-Q4 adjusted pre-tax income of $1 Billion USD
-Calendar year 2017 adjusted pre-tax income of $5.5 Billion USD
-Impact of the December, 2017 ATL power outage was ~ $60 Million USD

Not a recordbreaker, but still another truly amazing year for DL. Fantastic work by what is arguably the strongest leadership team in the industry. All DL employees are to be commended.

http://news.delta.com/delta-air-lines-a ... 017-profit

Keep an eye on oil prices - now close to $64 a barrel. Delta's refinery might be a hedge, but if this is the new normal, this year's results may be hard to duplicate.

toxtethogrady wrote:

Keep an eye on oil prices............Delta's refinery might be a hedge.

Good point. All else being equal, rising oil prices will lower profits. If the crack spread is a factor, the refinery could give DL an advantage. I'm thinking that one of our friends from Wall Street might ask a question about this on the webcast later this morning.

Interesting to see a number put to the ATL Power Outage. I wonder if they can recoup any of that from the Airport or Georgia Power or either of their insurance companies?

$1.1 billion for profit-sharing! Good for them. Glad they are not forgetting their employees.

RDUDDJI wrote:

Interesting to see a number put to the ATL Power Outage. I wonder if they can recoup any of that from the Airport or Georgia Power or either of their insurance companies?

One of those three or all three, someone is going to be reimbursing Delta.

What was the revenue for the year?

Sounds like the right moment to cut ticket's prices, thinking about his customers as well...

Great result for DL. Especially considering all that "unfair competition" they have to put up with.

Jayafe wrote:

Sounds like the right moment to cut ticket's prices, thinking about his customers as well...

Sorry, couldn't help myself.

Congrats to DL. Recently I flew with them into SFO and was surprised to see they give out candy while you wait for your luggage.

They are by far the best US carrier in terms of onboard product.

$5.5B Holy god. This has to be the most profitable year for any airline in the history of modern aviation.


...and yet airlines like Alitalia still exist making zilch.

Stunning performance. Hats off to them. At this rate, eventually, the US airline business may be a long term moneymaking industry since 1970 instead of a long term destroyer of capital. Not sure what that balance currently is.

william wrote:

RDUDDJI wrote:

Interesting to see a number put to the ATL Power Outage. I wonder if they can recoup any of that from the Airport or Georgia Power or either of their insurance companies?

One of those three or all three, someone is going to be reimbursing Delta.

How much is DL going to be on the hook for the ongoing JFK debacle? Maybe it will all balance out.

I hope DL's management is smart enough to put some of those profits away in a bank to weather a downturn.

RDUDDJI wrote:

Interesting to see a number put to the ATL Power Outage. I wonder if they can recoup any of that from the Airport or Georgia Power or either of their insurance companies?

They undoubtedly have business interruption insurance and may also have contractual performance clauses in the contracts with the relevant parties.

william wrote:

What was the revenue for the year?

Answered my own question $41 Billion, $5.5 Billion net.

Better than 10 to 1 profit ratio. Pretty healthy.

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-release ... 81218.html

mcdu wrote:

How much is DL going to be on the hook for the ongoing JFK debacle? Maybe it will all balance out.

What ongoing debacle? The water main break last week? DL doesn't own/manage T4. To my knowledge it's run by the JFK International Air Terminal (IAT) LLC, a subsidiary of the Schiphol Group*. Perhaps that is another opportunity for them to be reimbursed for their losses.

*Source: Wikipedia

SuperTwin wrote:

$5.5B Holy god. This has to be the most profitable year for any airline in the history of modern aviation.


...and yet airlines like Alitalia still exist making zilch.

They made $6.1B in 2016.

First I’ve heard of handing out candy at the luggage belts! It’s small big ideas like that that go a very long way. Bravo to Delta. I hope AA and UA do well too, I’d like to read about the US3 developing a good reputation across the board. It’s been a very long time since PanAm ruled the skies.
Hats off to ALL Delta employees- not just management, the people are what make or break an airline!

wedgetail737 wrote:

I hope DL's management is smart enough to put some of those profits away in a bank to weather a downturn.

They have been great about paying down debt and building equity too.

VC10er wrote:

First I’ve heard of handing out candy at the luggage belts! It’s small big ideas like that that go a very long way. Bravo to Delta. I hope AA and UA do well too, I’d like to read about the US3 developing a good reputation across the board. It’s been a very long time since PanAm ruled the skies.
Hats off to ALL Delta employees- not just management, the people are what make or break an airline!

I wonder if it doesn't deter baggage theft or something? Trying to see what the business justification is for this. Delta is too analytical to do something like that just because.

VS11 wrote:

$1.1 billion for profit-sharing! Good for them. Glad they are not forgetting their employees.

