Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance has become central to sustainable business conduct. Although prior studies often report positive links between ESG engagement and corporate financial performance, the evidence remains context-dependent. Industrial firms face environmental externalities, regulatory pressure, and capital-intensive operations, which may shape this relationship differently. This article examines the association between overall ESG scores, individual environmental, social, and governance pillars, and firms’ profitability, measured by return on assets (ROA), while controlling for firm-specific characteristics and time effects. Using an openly available panel dataset of 72 industrial firms from 2012 to 2021, the study applies descriptive statistics, Welch’s t-test, the Mann–Whitney U test, and fixed-effects panel regressions with firm-clustered standard errors. Five hypotheses concerning ESG engagement and ROA are tested. The results show that high-ESG firms are larger but, on average, less profitable than low-ESG firms. Regression findings reveal no significant association between composite ESG scores and ROA. However, the environmental pillar is positively and significantly related to profitability, whereas the social and governance pillars are not. These findings highlight the need to analyze ESG dimensions separately in practice.
