Publications

May 2019
Article

Who Consumes Firm Disclosures? Evidence from Earnings Conference Calls

By: Anne Heinrichs, Jihwon Park and Eugene F. Soltes

Using a set of proprietary records, we examine who consumes quarterly earnings conference calls and under which circumstances the calls are consumed. While there is significant interest in calls by institutional investors and sell-side analysts, we find that investors... View Details

Keywords: Disclosure; Conference Calls; Firm News; Corporate Disclosure; Business Earnings; Situation or Environment

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Companies: conference call transcripts

Where can I find transcripts of conference calls? Bloomberg On the single security main menu type EVT then hit GO for a calendar of corporate events. Check for audio and/or transcripts of earnings calls. Capital... View Details

September 2015
Article

Speaking of the Short-Term: Disclosure Horizon and Managerial Myopia

By: Francois Brochet, Maria Loumioti and George Serafeim

We study conference calls as a voluntary disclosure channel and create a proxy for the time horizon that senior executives emphasize in their communications. We find that our measure of disclosure time horizon is associated with capital market pressures and executives'... View Details

Keywords: Short-termism; Management Styles; Disclosure; Conference Calls; Investing; Earnings Management; Motivation and Incentives; Management Style; Forms of Communication

01 Mar 2005
News

Dean’s Conference Call Spotlights HBS Global Initiative

will play an increasingly important role aiding faculty in “creating new intellectual capital that spans the world in scope and impact,” Dean Kim B. Clark told HBS alumni who dialed into his January 11 conference call. Clark used the... View Details

Keywords: Colleges, Universities, and Professional Schools; Educational Services

07 Nov 2012
Working Paper Summaries

Causes and Consequences of Linguistic Complexity in Non-US Firm Conference Calls

Keywords: by Francois Brochet, Patricia Naranjo & Gwen Yu; Accounting

Working Paper

Private Lending and Preferential Treatment in Earnings Conference Calls

By: Xinlei Li, Tianshuo Shi and Christopher Williams

2016
Working Paper

Managers' Cultural Background and Disclosure Attributes

By: Francois Brochet, Gregory S. Miller, Patricia Naranjo and Gwen Yu

We examine how a manager’s ethnic cultural background affects managers’ communication with investors. Using a sample of earnings conference calls transcripts with 26,430 executives from 42 countries, we find that managers from ethnic groups that have a more... View Details

Keywords: Disclosure Tone; Individualism; Conference Calls; Ethnic Group; Management Style; Communication Intention and Meaning; Ethnicity; Corporate Disclosure; Financial Reporting

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July 2016
Article

The Capital Market Consequences of Language Barriers in the Conference Calls of Non-U.S. Firms

By: Francois Brochet, Patricia L. Naranjo and Gwen Yu

We examine how language barriers affect the capital market reaction to information disclosures. Using transcripts from the English-language conference calls of non-U.S. firms, we find that the calls of firms in countries with greater language barriers are more likely... View Details

Keywords: Voluntary Disclosure; Capital Market Consequences; Non-plain English; Spoken Communication; Complexity; Capital Markets; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues

2022
Working Paper

Passing the Mic: Career and Firm Outcomes of Executive Interactions

By: Wei Cai, Ethan Rouen and Yuan Zou

We exploit a unique feature of conference calls to study one type of interaction among executives—directly inviting colleagues to respond to analysts’ questions. We find that the frequency of initiating interaction is positively associated with an executive’s ability,... View Details

Keywords: Conference Calls; CEO Succession; Executive Interactions; Promotion; Interpersonal Communication; Personal Development and Career; Retention

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26 Mar 2013
News

A Bear Call on Bullish Analysts

02 Dec 2013
Research & Ideas

Companies Choreograph Earnings Calls to Hide Bad News

The quarterly earnings conference call is a traditional way for public companies to disclose information regarding performance and strategy from the prior quarter. Wall Street analysts and other company... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna; Financial Services

Earnings Call that get Lost in Translation

Does the form in which financial information is presented have consequences for the capital markets? The authors examine the level of linguistic complexity of more than 11,000 conference call transcripts from non-US firms between 2002 and 2010.... View Details

Article

Creating Firm Disclosures

By: Amir Amel-Zadeh, Alexandra Scherf and Eugene F. Soltes

Managers expend significant time and effort preparing disclosures about firm performance and strategy. Although prior literature has explored how variation in the style and presentation of disclosures impacts investors' perceptions of firms, little is known about how... View Details

Keywords: Disclosure; Earnings Conference Call; Field Study; MD＆A; Textual Analysis; Corporate Disclosure

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17 Apr 2013
Research Event

Conference Challenges Gender Conventions

A recent conference at Harvard Business School addressed the on-the-ground reality of women leaders 50 years after the first women were admitted to the School's two-year MBA Program. And the reality is that women leaders are stuck—for... View Details

Keywords: by Maggie Starvish

26 Apr 2016
Video

YALP16 Chattanooga Video Conference

16 Sep 2013
Research & Ideas

Earnings Calls That Get Lost in Translation

chose to host conference calls in English, placing themselves on shaky linguistic ground. The recent working paper Capital Market Consequences of Non-Plain English in View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

01 Apr 2022
Blog Post

The Africa Business Conference at HBS: Reimagining the Road Ahead

"Alone, I am nothing, I have nothing. We have power, but we will never see it work, unless we come together to make it work." - Ayi Kwei Armah, The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born Ayi's exquisite words summarize my reflections from the recently concluded Africa... View Details

Summer 2013
Article

A Tale of Two Stories: Sustainability and the Quarterly Earnings Call

By: Robert G. Eccles and George Serafeim

One of the challenges companies claim to face in making sustainability a core part of their strategy and operations is that the market does not care about sustainability, either in general or because the time frames in which it matters are too long. The response of... View Details

Keywords: Sustainability; Communication; Integrated Corporate Reporting; Investment; Environmental Sustainability