Search earnings calls
Use the Risk Tool to search earnings-call transcripts for a user-defined topic and generate call-level measures.
Before you search
Prepare:
- A draft or validated query. The Keyword Tool helps build and validate one.
- The date range for the search.
- A clear target sample for later interpretation.
NL Analytics searches English earnings-call transcripts at the sentence level.
Run the search
- Open the Risk Tool.
- Enter the query using keywords, phrases, or supported query syntax.
- Select the date range.
- Set additional search options where they matter for the research design.
- Run the search.
- Review the results overview.
- Open matched sentences in the Snippet Tool to validate the query.
- Download the CSV output when the query is ready for downstream work.
Search options
In addition to the query and date range, the Risk Tool can narrow where matches may occur:
| Option | What it does |
|---|---|
| Section of earnings call | Restrict matching to the management presentation or to the questions-and-answers part of the call. |
| Speaker affiliation | Restrict matching to corporate participants or to conference-call participants such as analysts. |
| Speaker title | Restrict matching to preset speaker roles — CEO, CFO, COO, CTO, Analyst, or Operator — or to custom title patterns you define. |
| Economic sector | Restrict the search to selected economic sectors before running it. |
| Headquarters country | Restrict the search to companies headquartered in selected countries. |
| Include adjacent sentences | Detect risk and sentiment words in a three-sentence window around each matched sentence: one sentence before and one after, by the same speaker, where available. Query matching itself always stays at the single-sentence level. |
| Search name | Label the search so it is easier to find in search history. |
Specific companies cannot be pre-selected before a search. To focus on particular firms, filter the exported output or use the Snippet Tool's company filters after the search.
If a search uses section, speaker, or adjacent-sentence options, record them: they change what the measures count. See the options note in the metric definitions.
Very broad queries
A search is rejected when its estimated matches exceed a share of all sentences in the corpus (the default threshold is 3 percent). If that happens, narrow the query with more specific phrases or exclusions, or contact support if the broad search is essential to the project.
The results overview
After a search completes, the results screen summarizes what matched:
- A time series of the selected measure, shown quarterly or weekly, with optional smoothing and a headquarters-country filter.
- A bar chart breaking the measure down for a selected period.
- Three tables: the keywords with the most matches, the companies with the most matched sentences, and breakdowns by sector (economic, business, and SIC).
- Totals for matched sentences and for the sentences, transcripts, and firms searched.
Use the overview as a first coverage and variation check: if a single keyword, firm, or sector dominates the matches, or the time series is flat where the design needs variation, inspect those sentences before relying on the measure.
Output
Risk Tool output is call-level: one row per earnings call, identified by earningscallID, including calls with zero matches in the selected date range. The metric columns are exposure, risk, positive, negative, and sentiment.
See Export a research panel for the available files, their columns, and join guidance.