Delta Air Lines this morning beat Wall Street expectations for revenue by nearly $1 billion as it announced its second-quarter earnings.
It still goes down on the books as a loss for the April-May-June quarter, but not nearly what The Street had forecast. According to MarketWatch, revenue dropped 43 percent from 2019 to $7.13 billion - but that was almost $1 billion above the FactSet consensus, or forecast, of $6.20 billion. Passenger revenue fell 53 percent to $5.33 billion but topped expectations of $5.01 billion.
"With the best employees and operation in the industry and an accelerating demand environment, we achieved significant milestones in the quarter including a solid pre-tax profit in the month of June, positive free cash flow for the June quarter, and our people and our brand being recognized with the top spot in the J.D. Power 2021 Airline Study," Ed Bastian, Delta's chief executive officer, said in a statement. "Looking forward, we are harnessing the power of our differentiated brand and resilient competitive advantages to drive towards sustainable profitability in the second half of 2021 and enable long-term value creation."
Net income fell to $652 million, or $1.02 a share, from $1.44 billion, or $2.21 a share, in the same period in pre-pandemic 2019. Excluding nonrecurring items, such as benefits related to government payroll support programs, the company swung to a per-share loss of $1.07 from earnings per share of $2.35 in 2019 but beat the FactSet loss consensus of $1.38.
"Domestic leisure travel is fully recovered to 2019 levels and there are encouraging signs of improvement in business and international travel. With the recovery picking up steam, we are making investments to support our industry-leading operation," Bastian said. "We are also opportunistically acquiring aircraft and creating upside flexibility to accelerate our capacity restoration in 2022 and beyond in a capital-disciplined manner."
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