Do the Manager's Personal Features Influence the Verbal Tone Used in Conference Calls?

The objective of this study is to evaluate whether managers’ tone of voice of Brazilian companies that publish the results in the presentation phase of the conference call is influenced by the personal characteristics of these agents. A total of 10 Brazilian companies were traded on the New York Stock Exchange (ADR) between 2002 and 2016, which made voluntary disclosure. The sample was limited to the companies with negotiations in North American market, that make the voluntary disclosure of the results by the necessity of the availability of the conference calls in English. To calculate the tone of voice, the dictionary developed by Loughran and McDonald (2011) was used. The tone was calculated based on the conference calls of quarterly disclosure of the results of the companies and related to the characteristics of the managers like gender, position and academic formation. The results verified in the Brazilian companies confirm the same ones found in international surveys, which find evidences that the personal characteristics influence the tone of voice used in the phase of presentation of the conference calls, controlling other factors like the performance of the company.