Delta Air Lines reported a bigger quarterly profit than expected on Thursday and provided hope to investors that demand for travel had “stabilized” after a rough start to the year.
The earnings announcement sent Delta’s share price soaring more than 10 percent in premarket trading. The airline lowered its financial forecast for the full year, but that was seen as an improvement on the previous quarter, when it withdrew projections altogether amid economic uncertainty around tariffs, a pullback in travel among federal workers and traveler anxiety after several high-profile plane crashes.
Consumer travel demand in the second quarter of the year was roughly flat compared with the same period last year, Delta’s president, Glen Hauenstein, said in a statement. Still, the airline benefited from faster growth in parts of its business with high profit margins, including the sale of premium-priced tickets, international travel and its credit card program.
“Demand trends stabilized at levels that are flat to last year and we continued to see resilience in our diverse, high-margin revenue streams,” Mr. Hauenstein said.
Delta had started the year on a high note, saying in January that it expected to deliver the best financial performance in its 100-year history. On Thursday, the airline said it now expects earnings about 15 percent lower than it thought at the start of the year. Delta is not alone in lowering its expectations.
“This summer will be defined generally as demand did not come in as strong as we all thought six months ago,” Bob Jordan, the chief executive of Southwest Airlines, said in a recent interview with The New York Times.
Delta’s performance may bode well for other large airlines with premium offerings, which are set to report earnings later this month, according to Tom Fitzgerald, an airline industry analyst for the investment bank TD Cowen. But it may not mean as much for smaller carriers that are more reliant on price-sensitive customers, he added.
“We came away reassured by Delta’s guidance,” Mr. Fitzgerald said in an analyst note. “The company has set a high bar for peers.”
Delta and many other airlines have tried to cut costs and trim flights to better match demand as President Trump’s trade war rattled economic confidence. Federal government job cuts also contributed to a slowdown in travel, as did anxiety among some consumers after fatal plane crashes in South Korea in December and Washington in January. A Delta flight was involved in a crash landing in February in Toronto, and all 80 people on board survived.
Niraj Chokshi is a Times reporter who writes about aviation, rail and other transportation industries.
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