Delta Air Lines beats earnings expectations in Q1

Delta Air Lines Inc is trading up in premarket on Wednesday after reporting market-beating earnings for its first quarter.

Delta Air Lines stock up on strong guidance

Investors are cheering also because the management issued encouraging guidance for the current quarter. $DAL expects its earnings to fall between $2.20 a share and $2.50 a share in Q2.

Analysts, in comparison, were at $2.23 per share. Ed Bastian – the chief executive of Delta Air Lines said in a press release today:

We anticipate continued strong momentum for our business, and in June quarter, we expect to deliver record revenue, a mid-teens operating margin. We remain confident in our full-year targets.

Watch here: https://www.youtube.com/embed/pOgVDNv1IuI?feature=oembed

The airline is seeing solid demand for both leisure and business travel ahead of the upcoming peak travel season, as per its earnings release. Delta Air Lines stock is now up roughly 30% versus its year-to-date low.

Delta Air Lines Q1 earnings snapshot

• Earned $37 million that translates to 6 cents a share
• Had $363 million loss (57 cents a share) last year
• Adjusted EPS printed at 45 cents as per the earnings report
• Revenue (adj) climbed 6.0% year-over-year to $12.56 billion
• Consensus was 36 cents a share on $12.59 billion in revenue

Load factor at 83% was also higher than 81% in the same quarter last year, as per Delta Air Lines. Its CEO Bastian added on Wednesday:

Delta is delivering the best operational reliability in our history, and we have widened the gap to our competitors. We delivered record revenue on outstanding operational performance, enabling strong earnings growth.

In February, $DAL announced a quarterly dividend of 10 cents per share. The air carrier reiterated its guidance for $6.0 to $7.0 of per-share earnings this year on up to $4.0 billion in free cash flow on Wednesday.

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