Here are the most notable earnings call statements that happened this week!

Uber CEO, Dara Khosrowshahi on Free Cash Flow:

“Uber delivered another strong quarter with gross bookings and an annualized run rate of $116 billion, an all-time high; EBITDA of $364 million, another all-time high and well above our guidance range; and positive free cash flow for the first time ever of $382 million. Despite the uncertain global economic environment and considerable foreign exchange headwinds, we’ve issued Q3 EBITDA guidance that shows strong incremental progression, and we remain confident in our ability to deliver healthy top and bottom line growth, strong margin improvement and yes, free cash flow, all the while continuing to responsibly invest in technical innovation, earner satisfaction and durable long-term growth.”

AMD CEO Lisa Su on the Data Center Business:

“But from our current view, I think we have a strong opportunity to continue to grow the data center business into 2023. And our view is we have an expanding portfolio as well. In addition to Genoa, we have our Bergamo, which is a cloud optimized capability, as well that’s coming online early next year. So there’s a lot of new products that are supporting sort of our growth ambitions.”

“So as we look now into the second half of the year, what we’re seeing is, again, Data Center is strong. Again, we expect Data Center to grow second half to first half nicely.”

Paypal CEO Daniel Schulman on Growth:

“Venmo remains a key growth driver for our business with nearly 90 million active accounts, driving revenue growth in Q2 of more than 50%, with the revenues exceeding $100 million last month alone. We continue to see increased commerce transactions on Venmo with commerce volumes growing more than 250%.”

Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz on Customer Demand:

“Customer demand for specifically customized cold coffee beverages, a category Starbucks single-handedly created and is now expanding around the world, is so strong that cold beverages now account for roughly 75% of our total beverage sales in U.S. company-operated stores. Customers are increasingly customizing their cold beverages by adding modifiers that enable the creation of a virtually unlimited range of taste, flavor and color profiles and then sharing their unique cold beverage creations with the world through social media.”

CEO Brian Chesky on the Stock Buyback:

“In fact, we’re so confident in our long-term growth and profitability that today, we’re announcing a $2 billion share repurchase program. And this is coming only 1.5 years after our IPO.”

Block (SQ) CFO Amrtia Ahuja on Afterpay:

“In the second quarter, GMV for Afterpay was $5.3 billion, up 13% year-over-year or 65% on a 3-year CAGR basis. For overall growth trends, we’ve seen impacts from spend shifts from online to in-person, competitive dynamics as well as foreign currency, which slowed year-over-year GMV growth by 5 points. We’ve seen growth hold up better in our more mature regions like Australia, which is more diversified across discretionary and nondiscretionary verticals as well as in-person and online channels.Trends have slowed more in North America, a newer market for Afterpay, where the primary verticals of fashion and beauty are both discretionary retail and where the Afterpay in-person product is still ramping.”

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Here are some top statements from earnings calls this week!

Apple CFO, Luca Maestri on Product Revenue:

“..Revenue was $63.4 billion with a June quarter revenue record for iPhone. During the quarter, our installed base of active devices continue to grow well, thanks to our unmatched levels of customer satisfaction and loyalty and reached an all-time high for all major product categories and geographic segments. Our Services set a June quarter revenue record of $19.6 billion, up 12% over a year ago, with all-time revenue records in the Americas and the rest of Asia Pacific and June quarter records in Europe and Greater China.”

Apple CFO, Luca Maestri on Guidance:

“Overall, we believe our year-over-year revenue growth will accelerate during the September quarter compared to the June quarter despite approximately 600 basis points of negative year-over-year impact from foreign exchange. On the product side, we expect supply constraints to be lower than what we experienced during the June quarter. Specifically related to Services, we expect revenue to grow but decelerate from the June quarter due to macroeconomic factors and foreign exchange.”

Amazon CFO, Brian Olsavsky on Inflation:

“Inflationary pressures remained at elevated levels in Q2, similar to what we saw in Q1. These include pressures from higher fuel, trucking, air and ocean shipping rates, which we expect will continue into Q3. We made strides to improve fulfillment network productivity in Q2. Staffing levels were more in line with rising Q2 demand, and we saw better optimization of our fulfillment network. On the transportation side, we continue to improve delivery, route density and improve package deliveries per hour. We are encouraged by the progress during the quarter and see opportunity to further improve in the second half of the year.”

Amazon CFO, Brian Olsavsky on AWS:

“On the bridge to Q2 to Q3, so again, you have the — mentioned 3 items, ops improvement that we see of $1.5 billion and offsetting that is increased costs in AWS as we build out depreciation. We also are adding — continuing to add people in that space, product engineers, sales people, customer support. Speaking more broadly, we know AWS is a huge opportunity. It’s early days in the adoption curve for companies and governments. And we invest with that confidence in mind. And customers have responded and we’re going to keep investing there.”

General Motors CEO, Mary Barra on Demand:

“Our #1 goal right now is to get these battery plants up and get it launched because there is such strong demand for the products that we have, whether it’s the HUMMER or the LYRIQ and continuing — we’re seeing really good interest in the Bolt from a customer perspective. But as we get into next year with the Silverado EV, the Blazer EV, the Equinox EV and yet this year later, the SUV of the HUMMER, we’re busy getting everything ramped up. And then if one thing General Motors’ engineering team and manufacturing team knows how to do is take cost out, and we’ll do it.”

Alphabet CFO, Ruth Porat on Advertising:

“Network advertising revenues of $8.3 billion, were up 9%, driven by AdSense. The quarter-on-quarter deceleration in both YouTube and network advertising revenues primarily reflects pullbacks in spend by some advertisers.”

Alphabet CEO, Sundar Pichai on Cloud:

“Customers are choosing Google Cloud as their technology partner because of our leadership in 4 areas. First, we continue to lead in the data cloud market because we unify data lakes, data warehouses, data governance and advanced machine learning into a single platform that can analyze data across any cloud.”

Meta CEO, Mark Zuckerberg on the Metaverse:

“By helping to develop these platforms, we’re going to have the freedom to build these experiences the way that we and the overall industry believe will be best rather than being limited by the constraints that competitors place on us and on our community and on small businesses. And given some of the product and business constraints that we face now, I feel even more strongly now that developing these platforms will unlock hundreds of billions of dollars, if not trillions over time. This is obviously a very expensive undertaking over the next several years. But as the metaverse becomes more important in every part of how we live from our social platforms and entertainment to work and education and commerce, I’m confident that we’re going to be glad that we played an important role in building this.”

Mastercard CEO, Michael Meibach on Consumer Spending:

“In the U.S., what you are seeing is good strength across both, but a declining trend in terms of the growth rates on the lower income side of things. Affluent spend continues to be very healthy and carries on in a very nice way. Outside of the U.S., we’re not seeing much in the nature of a shift between now. the affluent category spending versus what the lower income category spending.”

