How futureproof is your organization?

How futureproof is your organization?

Author: Pieter Hemels | 04-03-2025

If you ask Gemini or any other AI smart guy how to determine the value of a company, it will immediately start talking about intrinsic value, market value, financial performance, discounted cash flow, liquidation value (some CFOs jump out of their chairs enthusiastically when they read this). But is that really logical? Is money the unique value-determining factor? What is the value of the fact that your ten thousand employees are deeply happy with your employership? And the thousand who are sitting at home, burned out? Does the product turnover extending millions' lives have the same value as the turnover of a beer manufacturer? What is the value of the climate damage that you do or do not prevent? And what is the social value of the fact that a company is extremely good at tax avoidance?

Integrated value = financial + social + ecological value
More than a year ago, I started talking to professors Dirk Schoenmaker from Erasmus University and Willem Schramade from Nyenrode. Both have been researching long-term value for years and had just published their (second) book, 'Corporate Finance for Long Term Value': 630 pages about the importance of and how the integrated value of organizations can be calculated. We talked about the feasibility of actually calculating the integrated value of organizations. So, not only the financial value but also the social and ecological value of a company are essential. By converting all those actors into money, we could theoretically objectively calculate whether a company generates or costs society money.

The birth of the AEX Futureproof Index
We quickly came to the conclusion that that would be an almost impossible task. How do you ensure reliable calculations with public information, the same principles, and objective methods for all organizations? But yes, if it would work... So, we started calculating the integrated value of 23 companies with an AEX listing. Under the leadership of Dirk and Willem, a team of corporate finance MBA students from Nyenrode, 400 corporate finance masters students from RSM, and a team of analysts, project managers, and designers from ftrprf spent more than 10 person-years of work to arrive at the AEX Futureproof Index. We calculated dozens of factors, including safety, water use, employee satisfaction, CO2, corporate tax, and biodiversity impact.

Philips happy, Heineken less so
About the result: of the 23 companies examined, 15 scored a positive integrated value: their social value is greater than their financial value. Philips is number 1 because the company does a lot of good and improves the lives of millions of people. And is happy with that result. Heineken stated in the NRC Handelsblad that it's less enthusiastic about the fact that the damage alcohol causes to society was reflected in its futureproof valuation. CEO Dolf van den Brink says about it in the newspaper: "Remember the importance of the brown pub as a living room of the neighborhood. In an era of loneliness and mental health problems, beer also plays a positive social role." I would love to discuss that with him over a 0.0 beer. Shall we?

This essay by Pieter Hemels, director of ftrprf, was published in Management Scope 03 2025.

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