Lou Whiteman

Delta this week came out with an estimate on the cost of the government shutdown, which included, of course, a curtailment of their flying.

There was going to be a hit.

It was $200 million, about half of what analysts expected.

Part of the reason why was the continued strong pricing power they're seeing.

Dan, this is a best-in-class operator in a market of haves and have-nots that just keeps winning.

They have 30% of the lucrative business market despite having only about 20% of the seats in the U.S.

And here's the punchline.

Delta, which is a clear market leader and has been doing better than the industry, trades at about half of the earnings multiple as rivals like American and Southwest, who quite frankly aren't doing as well.

That's a really weird time to be an investor.

These are cyclical, but a lot of really interesting things going on at Delta right now.

Can I go to New Zealand?

Can I go visit Peter Beck?

That sounds fun.

I don't think the weakness is masked.

I think Rachel did a good job outlining what is going on behind these numbers.

Top line is great.

And yeah, it was great.

$44 billion in sales from Thanksgiving to Cyber Monday.

That's great numbers.

But it's the volume.