Detailed Description

Research question

InFineac is a Python package that extracts financial insights from earnings calls by categorizing them into a range of topics using NLP. These topics give an indication about the focus of the earnings call and the respective company. Although these insights might be used for a plentitude of tasks, this project centers around the following question: How are companies effected by the Russian invasion into the Ukraine?

Earnings Calls

Earnings calls are conference calls conducted by publicly traded companies with their shareholders, investors, analysts, and the general public to discuss their financial performance for a specific period - typically held quarterly. These calls usually take place shortly after the release of the company’s quarterly financial reports.

During an earnings call, key members of the company’s leadership, such as the CEO, CFO or other executives, provide insights and analysis about the company’s financial results, operations, strategies, and any other relevant developments. They often cover topics like revenue, net income, expenses, margins and forward-looking guidance and plans for the upcoming quarter or year.

The earnings call is a key source of information for investors, as it provides insights into the company’s financial performance and future prospects.

Data

The data used in this project stems from transcripts of earnings calls provided by Refinitiv The data is not publicly available and has to be purchased from Refinitiv Events.

Structure

The transcripts are provided as xml-files, with each xml-file containing the entire transcript of a single earnings call as well as some metadata, covering an unique ID, the title of the earnings all, the company name and ticker, the name of the city, where the earnings call was held, the date and time of the call as well as some other technical information. The transcript itself is structured into two three parts:

• List of participants, the company they are working for and their respective position within that company. The list is divided into corporate and conference call participants.

• Presentation

• Q&A

Both the presentation and the Q&A session are structured into parts, which are comprised of the speaker (name, company and position) and the corresponding text. The presentation is held by the corporate participants. In the Q&A session, the corporate participants answer questions from the conference call participants. Most of the times an operator moderates the presentation as well as the Q&A session.