McDonalds CFO, Kevin Ozan on Inflation:

“For the full year in the U.S., we expect roughly 12% to 14% inflation. It’s a little higher than that in the second quarter. likely a little higher than that in the third quarter. And then we expect to see it to moderate some in the fourth quarter. Obviously, that’s based on what we know today. that’s on food and paper. On the labor side, we’re probably seeing a little over 10% labor inflation right now. Part of that is we had strategic wage rate increases in our company-operated restaurants kind of mid last year. So we won’t start lapping those until the second half of the year. So more of that inflation was hit in the first half of the year than the second.”

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Communication Services Sector 

“We are well on track to our capital markets targets to take unit deployment costs down 25% on a like-for-like basis, inflation is not affecting us, we have long-term contracts.”

Timotheus Hottges, Deutsche Telekom AG – Chairman of Management Board, CEO & Member of the Data Privacy Advisory Board (February 2022)

“Nobody should like inflation at the levels we’re seeing in the United States right now. That approach or policy that ultimately doesn’t get that contained quickly is not going to be good for anybody, my company or any other company. And our focus right now as a country, our focus from a policy perspective, our focus on everything we should be doing is about getting that genie back in the bottle and dealing with in an aggressive way, it’s not healthy for anything.”

John T. Stankey, AT&T Inc. – CEO, President & Director (January 2022)

Industrials Sector 

“On the right-hand side, watch items have not changed since our last Capital Market Day: traffic recovery pace, obviously; recruitment and wage inflation; supply chain monitoring. And this is going to be, let’s say, the main watch items, I’d like to say: cost inflation; shortage of materials and components.”

Olivier Andries, Safran SA – CEO & Director (February 2022)

“Because when we talk about these inflationary pressures, we may have a supplier taking advantage of these capacity constraints to play the price card. We may just run out of access to a component.”

H. Lawrence Culp, General Electric Company – Chairman & CEO (February 2022)

“So we expect to be able to continue to leverage that pricing ability as we work through the inflationary challenges that we face in the new year.”

Michael F. Roman, 3M Company – Chairman & CEO (February 2022)

“And in a situation where inflation is popping up very quickly and to a very high number, that’s quite of a challenge”

Guillaume M.J.D Faury, Airbus SE – CEO & Executive Director (February 2022)

“And today, we believe we are able to secure trucks at a lower cost than the vast majority of the industry, both in an inflationary market on the right, and a deflationary market on the left.”

Lior Ron, Uber Freight LLC – CEO (February 2022)

“However, if we operate in a sustained higher inflation environment, it’s quite possible that the rate of that decline per unit will adjust to be a slightly less steep decline, which then is an effective relative price increase relative to the rate of decline we’ve had in the past..”

Erik Engstrom, RELX PLC – CEO & Executive Director (February 2022)

“As a leader, a technology leader, we are confident to balance cost inflation with pricing actions over time. All in all, this led to another excellent performance across all financial metrics.”

Roland Busch, Siemens Aktiengesellschaft – President, CEO & Member of Management Board (February 2022)

“I think it’s fair to say the single biggest pressure that the law firms face is that wage inflation.”

Stephen John Hasker, Thomson Reuters Corporation – President, CEO & Director (February 2022)

“The inflation that we’ve experienced in our Americas businesses and our U.S.-based businesses has been significantly higher than what we’ve seen in other markets around the world.”

Craig Arnold, Eaton Corporation plc – Chairman & CEO (February 2022)

“These swift pricing actions allow us to stay ahead of the inflation curve, driving a 5% increase year-over-year on top line and yielding approximately 50 basis points of margin expansions net of inflation.”

Darius E. Adamczyk, Honeywell International Inc. – Chairman of the Board & CEO (February 2022)

“Yes, it was a challenge in going into Q3 in North America and with the labor market, big volumes, component shortage and all that and also on the inflation of commodities and components and so on.”

Bjorn Klas Otto Rosengren, ABB Ltd – CEO (February 2022)

“As 2022 kicks off, we’re fully focused on recovering inflationary cost increases through our pricing programs and through the aggressive management of our cost structure.”

James C. Fish, Waste Management, Inc. – President, CEO & Director (February 2022)

“The external environment is challenging due to the ongoing impacts of the pandemic, labor tightness, upstream supply chain jams and rising inflation.”

Carol B. Tome, United Parcel Service, Inc. – CEO & Director (February 2022)

“As you know, we implemented price increases during 2021. We’re taking further action in 2022 with the intent to offset the impact of underlying inflation.”

D. James Umpleby, Caterpillar Inc. – Chairman of the Board & CEO (January 2022)

“While we expect to drive further efficiencies in 2022, our plan reflects the impact of increased inflation, any number of discrete strategic investment opportunities.”

James M. Foote, CSX Corporation – President, CEO & Director (January 2022)

Consumer Staples Sector 

“We continue to refresh our core portfolio. And while we’ve talked to you about this for several years, it becomes even more important during times of raw material inflation.”

Noel R. Wallace, Colgate-Palmolive Company – Chairman, CEO & President (February 2022)

“So we have inflation now across the board, but we’ve been dealing with inflation for many years in developing markets, and our revenue management toolkit is being very helpful over the years, but it’s almost like we are in a 2.0 version with data that we have in hand now.”

Michel Dimitrios Doukeris, Anheuser-Busch InBev SA/NV – CEO (February 2022)

“In addition, unprecedented levels of inflation across nearly all components of cost of goods and cost to serve necessitated multiple pricing actions across the industry, most of which lagged inflation in terms of timing in the market..”

Robert J. Gamgort, Keurig Dr Pepper Inc. – Executive Chairman, President & CEO (February 2022)

“So obviously, we’re dealing with a number of unknowns. Where exactly inflation is going? How much pricing we can get away with?”

Ulf Mark Schneider, Nestle S.A. – CEO, Member of Executive Board & Director (February 2022)

“We’re working closely with our suppliers to manage inflation, finding a few places where we can roll back prices, and we’re paying close attention to how we manage our opening price point items.”

C. Douglas McMillon, Walmart Inc. – President, CEO & Director (February 2022)

“And I think you have to recognize as well that the cost inflation pressures also hitting private label. So I think you’re going to see that too play itself out.”

Laxman Narasimhan, Reckitt Benckiser Group plc – Group CEO & Executive Director (February 2022)

“As we continue to take this quite assertive price increases, as we are saying in the context of very high generic consumer inflation, energy bills, the big question is, indeed, whether disposable incomes will be hit to the point that it will dampen overall consumer spend and beer spend as well.”

Rudolf Gijsbert Servaas van den Brink, Heineken N.V. – Chairman of the Executive Board & CEO (February 2022)

“Price elasticity is still strong in the U.S. There’s a lot of moving parts at the moment in terms of price of gas, employment and inflation and everything. I mean we’ll take it step by step.” 

