Are S&P 500 Companies Discussing the Election on Q3 Earnings Calls

During each corporate earnings season, companies often comment on domestic or international events that may have an impact on their business in the current quarter or future quarters. Given the uncertainty of the upcoming election in the U.S., have S&P 500 companies commented on the election 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 "election" and "elections" in the conference call transcripts of all the S&P 500 companies that conducted earnings conference calls from September 15 through October 31.

Of these companies, 116 cited the term "election" or "elections" during their earnings calls for the third quarter. This number is 36% of the total 324 earnings conference calls conducted by S&P 500 companies during this period.

At the sector level, the Industrials (30) and Financials (27) sectors have the highest number of companies citing the term "election" or "elections" on earnings calls for Q3 2024, while the Industrials (48%), Consumer Discretionary (46%), and Financials (45%) sectors have the highest percentages of companies citing the term "election" or "elections" on earnings calls for Q3.

In addition, more S&P 500 companies are citing these terms on earnings calls for Q3 2024 compared to earnings calls for Q3 2020 (during the last presidential election) through the same point in time. From September 15 through October 31 in 2020, 102 S&P 500 companies cited the term "election" or "elections" on their earnings calls.

What are these 116 companies saying about the 2024 election? Have they discussed the candidates by name or specific policies in relation to the election?

It is interesting to note that 38 of these companies cited a slowdown or pause in economic, business, or customer activity due at least in part to the election. Many of these companies expect business conditions to improve after the election. A list of these 38 companies and their comments can be found in Appendix 1 on page 37 of the full Earnings Insight report (which is available at the link at the end of the article).

Regarding the candidates, few companies have cited either one by name on their earnings calls. Overall, 3 S&P 500 companies have cited "Harris" by name while 6 S&P 500 companies have cited "Trump" by name.

However, more companies have discussed specific policies in relation to their comments on the election. The government policy that has been cited by the highest number of S&P 500 companies in conjunction with the election is tariffs and trade, with 7 companies discussing this policy area.

After tariffs and trade, housing (4) and regulations (4) were the policy areas cited by the highest number of S&P 500 companies in conjunction with their comments about the election.

A list of the companies that discussed specific policies in conjunction with their comments on the election can be found in Appendix 2 on page 41 of the full Earnings Insight report (which is available at the link at the end of the article).

This blog post is for informational purposes only. The information contained in this blog post is not legal, tax, or investment advice. FactSet does not endorse or recommend any investments and assumes no liability for any consequence relating directly or indirectly to any action or inaction taken based on the information contained in this article.

Public link

Please use the above public link if you want to share this noodl on another website.