Jim Cramer on Delta: “I Think It Might Work as a Trade”

Delta Air Lines, Inc. (NYSE:DAL) is one of the stocks in Jim Cramer’s game plan for this week. Cramer called it a tough stock to own, as he said:

“Now we’ve got a couple of important earnings reports on Thursday, including PepsiCo and Delta in the morning… Delta’s a tough stock to own. It’s been among the best performers in the group, yet it’s still down 5% for the year. I know that consumer’s supposed to be weaker, but there’s still an appetite for travel. I think it might work as a trade, but like I say in my book, these are the toughest stocks to own. So many things can go wrong.”

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Delta Air Lines, Inc. (NYSE:DAL) provides passenger and cargo air transportation. The company operates a large fleet and global network across major hubs and also provides aircraft maintenance, repair, and overhaul services. Cramer discussed Delta Air Lines, Inc. (NYSE:DAL) during the March 12 episode and commented:

“Now for those of you who haven’t been paying attention, this week Delta Airlines slashed its first-quarter earnings outlook, citing, ