A word cloud is a useful way to present unstructured textual data. A word cloud consists of words extracted from a source text, with the size of each word corresponding to the frequency it appears in the source text. Common words such as “a” or “it” are generally excluded to focus on more meaningful information.
Here is a word cloud created from the transcript of Apple’s Q4 2020 earnings call.
Some of the more common words are not surprising. “Apple,” “Quarter,” “Year,” “September,” and ‘iPhone” are to be expected. There are words that sound positive such as “new,” “ever,” and “strong.” There are also some that sound negative, such as “challenges,” “challenging,” and “COVID.” “Students” and “Education” appear, indicating a potential market focus on the education sector. And finally there is the unusual word “Tejas.”
An analyst can then search the text for these words to get more details. This would show that Tejas Gala is the name of Apple’s investor relations representative. Further, COVID-19 caused many of Apple’s retail stores to close, “resulting in the most challenging economic environment we can remember.”