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Delta Air Lines

DAL on NYSE. Delta sells plane tickets and cargo shipping to travelers and businesses. Market value $54.6bn.

Watch this stockFree. We tell you when something changes.

Price checks use the past 12 months to June 2026. Quality checks use five annual reports, the latest for the year to December 2025.

Should I look at this?

Worth a closer look

Why it could be worth it

What to watch out for

Nothing stood out in the numbers we check.

Read what could go wrong

This is not advice. Check the numbers below.

Compare with another stock

Cash yield
past 12 months to June 2026
13.1%very high

For every $100 of what the whole company costs, it produced $13.07 of spare cash in the past 12 months. A savings account pays about $4.

Price to profit
past 12 months to June 2026
11.5×fair

You pay 11.5 years of operating profit for the business. The average large US company costs around 18.

Return on capital
five annual reports to December 2025
15.0%five-year median

Each dollar kept in the business earns 15 cents a year. Above 10 is good.

Quality score: 88 of 100. Price score: 100 of 100. Our list needs 70 on quality and 60 on price.

$83.66 a share, 52% above its 1-year low

Over the past year the price has ranged from $55.03 to $95.68.

Expected to report results Thursday 8 Oct, before the market opens.

Dividend: 0.8% a year

Paid every year for 3 years

Payouts have jumped around in recent years, so this may not repeat.

Prices from Tuesday’s close (6 October).

Five years of cash, in billions

0.0
-0.0
1.1
2.9
3.8
7.2
2021202220232024202512 monthsto Jun '26

Spare cash swings from quarter to quarter here: $7.2 billion in the past 12 months, $3.8 billion in the year to December 2025.

Revenue
$29.9bn$50.6bn$58.0bn$61.6bn$63.4bn
Operating margin
6.3%7.2%9.5%9.7%9.2%
Debt to equity
6.933.501.811.060.68
Shares outstanding
0.64bn0.64bn0.65bn0.65bn0.66bn

Health checks

  • Free cash flow positive4 of 5 years
  • Accounting looks honest (Beneish)Not enough data
  • Financial strength (Piotroski)6 of 7 checks we could run
  • Profit backed by cash (accruals)Yes
  • Debt0.68× equity
  • Revenue growth, five yearsStrong, 30.0% a year
  • Buying back its own sharesRoughly flat

The quarter to June 2026

How the business did, compared with the same quarter a year earlier.

  • Sales: $19.8 billion last quarter, up 19% on a year ago.
  • Profit: $1.6 billion, down 25% on a year ago.
  • It keeps 8 cents of each $1 of sales as operating profit, down from 9 cents a year earlier.
  • Spare cash over the past 12 months: $7.2 billion, up from $2.3 billion.
  • 1% more shares than a year ago. Each share owns a bit less of the company.
  • Debt is $8.2 billion more than cash, down from $11.1 billion a year ago.
  • Sales grew on a year ago in each of the last 4 quarters.
Sales by quarter
Sales by quarter
Quarter toAmount
September 2024$15.7bn
December 2024$15.6bn
March 2025$14.0bn
June 2025$16.6bn
September 2025$16.7bn
December 2025$16.0bn
March 2026$15.9bn
June 2026$19.8bn
Profit by quarter
Profit by quarter
Quarter toAmount
September 2024$1.3bn
December 2024$843m
March 2025$240m
June 2025$2.1bn
September 2025$1.4bn
December 2025$1.2bn
March 2026-$289m
June 2026$1.6bn

From the company's quarterly reports to the SEC.

Dates

Next results (estimated)
8 October 2026
Last annual report (10-K)
11 February 2026
Next quarterly (estimated, 10-Q)
9 October 2026

Who owns it

15 long-term investors we follow own it, down from 16 last quarter. 1,513 funds in all.

Jun '25
Dec '25
Jun '26

Sold out this quarter

Largest holders overall

From 13F filings for the quarter ended 30 June 2026.

Big holders and activists

3 investors own more than 5%.

From Schedule 13D and 13G filings: anyone owning more than 5% must file one.

What insiders did

No insider bought shares on the open market in the last 12 months. 12 sold $124m.

  • HUERTA MICHAEL P
    Director
    Sold
    Date
    5 August 2026
    Shares
    3,100
    Price
    $94.11
    Value
    $291,757
  • Sear Steven M
    EVP - Global Sales & Distrib
    Sold
    Date
    5 August 2026
    Shares
    40,460
    Price
    $93.55
    Value
    $4m
  • Carter Peter W
    President
    Sold
    Date
    4 August 2026
    Shares
    39,900
    Price
    $92.98
    Value
    $4m
  • BELLEMARE ALAIN
    EVP & Pres. - International
    Sold
    Date
    4 August 2026
    Shares
    35,000
    Price
    $92.72
    Value
    $3m
  • Bastian Edward H
    Chief Executive Officer, Director
    Sold
    Date
    4 August 2026
    Shares
    206,510
    Price
    $92.80
    Value
    $19m
  • DEWALT DAVID G
    Director
    Sold
    Date
    3 August 2026
    Shares
    31,756
    Price
    $90.85
    Value
    $3m
  • Ausband Allison C
    EVP & Chief People Officer
    Sold
    Date
    27 May 2026
    Shares
    5,000
    Price
    $80.90
    Value
    $404,500
  • BELLEMARE ALAIN
    EVP & Pres. - International
    Sold
    Date
    27 May 2026
    Shares
    25,000
    Price
    $81.44
    Value
    $2m
  • Ausband Allison C
    EVP & Chief People Officer
    Sold
    Date
    26 May 2026
    Shares
    5,000
    Price
    $79.00
    Value
    $395,000
  • Ausband Allison C
    EVP & Chief People Officer
    Sold
    Date
    22 May 2026
    Shares
    9,710
    Price
    $76.00
    Value
    $737,960

From Form 4 filings: insiders must report trades in their own company's shares within two days.

Warning signs in its filings

Problems the company itself reported to the SEC, in its own words.

None of the warning signs we check for were found.

We look for five warning signs: doubt it can keep going, weak checks on its own accounts, a notice that its past accounts can't be relied on, a change of auditor, and one customer bringing in a big share of sales. We don't check lawsuits, investigations or debt yet.

We checked the auditor's report, internal controls, restatement notices, auditor changes and big customers in the 10-K filed 11 Feb 2026, plus the 10-Q filed 10 Jul 2026 and 7 later 8-Ks.

A 10-K is the yearly report every US company files with the SEC. An 8-K is a short notice of a big event.

What could go wrong

Cheap for a reason is the question the numbers cannot answer.

Whether the price already reflects the risks is what the deep dive is for.

The deep dive

Everything above is arithmetic on public filings. The deep dive reads the last ten years of annual reports, the proxy statements, and the earnings calls, then argues the case the way Buffett, Klarman, and Hohn would, and checks every claim against the source.

  • What the business is worth, as a range, and the margin of safety at today’s price
  • Prices to start buying, buy, and buy hard
  • The three things that would make this a mistake
  • Every number footnoted to the filing it came from

It moved up our list overnight. The deep dive tells you if the move is real.

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What a finished deep dive looks like

Not advice. Numbers on this page come from SEC filings and are updated each night; prices are updated again after the US market closes. The five-year figures are rounded.