Going by the flurry of corporate announcements, conference presentations and articles in the business media, you would think companies were tripping over themselves to embrace the metaverse. But there’s a more accurate and data-driven way of scratching beneath the surface to assess whether organizations are thinking seriously about this or any business investment area: by deeply analyzing what a wide range of companies are saying in their earnings-call presentations.
As it turns out, fewer than three in 100 are talking about the metaverse to analysts and investors during these calls. This reality check reveals a widespread lack of planning and strategizing for this area—and that is a dangerous mistake.
Getting a read on how often and how much thousands of company leaders are discussing a topic with investors and analysts in their earnings calls provides a window into the extent to which executives believe it is impacting or will impact the business environment. It also reveals the extent to which they are preparing to address it or have already done so.
This is why we have created our engagement gauge and intensity of engagement index. Both tools apply text mining technology to identify terms associated with various business investment areas during earnings-call presentations. With the results of this analysis, we can gauge both the share of companies discussing a particular topic (in this case, the metaverse) and the depth of this engagement. (Click here for a full explanation of our methodology).
Metaverse engagement levels low but rising
As seen in our extent of engagement gauge, there’s been a marked increase in the overall share of businesses globally and across all industries discussing the metaverse, its applications and technologies in earnings-call presentations (see Figure 1).
Business extent of engagement gauge.
Share of companies with leaders mentioning metaverse-related terms in their earnings-call presentations.