What is top of mind for US investors in 2025?

Over the past few years, investors have been contending with forces that are transforming the global economy. During this time, they have sought to understand how these changes will impact economic performance at the companies in which they invest and cover.

In fall 2024, PwC surveyed 345 investors across geographies, asset classes and investment approaches to learn more about their expectations, concerns and outlook for the future. The resulting analysis, PwC’s Global Investor Survey 2024: Cautiously optimistic, investors expect growth, identifies four key themes:

• Reinvention imperative: Innovation and new ways of doing business are top of mind for investors.
• Generative AI optimism: The promise of GenAI is high for a large majority of investors.
• Climate investment opportunities: Climate actions are important investment drivers.
• Trust through communication: Most investors trust companies to make decisions for the long term.

Compared to their global counterparts, those who invest in or cover companies based in the United States (US investors) are equally grappling with how to hedge against myriad risks and tap into the opportunities that megatrends like artificial intelligence and climate change have to offer. However, they are increasingly relying on budding information sources like GenAI to draw new investment conclusions, and with more disclosures on the horizon due to global reporting regulations, US investors may be less familiar with how to interpret the new data at their disposal.

So what are the top priorities of US investors and what steps should boards and management teams take to respond and adapt?

Companies continue to navigate a complex operating environment. This may explain why corporate governance, management competence and innovation join financial performance as top of mind for US investors when evaluating companies. Compared to last year’s survey, cybersecurity and data privacy had the largest spike in importance, from 34% to 43%.

Additionally, 36% of US investors view cyber risks as a top threat over the short term. Investors aren’t the only ones increasing their focus on cybersecurity; 64% of board members in our Annual Corporate Directors Survey said they have given the topic increased agenda time.

Since cyber risk is important to investors, make sure you are adjusting to the evolving threat environment.

Company executives are acutely focused on this issue, but that focus has not translated into action. For example, in our 2025 Annual Global CEO Survey, CEOs rank exposure to cyber risk high on their list of concerns. However, in our 2025 Global Digital Trust Insights survey, only 2% of executives surveyed say they have implemented the most robust cyber resilience actions across their organizations.

There are a number of strategies companies can take to demonstrate cyber preparedness to investors and other key stakeholders:

1. Establish a shared vision for preparedness across the C-suite
2. Deploy AI to reinforce cybersecurity
3. Deliver frequent reporting to executives on the regulatory environment
4. Leverage information and tools to quantify cyber risks and demonstrate the business case for your cyber investments
5. Include your chief information security officer (CISO) when addressing business activities and strategic decisions

US investors use a variety of information sources to assess how companies manage business risks and opportunities. Though they still predominantly rely on information published by companies themselves, fewer are getting their information through these channels. In 2024, fewer US investors report relying on financial statements, investor-focused communications, and company news statements. Rather, they indicate a growing interest in less direct sources of information. In fact, GenAI had the largest increase in the percentage of respondents using it as a source of information compared to the prior year (67% compared to 49% in 2023).

Nonetheless, the use of GenAI among this group has been mixed. Like their global counterparts, only 30% of US investors say it has significantly increased their ability to analyze information published by companies.

Understand how investors are using GenAI to evaluate your company.

For example, if investors are using GenAI to summarize key takeaways from your materials, you should consider doing it too. That way, you can determine how that information is presented or interpreted and use those results to sharpen your public disclosures. Incorporating GenAI into the development of investor-focused communications may help align what they are reviewing with the message you are trying to convey.

More than half of US investors believe it is very or extremely important for companies to change the way they create, deliver and capture value in response to climate change. Broadly speaking, most would increase their investment in companies taking climate-related actions. Specifically, about two-thirds of US investors indicated they would moderately or significantly increase their investments in companies that are addressing climate risks and opportunities. These include working with suppliers and communities to build sustainable value chains (75%), innovating products and services to enable customers to adapt and/or mitigate the impacts of climate change (77%), building resilience against physical climate risks (70%), increasing the use of renewable energy (67%) and pursuing opportunities that contribute to climate-related operational efficiencies (65%).

Focus on ways to generate value for investors through climate action.

As companies consider how climate change impacts the business, investors will want to understand the upside of any actions taken in response. Our research shows that most business actions related to climate change are linked with higher profit margins and revenue growth. We’re also seeing that the chief financial officer (CFO) and broader finance function have taken on more responsibilities related to quantifying and articulating how these initiatives are aligned with financial performance.

Our CFO sustainability playbook lays out various strategies to help CFOs and their teams understand how to create, deliver and capture value:

1. Embed sustainability into your corporate strategy.
2. Get company-wide buy-in.
3. Incorporate robust governance and oversight into sustainable capital project planning.
4. Leverage tax incentives effectively.
5. Build a reporting and compliance strategy that adapts to evolving regulations.
6. Use tech and AI to streamline your strategy.
7. Upskill your workforce.

Most US investors use sustainability disclosures to assess the companies they invest in or cover. Indeed, more than half of respondents believe to a large or very large extent that increased sustainability reporting generates benefits such as enhanced risk mitigation, a greater competitive advantage, more effective corporate governance, revenue growth and improved engagement with stakeholders.

However, an overwhelming 94% of US investors believe that corporate reporting contains unsupported claims about a company’s sustainability performance, at least to some extent. Investors identified a few key factors that give them confidence in assessing a company’s sustainability reporting, including trust in leadership, management capabilities to deliver on strategy and data comparability, and consistency year over year.

Notably, over 60% of US investors indicate that compliance with sustainability reporting standards also gives them confidence to a large or very large extent. That said, while the transition to mandatory sustainability reporting is well underway, US investors are less familiar with upcoming reporting regulations than their global counterparts. Less than 40% of respondents say they are very or extremely familiar with each of the current and upcoming reporting regulations: the IFRS Sustainability Disclosure Standards, the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive and the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive.

Be prepared to address US investors’ knowledge gap.

Several companies are publishing disclosures in line with these regulations as early as 2025, so investors will need help interpreting these materials. One way to tackle this could be partnering with Investor Relations to develop a comprehensive strategy to explain these regulatory requirements and highlight how your disclosures are compliant for a US-focused audience. This could include developing more targeted communications materials or utilizing shareholder engagement conversations.

Of the 159 US investors surveyed, respondents were predominantly institutional investors, comprising mainly analysts (27%), chief investment officers (29%), portfolio managers (21%) and governance or stewardship professionals (9%). Their investments covered a range of asset classes, investing approaches and time horizons, with 75% of respondents at organizations with total assets under management over $1 billion.