Jack Marie Henry David Bowles, British American Tobacco p.l.c. – CEO, Member of Management Board & Director (February 2022)

“Further recovery in 2022 will be determined by macro factors, including overall consumer sentiment as well as supply chain challenges; labor shortages; and of course, the inflationary pressures and interest rates.”

James Robert B. Quincey, The Coca-Cola Company – Chairman & CEO (February 2022)

“2022 has started well. But the biggest challenge we’ll face this year is navigating a further step-up in input cost inflation… Pricing stepped up to its highest level in the decade as we responded to the significant inflation that we’re seeing across commodities and other input costs.”

Alan W. Jope, Unilever PLC – CEO & Executive Director (February 2022)

Health Care Sector 

“We have a formal inflation task force that we’ve established, with multiple different pillars within that and dedicated groups, working on everything from rethinking our logistics chain, and that includes looking at alternative shipping partners in a number of areas.”

Thomas E. Polen, Becton, Dickinson and Company – President, CEO & Chairman (February 2022)

“At this particular point in time, our book of business for 2022 is pretty much accomplished and part of ’23 is accomplished. But we’re building in some flexibility to reflect the inflationary pressures that might exist, and we’ll continue to work through those as we work through our contract portfolio with the different payers.”

Samuel N. Hazen, HCA Healthcare, Inc. – CEO & Director (January 2022)

“Another area, obviously, on the macro side is supply chains and inflation challenges that every company is facing, and obviously, kind of currency headwinds. So I’d say those are all challenges that are facing a lot of medtech companies, companies in health care, and quite frankly, a lot of companies outside of our sector.”

Robert B. Ford, Abbott Laboratories – Chairman of the Board, President & CEO (January 2022)

“We do see inflationary pressure on our own costs. Certainly, hospitals are going to be seeing it in their cost, labor costs and otherwise. And what that implies for us going forward, we’ll work to balance.”

Gary S. Guthart, Intuitive Surgical, Inc. – President, CEO & Director (January 2022)

Materials Sector 

“We had to absorb inflation and minimize the impact. We had, of course, to swallow EUR 2 billion increase in energy costs.”

Benoit Potier, L’Air Liquide S.A. – Chairman & CEO (February 2022)

“This was required to compensate for significant incremental costs from supply constraints and much high inflation pressure on our raw material and freight costs, discussed by close to 20% in the fourth quarter, nearly double the rate we saw in the third.”

Christophe Beck, Ecolab Inc. – President, CEO & Director (February 2022)

“However, I do have some concerns on the economic backdrop driven by continued COVID challenge, the impact of supply chain constraints, inflation, energy costs and geopolitical tensions.”

Seifollah Ghasemi, Air Products and Chemicals, Inc. – Chairman, President & CEO (February 2022)

“Even with the increase in consolidated sales, we were not able to fully overcome the impacts of raw material and other cost inflation, raw material availability and the Omicron variant in the year.”

John G. Morikis, The Sherwin-Williams Company – Chairman of the Board, President & CEO (January 2022)

Information Technology Sector 

“So I think, as Prashanth said, cost inflation, we’re in the post-Moore’s Law era, cost inflation, I think, is going to be a long-term facet of the economic dynamic of the semiconductor business. So I expect that cost increases will moderate, but there will be inflation, I think, for the medium to long term here.”

Vincent T. Roche, Analog Devices, Inc. – President, CEO & Director (February 2022)

“So I think that clearly, we have customers who are definitely trying to buy ahead of price increases.”

Charles H. Robbins, Cisco Systems, Inc. – Chairman & CEO (February 2022)

“So inflation is affecting our business in a different way than it would be the overall CPI. So if you have inflation expecting rent, while that’s generally not running through our rails to a large extent. So that could again be a very different picture. Taking all of that into account, fundamentally, notwithstanding the impact that inflation has that it could be negative on consumers, on businesses and so forth. There is an impact on GDV if it’s moderate inflation that would be showing in our numbers.”

Michael Miebach, Mastercard Incorporated – CEO, President & Director (January 2022)

“Further, we’d say, over time, we think we have a structurally superior margin model for our business where I think everybody is seeing acute inflation and foundry costs and others in the industry where our factory network will give us a lot more opportunities to create a more balanced cost structure that others in the industry will not be able to accomplish.”

Patrick P. Gelsinger, Intel Corporation – CEO & Director (January 2022)

Utilities Sector

“About half of our operating margin is automatically protected from inflation as a result of regulatory frameworks and contracts within the excess prices. And for the remainder, we expect market prices to reflect increase in cost. In addition, our major supply contract for 2022 are already closed with fixed or hedged prices protecting ourselves from any potential duration of price shock in the global supply chains.”

Jose Ignacio Sanchez Galan, Iberdrola, S.A. – Executive Chairman & CEO (February 2022)

“In terms of inflation, we are seeing labor inflation as the one thing I would point to.”

Lynn J. Good, Duke Energy Corporation – Chairman, President & CEO (February 2022)

Real Estate Sector 

“There are different types of price increases. We’re actually implementing some baseline, sort of new pricing for new deals because of a broader set of inflationary characteristics and a deep confidence in the value that we deliver to customers. Those I view as more structural. But then in other markets, there are more temporal pricing adjustments associated directly with the utility volatility. And I wouldn’t expect those to be permanent.”

Charles J. Meyers, Equinix, Inc. – President, CEO & Director (February 2022)

“The other thing is that I think if you’re uncertain about the inflation outlook, which is what a lot of the discussion is, is it inflation, is it supply chain, is it short term, is it long term, not a bad thing to own modestly leveraged real estate in an asset class that’s in the equilibrium, actually better than equilibrium, a couple of hundred basis points tighter than equilibrium, when you have replacement costs that give you that buffer. So we have the buffer of the mark-to-market in the 30% range that Tom talked about. But we also have the buffer of replacement costs going up, which Gene talked about. That’s just the future buffer that we haven’t started talking about yet.”

Hamid R. Moghadam, Prologis, Inc. – Co-Founder, Chairman & CEO (January 2022)

“We have escalators built into our contracts internationally. They’re largely driven tying to inflation. Our land, which is our biggest cost, has fixed escalators largely in the United States and again, kind of the same basis internationally. And our payer role is the next largest expense, which is somewhat controllable as well. So I don’t really look at the inflation as being — having a significant impact on our business.”

Thomas A. Bartlett, American Tower Corporation – President, CEO & Director (January 2022)

Energy Sector 

“We are confident EOG’s innovative and technology-driven culture can offset inflationary pressures this year.”

Ezra Y. Yacob, EOG Resources, Inc. – CEO & Director (February 2022)

“So what you’ve seen or what you hear from Joel is that we have very little exposure to inflation in terms of our operating costs.”

