
One of our goals is to establish relationships with other venture capital funds that are also empowering ESG actions. We want to understand other policies, learn about failures and share experiences to be able to put in practice a continuous improvement of our policy and provide a useful guidance to our shareholders. Comparing our strategies with our peers allows us to implement top industry standards being able to identify more resilient business with wider impact for Cemex.
We will also promote responsible investment practices among our partners, the investment community and society at large. When possible, we will communicate openly in private discussions or participate as speakers in conferences and events, with the aim to encourage and share ESG best practices.
