Can Dividend and Sustainable Investing Mix?

A Veteran Investor Makes the Case for the Affirmative.

In some cases, dividend and sustainable stocks mix like oil and water. Many old economy companies just don’t cut it, though the world is changing as companies put more emphasis on issues such as climate change, equity and resource scarcity. Income Matters Today spoke recently with Peter Krull, 53, a partner and director of sustainable investments at Earth Equity Advisors in Asheville, N.C. Krull says that there are plenty of dividend-paying stocks that also square with his priorities on sustainability. As of Oct. 31, the firm’s Green Sage Sustainability Portfolio had an annualized return of 9.23% since its inception in late 2012, according to Morningstar. This is an edited version of our conversation.

IMT: Let’s start with some basic building blocks, Peter. Could you put socially responsible, ESG (environmental, social and governance) and sustainable investing into context for us?

It’s really been an evolution. When I got into this business almost 20 years ago, everybody called it socially responsible investing. And it was really just sort of a blanket designation for anybody who was integrating any kind of non-financial information into their process. Over the years it evolved, because people wanted to see the numbers -- and they wanted to see that there was some quantifiable aspects of it. ESG came out of a United Nations report. The ESG folks actually tried to find what are the metrics that affect the risk of a company.