The season all Wall Street professionals hate is earnings season.

It’s also the only season that comes four times a year! 

S&P 500 companies report results every three months, typically two to six weeks after the quarter ends. Most report before the market opens or after the close to avoid charges of manipulation. It starts with a press release followed by a conference call. 

It can take a month for the CEO, PR and IR teams to prepare for that elaborate dance.

And yet, as challenging it is for companies, it’s 500 times worse for the analysts at brokerages and financial reporters covering the results, many of which occur on the same day and even at the same time. 

The big platforms — FactSet, Bloomberg and LSEG Workspace — have everything investors need at a price. But even they aren’t optimized to handle the specific problem that it all happens in such a small window. 

There are surprisingly few tools built to address this onslaught. Thomas Li at Daloopa has built software that automatically updates analyst models. Andrew Meister at DoTadda has a nifty tool that summarizes results and allows analysts to ask wide ranging questions. 

At Pricing Culture, my co-founder Bhargav and I, are getting into the game by providing a feed summarizing press releases, filings and conference calls in a standardized format optimized for a financial professional. 

We ingest the press releases and filings to extract data points, such as earnings. Then, leveraging AI, we create a table with key financial data, along with the names of the executive leadership, management comments and actionable takeaways. We repeat the process for conference calls. 

One of the things I learned in my previous role as Bloomberg’s Global Head of News Product was the value of curating, organizing and formatting data, especially when time is of the essence. It’s much easier to absorb information in a consistent, predictable way. 

Disney’s recent report is a good example. We posted a formatted version quickly after it was released. It has all the major financial data as well as a section on “Other interesting notes” that highlighted these two facts buried well below the top line:

–The Star India transaction resulted in a $143 million restructuring and impairment charge.

–Disney Cruise Line incurred pre-opening expenses of approximately $200 million.

It’s a reminder of the tremendous potential of AI to collect and organize data so it’s available faster. 

That way analysts and reporters can spend more time on the really valuable part of the job: applying human domain expertise to create insights. 

Better tools might even change the prevailing view on earnings season. 

Check out our website for more (link in comments) or DM me with questions.