Recent years have witnessed significant growth in corporate sustainability reporting. Yet existing research provides mixed evidence on the information content of these reports for investors. We examine the stock market reaction to the announcement of corporate sustainability reports incorporating SASB metrics that are intended to provide financially material and decision useful information to investors. Using standard measures, we are unable to find compelling evidence that these reports provide a significant amount of decision-useful information to investors. Further analysis of a subset of common metrics indicates that they are either financially immaterial or preempted by traditional financial disclosures. Finally, we show that firms target sustainability reports at a broad set of stakeholders concerned with environmental and social impacts and conclude that a narrow focus on financial materiality to investors is unnecessarily restrictive.