Does this mean every employee got $13,750 in profit sharing?

SuperTwin wrote:

$5.5B Holy god. This has to be the most profitable year for any airline in the history of modern aviation.


...and yet airlines like Alitalia still exist making zilch.

They did better in 2016. The entire us airlines industry is milking money. Their margins has been middle of the pack amongst us airlines this year.

ilovelamp wrote:

SuperTwin wrote:

$5.5B Holy god. This has to be the most profitable year for any airline in the history of modern aviation.


...and yet airlines like Alitalia still exist making zilch.

They made $6.1B in 2016.

And American Airlines made $7.6 billion in 2015.

luv2cattlecall wrote:

VS11 wrote:

$1.1 billion for profit-sharing! Good for them. Glad they are not forgetting their employees.

Does this mean every employee got $13,750 in profit sharing?

No - it's a percentage of every employee's annual earnings.

https://www.flightglobal.com/news/artic ... 20-444817/

Delta's operating profit declines 12% driven mostly by costs growth exceeding revenue growth. Maybe time to examine where the money leakage is.

william wrote:

RDUDDJI wrote:

Interesting to see a number put to the ATL Power Outage. I wonder if they can recoup any of that from the Airport or Georgia Power or either of their insurance companies?

One of those three or all three, someone is going to be reimbursing Delta.

It doesn't really help DL much to go after the airport since any settlement would end up being paid by the airport's primary tenants through higher fees -- and DL is the largest tenant by far. No doubt the other airlines at ATL would also go after their respective pieces of the pie, too.

wedgetail737 wrote:

I hope DL's management is smart enough to put some of those profits away in a bank to weather a downturn.

Wall Street doesn't like it when companies sit on big cash piles (unless they're doing it to avoid taxes) since that's essentially a bunch of capital which sits idle. It makes the ROIC numbers look worse versus doing things like stock buybacks.

ScottB wrote:

It doesn't really help DL much to go after the airport since any settlement would end up being paid by the airport's primary tenants through higher fees -- and DL is the largest tenant by far. No doubt the other airlines at ATL would also go after their respective pieces of the pie, too.

I would hope the airport has insurance for such an occasion.

ScottB wrote:

william wrote:

RDUDDJI wrote:

Interesting to see a number put to the ATL Power Outage. I wonder if they can recoup any of that from the Airport or Georgia Power or either of their insurance companies?

One of those three or all three, someone is going to be reimbursing Delta.

It doesn't really help DL much to go after the airport since any settlement would end up being paid by the airport's primary tenants through higher fees -- and DL is the largest tenant by far. No doubt the other airlines at ATL would also go after their respective pieces of the pie, too.

wedgetail737 wrote:

I hope DL's management is smart enough to put some of those profits away in a bank to weather a downturn.

Wall Street doesn't like it when companies sit on big cash piles (unless they're doing it to avoid taxes) since that's essentially a bunch of capital which sits idle. It makes the ROIC numbers look worse versus doing things like stock buybacks.

And makes companies targets for leveraged buyouts where the new owners scoop the cash, load the company up with debt, and then vamoose.

ScottB wrote:

william wrote:

RDUDDJI wrote:

Interesting to see a number put to the ATL Power Outage. I wonder if they can recoup any of that from the Airport or Georgia Power or either of their insurance companies?

One of those three or all three, someone is going to be reimbursing Delta.

It doesn't really help DL much to go after the airport since any settlement would end up being paid by the airport's primary tenants through higher fees -- and DL is the largest tenant by far. No doubt the other airlines at ATL would also go after their respective pieces of the pie, too.

wedgetail737 wrote:

I hope DL's management is smart enough to put some of those profits away in a bank to weather a downturn.

Wall Street doesn't like it when companies sit on big cash piles (unless they're doing it to avoid taxes) since that's essentially a bunch of capital which sits idle. It makes the ROIC numbers look worse versus doing things like stock buybacks.

Unless you are Apple with $200 Billion, most of it oversees. Apple is untouchable, even Corporate Raider Ichan couldn't move the needle.

RDUDDJI wrote:

ScottB wrote:

It doesn't really help DL much to go after the airport since any settlement would end up being paid by the airport's primary tenants through higher fees -- and DL is the largest tenant by far. No doubt the other airlines at ATL would also go after their respective pieces of the pie, too.

I would hope the airport has insurance for such an occasion.

Airport insurance should partly cover their loss of profits, but unlikely to cover consequential damages of customers (airlines and passengers). Up to customers to take out their own insurance for such events.

The airline's insurers may attempt to mitigate their compensation by claiming from the airport, airport's insurers and / or the other parties involved.

