Zacks Equity Research
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Chicago, IL – July 8, 2025 – Zacks.com announces the list of stocks featured in the Analyst Blog. Every day the Zacks Equity Research analysts discuss the latest news and events impacting stocks and the financial markets. Stocks recently featured in the blog include: Delta Air Lines, Inc. DAL, SkyWest, Inc. SKYW and United Airlines UAL.
Delta Air Lines, Inc. is scheduled to report second-quarter 2025 results on July 10, before market open.
Delta Air Lines’ earnings outpaced the Zacks Consensus Estimate in two of the trailing four quarters, the average beat being 3.96%. However, the company missed the Zacks Consensus Estimate in the remaining two quarters. (See the Zacks Earnings Calendar to stay ahead of market-making news)
Let’s see how things have shaped up for Delta Air Lines this earnings season.
The Zacks Consensus Estimate for DAL’s second-quarter 2025 earnings has been revised upward by 1.02% in the past 60 days to 1.99 per share. The consensus estimate lies within the company provided guided range of $1.7-$2.3. However, the consensus mark implies a 15.7% downside from the year-ago actual.
We expect geopolitical uncertainty, tariff-related pressures, and persistent inflation to weigh on DAL’s operations and weaken travel demand, especially in the international and business segments. These headwinds are causing volatility in passenger traffic and limiting the airline’s ability to maintain strong yields and consistent revenue growth. Softening demand is preventing DAL from fully optimizing its network and operating at peak efficiency.
Labor costs are also likely to have been high, which would have hurt the company’s bottom-line performance in the June quarter. We expect expenses on salaries and related costs to increase 13.2% in the to-be-reported quarter from the second quarter of 2024 actuals.
The Zacks Consensus Estimate for DAL’s second-quarter 2025 revenues is pegged at $16.18 billion, indicating a 2.89% decline year over year.Due to the difficult revenue environment, Delta has issued a cautious outlook for the second quarter of 2025, projecting adjusted revenues to either decline 2% or increase up to 2% year over year.
On a brighter note, the southward movement of oil prices bodes well for the bottom-line growth of industry participants. This is because fuel expenses are a significant input cost for the aviation industry. Crude oil is struggling in 2025, with prices sliding to multi-month lows. Tariff concerns, weakening consumer confidence, and the production increase by OPEC+ have all contributed to this downward pressure. Oil prices decreased by 6% in the April-June 2025 period and by 9% from the beginning of 2025 to date.
