Delta Air Lines, Inc. (DAL) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

For the period ending June 30, 2023

July 13, 2023 10:00 a.m. ET

Prepared Remarks

Questions and Answers

Call Participants

Prepared Remarks:

Operator

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the Delta Air Lines June Quarter 2023 Financial Results Conference Call. My name is Matthew, and I'll be your coordinator. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode, until we conduct a question-and-answer session following the presentation. As a reminder, today's call is being recorded. [Operator Instructions]

I would now like to turn the conference over to Julie Stewart, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Julie Stewart

Thank you, Matthew. Good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining us for our June quarter 2023 earnings call. Joining us from Atlanta today are CEO, Ed Bastian; our President, Glen Hauenstein; our CFO, Dan Janki. Ed will open the call with an overview of Delta's performance and strategy. Glen will provide an update on the revenue environment, and Dan will discuss costs and our balance sheet. After the prepared remarks, we'll take analyst questions. We please ask that you limit yourself to one question and a brief follow-up, so we can get to as many of you as possible. And after the analyst Q&A, we will move to our media questions.

Today's discussion contains forward-looking statements that represent our beliefs or expectations about future events. All forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties that could cause the actual results to differ materially from the forward-looking statements. Some of the factors that may cause such differences are described in Delta's SEC filings. We'll also discuss non-GAAP financial measures, and all results exclude special items unless otherwise noted. You can find a reconciliation of our non-GAAP measures on the Investor Relations page at ir.delta.com.

And with that, I'll turn the call over to Ed.

Ed Bastian

Thanks, Julie. Good morning, everyone. We appreciate you joining us. Today, thanks to the great work of our team, we announced record revenue and earnings, reflecting the strength of demand for and momentum of Delta's differentiated brand. During the June quarter, we generated earnings of $2.68 per share, a 90% increase over last year. This marks the highest quarterly earnings result in our history, an achievement that moves Delta beyond recovery and firmly on a great path forward. Revenue was 19% above last year, and we achieved a 17% operating margin. This resulted in operating income of $2.5 billion bringing our operating profit over the last 12 months to $6 billion. We generated over $1 billion of free cash during the quarter, bringing our first half free cash flow to $3 billion. We continue to repay debt and we've reinstated the quarterly dividend, signifying strong execution on our three-year plan and creating value for our owners.