Given concerns in the market about tariffs, did more S&P 500 companies discuss uncertainty during their earnings conference calls for the second quarter compared to the first 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 “uncertainty” in the conference call transcripts of all the S&P 500 companies that conducted earnings conference calls from June 15 through September 12.
Overall, the term “uncertainty” was cited on 283 earnings calls conducted by S&P 500 companies during this period. This number reflects a quarter-over-quarter decline of 32% compared to Q1 2025, when the term “uncertainty” was cited on 418 earnings calls (from March 15 through June 14).
However, it is important to note that this number is still well above the 5-year average of 227 and the 10-year average of 188 for the number of S&P 500 earnings calls citing the term “uncertainty” for a quarter.
At the sector level, the Financials (55) and Industrials (54) sectors have the highest number of earnings calls where the term “uncertainty“ was cited, while the Materials (77%), Financials (75%), and Industrials (71%) sectors have the highest percentages of earning calls where the term “uncertainty” was cited.
On a quarter-over-quarter basis, all 11 sectors recorded a decline in the number of earnings calls where the term “uncertainty” was cited, led by the Information Technology (-26), Industrials (-18), and Consumer Discretionary (-17) sectors.
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