Are More S&P 500 Companies Discussing “Recession” on Q2 Earnings Calls Than Average?

Given concerns in the market about a possible economic slowdown or recession, have more S&P 500 companies than normal commented on recession during their earnings conference calls for the second quarter?

The answer is no. FactSet Document Search (which allows users to search for key words or phrases across multiple document types) was used to answer this question. Through Document Search, FactSet searched for the term “recession” in the conference call transcripts of all the S&P 500 companies that conducted earnings conference calls from June 15 through August 15.

Of these companies, 28 cited the term “recession” during their earnings calls for the second quarter. This number is well below the 5-year average of 83 and the 10-year average of 60. In fact, this quarter marks the second-lowest number of S&P 500 companies citing “recession” on earnings calls for a quarter since Q4 2021 (15).

However, it should also be noted that the number for Q2 2024 marks a slight quarter-over-quarter increase compared to the number for Q1 2024 (27). This marks the first sequential increase in the number of S&P 500 companies citing “recession” on earnings calls since Q2 2022.

At the sector level, the Financials (7) and Industrials (7) sectors have the highest number of S&P 500 companies citing “recession” on earnings calls for Q2 2024.

It is interesting to note that a higher percentage of S&P 500 companies have cited the term “recession” on Q2 earnings calls since the BLS released the nonfarm payrolls and unemployment rate numbers for July on the morning of August 2. From June 15 through August 1, 17 out of 343 S&P 500 companies (or 5.0%) cited the term “recession” on earnings calls for Q2. From August 2 through August 15, 11 out of 109 S&P 500 companies (or 10.1%) cited the term “recession” on earnings calls for Q2.

The FactSet Earnings Insight report will not be published on August 23 and August 30. The next edition of the report will be published on September 6.

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