Given concerns in the market about tariffs and a potential economic slowdown, 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 7.
Overall, the term “recession” was cited on 16 earnings calls conducted by S&P 500 companies during this period. This number is well below the 5-year average of 74 and the 10-year average of 61.
In fact, this number reflects a quarter-over-quarter decline of 87% compared to Q1 2025, when the term “recession” was cited on 124 earnings calls (March 15 through June 14).
On a percentage basis, the term “recession” has been cited on just 4% of the 442 earnings calls conducted by S&P 500 companies from June 15 through August 7.
At the sector level, the Financials (5) and Industrials (5) sectors have the highest number of earnings calls where “recession” was cited, while the Real Estate (10%), Financials (7%), and Industrials (7%) sectors have the highest percentages of earning calls where “recession” was cited.
In 6 of the 11 sectors, no companies have cited the term “recession” on their earnings calls for Q2 to date.
The FactSet Earnings Insight report will not be published on August 15 or August 22. The next edition of the report will be published on August 29.
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