How urgent are these earnings calls actually?

In what scenarios do you need to listen to earnings calls to get that information RIGHT THEN AND THERE? Can this data not always wait until transcripts come out tomorrow? 

And aside from interns, are there any automatic ways to get a real time transcript of the call so I can go in right after the call and ctrl + F all the data I need?

 

You should have at least a preliminary view of the company before the call. It's helpful if you've gone back through at least a few quarters of historical transcripts to understand the format and type of questions asked. That way, anything out of the ordinary can be easily spotted.

 

Usually the process goes like this: (1) sell-side will publish pre-release notes on expectations for the quarter and what to watch out for. (2) On the day, the company will release the numbers in the morning press-release with the financials and commentary on the quarter. (3) There will be a call after the press release, usually in the late morning or afternoon. (4) Sell-side will publish notes after the call with the key points.

If you are in a name you really should read the morning press release, update your model, and check how the results compared vs. consensus. If there is a big miss/beat you want to listen to the call. Just look at SAP Q3 earnings last week......stock down 20% after the release!

 
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Hedge fund people like to seem on top of things so they listen to calls live as they happen. My experience is that “being on top of news flow” is one way that competence is performed by finance professionals. If you can’t outperform the market, you might as well perform well on the stage that is life (that is perform theatrically well and giving off Bill Ackman vibes). You are doing a good job if you listen to the call while pacing around in the office with a serious face. Keeping your headset on while peeing in the bathroom is also a strong, alpha move. In all seriousness, at least some of the preference for listening to calls I think is explained by the constant need to exude competence. This need exists because competence is often not otherwise measure-able in a statistically significant way even in the case where it may exist. 

It depends on your firm’s strategy though. You can’t dismiss all this behavior as silly. Trading volumes are far higher on earnings days. For liquid names, you will sometimes clearly see the stock move in overnight trading based on a very live / immediate reaction to call commentary. Clearly someone thinks the call matters! I am actually not sure whether many long/short funds participate in overnight trading; I have generally assumed this is small-ish trading firms. If hedge funds do this, I struggle to understand why this isn’t obviously poor execution. Feel free to correct me if this is wrong in your experience. 

Fwiw, at the fund I worked at, I did not observe immediate decisions being made based on the calls but we still listened to them live anyway. Things would have been probably slightly better if people could calm the fuck down, eat their seamless while updating your model and just wait until the transcript is released 30 mins later. From a process standpoint, the preference for immediacy seemed inefficient to me since 2/3rds of an earnings call is irrelevant and you don’t need to listen to it anyway. I usually pretended to listen but actually read the live Bloomberg transcript instead. 

 

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