Are rating agencies incompetent or am I an idiot?

After some red flags I started taking a thorough look at ESG ratings and credit ratings for car companies. Still in a very early phase, but I want to share my results.

First I collected ESG data from two notable ESG rating agencies (MSCI & Sustainalytics) for 15 notable automotive companies with available data. When I calculated the correlation with each other they were not correlated (anti-correlated if anything, Pearson -0,25). This indicates to me it is just random noise without intrinsic information.

Then I collected credit rating information from two notable credit rating agencies (Moody's & S&P) for 15 notable automotive companies with available data (same companies used for ESG analysis). These ratings were strongly correlated implying some underlying information (Pearson 0,65). But when I then ranked these car businesses by their average credit rating Tesla scored the lowest with 2 billion debt, 20 billion cash & 10 billion yearly income. On the other hand business leveraged to the tits & flirting with bankruptcy (Toyota 210 billion debt, 50 billion cash, 20 billion yearly income, General Motors 110 billion debt, 20 billion cash, 10 billion yearly income) were scoring higher.

I realize more data can be collected and the numbers can be cherry-picked for a brighter picture, but overall this initial result paint a black and white picture: ratings = bullshit. What am I missing?

Thanks redditors! 🙂