Francois Lionel Poirier, TC Energy Corporation – CEO, President & Director (February 2022)

“In procurement with developing long-term supply agreements, like we would have our long-term relationships, like we would have in the oil and gas business. So it’s one of the things that I think we’re working with them on to these frame agreements that we’ve traditionally used in oil and gas, to see if they can develop long-term relationships, Jason, there. So — and some of these megawatts that we’re flipping on at the moment look like they’re not being impacted by inflation prices. They seem to be very attractive.”

Bernard Looney, BP p.l.c. – CEO & Director (February 2022)

“Yes, we see some price inflation as well. Of course, most of the price inflation that is being talked about today is, of course, in cost of living and clearly driven also by energy prices. If you look into our supply chain, though, it’s a slightly different story. I think probably where we see most of the supply chain cost inflation is actually in the renewable space. So wind turbines, significantly up, but also battery costs, we see the raw materials there also being significantly affected by inflation and supply chain. That’s something that we are watching very carefully because, of course, quite often, you bid on projects where you have to take a view on how costs then subsequently will develop as well. And that’s probably the most significant part.”

Ben Van Beurden, Shell plc – CEO & Director (February 2022)

Financials Sector 

“But just to put it into context, it’s hard to predict how inflation will move forward over the next year or 2, but there’s likely to be inflation there.”

Noel P. Quinn, HSBC Holdings plc – Group CEO, Member of the Group Management Board & Executive Director (February 2022)

“And as you know, we have been very clear that we have believed that, particularly in Europe, interest rate policy and QE have been by far wrong because it was trying to drive certain effects that never materialized, higher investments and others. So now it’s really high time that we increase interest rates. We have minus 5% to 6% interest rates in Germany now, which is basically robbery of private people’s money and the forecast from the Central Bank will all wrong, right? So last year, they said there is no inflation, then the inflation would be very short, and then there was what now. People have come to recognize that it’s there… You can have very negative effects on spread widening that are unintended.”

Oliver Bate, Allianz SE – Chairman of the Management Board & CEO (February 2022)

“Rates. You’ve heard some of the rhetoric. We believe that rates will continue to trend above expected loss costs with an inflation buffer in there. We saw in the fourth quarter where there was concern and fear around Property, and Property turned back. And I call out not only to ourselves but to everybody on this call, how we thought there would be deceleration in 2021, but there was a respect in the industry and a reflection in the industry on inflation costs, and the market is reacting rationally to that. And we think that will continue into 2022.”

David Hughes McElroy, American International Group, Inc. – Executive VP & CEO of General Insurance (February 2022)

“We also think that scale matters everywhere in business. And there’s going to be continued consolidation, continued repositioning activity. And the environment that we’re shifting into, given we’re moving into an environment with probably above trend inflation for a period of time, actually is going to force companies to think about their strategic positioning differently, and we’ll benefit from that… Inflation has the risk of being a real headwind to growth.”

David Solomon, The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. – Chairman & CEO (February 2022)

“The only incremental color I’d give is, if anything, we’re seeing more interest in real assets with yield. So anything with some inflation protection, so think infrastructure and real estate. As we see inflation expectations go up, we’re finding even more interest in those asset classes.”

Scott C. Nuttall, KKR & Co. Inc. – Co-CEO & Director (February 2022)

“What are the uncertainties? Obviously, on the one hand, it’s the policy era in the sense that you wind up with massive increases in interest rates, which take economies into recession. We’ve not factored that into our outlook. At this point in time, though we think it’s unlikely, even if there are 7 or 8 rate hikes, that would take rates up to about 2% levels, and 2% levels are still manageable. If the Central Banks find that inflation is too sticky, and therefore, rates get back to 3%, 3.5%, 4% level, then that’s another story.”

Piyush Gupta, DBS Group Holdings Ltd – CEO & Executive Director (February 2022)

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Our head of research Nick Mazing was wrong (yet again). In a 2019 blog post, he declared that Pumpkin Spice is over. The blog looked at the earlier start and lower peak of “stacked” searches for pumpkin spice, as well as new products like the pumpkin spice-flavored SPAM selling out in hours, and stated, verbatim, “we declare that pumpkin spice is over.” 

Not so fast. 

Two years later, we can see that “stacked” search trends for pumpkin spice are trending very much in line with the record recent years (for more strong consumer trends, download our white paper with 39 Post-Pandemic Consumer Trends). 

Notably, the recent pattern (August start) is a major shift, versus the historical (pre-2010) trends. We can see that (1) the search volumes are much bigger, and (2) the peak is much earlier (vs. Thanksgiving). We left the 2021 trend for contrast to the 2004-2009 trends: not only is it spiking much earlier but it is also higher year-round. 

Using the Sentieo platform’s Document Search feature, we queried press release titles for mentions of pumpkin spice to assess the pumpkin spice-related product releases this year. (And, yes, stop using Ctrl-F: watch our Basic and Advanced Document Search webinars.)

The first one out of the gate was a public company, Laird Superfood (NYSE American: LSF), a recent SPAC transaction: the company’s core products are coffee creamers. We also spotted “the usual suspects”: Dunkin’ Brands with Pumpkin Cream Coldbrew, Keebler (Kellogg) with pumpkin spice fudge stripes, Peet’s Coffee, recent IPO Krispy Kreme (Nasdaq:DNUT), and others. Two products that stood out this year were Pumpkin Spice Cup Noodles from Nissin (yes, really), and Honey Baked Ham Company’s “early release” of Pumpkin Spice-glazed Turkey Breast.

Of course, the pumpkin spice “OG” Starbucks (Nasdaq:SBUX) is still going strong. We reviewed their transcripts going back to 2006 for comments. Below we have extracted a few illustrative quotes about the phenomenon. 

February 2006:

Last year’s seasonal and holiday favorites returned this year, beginning in the fall with the Pumpkin Spice platform. The continued success of Pumpkin Spice provided an excellent prelude to the November return of our great anticipated holiday offering Beverage Trio — peppermint, gingerbread and eggnog.

November 2006:

Beverages introduced during the fourth quarter included our new Frappuccino juice blends, offered in two popular flavors, pomegranate and tangerine, and the return of one of our highly anticipated seasonal flavors, pumpkin spice. The continued success of pumpkin spice provides an excellent prelude to the return of our popular holiday beverage trio, Peppermint Mocha, Gingerbread Latte, and Eggnog Latte.

November 2011:

Strong sales momentum coming into Q4 accelerated in September in response to our annual fall promotions featuring our Pumpkin Spice Latte and Salted Caramel Mocha, and Tazo Chai Tea beverage platforms, and our Anniversary Blend coffee. Pumpkin Spice Latte was a notable success, growing 44% over last year.

January 2013:

Also fueling our strong comp growth were our fall promotional beverages, headlined by pumpkin spice latte, combined with our always popular holiday beverage offerings.

