Are More S&P 500 Companies Citing “Election” on Earnings Calls for Q2 2024 vs. Q2 2020?

During each corporate earnings season, companies often comment on domestic or international events that may have an impact on their business in future quarters. Given the uncertainty of the upcoming elections in the U.S., how many companies in the S&P 500 have commented on the elections during their earnings conference calls for the second quarter? How does this number compare to the previous presidential election in 2020? Have S&P 500 companies discussed any specific government policies in conjunction with the elections?

FactSet Document Search (which allows users to search for key words or phrases across multiple document types) was used to answer these three questions.

To answer the first question, FactSet searched for the term “election” or “elections” in the conference call transcripts of all the S&P 500 companies that conducted earnings conference calls from June 15, 2024, through August 15, 2024.

Of these companies, 116 cited the term “election” or “elections” during their earnings calls for the second quarter. At the sector level, the Financials (22) and Industrials (21) sectors have the highest number of companies citing the term “election” or “elections” on earnings calls for Q2 2024.

To answer the second question, FactSet searched for the term “election” or “elections” in the conference call transcripts of all the S&P 500 companies (using current S&P 500 constituents) that conducted earnings conference calls from June 15, 2020, through August 15, 2020.

Of these companies, 65 cited the term “election” or “elections” during their earnings calls for the second quarter. At the sector level, the Industrials (10), Energy (9), and Financials (9) sectors had the highest number of companies citing the term “election” or “elections” on earnings calls for Q2 2020.

Thus, through the same point in time in each quarter, the number of S&P 500 companies citing the term “election” or “elections” during earnings calls for Q2 2024 is more than 75% higher than the number of S&P 500 companies citing these terms in Q2 2020 (116 vs. 65). At the sector level, the Financials (+13) and Industrials (+11) sectors have recorded the largest increases in the number of companies mentioning “election” or “elections” during their earnings calls for Q2 2024 compared to Q2 2020.

To answer the third question, FactSet looked at the context in which the terms “election” or “elections” were mentioned during these 116 earnings conference calls for Q2 2024 to see if any specific policy areas were referenced in conjunction with the terms.

The government policy that was cited by the highest number of S&P 500 companies in conjunction with the election was energy and carbon emissions (including renewables and EVs), with 19 companies discussing this policy area. At the sector level, the sectors with the highest number of S&P 500 companies discussing energy and carbon emissions policy in conjunction with the election were the Utilities (6) and Energy (4) sectors. A list of the 19 S&P 500 companies that discussed energy and carbon emissions policy in conjunction with the election and their comments can be found on pages 37 to 42 of the FactSet Earnings Insight report. A link to this report is available at the end of the article.

After energy and carbon emissions, regulations (15), the Inflation Reduction Act (10), and tariffs and trade (10) were the policy areas cited by the highest number of S&P 500 companies in conjunction with comments about the election.

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.

This blog post is for informational purposes only. The information contained in this blog post is not legal, tax, or investment advice. FactSet does not endorse or recommend any investments and assumes no liability for any consequence relating directly or indirectly to any action or inaction taken based on the information contained in this article.