Artificial intelligence has been a focus topic for the market for several quarters. Given the heightened interest, have more S&P 500 companies than normal commented on “AI” during their earnings conference calls for the third 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 “AI” in the conference call transcripts of all the S&P 500 companies that conducted earnings conference calls from September 15 through December 4.
Overall, the term “AI” was cited on 306 earnings calls conducted by S&P 500 companies during this period. This number is well above the 5-year average of 136 and the 10-year average of 86.
In fact, this is the highest number of S&P 500 earnings calls on which “AI” has been cited over the past 10 years (using current index constituents going back in time). The previous record over the past 10 years was 292, which occurred in Q2 2025.
At the sector level, the Information Technology sector has the highest number (63) of earnings calls citing “AI” for Q3, while the Information Technology (95%) and Communication Services (95%) sectors have the highest percentages of earnings calls citing “AI” for Q3.
It is interesting to note that S&P 500 companies that have cited “AI” on Q3 earnings calls have seen a higher average price increase compared to S&P 500 companies that have not cited “AI” on Q3 earnings calls since December 31 (13.9% vs. 5.7%), since June 30 (8.1% vs. 3.9%), and since September 30 (1.0% vs. 0.3%).
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