During each corporate earnings season, companies may comment on government policies that could have an impact on their business in the current quarter or in future quarters. Given the Trump administration implementing tariffs during the past week, have S&P 500 companies commented on tariffs during their earnings conference calls for the fourth quarter?
The answer is yes. 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 “tariff” and “tariffs” in the conference call transcripts of all the S&P 500 companies that conducted earnings conference calls from December 15 through March 6.
Of these companies, 259 have cited the term “tariff” or “tariffs” during their earnings calls for the fourth quarter. This marks the highest number of S&P 500 companies citing “tariff” or “tariffs” on quarterly earnings calls over the past 10 years (using current index constituents going back in time). The previous record-high number during the past 10 years was 185 companies, which occurred in Q2 2018.
At the sector level, the Industrials sector has the highest number of companies (55) citing the term “tariff” or “tariffs” on earnings calls for Q4 2024, while the Materials sector has the highest percentage of companies (82%) citing the term “tariff” or “tariffs” on earnings calls for Q4 2024.
It is interesting to note that the four sectors (Materials, Industrials, Consumer Discretionary, and Consumer Staples) that have the highest percentages of companies citing “tariff” or “tariffs” on earnings calls for Q4 are also the four sectors that have seen the largest cuts to EPS estimates for Q1 to date. For more details on estimate revisions, read Analysts Making Larger Cuts Than Average to EPS Estimates for S&P 500 Companies for Q1.
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