Fewer S&P 500 Companies Discussing “AI” on Earnings Calls For Q3 Compared to Q2

Artificial intelligence has been a focus topic for the market in recent months. Given the heightened interest, did more S&P 500 companies comment on “AI” during their earnings conference calls in the third quarter relative to 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 “AI” in the conference call transcripts of all the S&P 500 companies that conducted earnings conference calls from September 15 through November 30.

Of these companies, 152 cited the term “AI” during their earnings call for the third quarter. This number is 16% below the number of S&P 500 companies that cited “AI” on earnings calls for Q2 2023 (180).

However, it should be noted that this number is still well above the 5-year average of 67 and the 10-year average of 41. In fact, this is the second-highest number of S&P 500 companies citing “AI” on earnings calls going back at least 10 years (using current index constituents going back in time), trailing only the previous quarter’s number of 180. It should also be noted that there are a small number of S&P 500 companies that have not reported earnings for the third quarter. Thus, while the final number of companies citing “AI” for Q3 will likely be higher than the current 152, it will not finish above the previous quarter’s number of 180.

At the sector level, nine of the eleven sectors have recorded a quarter-over-quarter decline in the number of companies citing “AI” on earnings calls for Q3 2023 relative to Q2 2023, led by the Information Technology (-8) and Financials (-7) sectors. The Communication Services (+4) and Energy (+1) sectors are the only two sectors that witnessed a quarter-over-quarter increase in the number of companies citing “AI” on earnings calls. Despite the quarter-over-quarter decline, the Information Technology sector still had the highest number (48) and percentage (79%) of S&P 500 companies citing “AI” on earnings calls for Q3.

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