00:00 Speaker A
Good to have you here with us. Just want to get your biggest takeaways from the report plus the additive of of the set of actions that is very clearly tariffs that many CEOs are going to have to acknowledge in some facet or another this earning season.
00:22 George Ferguson
Yeah, so I guess my my biggest takeaway was it wasn’t as bad as we had expected Delta’s results. Uh obviously, they reset them, you know, right during the JP Morgan conference, so we’re working off uh lower expectations, but uh we still saw some positive yields in the uh domestic market. Uh the Atlantic market was still pretty strong. Uh so my sense is that uh, you know, Delta’s looking a bit forward like you you heard uh Ed Bastion just say. Uh and you know, incorporating these results clearly not the the recent uh, you know, tariff related uh disturbances in the marketplace. That’s going to affect demand uh for sure. Uh and I’m sure you know, Ed obviously is seeing uh fairs come in or or demand real time, which we aren’t. One queue again wasn’t as bad as we would expect. Two queue looks like we’re going to have to bring some numbers down. The market’s consensus seems a bit high. Uh but like I’d said, I guess he thinks it’s still structurally sound if uh the turmoil could be eliminated.
02:26 Speaker B
But George, what’s he going to say? Yeah, I’m really worried about the future of the company. How how real do you think it is that there are enough consumers who are going to have to continue air travel, of course, and that being enough of a bottom on any consumers and economic slowdown that we might see for not just Delta, but the other airlines?
03:02 George Ferguson
Well, I mean, so I do think if markets keep trending this direction, uh premium travel, which was a strong support for Delta, isn’t going to hold up, right? Uh I I think that one of the things you’re going to see, you know, transatlantic has been really strong through a lot of these airlines, a lot of the full service, Delta, American, United. Transatlantic travel is something you book with a lot longer lead time. Uh you know, so folks are just sort of waking up to the idea that their net worth is a bunch lower than it had been a month ago. I think as you get, you know, a month or two out, people are not going to be booking transatlantic travel. That’s going to hurt a lot. Uh so I think Ed is starting to take actions based on the trajectory we’re on. Uh and and so yeah, he’s not going to set off an alarm right away, but he’s obviously concerned and that’s why he’s cutting capacity in the second half and it’ll hurt the other other airlines in the market as well, right? I think Delta is one of the better performers on revenue. Uh and so my expectations is we’ll see worse results from the rest of the US airline group because their revenues just won’t hold up. They won’t have the premium. Uh they won’t have the loyalty programs to support them as well.