Given concerns in the market about a possible economic slowdown or recession, did more S&P 500 companies than normal comment on recession during their earnings conference calls for 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 “recession” in the conference call transcripts of all the S&P 500 companies that conducted earnings conference calls from March 15 through June 6.
Of these companies, 29 cited the term “recession” during their earnings calls for the first 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 lowest number of S&P 500 companies citing “recession” on earnings calls for a quarter since Q4 2021 (15). After peaking in Q2 2022, the number of S&P 500 companies citing “recession” on earnings calls has declined (quarter-over-quarter) for seven straight quarters.
At the sector level, the Financials (11) and Industrials (7) sectors have the highest number of S&P 500 companies citing “recession” on Q1 earnings calls.
It is interesting to note that the term “soft landing” was cited on the Q1 earnings calls of 13 S&P 500 companies.
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