October 2013: 10th year anniversary

Building on the strong summer sales in September, the Americas region kicked off for its fall promotional calendar, with what has become our most popular seasonal beverage ever, pumpkin spice latte. 2013 marks the 10th anniversary of PSL, with customers having purchased more than 200 million PSL beverages since launch. Despite the proliferation of knock-offs and copycats, sales of Starbucks PSL beverages are as strong as ever and once again exceeding expectations as customers continue to embrace the quality of the original Starbucks PSL.

November 2013:

We are continually, frankly, even amazed internally at its ability to keep driving its proposition, comping over itself every year, and, frankly, how it has become one of those iconic products that many of our customers measure the seasons by.

When Pumpkin Spice Latte hits it is fall, when the red cup comes into Starbucks stores it is time to think Christmas. We have actually become, in many of our cases, some of those iconic products that really signal things in people’s lives as we have become more pronounced.

October 2014:

With regard to products, it’s clear that over the last 10 years, we created a category that did not exist with Pumpkin Spice Latte. Having said that, PSL did very well for the season.

September 2020:

I think it just goes to show you that in the current environment, customers are looking for a taste of something familiar, something that helps them feel that they’ve returned to a sense of normalcy. And that’s what Starbucks as a brand represents for many customers, and that’s what a product like Pumpkin Spice represents for so many of our customers as well.

To learn more about how the Sentieo research platform can support your investment research workflow and outcomes, we invite you to request a demo.

The post Pumpkin Spice Isn’t Over appeared first on Sentieo.

No More Stranded Documents

Do you have…

• 5 years of an expensive industry weekly archived on your laptop?
• Powerpoint presentations from past conferences that you know are full of great data that you just can’t find?
• A decade’s worth of meeting minutes organized by topic?

While we are constantly adding more and more valuable documents to Sentieo (51 million and counting!), we realize that many of your most valuable documents are your own.  With a Box or Dropbox integration you can make these documents a part of your Sentieo workflow.  

Easy to Set Up, Seamless to Use

With a few clicks you can sync your existing Box or Dropbox folder structure with Sentieo, choose which of your existing documents to include, and configure the sync to automatically upload new files.  Tickers and tags can be added on import for easy searching and filtering.  

Once synced your folder structure and documents become a source in Sentieo’s Document Search.  Your documents are searchable using all of our query operators and categories, filterable by your folder structure, and ready to be highlighted and worked with in Notebook. 

For Sentieo users, step by step instructions can be accessed in the Support Center.

Contact us to learn more about putting the power of the Sentieo financial and corporate research platform to work in your organization.

The post Your Valuable Documents, Our Powerful Search appeared first on Sentieo.

What happened?  

We are still below from where we were in terms of the number of transcripts (monthly counts) that mention “bitcoin” versus the prior period of enthusiasm during the 2016-2018 price run-up (the red line below is the BTC price). 

We are also not seeing a big change in the composition of the companies discussing bitcoin. 

In our database, we see 284 transcripts with mentions of bitcoin during the “peak” 2017-2018 period. But only 52, or around 18%, of these are from companies with (current) market capitalizations of over $50 billion. 

This is roughly comparable to the proportion for the last 6 months, we see 15 transcripts from the large ($50 bn+) capitalization companies, versus 78 overall, or around 19%. 

But here is something that is very different from the prior surge: “nobody” talks about “blockchain” the underlying technology, any more. This indicates to us that the current surge in interest is heavily focused on the use of bitcoin as a currency. 

Bitcoin presents an interesting conundrum for corporations and investors alike. 

On one hand, the market in H2 2020 handily rewarded the pioneer in corporate bitcoin purchases Microstrategy (Nasdaq: MSTR), a 30-year old software company. Its market capitalization went from under $2 bn to as high as $12 bn, closely following the rise of bitcoin itself. 

Tesla’s recent move into BTC also made headlines: unlike MSTR, TSLA is not controlled by its founder/CEO, and is in the S&P 500 index. This is likely paving the way for future “household name” corporate adoptions as well as recent announcements around custody capabilities by some of the largest players in the space. 

But the interest (and reward) in indirect bitcoin plays is also probably partially due to the lack of a direct US-traded exchange traded product. We have seen very persistent premiums to NAV (Net Asset Value) for GBTC, a Closed End Fund holding BTC but without the standard ETP creation/redemption mechanism (in the chart below, we are estimating the GBTC NAV by multiplying BTC by the BTC/share amount of 0.00094898, and then subtracting it from the GBTC price). The most up-to-date premium/discount data is available on the GBTC website.

The accounting for a “regular” corporation holding BTC is fluid (we are quite certainly not accountants nor are we lawyers, so this is not advice: but do read this overview in CFO Magazine). While the article suggests that BTC is an indefinite-life intangible (so “no mark-ups”), the SEC says whether a crypto is a security “depends” while the IRS says it is “property.” 

Stepping back, we do wonder if it makes sense to “hodl” BTC if investors can do that relatively easily, and if BTC is a suitable treasury asset in terms of volatility: bitcoin did suffer a ~50% drawdown in March 2020 during the COVID selloff, and a ~75% drawdown during the 2018-2019 decline. 

We will leave you with a handful of selected comments from the recent calls.

Visa is positioning itself as the intermediary between cryptos and “the real world”.

GM, unlike fellow automarket Tesla, has no plans “full stop”.

CME has added Ether to its crypto futures products.

WETF is seeing inflows in its ETP mentioned above.

The early adopter MSTR is going all in.

If you have any questions about the Sentieo platform or would like to set up a free trial, please get in touch.

The post Bitcoin Re-emerges as a Topic in Q4 Conference Calls: Is It For Real This Time? appeared first on Sentieo.

We have been monitoring “The Big Four” social media companies (Facebook, Twitter, Snap Inc., and Pinterest) for a while. We published a very long and very bullish piece on Pinterest in Forbes shortly after the company’s IPO in May 2019. We specifically stated:

“To summarize our view, we see Pinterest as a unique advertising and potentially ecommerce property that has established a very attractive vertical, and is only now turning on the monetization “machine.” Valuation is not dissimilar to what we saw in early Facebook, but with substantially lower business risks: we know what works.”

Pinterest has more than quadrupled in price since then, from $20 to over $80. 

We have “the receipts” on Snap and Twitter as well: our co-founder and Chairman Alap Shah was interviewed in Barron’s in January 2019, expressing a bullish view on Snap (the stock has around 10x’ed since then). We covered Twitter in our July 2019 picks: the stock was at $35 then, and it is at over $70 now. 

Looking at the Q4 2020 reports, we continue to be positive on the space. 

In terms of overall revenues, all four had record quarters: in the data viz below, we have aligned the origins of the revenues of the companies (and moved Facebook to a left axis, since they are so much larger). We can see that both Pinterest and Snap are “above trend”, and Twitter’s revenue has inflected upwards. (Watch how to make this chart on YouTube)

(interactive chart link) 

In terms of reported revenue growth on a year-over-year basis, we can see that the COVID impact was very short-lived (and shallow, in the case of Facebook). Both Pinterest and Snap are at all-time or multi-year highs in revenue growth, while Facebook, despite its size, is still a 30% grower. Twitter has been below the group, however, we fully expect acceleration there as well with its improved ad stack, extensive new product innovation, and dramatically improved monetization. (Watch how to make revenue growth charts in seconds on YouTube)

(interactive chart link)

The Street estimates for strong revenue growth continue for 2021 as we can clearly see below. Even the 2022 numbers are in the 20-40%: revenue growth rates that would be the envy of non-tech companies everywhere. 

