More Than 40% of S&P 500 Companies Cited “AI” on Earnings Calls for Q2

Artificial intelligence has been a focus topic for the market. Given the heightened interest, have more S&P 500 companies than normal commented on “AI” during their earnings conference calls for the second 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 June 15 through September 13.

Of these companies, 210 cited the term “AI” during their earnings call for the second quarter. This number is well above the 5-year average of 88 and the 10-year average of 55.

In fact, this is the second-highest number of S&P 500 companies citing “AI” on earnings calls going back to at least 2014 (using current index constituents going back in time). The current record is 211, which occurred in Q1 2024. This quarter also marks the second-straight quarter in which more than 200 S&P 500 companies cited “AI” on earnings calls.

At the sector level, the Information Technology sector has the highest number (59) and percentage (91%) of companies citing “AI” on Q2 earnings calls.

It is interesting to note that S&P 500 companies that have cited “AI” on Q2 earnings calls have seen a lower average stock price performance since the start of the third quarter compared to S&P 500 companies that did not cite “AI” on Q2 earnings calls. For S&P 500 companies that cited “AI” on Q2 earnings calls, the average change in price since June 30 is 4.1%. For S&P 500 companies that did not cite “AI” on Q2 earnings calls, the average change in price since June 30 is 6.1%.

However, S&P 500 companies that have cited “AI” on Q2 earnings calls have seen a higher average stock price performance since the start of the year compared to S&P 500 companies that did not cite “AI” on Q2 earnings calls. For S&P 500 companies that cited “AI” on Q2 earnings calls, the average change in price since December 31 (2023) is 12.2%. For S&P 500 companies that did not cite “AI” on Q2 earnings calls, the average change in price since December 31 (2023) is 8.6%.

What are companies saying about artificial intelligence on their earnings calls? Transcript Assistant (FactSet’s interactive generative AI solution that extracts the most salient points from earnings call transcripts with questions from users and pre-populated prompts) can be used to answer this question. 

For example, Transcript Assistant generated the following summary of all the statements about “AI” from the earnings call transcript of Meta Platforms on July 31:

The document discusses the use of AI in various aspects of Meta's operations. Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO, highlights the role of AI in improving the quality of recommendations and driving engagement on Facebook and Instagram. He also mentions the potential of AI to evolve their services for advertisers, predicting who would be interested in their ads and generating creative content for them. He discusses the new AI experiences enabled by their assistant Meta AI, which is on track to become the most-used AI assistant by the end of the year. He also mentions the launch of AI Studio, which allows anyone to create AIs to interact with across their apps. He sees potential in business AIs, with positive feedback from alpha testing. He also discusses the role of AI in shaping their metaverse work. Susan Li, the CFO, also mentions the role of AI in improving ad delivery and making it easier for advertisers to maximize ad performance. She also mentions the potential of generative AI to help businesses communicate with customers more efficiently through messaging.*

*Results may vary based on prompts used

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