On May 22, during the Q1 2025 earnings call, Williams-Sonoma’s CEO, Laura Alber, said, “We are optimistic about 2025. We are planning to gain market share, enhance the customer experience, and deliver strong earnings.” Yes, even the hardest critic of the American consumer retail company, with a market cap of over $20 billion, would say that’s a positive statement for the stock. The question, however, is how do you quantify that positive sentiment?
That’s where AlphaPro.ai’s sentiment score makes your life, as an investor or stock analyst, easier.
AlphaPro.AI’s Sentiment Score – “Did the CEO sound confident enough?”
AlphaPro’s sentiment score gives you a single actionable data point that captures the overall sentiment in a company’s earnings call. “Did the CEO’s statement reflect cautious optimism, or was it a subtle sign of an uncertainty we must price in?” “What does the executive’s choice of words tell about their near-term view of the company or the industry?” Moreover, “How do I combine the positive and negative sentiments to arrive at a singular view on the stock?”
Figure 1: Williams-Sonoma’s (WSM) sentiment score trend
AlphaPro’s sentiment score helps you answer these pertinent questions with a single score. And if you were wondering where this score comes from, the short answer is that AlphaPro’s proprietary agentic AI model uses advanced Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques to find hidden meaning in spoken words. AlphaPro listens to the earnings call, picks up the words (and yes, even those awkward “uhhs” and “umms”), tone, and context, and tells you whether management sounded confident, uncertain, or somewhere in the middle.
One score to sense them all
Even when a CEO talks in circles or tries to sugarcoat bad news (like saying “we are right-sizing operations” when they are actually laying off half the team), AlphaPro’s sentiment score cuts through all that. It picks up what they’re really saying (or, not saying) and turns it into a score you can actually use. No matter how carefully the message is crafted, the system spots the hints, the hesitations, the strong signals, and gives you a clear take on what was really going on.
It’s like having someone sit through the call and say, “Look, they sounded pretty upbeat this quarter,” or, “Something feels not quite right.” Except now, you have it quantified to help you decide whether to buy, sell, or just sit on the fence with cash in hand.
Well, all that talk is fine. Let’s be honest, none of this matters if you can’t make money from it. So, how do you use it?
AlphaPro called it before the chart did
Our backtesting data from over six quarters shows that AlphaPro’s sentiment score acts as a leading indicator, especially for mid and small cap companies (The reason: in the hottest large caps, sentiments are often priced in even before earnings calls because of heavy analyst coverage, leaked expectations, and the sheer number of eyes already watching every move.)
But in less-covered stocks, when there’s a clear shift in the sentiment score from one quarter to the next, the price tends to follow. The move may not always be instant, but close enough to matter. Of course, don’t take our word for it, just look at these two examples:
Stock 1: Charles River Laboratories International (CRL)
Sentiment score shift from Q1, 2025 to Q2, 2025: 57 to 76
Sentiment shift vs. price trend: CRL’s 19-point sentiment score uptick is followed by more than a 30% uptick in the stock to date.
Figure 1: CRL’s sentiment shift
What led to the sentiment shift at CRL? AlphaPro.ai’s quick summary:
DSA net book-to-bill ratio returned to above 1.0 for the first time in over two years.
First quarter DSA bookings increased by more than 20% year-over-year.
CRL raised its full-year revenue guidance by 100 basis points.
Stock 2: Skyworks Solutions (SWKS)
Sentiment score shift from Q1, 2025 to Q2, 2025: 76 to 95
Sentiment shift vs. price trend: Following Skyworks’ 19-point increase in sentiment score, the stock has gone up nearly 12% to date.
Figure 2: SWKS’s sentiment shift
What led to the sentiment shift at SWKS? AlphaPro.ai’s quick summary:
Solid Q2 performance with revenue, gross margin, and EPS exceeding guidance midpoints.
Record $600 million returned to shareholders via buybacks and dividends.
Steady recovery in diversified businesses (Edge IoT, Automotive, Wi-Fi 7) with 5 consecutive quarters of sequential revenue growth.
Extensive backtesting data (Q2 2023-Q4 2024) shows that AlphaPro.ai sentiment scores helped investors beat broad indexes like the S&P 500, Russell 2000, and Russell 3000. When there is a major change in sentiment score (+20%), investing based on that indicator can potentially help you outperform the market, as backtesting results showed in 6 out of 7 quarters:
Figure 3: AlphaPro’s sentiment scores can potentially help beat the market
2. Look for score divergences in long-term holds
If you’re holding a company long-term and the score suddenly takes a deep plunge, it might be time to dig deeper. Maybe it’s nothing. Or maybe it’s the first sign of a crack in the company’s carefully crafted narrative. Let’s say you’ve been holding stock ABC for a couple of years. The stock has solid fundamentals, decent growth, and good management, so there is no real reason to panic. But then, after the Q2 2025 earnings call, AlphaPro’s sentiment score drops from 84 to 62. That’s a crash in sentiment.
Now, when you check the numbers, the revenue is up, earnings beat estimates, and the guidance isn’t bad either. On the surface, everything looks normal. But during the call, the CFO was not quite confident and dodged questions about slowing enterprise demand. What about the company’s big push into AI-driven design tools? Suddenly, they’re talking about “measured rollout” and “early feedback.”
That’s where the sentiment score can help you. You don’t need to panic and press the sell button; just scan the transcript and recheck your thesis. Spot the red flags before they become wide and clear. The management may not be saying it outright, but their tone might already be shifting.
3. Add sentiment score to your existing filters
You may already be screening stocks for valuation or momentum. Great, now layer in sentiment. A cheap stock with rising sentiment might be a value trap turning into a comeback story. A momentum stock with falling sentiment might be running out of steam.
Also, if a company’s sentiment score has been climbing over two or three quarters but the stock hasn’t caught up yet, watch out. It might be setting up for a post-earnings move. The AlphaPro Sentiment Score can help you decide when to get in, not just based on price action, but based on management conviction.
4. Spot the Hottest Sectors Through Sentiment Swings
AlphaPro’s sentiment scores are not limited to specific companies alone. The earnings sentiment score map allows you to find the hottest sectors based on sentiment shifts. So, if consumer electronics companies reflect more positive sentiment on an aggregate level compared to auto manufacturing companies, the former is going to see a positive sentiment shift.
Figure 4: Where is the next action?
5. Find undervalued stories hiding in boring transcripts
Many “boring” mid-cap or small-cap companies often don’t get much coverage from analysts. A sharp uptick in sentiment, while the stock is still under the radar, could point to a turnaround or a breakout quarter coming up. The score helps you spot those early, before the price runs away.
Last few words
Markets are as noisy as they can be, and management teams talk a lot, especially during earnings calls. Sometimes, it’s not too obvious what will make a stock move (or stay flat). That’s where tools like AlphaPro.AI’s sentiment score come in handy. Of course, it doesn’t promise magic, but it gives you a clear, data-backed nudge that you can factor in alongside fundamentals, charts, and gut feel.
If you already follow earnings calls, the AlphaPro earnings score is one more lens to look through. If you don’t, the score gives you a handy shortcut. Either way, it’s worth paying attention to how confident or unsure management really sounds. Because in the markets, tone often speaks before the numbers do.
At the end of the day, it’s still your call. The earnings sentiment score just helps you ask better questions, catch early shifts, and spot patterns before they become obvious to everyone else.