DAL has added 4.3% this week to trade at $86.72, and the Street is in a rare synchronised rush to revise higher — with three bellwether firms lifting price targets in the span of three days ahead of the July 10 Q2 print.
The analyst move is the standout this week. UBS raised its target to $107 from $98, maintaining Buy, in a note published Tuesday. BofA Securities pushed to $93 from $78 on Monday while keeping Buy. Jefferies bumped its target to $100 from $81 on Wednesday, also retaining Buy. The consensus mean price target now sits at $82.97 — actually below the current price of $86.72, which reflects how quickly the stock has run through prior Street estimates. The practical read is that the consensus is stale rather than bearish: every recent revision has been sharply upward, and targets are still catching up to the price. Bernstein had already lifted its target to $93 in mid-June. The direction of travel on the Street is uniformly constructive, with no downgrades visible in the recent activity.
Options positioning has normalised materially since the pre-earnings defensive spike noted in the June 17 note. The put/call ratio has eased to 1.10, now running slightly below its 20-day average of 1.14 — a z-score of -1.07 — compared to the near-two-standard-deviation defensive peak immediately before the June 18 results. The options market is no longer braced for downside. That shift follows a Q2 pre-announcement on June 18 that moved the stock up 4.5% in a single session, the sharpest positive earnings-day reaction in at least two quarters.
The lending market confirms the absence of any meaningful bear thesis. Borrow availability is running at roughly 981% of short interest — well into the zone where there is no scarcity pressure. Short interest has edged up about 2.4% on the week to 3.58% of the free float, a modest rebuild from the post-earnings low, but the move is small. Borrowing costs are negligible at 0.39%, and the short score of 37.6 has barely moved from the mid-36 range where it spent most of June. The ORTEX short score rank sits in the 42nd percentile, signalling that bears are not concentrating on this name relative to the broader market.
Among peers, AAL is up 4.4% on the week — in line with DAL — but ALGT and ULCC have outpaced both, up 8.7% and 10.4% respectively. UAL, the name ORTEX stock scores showed as ranking above DAL on quality and value, has risen just 1.3% this week, underperforming despite its higher combined score. ALK has barely moved, up 0.3%.
Valuation is creeping higher alongside the price. The P/E multiple has expanded roughly 0.7 points over the past 30 days to 12.4x, and the P/B ratio has added 0.17 points to 2.13x over the same period. At 7.9x EV/EBITDA, the stock is not demanding, but the multiple has compressed slightly as the EV equation adjusts. The 30-day EPS momentum factor sits in the 79th percentile — the standout factor score — confirming that near-term estimate revisions have been moving the right way. EPS surprise, however, ranks in just the 4th percentile, a reminder that the market has repeatedly needed to revise up rather than DAL consistently beating a conservative bar.
The July 10 Q2 earnings date now frames the next key test: whether the stock can hold above a consensus that is still visibly trailing the price, and whether the June 18 pre-announcement guidance holds up as the full result lands.
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