(interactive chart link)

To illustrate the striking contrast between the share gainers/new market players (FB TWTR SNAP PINS) and traditional advertising, we can look at how the FY2020 and FY2021 revenue estimates for Omnicom (NYSE:OMC), a “traditional” advertising agency, have been contracting for five straight years.

(interactive chart link) 

Even previously “safer” outdoor (billboard) advertising plays, like Clear Channel Outdoor (NYSE: CCO) have seen dramatic declines in revenue estimates.

(interactive chart link)

We are also seeing record KPI numbers. For example, below we have used our Table Explorer table chaining and visualization tool to show Snap’s daily active users (DAUs.) (watch how to use Table Explorer on Youtube) 

Pinterest, which reports monthly active users (MAUs), looks similarly steep.

Specifically for Pinterest, we can also see the constantly improving monetization (average revenue per user, or ARPU) over time, along with the big difference between U.S. (almost $6 in the last quarter) versus international (just $0.35 per user). The increased monetization is still a big part of the thesis there, as we had outlined almost two years ago, though more of it is priced in.

Digging into our Natural Language Processing (NLP) trending topics inside of the transcripts, we did notice the dramatic increase in mentions of Apple on Facebook’s calls (13 vs 0-2 most other quarters), along with the negative sentiment. (Read how to get company- and sector-level insights through our NLP technology here).

We also saw Apple’s iOS14 mentioned by Facebook in the Headwinds category around targeting.

For contrast, we can see WhatsApp mentions are frequent (around 10-20 per call) and consistently positive over time.

To get up to speed quickly on the issue, we decided to look across the four transcripts for Apple or iOS or IDFA. We immediately spotted that Facebook is by far the most active in discussing these changes.

Switching to our newly-released Snippet Summary view, we can read the conversations side-by-side. 

More specifically, the comments range from “modest impact” for Twitter and “keeping our eye on that” for Pinterest, to “sharing the stories of small businesses worried that Apple’s iOS 14 changes will hurt their ability to reach customers” from Facebook. As we know, the tension between Apple and Facebook has spilled to full-page newspaper ads.

We decided to dig deeper into the issue, and redline the 10-K language around the same term in these companies filings. (Watch how to redline any two SEC documents on YouTube)

In Facebook’s 10-K, we see added language around “third party policies”:

As well as additions to the targeting risk factor:

We see similar additions across Snap Inc.’s 10-K:

But the market overall seems more concerned about Facebook than the other three players (if we judge by looking at the returns over the last six months since the iOS changes were announced over the summer).

.

(interactive chart link)
If you have any questions about the Sentieo platform or would like to set up a free trial, please get in touch.

The post The Social Media “Big Four”: Secular Winners Back to Enviable Growth But The iOS Changes Loom Large appeared first on Sentieo.

With the great news from Pfizer and BioNTech regarding their COVID vaccine development on Monday, November 9, 2020, we observed major rotations in the equity markets. For example, several of the “Work From Home” names that we wrote about in February, well ahead of the March sell-off, were down double-digits on the news, including Zoom, Teladoc, and Peloton. 

On the other hand, we saw a major rebound in airlines: the JETS ETF was up 16%. We covered the very low sentiment across the industry’s transcripts using our NLP Sentiment Heatmaps in July 2020 (Airlines: Stuck at the Gate). 

Related to the reduction in “COVID risk”, in August the New York Times Dealbook featured our proprietary “COVID risk indicator”, the stock price ratio of Clorox to Dave and Buster’s: the indicator continues to work, as Dave and Buster’s finished the day up 33% while Clorox was down 11%. The ratio is now at around its March 9th, 2020 level. 

Given the importance of the vaccine news, the first thing that we looked at was the trend in transcripts with mentions of the terms vaccine or vaccines. We can clearly see the spike this year from a very low base (mostly healthcare companies discuss the topic pre-2020, and hopefully we return to this state soon). 

In our popular click-through Search Analytics page, we can see that Healthcare is the top industry that mentions vaccines over the last 2 years, Industrials is 2nd.

Clicking on Industrials to filer, we can see a more detailed breakdown of the sub-sectors.

Continuing our research on vaccine comments across industries, we utilized many of Sentieo’s standard AI (NLP and ML) tools that help users save time and gain insights every day:

• Our newly released SEC filings Section Redlining (see the 4-min video tutorial here), 
• Our Transcript NLP Heatmaps (see us using the heatmaps and spotting the strength in housing early in Q2 2020) and Trending Term identification,
• The word clouds in our Transcript NLP Smart Summaries (see them applied to Clorox, Six Flags, and UPS as we tried to make sense during the tumultuous Q1 2020), and
• Our one-click ML-based filings table identification, chaining, visualization, and export tool Table Explorer (one of several tutorials on our YouTube channel)

In our Q3 2020 coverage, we previously looked at the big banks and at the Office/Diversified REITs/ state of the return to the office.  

SEC Filings Section Redlining 

We saw added vaccine language across filers when we applied our new Section Redlining Heatmaps: we use this type of linguistic intelligence to look for quantitative factors that can influence stock price performance in a return to a (new) normal.  

In the example below, we can see that AvalonBay, a high-density urban residential REIT, added language specifically about vaccines in their latest Risk Factors: the company does not expect pre-pandemic NOI (Net Operating Income) levels before a widely available vaccine. 

We saw added language around vaccines and treatments in Marriott’s latest 10-Q among the most important factors influencing the company. 

Restaurant franchisor YUM! Brands (parent of KFC, Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, and The Habit) also added vaccine timeline to its Risk Factors. 

Transcript NLP Heatmaps

We saw the vaccine news picked up as a topic in our NLP Heatmaps. For example, mall landlord (and, now, owner of several retail chains) Simon Property Group has seen the overall sentiment improve QoQ, and welcomed the vaccine news while cautioning on the ongoing spike in cases.

Trending Terms

We see Vaccine as the top trending term for Norwegian Cruise Lines, as the call happened after the Pfizer news: RCL and CCL, comps that reported earlier, did not have the term. Easily comparing the trending terms among direct competitors can alert users to changes in industry conditions. 

Transcript NLP Smart Summary Word Clouds

Using the word clouds, we can get a more visual extended version of the trending terms. We can see Vaccine really dominating the word cloud for Norweigian Cruise Line Holdings’ latest transcript. 

We also see Vaccine emerging in the word clouds for Deutsche Post and aircraft finance company Aercap NV. 

