Delta Air Lines heads into its June 18 earnings call with an interesting split: the stock is up 16% over the past month and the Street keeps raising targets — yet insiders have been selling steadily into every uptick.
The insider selling is the clearest signal worth watching this week. Multiple executives have been reducing positions as the stock climbed. Division president Alain Bellemare sold 25,000 shares on May 27 at $81.44, netting over $2 million. HR director Allison Ausband sold across five separate transactions in May alone, totalling more than 24,700 shares and roughly $1.9 million in proceeds. The COO, John Laughter, sold nearly $5.8 million worth in two tranches in April. Net insider activity over 90 days registers at a positive $18.3 million — but that's entirely driven by the scale of sales, not buying. Not a single purchase appears in the recent trade log. That pattern — repeated, methodical selling from multiple executives as the share price recovered — is worth noting ahead of a quarterly print.
The positioning picture in the lending market tells a very different, relaxed story. Short interest is a modest 3.7% of the free float, and it has drifted slightly lower on the week, down around 2%. More telling is the availability reading: at 951%, there are roughly nine shares available to borrow for every one already shorted. That's comfortably in normal territory and well above the year's tightest reading of 692% seen briefly on May 14. Cost to borrow is 0.50% — up about 32% over the past month in percentage terms, but still firmly in "easy borrow" territory. The ORTEX short score of 37 sits in the lower half of the range. There is no squeeze pressure here. Options reinforce the same calm: the put/call ratio at 1.12 is actually slightly below its 20-day average of 1.15, roughly 0.8 standard deviations softer than the norm. Defensive hedging has eased, not built, as the stock climbed.
Analyst momentum has been uniformly constructive. UBS raised its target three times since late March — most recently to $98 on May 26, maintaining a Buy. Bernstein followed with a raise to $88 in mid-May, also keeping Outperform. The consensus mean target is $81.81, sitting just above the current $80.02 close — which means the stock has essentially caught up to where the Street was pricing it only weeks ago. Bulls point to strong domestic travel demand, Delta's premium positioning, and what company executives said on June 3: demand remains strong despite global uncertainty, and a new Delta Sync partner announcement is expected next month. The PE at 12.1x and EV/EBITDA at 7.7x are not demanding multiples for a carrier posting this kind of recovery. The dividend score factor ranks in the 90th percentile — though the last actual dividend paid was in early 2020, so that ranking reflects potential rather than current income.
Among peers, the week has been more mixed. UAL gained 2.7% on the week, roughly in line with Delta's 0.8% move. AAL and JBLU fell around 6% each, while budget carrier ULCC was the outlier, surging 8.7%. Delta's relative steadiness compared to weaker budget names continues the theme from recent weeks — premium carriers have absorbed the sector volatility better than low-cost peers.
Earnings history provides a useful frame. The April 8 Q1 print saw the stock rise 3.4% on the day and add nearly 10% over the following five sessions. The Q4 2025 result, by contrast, dropped 3.6% on the day and gave back 5% over five days. The setup on June 18 is therefore less about the headline demand story — executives have already confirmed that — and more about whether cost guidance and fuel assumptions land where the Street expects them, given how much multiple expansion has already occurred during the rally.
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