Delta Air Lines
Oil was already down 15% before he finished speaking.
The Beat
Delta's adjusted EPS came in at $0.64 versus the $0.57 expected, with operating income of $652 million and an operating margin of 4.6%.
Premium revenue grew 14%, loyalty climbed 13%, and corporate sales hit a record.
Bastian said demand remains "broad-based" and strong across "all geographies, products and categories."
The Guidance That's Already Stale
Delta projects Q2 pretax profit of around $1 billion despite a more than $2 billion fuel cost increase, a number pegged to an April 2 forward curve, before the ceasefire.
Bastian was direct on why full-year guidance wasn't updated: "We don't know where fuel is going to go."
That uncertainty now cuts the other way. WTI fell to $93 per barrel this morning, having touched $117 the day before. Delta estimates $40 million in additional annual fuel expense per one-cent move in jet fuel.
Bastian said Delta is not walking back its full-year EPS guidance of $6.50 to $7.50, but with fuel falling, that range may prove conservative.
What Prediction Markets Say
The ceasefire is priced as settled. A separate contract gives 81% odds that Trump announces a full end to military operations by June 30, suggesting traders expect the truce to hold and extend.
The Hormuz reopening is what actually moves jet fuel, and here the picture is more cautious. Polymarket prices a 65% chance of Strait traffic returning to normal by end of May.
IATA director general Willie Walsh backed that skepticism Wednesday, warning it would "still take a period of months to get back to where supply needs to be given the disruption to the refining capacity in the Middle East," even if Hormuz reopens and stays open.
That may be the DAL trade in a sentence: political risk has collapsed; physical supply recovery hasn't caught up yet. If the Hormuz normalization odds keep improving, Bastian's $4.30 forecast may start to look more like a ceiling than a floor.
