GRESB 2022: Mercialys Moves up to Second Place in the Benchmark and Maintains Its Outstanding Rating

PARIS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Regulatory News:

Mercialys (Paris:MERY):

GRESB ¹, the Global Real Estate Sustainability Benchmark, published the results of its annual ranking today. This benchmark assesses the Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) practices of real estate companies around the world. For its seventh participation, Mercialys continued to progress, moving up to second place in its category for listed retail property companies in Europe. These outstanding results reflect the CSR commitments set out by the Company, through its 4 Fair Impacts for 2030 strategy.

Mercialys achieved a rating of 91/100, up 2 points from 2021, while the GRESB’s average rating is down 1 point to 74/100. The Company has consolidated its position as a leader for sustainable development and maintained its Green Star status, the benchmark’s highest level of recognition, for the sixth consecutive year.

In terms of the 14 areas covered by this benchmark, Mercialys’ performance stands out in particular in the Management category, reflecting its integrated management of CSR at the heart of the Company’s strategy. The Company achieved the maximum score in four of the five corresponding areas: leadership, policies, stakeholder engagement and reporting.

Alongside this, highlighting the progress made with its strategic initiatives, Mercialys improved its results in 2021, in the Performance category, on the following aspects:

• The Company’s certification policy, with 100% of its strategic assets BREEAM In-Use certified;
• Its ongoing commitment to energy savings and its drive to engage tenants in this approach, reflected in a -5% reduction in overall consumption like-for-like versus 2021, whereas the GRESB benchmark recorded a +1.2% increase;
• The use of renewable energies, with the consumption of green electricity and 25% biogas for its centers in mainland France;
• The actions to reduce water consumption, outpacing the GRESB benchmark.

In the current context of energy market tensions, Mercialys has also decided to ramp up its efforts to reduce energy consumption levels ². The Company has rolled out a series of immediate measures to supplement its CSR strategy, focused on heating temperatures, switching off lighting and illuminated signs, as well as the air flow rates for the ventilation systems.

This press release is available on www.mercialys.com.

About Mercialys

Mercialys is one of France’s leading real estate companies. It is specialized in the holding, management and transformation of retail spaces, anticipating consumer trends, on its own behalf and for third parties. At June 30, 2022, Mercialys had a real estate portfolio valued at Euro 3.1 billion (including transfer taxes). Its portfolio of 2,130 leases represents an annualized rental base of Euro 168.8 million. Mercialys has been listed on the stock market since October 12, 2005 (ticker: MERY) and has “SIIC” real estate investment trust (REIT) tax status. Part of the SBF 120 and Euronext Paris Compartment B, it had 93,886,501 shares outstanding at June 30, 2022.

IMPORTANT INFORMATION

This press release contains certain forward-looking statements regarding future events, trends, projects or targets. These forward-looking statements are subject to identified and unidentified risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from the results anticipated in the forward-looking statements. Please refer to Mercialys’ Universal Registration Document available at www.mercialys.com for the year ended December 31, 2021 for more details regarding certain factors, risks and uncertainties that could affect Mercialys’ business. Mercialys makes no undertaking in any form to publish updates or adjustments to these forward-looking statements, nor to report new information, new future events or any other circumstances that might cause these statements to be revised.

¹ GRESB: GRESB is an organization that provides the financial markets with standardized and verified environmental, social and governance (ESG) data. Founded in 2009, GRESB is now the leading ESG benchmark for real estate and infrastructure investments worldwide and is used by more than 170 institutional and financial investors to support their decisions. In 2022, the index covers more than USD 8,600 billion of assets under management. Learn more at GRESB.com.
² ‘Energy efficiency’ press release published on September 15, 2022 on the Company website