Earning Calls Are a Necessary Evil
Like them or hate them, earnings calls help investors make more informed decisions, spot opportunities, and identify risks. Here's 5 tips for evaluating transparency, mastering engagement, and delivery of quality information.
R&R: Listen to the signals, track performance over proceeding quarters. Make note of benchmarks - a change could be innocuous, or it could be used to hide a larger issue. The earnings report is usually available prior to the call. Look through it and come prepared with questions.
Listen: Don’t focus just on the words said by the C-Suite - listen to their tone. When potential volatile issues arise, watch how they respond and note word choice. Are they nervous and gloss over the issue, or do they sound confident and address it head on? Their approach could foreshadow future performance.
Ask: Management wants engagement and welcomes clarification, if they’ve prepped accordingly. Use your investor lens to filter out the corporate speak and extract what’s important.
Break the ice. Reach out to Graham Farrell (Graham.Farrell@Harbor-Access.com) [in Canada] or Jonathan Paterson (Jonathan.Paterson@Harbor-Access.com) [in the US] to start a conversation.