Table Explorer: one-click table identification, chaining and visualization

Finally, we used our machine learning-based table identification, chaining, extraction and visualization tool Table Explorer: the rapid visualization of any line item (including amounts, change, and common size) is an indispensable tool for analysis. 

We spotted added vaccine language in JetBlue’s latest 10-Q using our “classic” redlining.

To assess the potential impact, below we have chained the main KPI table in JetBlue’s latest 8-K filing. In the first image, we are displaying the Revenue Passenger Miles and the Available Seat Miles. In the second chart, we have converted the metrics to YoY% change, and we are visualizing the passenger count drop-off in the integrated mini-plotter. 

Be sure to register for our upcoming earnings season webinar where you will see more of our analysis live. If you have any questions about the Sentieo platform or would like to set up a free trial, please get in touch.

The post Using AI to Analyze Key Themes This Earnings Season: Vaccine Comments Across Industries appeared first on Sentieo.

We have been tracking the “return to the office” trends across filings, transcripts, and macro data since the summer. In July, we were mentioned on CNBC regarding the Wall Street banks and their plans. In September, we wrote about the “return to the office” vs. the data pointing to a “femcession” in Forbes: this trend was later confirmed in early October, when we looked at the latest labor force participation rate for women. The fundamentals have not changed: things will not be back to the “old normal” nor will they be near the “new normal” until schools and after-schools are fully open, regardless of vaccine developments.

With that in mind, we decided to see what the Office REITs are saying about this topic. Another reason why we wanted to look at the Office REITs is that while collections might be going as contracted now, the market is forward-looking and trying to assess lease roll-offs, so bank exposure to the office CRE class will be a bigger topic. We covered the big bank earnings last week. 

For this blog post, we will utilize many of Sentieo’s standard AI (NLP and ML) tools that help users save time and gain insights every day:

– Our newly released SEC Filing Section Redlining (see the 4-minute video tutorial here)

– Our Transcript NLP Heatmaps (see us using the heatmaps and spotting the strength in housing early in Q2 2020) and Trending Term identification
– The word clouds in our Transcript NLP Smart Summaries^TM (see them applied to Clorox, Six Flags, and UPS as we tried to make sense during the tumultuous Q1 2020)
– Our one-click ML-based filings table identification, chaining, visualization and export tool Table Explorer (one of several tutorials on our YouTube channel)

What we saw across the comments and filings from the Office REITs is:

• Slow pace of return for most markets: sub-25% seems to be the norm 
• Only natsec/defence seems to be close to “normal” 
• Collections are OK, however plenty of color points to clients reducing or planning to reduce footprint 

In this blog post, we are going to cover Corporate Office Properties (NYSE:OFC), Office Properties Income Trust (Nasdaq: OPI), Washington REIT (NYSE: WRE), Boston Properties (NYSE: BXP), SL Green Realty (NYSE: SLG), Vornado (NYSE:VNO), Empire State Realty Trust (NYSE:ESRT), Cousins Properties (NYSE:CUZ), Brandywine Realty Trust (NYSE: BDN), Easterly Government Properties (NYSE:DEA), and Alexander & Baldwin (NYSE: ALEX)

By using our tools, we can spot changes, inflections, and trends in seconds, instead of spending hours reading. 

SEC Filings Section Redlining Heatmap

We are looking at the Section Redlining Heatmap for OFC. We can see that there have been increases in the Risk Factors section over the last three quarters: this is true for most filers as we saw a lot of COVID-related language make its way in the documents. 

Clicking on the newest Risk Factors section, we bring up the side-by-side view along with the comparison, and we can immediately spot the new language around “more gradual”, “extended easing”, “continue to be hindered”, “reluctance”, and so on.

In OPI’s newest Risk Factors, we see a detailed breakout (footage and rent percentages) on tenants with currently exercisable rights for lease terminations.

Transcript NLP Heatmaps

We saw sentiment improving across categories in the transcript: there is more “green”.

WRE Transcript NLP Heatmap

BXP Transcript NLP Heatmap

BXP Transcript NLP Heatmap detail: we can see comments on store re-openings as well as the current building utilization in Manhattan (15%). 

Again with BXP, we picked up “well under 15%” building census in Northern Virginia.

And, predictably, the pace of the recovery and the new highs in COVID cases are picked up as a negative.

In the peer comparison view for BXP (Transcript Peer Comparison: Third Quarter 2020), we can spot sentiment deviations across peers. 

We can then explore the “reddest” comments from a peer.

With the “side by side” details, we spot a comment from SLG on employees feeling disconnected and frustrated by the isolation.  

Finally, the Empire State Building owner, ESRT, is seeing sub 15% utilization in Manhattan, versus 45-55% in the NYC suburbs (elsewhere, we saw that now is a great time to visit the Empire State Building Observatory: visitors are at 6% of last year’s counts). 

The post Using AI to Find the Key Themes This Earnings Season: Office REITs Hurt by Slow Return to the Office appeared first on Sentieo.

With the large U.S. banks’ results already out this earnings season, we decided to take a look at what we can extract using the AI (NLP and ML) technology built into our platform. We focused on the larger banks as their “live view” into the economy provides critical insight during periods of uncertainty.

For our analysis, we utilized many of Sentieo’s standard tools that help users save time and gain insights every day:

• Our newly released SEC filings Section Redlining (see the 4-min video tutorial here)
• Our Transcript NLP Heatmaps (see us using the heatmaps and spotting the strength in housing early in Q2 2020) and Trending Term identification
• The word clouds in our Transcript NLP Smart Summaries (see them applied to Clorox, Six Flags, and UPS as we tried to make sense during the tumultuous Q1 2020)
• Our one-click ML-based filings table identification, chaining, visualization, and export tool Table Explorer (see one of several tutorials on our YouTube channel)

What we saw across the industry was:

• Optimism around credit quality (driven by declining unemployment, stimulus programs, and other factors): we picked up terms like “reserve release”
• Strong housing markets: we see terms like “home lending”  
• Broad uncertainty around the recovery: a lot of mentions of “crisis” and related terms 
• Regulatory conversations

We also picked up a number of company-specific topics that we will go over, like U.S. Bank’s purchase of the State Farm card portfolio. 

For the examples below, we focus on the largest U.S. banks by assets: JPMorgan Chase (NYSE:JPM), Bank of America (NYSE:BAC), Citigroup (NYSE:C), Wells Fargo (NYSE:WFC), and U.S. Bancorp (NYSE:USB), as well as some other well-known financials, like American Express (NYSE:AXP) and Discover (NYSE:DFS).   

Most importantly, by using the tools in the Sentieo platform, we can spot changes, inflections, and trends in seconds, instead of spending hours reading. 

SEC Filings Section Redlining

Pulling up our Section Redlining for DFS, we can see some updates in the MD&A and in the Notes to Financial Statements section. Also spot the 100% just in the Q1 Risk Factors: most filers were adding COVID language at that time. 

