By Nate Wolf

The Iran war, which has jacked up oil prices and sent stocks jumping or diving depending on the news of the day, is weighing on the minds of the world's most powerful executives.

Mentions of both Iran and oil on earnings calls have spiked since the beginning of March, according to transcripts tracked by FactSet. Not only are companies monitoring the war, they are also baking quicker inflation and higher interest rates into forecasts.

In March and April, companies in the S&P 500 have mentioned Iran, the Persian Gulf, or the Strait of Hormuz in 49 separate earnings calls or investor conferences. The topic came up just 24 times in the year before the U.S. and Israel's attacks on Iran on Feb. 28.

On Tuesday morning alone, eight S&P 500 constituents spoke about the war on quarterly calls. Earnings due after the closing bell from United Airlines, Capital One Financial, and Chubb may add to that total.

The story is similar for mentions of oil prices. The topic has come up in 157 transcripts and filings since last March, and more than 50 of those mentions occurred in the last two months. Everyone from Williams-Sonoma, to Nike, to Norfolk Southern has been thinking about energy costs.

To be sure, executives are sometimes talking about the conflict in passing or fielding questions about Iran from analysts. In that sense, the spike in mentions is to be expected. But some companies sound genuinely worried about the war.

Herbert Nappier, chief financial officer at Genuine Parts, told investors Tuesday that the automotive parts distributor incorporated depressed demand and higher supply prices into its fiscal-year outlook. Equifax, the credit bureau, said that the war had resulted in higher interest rates and reduced U.S. mortgage activity, preventing it from raising constant-currency revenue guidance.

For other companies, the uncertainty around when the war ends and what the Middle East looks like afterward has muddied forecasts.

"It really comes down to when does the military activity cease and when do Middle East operations return to normal in the context of the Strait of Hormuz being back to fully functioning," Phillips 66 Chief Financial Officer Kevin Mitchell said of the war's impact last month. "That's a tough one to answer."

Companies with less direct exposure to the flow of oil, meanwhile, are trying to gauge the impact on overall inflation.

"Our assumption is that inflation will come," Stephen Schmitt, chief financial officer at Pepsi, said in a conference call last week. "The order of magnitude we're still working through, and I think a lot of that is still to be determined."

A resolution to the war this week would clarify the situation, though Iran hasn't confirmed it will attend peace talks in Pakistan. Barring a longer-term truce, Iran will remain a hot topic on earnings calls, with 45% of the S&P 500 by market-value weight reporting results next week, according to data compiled by Citadel Securities.

Write to Nate Wolf at nate.wolf@barrons.com

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April 21, 2026 12:56 ET (16:56 GMT)

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