In most of the World, such a claim would be covered by Force Majeure / Acts of God provisions, but we are dealing with litigation enthusiastic USA.

As pointed out earlier, compensation results in higher fees and excesses tomorrow.

Insurance coverage depends on what the deductible or threshold is for coverage. Usually it is at a very high level to cover only catastrophic coverage such as a tornado taking out a concourse. My bet is everyone will just have to eat the various expenses.

IPFreely wrote:

ilovelamp wrote:

SuperTwin wrote:

$5.5B Holy god. This has to be the most profitable year for any airline in the history of modern aviation.


...and yet airlines like Alitalia still exist making zilch.

They made $6.1B in 2016.

And American Airlines made $7.6 billion in 2015.

Wow

Planesmart wrote:

In most of the World, such a claim would be covered by Force Majeure / Acts of God provisions, but we are dealing with litigation enthusiastic USA.

Admittedly, I'm not a litigator, but in the case of the ATL power outage I can't see how equipment failure/poor design could be considered Force Majeure.

RDUDDJI wrote:

Planesmart wrote:

In most of the World, such a claim would be covered by Force Majeure / Acts of God provisions, but we are dealing with litigation enthusiastic USA.

Admittedly, I'm not a litigator, but in the case of the ATL power outage I can't see how equipment failure/poor design could be considered Force Majeure.

Precisely. The argument will certainly be someone was negligent (I doubt this was intentional). Was it properly maintained? Improperly designed? Was the airport supposed to do something different under their contract with DL? There are a variety of reasons someone could actually at fault and not just a "force majeure" event. By your standard, someone slips and falls on a banana peel at a store, its force majeure. But, what if a store employee saw it and ignored it? What if someone left it there intentionally so someone would slip? Your attack on the US is misplaced not only because it ignores fault, but many other countries would also have similar protections under the law for negligence/contractual violations/etc.

Maybe Delta should pay for the time they lied about the weather when employees were forced to sleep on the floor for days and how they lied to the employees, public and media when it was an IT meltdown and lost their crews for days

We don’t really know what the actual cause of loss is, but I highly doubt that force majeur would apply here (or in UK/Europe for that matter).

Most companies do try to have coverage for claim events that are large enough to be discussed in earnings calls, but I have no idea how Delta structures it’s policies. They likely have both primary and excess/surplus coverage and also likely have self insured retention tomoffset premium costs. It will be complicated.

Since Delta is so profitable and pating themselves on the back may they can shelf those $60 bag fees they are planing to implement on international travelers.

Channex757 wrote:

https://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/delta-operating-profit-declines-12-to-611bn-in-20-444817/

Delta's operating profit declines 12% driven mostly by costs growth exceeding revenue growth. Maybe time to examine where the money leakage is.

The Atlanta hub.

IPFreely wrote:

ilovelamp wrote:

SuperTwin wrote:

$5.5B Holy god. This has to be the most profitable year for any airline in the history of modern aviation.


...and yet airlines like Alitalia still exist making zilch.

They made $6.1B in 2016.

And American Airlines made $7.6 billion in 2015.

Apples and oranges. AA’s 7.6 billion in 2015 was the GAAP Net Income. The Delta 5.5B and 6.1B talked about here is the pre-tax income; the pre-tax Income in 2015 for AA when they got the 7.6B GAAP net income was 4.6B.

The AA GAAP net income in 2015 reached 7.6B because of the special non-cash tax valuation allowance that year of over 3B. Delta had a similar tax valuation allowance special item but back in 2013 which enabled it to report a GAAP net income of 10.5 billion that year.

PanAm don’t even bother...these two yahoos will never take facts in to consideration.

IPFreely wrote:

ilovelamp wrote:

SuperTwin wrote:

$5.5B Holy god. This has to be the most profitable year for any airline in the history of modern aviation.


...and yet airlines like Alitalia still exist making zilch.

They made $6.1B in 2016.

And American Airlines made $7.6 billion in 2015.

Yes, and AA dropped to $2.68 billion in 2016.

RDUDDJI wrote:

Interesting to see a number put to the ATL Power Outage. I wonder if they can recoup any of that from the Airport or Georgia Power or either of their insurance companies?

I honestly don't see them having a case against the airport or Georgia Power. If they have an insurance policy that covers such events then so be it but I don't know of any company/organization that's going to pay you for lost revenue. If you ship a critical part that is desperately needed to do whatever it is you need to do tomorrow via UPS and they don't show up then you're only562 going to get your money back for the shipping costs.

With that being said, there seems to be a lot of misplaced hatred towards Delta on these forums but Delta obviously knows what it's doing.

toobz wrote:

PanAm don’t even bother...these two yahoos will never take facts in to consideration.

