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Specialist in Asia Pacific, China, India and South East Asia and Global Emerging Market equities.

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formerly Realindex Investments

Leader in active quantitative equities across Australian equities, global equities, emerging markets and global small companies.

Backed by a unique blend of research, portfolio construction and risk management, focused on uncovering original insights and translating them into investment strategies that are active and systematic, aiming to generate alpha.

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Management speak can conceal future performance wins and woes

What if we could find investment opportunities based on how people say things, as much as what they say?

The length and complexity of management earning call discussions could be a good indicator of future stock performance, as is the tone executives use on these calls, a new study shows.

This two-part study examines quarterly earnings calls to find natural language anomalies.

The first paper 'Conference call clarity' reveals examples of management discussions that carry on longer than may be necessary – long speeches that are complex and lacking in clarity could be designed to bamboozle investors, the study suggests.

The second paper 'Conference call tone' examines the tone of how things are said – good and bad news about the future prospects of a company can be inferred by measuring the linguistic tone of sentiment of speeches, the study shows.

The study finds correlations between language and future performance. It finds the clearest results in North American listed companies which have the most consistent disclosure requirements.

Assessing conference call transcripts for patterns relating to length and language clarity reveals useful negative signals on future stock price performance.

The study makes the case for using this kind of text-based data to assess sentiment via natural language processing, alongside other more traditional price and accounting-based data, to assess future company performance.

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This material is directed at persons who are ‘wholesale clients’ (as defined under the Corporations Act 2001 (Cth) (Corporations Act)) and has not been prepared for and is not intended for persons who are ‘retail clients’ (as defined under the Corporations Act). This material contains general information only. It is not intended to provide you with financial product advice and does not take into account your objectives, financial situation or needs. Before making an investment decision you should consider, with a financial advisor, whether this information is appropriate in light of your investment needs, objectives and financial situation.

Any opinions expressed in this material are the opinions of the individual author at the time of publication only and are subject to change without notice. Such opinions: (i) are not a recommendation to hold, purchase or sell a particular financial product; (ii) may not include all of the information needed to make an investment decision in relation to such a financial product; and (iii) may substantially differ from other individual authors within First Sentier Investors.

To the extent permitted by law, no liability is accepted by MUFG, Realindex nor their affiliates for any loss or damage as a result of any reliance on this material. This material contains, or is based upon, information that Realindex believes to be accurate and reliable, however neither MUFG, Realindex nor their respective affiliates offer any warranty that it contains no factual errors. No part of this material may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of Realindex.

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