Given the increase in the CPI over the past few months, did more S&P 500 companies discuss inflation during their earnings conference calls for the second quarter compared to 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 “inflation” in the conference call transcripts of all the S&P 500 companies that conducted earnings conference calls from June 15 through September 12.
Overall, the term “inflation” was cited on 178 earnings calls conducted by S&P 500 companies during this period. This number reflects a quarter-over-quarter decline of 24% compared to Q1 2025, when the term “inflation” was cited on 235 earnings calls (from March 15 through June 14). The number for Q2 2025 is also below the 5-year average (267) and 10-year average (195) for a quarter.
In fact, this quarter marks the lowest number of S&P 500 earnings calls citing the term “inflation” since Q4 2020 (144).
At the sector level, the Industrials (33) and Consumer Staples (32) sectors have the highest number of earnings calls where the term “inflation“ was cited, while the Consumer Staples (78%), Consumer Discretionary (55%), and Materials (50%) sectors have the highest percentages of earning calls where the term “uncertainty” was cited.
On a quarter-over-quarter basis, 8 of 11 sectors recorded a decline in the number of earnings calls where the term “inflation” was cited, led by the Financials (-13) and Industrials (-13) sectors. On the other hand, 2 of 11 sectors recorded an increase in the number of earnings calls where the term “inflation” was cited: Energy (+3) and Health Care (+3).
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