Supply chain information in analyst reports on publicly traded companies

Analyst reports are an important source of secondary data on companies for understanding a company’s performance in the recent past and for getting guidance on its future performance. We therefore analyzed the text of 1028 equity analyst reports of 145 Fortune 500 Global companies (not including services sectors like IT or banking) published between 2009 and 2011 for supply chain related information. We found that nearly three-fifths of these reports contained supply chain information pertaining to inbound, process or outbound aspects of the supply chain of the company. At the report level, there are significant industry effects for supply chain related content in analyst reports. On the other hand, aggregating information at the company level, it appears that analysts focus on a particular supply chain aspect for a company as well as its sector. Furthermore, logistic regression analysis suggests a link between the supply chain information provided when this is positive in orientation and the buy/sell/hold recommendation of the analyst regarding the company’s stock.