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20 Nov, 2019

Communications Firm Reveals the Most Transparent Industries in the U.S.

ATLANTA, 19 November 2019, BUSINESS WIRE – Labrador, a global communication firm specializing in regulated disclosure documents, today announced the most transparent industries in the U.S. based on rankings determined in the inaugural U.S. Transparency Awards.

The rankings, which compare the efficacy of corporate disclosure documents among the top S&P 250 companies by market capitalization trading on the NYSE or Nasdaq1, reveal companies within the Telecommunications Services industry, including AT&T, Inc.; Comcast Corporation; and Verizon Communications, scored the highest average in 2019 for transparent disclosure.

U.S. Industries Ranking (and the top-ranking companies within each industry)

(1) Telecommunication Services (AT&T, Inc.; Comcast Corporation; Verizon Communications)

(2.) Utilities (Southern Company; Duke Energy Corporation; Xcel Energy, Inc.)

(3) Financials (BlackRock, Inc.; Prudential Financial, Inc.; The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc.)

(4) Consumer Staples (The Coca-Cola Company; Walmart, Inc.; PepsiCo)

(5) Industrials (Caterpillar, Inc.; The Raytheon Company; Rockwell Automation, Inc.)

(6) Healthcare (Medtronic plc; CVS Health Corporation; Amgen, Inc.)

(7) Energy (ConocoPhillips; Occidental Petroleum Corporation; Marathon Petroleum Corporation)

(8) Materials (LyondellBasell Industries N.V.; Ecolab, Inc.; Linde plc)

(9) Information Technology (Intel Corporation; Intuit, Inc.; Corning)

(10) Consumer Discretionary (General Motors Company; Target Corporation; McDonald’s Corporation)

The U.S. Transparency Awards rankings, announced in October 2019, recognize the quality and completeness of information that top U.S. companies make available to investors. Company rankings were determined through review of the annual proxy statement, form 10-K and investor relations website of each company and were then scored using 93 different criteria2 based on four pillars of transparency: accessibility, accuracy, comparability and availability. Industries were ranked by averaging the scores of the companies within each industry market that make up the S&P 250. The criteria used in the rankings are available to the public and can be found at www.transparencyawards.com/criteria.

“The Transparency Awards launched in France 10 years ago, and the rankings have become a recognized rating of disclosure quality for the top traded French market caps,” explains Molly Doran, director of advisory & design services at Labrador. “Using the methodology developed by an international group of independent stakeholders, we identified the U.S. companies that are providing the highest-quality of information to investors. Our hope is the Transparency Awards rankings will encourage U.S. companies to look to their peers and analyze their own year-over-year reporting in order to adapt and improve their disclosure, leading to an elevated level of financial reporting across industries.”

For more information on the U.S. Transparency Awards, visit www.transparencyawards.com. Companies wishing to inquire about the rankings should contact transparency@labrador-company.com.