Looking through the MD&A, we can see added language around the Federal Reserve, as well as borrower relief (“Skip A Pay”) program updates. 

Looking through the changes in the MD&A for AXP, we see the recurring theme: improved credit performance but continued uncertainty. 

Transcript NLP Heatmaps 

We saw sentiment improving across most categories. Looking at JPM below, we can see that while the last three transcripts have been “redder” than normal (going back five years), we see overall sentiment improving for two quarters in a row. 

Clicking specifically on the business drivers, we can see why: investment banking and capital markets revenue is up, record asset/wealth management revenue, and they’ve taken over the #1 spot in U.S. retail deposits. 

We also used our clickable/expandable Peer Comparison Heatmap (here shown for USB) as we like the ability to “graze” information on one screen. 

Trending Terms

For JPM, we saw the “reserve release” that really dominated the headlines when they reported, alongside deposit growth (we picked up their move to #1 as shown above), as well as macro and regulatory language. Users can simply click on a trending term to convert to a search. 

For BAC, the EPS number was affected by litigation expenses. Similar to JPM, we also saw regulatory and macro terms. 

For WFC, we saw more heavy emphasis on the regulatory language: for example, the asset cap that the company is currently subject to. 

For C, we see an interesting mix: new CEO (first woman CEO of a major Wall Street Bank), global operations (FX and geographic terms), and some specific regulatory actions from the Fed and the OCC related to internal risk and controls that we expect will be resolved shortly. 

For USB, the big State Farm credit card portfolio transaction really dominated the results. 

Transcript NLP Smart Summary Word Clouds 

Using word clouds, we get a more visual extended version of the trending terms. For USB, we can really see the State Farm card acquisition being front and center, along with macro terms (unemployment rate, interest rate environment) and sector exposure (i.e., Lodging).

For C, we can see the new CEO name, as well as the regulatory issues that are relevant. 

Table Explorer: One-click table identification, chaining and visualization

Finally, we used our machine learning-based table identification, chaining, extraction, and visualization tool Table Explorer to see some reported KPIs. We started with our in:table search function for VaR (Value at Risk) in JPM’s 8-Ks.

We then clicked on the Table Explorer button above the table we want to chain. 

And we can see that the VaR, while higher than previously, has come down from its Q2 peak. 

Table Explorer also allows for one-click conversions to Common size, YoY%, and QoQ% changes. For example, here is USB Table Chaining from 8-Ks for their Investment Securities line item YoY% change. 

Keep an eye out for additional earnings season highlights over the next couple of weeks. If you have any questions or would like to set up a free trial, please get in touch.

The post Using AI to Find the Key Themes This Earnings Season: U.S. Banks Seeing Stable Performance but Uncertain Recovery in Q3 2020 appeared first on Sentieo.

Sentieo’s industry-leading Document Search has had SEC filings redlining (also known as “blacklining”) for years. It lets users compare any two SEC filings in several ways: all changes, just the inserts, or just the numbers. We also have productivity enhancers, like “hover overs” that show the old vs. new text side-by-side, or “most logical” documents to redline against (like the prior 10-Q or the “same” 10-Q YoY).

Redlining to spot changes is essential for anyone reading filings, including equity analysts, SEC reporting teams, securities regulators, comp intel professionals, as well as financial journalists (i.e., see our redlining in action in the Financial Times, looking at the changes in Tesla’s 10-K, filed earlier this year). 

But redlining is also inherently limiting because it compares only two documents: until now. With Sentieo’s newly-released Section Redlining (accessible both in the Menu dropdowns and in the classic Redlining in-doc menu), users can now compare changes, on one screen, in document sections for:

• Single companies across time 
• Multiple companies and watchlists, based on the latest filings

This new function will save users time as changes, by section, can now be spotted in a second. Users can also see the trends in disclosures over the years (i.e., is there more language in the Litigation section?). This means less time looking for where the changes are, and more time reading to assess their materiality. 

The navigation allows for “side by side” readings of “old” vs “new” vs. “changes” in the same panel. And, in more detail, the shading of the cell indicates more (darker) vs fewer (lighter) changes, while the number indicates the net change in words in the section. The 10-Qs are compared against the prior 10-Q, and the 10-Ks are compared against the prior 10-K. 

Let’s look at some examples. 

This is a single-company view for Pilgrim’s Pride (NYSE:PPC), a poultry producer. We can see very consistent increases over time in both the Risk Factors and the Legal Proceedings. And for a good reason: the US poultry industry has been involved in multiple litigation proceedings regarding an alleged price-fixing cartel. Logically, we would expect to see exactly these disclosures grow over time. PPC just settled with the DOJ last week, and its then-current CEO was indicted in June, while the prior CEO was indicted in October. Further, PPC’s controlling shareholders were fined over a quarter billion dollars for FCPA violations in Brazil by both the DOJ and the SEC. Hopefully, with the worst behind the company, we will see these sections shrink in the future.

Now that we have spotted the 48% increase in Risk Factors language in the Q2 2020 10-Q filing, we can just click on the cell to read what was added. 

We can easily see that there was a whole new Risk Factor added quarter-over-quarter regarding legal proceedings, including the indictment of the then-CEO. 

We can also read whole sections, across 10-Qs and 10-Ks, on a side-by-side basis.

We can compare changes in the latest filings between companies as well. Here we are looking at the latest from PPC vs Sanderson Farms (Nasdaq SAFM), another poultry company. We can see that the Legal Proceedings section there has expanded as well. 

We can see what happened with SAFM just like we showed with PPC above, but we can also see the Legal Proceedings section of PPC and SAFM side-by-side. This is particularly useful in this case, as both companies are defendants in many of the same proceedings.

Another interesting thing that we spotted while using the new function was when we compared Home Depot (NYSE:HD) to Lowe’s (NYSE:LOW). We spotted right away that the normally “sleepy” Controls and Procedures section had a big update from HD.

Clicking on that cell, we read that, due to COVID, HD suspended temporarily physical inventory counts, and is using modeling instead.

Finally, we can compare the changes in the latest filings for entire watchlists. All that Sentieo users need to do is enter the name of their watchlist, and then see the comparisons.

Here we are bringing in the six S&P 500 Household and Personal Care stocks: Estee Lauder, Clorox, P&G, Church and Dwight, Colgate, and Kimberly Clark. 

One thing that we can spot right away is that three out of the six have a June FYE: this is why we are seeing the 10-Ks as the most recent K/Q filing. 

The navigation here is the same as the prior example with the two companies. 

In this four-minute video below, we go over the examples “live” to demonstrate the navigation and speed of the new feature. 

If you’d like to see how the Sentieo platform can help you and your colleagues can expedite peer and sector research, contact us to set up a free trial.

The post See More in Less Time with Sentieo’s New Section Redlining for SEC Filings appeared first on Sentieo.