We study the emergence of a new channel for firms’ political activity using dark money through undisclosed and unlimited contributions. After the U.S. federal court decisions in 2010, S&P 500 firms substantially increased their use of dark money. We find that dark money contributions complement political engagement through campaign contributions and lobbying. Firms disclose dark money contributions when they face heightened nondisclosure costs. Firms contributing to dark money groups benefit by receiving more procurement contracts and increased government subsidies. Our findings highlight that political connections by firms are evolving and expanding through new and largely unexplored channels.

We construct a new numerical measure of earnings announcement surprises, standardized unexpected earnings call text (SUE.txt), that does not explicitly incorporate the reported earnings value. SUE.txt generates a text-based post-earnings-announcement drift (PEAD.txt) larger than the classic PEAD. The magnitude of PEAD.txt is considerable even in recent years when the classic PEAD is close to 0. We explore our text-based empirical model to show that the calls’ news content is about details behind the earnings number and the fundamentals of the firm.