Given concerns in the market about inflation and tariffs, have more S&P 500 companies than normal commented on recession during their earnings conference calls for the fourth 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 December 15 through March 6.
Of these companies, 13 cited the term “recession” during their earnings calls for the fourth quarter. This number is well below the 5-year average of 80 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 Q1 2018 (12).
At the sector level, the Industrials sector has the highest number (4) of S&P 500 companies citing “recession” on earnings calls for Q4 2024, while the Materials sector has the highest percentage (11%) of S&P 500 companies citing “recession” on earnings calls for Q4 2024.
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