Business sentiment continues to show strong recovery, with 2021 witnessing the highest gain in the past four years on account of positivity around key digital themes and an optimistic outlook. The earnings call transcript sentiment of companies shows an 8% increase in 2021 compared to 2020.
GlobalData’s latest report, Company Filing Analytics Trends & Signals Annual Report 2021, reveals that all sectors witnessed sentiment gains, with companies from Financials, consumer industries, and industrials seeing the most improvement.
The technology sector had the highest positive sentiment in 2021. Mentions of COVID-19 reduced sequentially across quarters, with companies looking forward to enhancing operations.
Rajeev Gupta, director of financial markets data at GlobalData, noted that companies seem to be optimistic despite macroeconomic risks.
“There were key mentions around inflation, cost, shortages, and supply chain, yet the improvement in sentiment highlights rising positivity despite the risks. ‘Investment’ and ‘Acquisition’ also saw key mentions throughout 2021, with ‘Supply Chain’ emerging in the latter half of the year,” he continued.
Technology themes including e-commerce, digitalization, and cloud had the most mentions while blockchain, fintech, and cybersecurity were key trending themes. Cryptocurrencies, NFT, and metaverse had a significant uptick during 2021.
“ESG also continues to be a prominent theme in the post-COVID era. ‘Carbon’ and ‘emissions’ mentions took the centre stage in 2021. Companies had fewer mentions of oil prices in 2021 and discussed more environment-related investment,” concluded Gupta.
