Vérité40® Index
The Vérité40® Index is the application of Axylia's Carbon Score® to French listed companies.
Current indices are based on market capitalisation but do not reflect companies' environmental impacts. That is why Axylia has chosen to establish its own index in order to guide investors and individuals towards companies that are able to pay their carbon bill and stabilise it over time.
Vérité40® Index composition in 2025
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The Vérité 40 is then made up of only "positive" Carbon Score companies (A, B or C) and the top 5 Dynamic Carbon Score 2025.
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16 companies were therefore excluded from the CAC40 and this is why the majority of the companies in Axylia's Vérité40 are not at the top of the current benchmarks.
Applying the Axylia Carbon Score® to the CAC40 yields the above distribution. It appears that nearly half of these companies are unable to pay their carbon bill (scores D, E, F or ND).
How is the Vérité40® index calculated?
1.
Based on the top 120 French market capitalisations, calculation of the Axylia Carbon Score® for each company, from A to F.
2.
Carbon Scores® of D, E, F and ND are disregarded.
3.
We select the same number of companies from the 11 GICS* sectors for the Vérité40 as for the CAC40. In each sector, we select the largest market capitalisations.
* The GICS® (Global Industry Classification Standard) classification, developed and updated by Morgan Stanley (MSCI) and Standard & Poor's (S&P), is a sector classification comprising 11 sectors: Technology, Financials, Health Care, Consumer Discretionary, Consumer Staples, Communication Services, Industrials, Materials, Real Estate, Energy and Utilities.
Areas of concern
Check 1: The financial sector
10% of companies excluded
According to the CDP, the largest source of emissions in the financial services sector comes from lending, investment and insurance activities, i.e. portfolio emissions, which are accounted for in Scope 3 category 15, ‘Investments’. As Scope 3 is incomplete, some financial institutions (particularly banks) receive an ‘ND’ score. However, those that use the full PCAF* methodology are not automatically excluded.
*The Partnership for Carbon Accounting Financial Institutions (PCAF) is a global initiative used by more than 450 financial institutions to harmonise the accounting of greenhouse gas emissions for these institutions.
Check 3: Sector anomaly
10% of companies excluded
The analysis shows that companies reporting the highest emissions volumes are those that provide the most comprehensive breakdowns. Axylia therefore excludes companies whose Scope 3 emissions are significantly lower than the average for their sector or whose emissions calculations are incomplete. This includes, in particular, the absence of essential Scope 3 categories, such as the impact of customer travel in the hotel sector or product promotion in the advertising sector.
This check results in 12% of companies being excluded from the initial pool.
If a company does not pass the ‘check’, its Carbon Score® is ND.
Which companies will be excluded in 2025 ?
Following these checks carried out by Axylia, the companies listed opposite have been rejected from the model because they received an insufficient Carbon Score® and are therefore unable to pay their carbon bill.
When it comes to paying, carbon will be a powerful destroyer of value. Nearly one in two companies on the famous Paris index has a carbon bill that exceeds its operating profit and is unable to reduce it by 2030.
Crédit Agricole, BNP Paribas, Société Générale, AXA, Accor, Eurofins Scientific, Publicis Groupe and ST Microelectronics do not provide complete carbon data. They are rated ‘ND’ (‘Not Available’).
Relive the Vérité40® Index webinar