2021 Universal Registration Document
4 CORPORATE RESPONSIBILITY
Environmental Responsibility: Carbon-neutral trajectory – Net-zero emissions by 2028
ACTIVITIES OF MARGINAL IMPORTANCE 3.5.2. RELATIVE TO THE TAXONOMY The main difficulty that Sopra Steria has encountered lies in the application of the activities defined in the Taxonomy and their general lack of relevance to its business model. As is the case with some digital services companies, the Group’s activities do not have a substantial negative impact on the climate. It is therefore only marginally concerned by the activities identified in the Taxonomy, and essentially by those associated with the climate change mitigation objective. Turnover indicator The following Taxonomy activities are partly reflected in Sopra Steria’s business model and turnover: “Data processing, hosting and related activities”; 1. “Data-driven solutions for GHG emissions reductions”. 2. Data processing, hosting and related activities p This involves hosting activities for clients in the Group’s own infrastructures. At this point, it excludes all hosting activities carried out in third-party infrastructures, such as those of data centre operators or cloud providers, management infrastructure services provided outside of the Group’s infrastructures, consulting services, and transformation and cloud deployment projects. Given its business model, the Group has negligible eligibility for this activity. Data-driven solutions for GHG emissions reductions p This mainly involves Consulting and Integration activities. This includes all projects on behalf of clients which could, directly or indirectly, contribute to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. To enable alignment, the impact of these projects must be scientifically measurable. Some examples of projects that have a direct positive effect on the climate are the development of solutions to determine and measure greenhouse gas emissions, systems that offset greenhouse gas emissions, and the integration of solutions that enable the Group’s clients to reduce their consumption of raw materials or components. Some examples of projects that have an indirect positive effect on the climate are integration projects that optimise a constraint or replace physical transactions with a digital process (e.g. road traffic regulation and dematerialisation) or that improve the environmental footprint of the Group’s clients. These services would be provided mainly by the Group’s Energy & Utilities, Transport and Public Sector market teams. Thus, given its business model, the Group would have very little eligibility for this activity. On the basis of these initial analyses and the current stage of its Taxonomy project, the Group estimates that the activities eligible
under the turnover indicator would represent just over 5% of the Group’s total revenue in 2021. Capex indicator This second indicator requires an analysis of the eligibility of capital expenditures. The capex to be used is not the cash outflow on the cash flow statement, but the increase in the value of assets. Accordingly, new right-of-use assets will be recognised when leases are signed, while the financing details of capital expenditures, such as late payments, will not be recognised. Capital expenditures also include new intangible assets resulting from business combinations, such as technologies, customer relationships and brands. Eligible capital expenditures include those that are made for potentially sustainable activities, for a project to make an activity sustainable or to develop a sustainable activity, or for the individually eligible activities defined in the Taxonomy, such as capex on premises, vehicles or data hosting. The Group estimates that these eligible expenditures could account for about 97.3% of its total capex in 2021. This ratio may vary from year to year, depending on the nature of the capex. Opex indicator This third and last indicator requires an assessment of operating expenditures. These include those made for an eligible activity, for a project to make an activity sustainable or to develop a sustainable activity, or for the individually eligible activities defined in the Taxonomy, such as opex on premises, vehicles and data hosting. Not all operating expenditures are to be recognised. Only research and development expenditures, building refurbishment costs, short-term lease expenses, maintenance, cleaning and repair expenses, and any other direct expenditures for the ongoing maintenance of tangible assets that are necessary to maintain their normal functioning. The Group’s business model is people-intensive. It therefore includes essential expenditures on subcontracting, travel and communication services, which fall outside the scope of the Taxonomy. With the exception of research and development expenditures, which are essential to software publishing, the other cost components of the denominator of the opex indicator play only a very small role in the Group’s business model. These expenditures are immaterial, amounting to no more than 5.4% of total opex. As such, the Group has decided, at this stage, to disregard them, in accordance with the EU regulation’s materiality threshold for opex. The numerator representing the opex-eligible activities is therefore 0, for a denominator that is estimated not to exceed 236.5m.
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SOPRA STERIA UNIVERSAL REGISTRATION DOCUMENT 2021
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