Earnings Calls: Get in the Room with Management

An earnings call, also known as a conference call, is a session where the top executives of a publicly traded company discuss the financial results of a reporting period. These calls usually involve a presentation by the company's management followed by a Q&A session with analysts. Not only do earnings calls help investors and analysts to understand the financial health of a company, they also offer an invaluable opportunity to gauge the management’s perspective, confidence, and future strategies.

• Earnings calls and transcripts offer investors and analysts a deeper dive into a company's financial results and provide insights into the management’s perspective, confidence, and future plans.

• Earnings calls are open to the public, promoting transparency as both institutional and individual investors have simultaneous access to the same information.

• The Quartr Mobile App provide an easy and convenient way to access earnings calls, transcripts, reports, and slides. It features adjustable speeds, searchable transcripts, and notifications for when a call is going live, ensuring investors stay updated.

• Earnings calls and transcripts are not just about financial results; they serve as an opportunity to understand the company's narrative shaped by its management. It helps in comprehending the company's performance as well as the strategies and visions for the future. It’s like being in the room with management, gaining firsthand knowledge of their outlook.

An earnings call is typically held quarterly by companies, following the release of their financial reports. This call provides an opportunity for the management team, usually including the CEO, CFO, and other high-ranking officials, to walk shareholders, investors, analysts, and media representatives through the company's performance in the recent financial quarter. The agenda of the call commonly starts with a presentation of the financial results and concludes with a question-and-answer session.

An important aspect of earnings calls is the opportunity they provide for understanding management’s strategic vision. Executives often share “more color” on future goals, growth strategies, expansion plans, and product developments during the calls. Also, they often provide an outlook for the company’s performance in the upcoming quarters.

Additionally, earnings calls allow for a valuable two-way communication channel between the company and its stakeholders. During the Q&A session, analysts have the opportunity to seek clarification and ask questions about the reported results or the company strategy.

Whether to buy stocks before or after an earnings call depends on various factors such as your risk appetite, market expectations, and the company’s historical performance during earnings season. While some investors consider purchasing before an earnings call to potentially capitalize on positive news, others may prefer to wait until after the call to make more informed decisions based on the information disclosed.

However, timing the market is a tricky task. Often, you fare better by thoroughly understanding the long-term potential of the company in which you're investing. As legendary investor and author Peter Lynch puts it, 'Far more money has been lost by investors trying to anticipate corrections than lost in the corrections themselves.' To illustrate, a $10,000 investment in the market over the past 20 years would have grown to $64,842 if you were continuously invested. But if you attempted to time the market and missed the best 30 days, it would have grown only to $11,702.

Through the Quartr Mobile App and Web App, you gain access to earnings reports and slides along with earnings calls in a podcast-like format, both live and in replay, at adjustable speeds. Quartr also provides fully searchable transcripts and personalized notifications, ensuring you never have to refresh an investor relations page again. This user-friendly interface is designed to make the process of staying updated with your investments more convenient than ever.

Listening to earnings calls is very simple. As mentioned before, Quartr offers an exceptional platform to access these calls via mobile and web. By providing earnings reports, slides, calls and transcripts, in a podcast-like format with adjustable speeds, Quartr ensures that you get the most out of each call.

Yes, earnings calls are open to the public. Any interested individual can listen to these calls, and the open-door policy encourages transparency and allows investors, both big and small, to have access to the same information at the same time.

The length of earnings calls can vary, but they typically last between one hour to ninety minutes. The initial portion of the call is reserved for the company’s presentation, and the remaining time is devoted for the Q&A session with analysts.

Earnings call transcripts are transcribed versions of the conference call, providing a chance to review the earnings call at your own pace. The possibility of returning to points of interest or confusion, is also something that can be preferred considering they often contain complex financial details. Highlights in Quartr is especially useful when you do your transcript reading, and you can use the feature when listening to earnings calls, investor days, and M&A announcements, and simply highlight and save the parts you want to recall, for instance something specific that you want to follow up on in the next quarter.

Earnings calls and transcripts also enable you to scrutinize the language used by management. This can sometimes reveal more about the business and its operations than numerical data alone. Moreover, if you miss the live call in Quartr, you can easily replay it at adjustable speeds, or opt to read and search through the earnings call transcript.

Going through historical earnings calls can offer a rich perspective on a company’s trajectory, casting a light on how its strategy has evolved over time and how it has responded to various challenges and opportunities. But where can you find these old earnings calls? The Quartr database has a backlog of earnings calls, capital market days, M&A announcements, and investor conferences from 9,000+ publicly listed companies, everything available in both our Mobile App and Web App.

Earnings calls and earnings call transcripts are not just about the numbers. They also help you understand the company's narrative, as shaped by its management. Through earnings calls, management communicates not just how the company has performed but also their strategies and vision for the future. So, next time an earnings call is scheduled for a company you are invested or interested in, make sure you follow the company on Quartr and enable notifications so you never miss when a call or transcript is available. It’s like being in the room with the management, and that’s an opportunity too good to miss.