Well said. Although, I would like to thank PanAm for setting the record straight.

klm617 wrote:

Since Delta is so profitable and pating themselves on the back may they can shelf those $60 bag fees they are planing to implement on international travelers.

One of the reasons why they are so profitable is that they are good at working out what people will/ will not pay for.

DL747400 wrote:

Not a recordbreaker, but still another truly amazing year for DL. Fantastic work by what is arguably the strongest leadership team in the industry. All DL employees are to be commended.

= Interesting observation.

Saludos,
Alex

I am stunned by the headline number. I seriously cannot imagine how DL pulled it off.

$5.5 billion ...

I missed DL was given an investment grade (albeit BBB-) last year. For an airline, that is great news! (They are normally considered speculative for the purpose of lending money to them.)
http://news.delta.com/delta-achieves-th ... -rating-sp

Investment grade debt means it is time to borrow to upgrade the fleet.

https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/in ... 849812.cms
<i>DAL’s debt levels have fallen from $8,557.0M to $7,764.0M over the last 12 months , which comprises of short- and long-term debt. With this reduction in debt, the current cash and short-term investment levels stands at $3,251.0M for investing into the business. Additionally, DAL has produced cash from operations of $7,205.0M in the last twelve months, leading to an operating cash to total debt ratio of 92.80%, indicating that DAL’s current level of operating cash is high enough to cover debt. This ratio can also be interpreted as a measure of efficiency as an alternative to return on assets. In DAL’s case, it is able to generate 0.93x cash from its debt capital.</i>

Translation: DL is a cash generating machine. For an airline to pay of 10% of its debt in a year is amazing!

Oh, the one of the article surprises me. Apparently DL doesn't have as much cash on hand as many non-airlines. Eh... I don't think they'll have any trouble.

SuperTwin wrote:

$5.5B Holy god. This has to be the most profitable year for any airline in the history of modern aviation.


...and yet airlines like Alitalia still exist making zilch.

It is as good as it gets and Alitalia and Air India need subsidies... Why?

I understand why QR is in trouble and EY's failed strategy (both of which are hurting EK). But DL is now in a league of its own.

geologyrocks wrote:

RDUDDJI wrote:

Interesting to see a number put to the ATL Power Outage. I wonder if they can recoup any of that from the Airport or Georgia Power or either of their insurance companies?

I honestly don't see them having a case against the airport or Georgia Power. If they have an insurance policy that covers such events then so be it but I don't know of any company/organization that's going to pay you for lost revenue. If you ship a critical part that is desperately needed to do whatever it is you need to do tomorrow via UPS and they don't show up then you're only562 going to get your money back for the shipping costs.

With that being said, there seems to be a lot of misplaced hatred towards Delta on these forums but Delta obviously knows what it's doing.

Lol. Legal issues are not as simple as shipping. Read my post above. If you’re so knowledgeable, explain how there wasn’t negligence? Do you know what’s Delta’s contract with the airport says in the way of interruptions?

It’s not simply “lost revenue”. If somebody / entity is at fault because they were negligent, then yes, you absolutely can recover lost revenue. It’s like a slip and fall, the plaintiff can recover lost wages.

jbs2886 wrote:

geologyrocks wrote:

RDUDDJI wrote:

Interesting to see a number put to the ATL Power Outage. I wonder if they can recoup any of that from the Airport or Georgia Power or either of their insurance companies?

I honestly don't see them having a case against the airport or Georgia Power. If they have an insurance policy that covers such events then so be it but I don't know of any company/organization that's going to pay you for lost revenue. If you ship a critical part that is desperately needed to do whatever it is you need to do tomorrow via UPS and they don't show up then you're only562 going to get your money back for the shipping costs.

With that being said, there seems to be a lot of misplaced hatred towards Delta on these forums but Delta obviously knows what it's doing.

Lol. Legal issues are not as simple as shipping. Read my post above. If you’re so knowledgeable, explain how there wasn’t negligence? Do you know what’s Delta’s contract with the airport says in the way of interruptions?

It’s not simply “lost revenue”. If somebody / entity is at fault because they were negligent, then yes, you absolutely can recover lost revenue. It’s like a slip and fall, the plaintiff can recover lost wages.

I never claimed to be knowledgeable but stated my opinion. Do you know what the contract says? What about when Delta had its computer issues? Does it owe every airport and every Hudson News money?

Apparently it's all as simple as a slip and fall personal injury case.

SuperTwin wrote:

$5.5B Holy god. This has to be the most profitable year for any airline in the history of modern aviation.


...and yet airlines like Alitalia still exist making zilch.

Modern Aviation? As opposed to prehistoric Aviation?