2021 Company Filings Signal Optimism of Managements
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Positive business sentiment in 2021 showed corporate enthusiasm across sectors
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Crypto and NFTs gained popularity among corporates, while Metaverse emerged as a new topic of interest
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Inflation, costs, shortages, and supply chain – potential challenges in 2022
2021 Company Filings Signal Optimism of Managements
The year 2021 progressively moved out of the lingering shadows of the COVID-19 pandemic. COVID-19 hit businesses worldwide and annual filings since the last quarter of 2019 depicted a gloomy picture. Our filing analytics universe delves into 35k+ companies belonging to 19 industries across the globe with coverage in 120+ countries.
Optimism in Every Segment, Industry & Geography
In 2021, overall business sentiment by 8%. In the first quarter of 2021, COVID-19 was still the primary sentiment mover. However , since the second quarter, corporate publications focused more on revenue, while considering the pandemic a cost-increasing factor. The change in focus indicates the balancing act of the managements with adaptation to the pandemic-related uncertainties and optimism gained from the global pandemic mitigation initiatives.
The shift to positive sentiment could also be observed among mega-cap companies such as Visa, Verizon, and ExxonMobil, large-cap companies such as Icahn Enterprises and Mitsui, and mid-cap companies such as Integra and Voestalpine. Likewise, the sentiment is upbeat in sectors such as Foodservice and Travel and Tourism. Despite the pandemic hampering the operations of these two sectors, the sentiment showed an uptick during the second half of the year.
Post-Pandemic Trends – Blockchain & Vietnam
The future of work, the most discussed topic in 2020, became stale in 2021 as organizations started to adopt a hybrid work environment and modify their business models. At the same time, new technologies caught the attention of corporates. Managements discussed Blockchain almost three times more in 2021 vs 2020, while attention to Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality increased significantly. Cybersecurity, which always remained a priority for managements, continued to be one of the discussed topics in 2021. However, with employees continuing to work from home, Intellectual Property became a significant concern for organizations.
Continued lockdowns in Vietnam, a major outsourcing country, caused significant concerns for retail organizations such as GAP, Lululemon, and Nike, which experienced supply chain bottlenecks due to the frequent closure of factories . However, during this period, major companies such as Capitaland and Heiniken showed a positive sentiment for the country because of new project launches and capacity expansions.
Familiar topics ESG, which have been a priority for managements over the last few years, continued to exhibit a similar grip on corporate communications. Newer technologies such as Metaverse, Cryptocurrency, and NFT also appeared in management discussions.
With the new variant, Omicron posing new challenges for organizations, topics such as inflation, raw material shortages, and supply chain issues dominated the discussions in the last quarter of 2021 and could be the topics to watch out for in 2022.
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