Key performance indicators and targets

Scope

The chapter ‘key performance indicators’ provides information about METRO’s sustainability performance in the form of key performance indicators (KPIs). It is divided into KPIs on the economic performance of the company and KPIs on our sustainability focus topics: Organic and Responsible Products, Climate Action, Human Rights as well as Diversity and Inclusion. In addition, we report on the KPI community investment.

Reporting period

The reporting year is the same as the METRO financial year, that is from 1 October to 30 September. Key performance indicators are reported for the previous 3 financial years where data is available.

Reporting of the climate protection target also includes the target’s reference year, 2011. The figure for the reference year relates to the period from 1 January to 31 December 2011. A different reporting period is used in this case because METRO changed its financial year from the calendar year to the 12 months from October to September in 2013.

Data collection approach and degree of coverage

The key performance indicators reported are based on data that is gathered using various internal reporting systems. As a rule, this data is systematically recorded for each business unit and each country every quarter, in some cases every month. The KPIs are based on data collected for the whole METRO, that is – where applicable – for all of the stores, back offices and warehouses and for the head office in Düsseldorf. It is necessary to extrapolate and estimate consumption data for some KPIs in cases where the primary data available is incomplete. This applies to the KPIs from the section Climate Action. The sustainability data management office merges the data from various reporting systems.

The greenhouse gas emissions relating to purchased goods and services, assets and leased assets which are reported in accordance with Scope 3 are modelled because recording primary data for these is highly complex. This modelling is based on on sales per product category or on other KPIs for the economic value added by METRO. To perform these calculations, we use so-called economic input-output models, which are founded on the economic flows of goods and services.

The selling and delivery space figures used as a basis for the KPIs are averages for the year.

Unless expressly stated otherwise, all presentations in this report refer to continuing operations (excluding the hypermarket business Real and excluding METRO China). We report most of the KPIs separately for METRO as a whole and for the region Germany, as the country in which METRO’s headquarter is based. As a general rule, the KPIs for METRO as a whole include the data for all locations or all employees unless stated otherwise in the footnotes of a respective KPI. We do not yet report the key figures on professional continuous development in the Diversity and Inclusion section for all employees. We do not have data of sufficient quality for all sales lines and organisational units. However, these key figures on professional continuous development include almost all companies with the exception of a few service companies.

All of the KPIs in this report have been audited by KPMG AG Wirtschaftsprüfungsgesellschaft.

Deviations from previous reports

In some cases, the figures presented in previous sustainability reports differ from those cited in this report. There are various reasons for this.

In financial year 2018/19, we retroactively switched to a different emission factor set for energy.

For all representations given, the data for the hypermarket business and METRO China were removed retroactively from the data.

There are other differences in the KPIs in the section Climate Action, arising from estimated figures having been replaced by actual values. In a number of cases, the utilities provide us with consumption figures quite late, and we therefore initially work on the basis of estimates.

The only deviations are those in comparison with earlier reported numbers. Within the present disclosure, KPIs are represented according to a uniform methodology for 3 years, respectively. They thus allow a comprehensible overview of the development.

We complete our data collection and reporting on an ongoing basis to improve the level of transparency and the way we manage our sustainability performance.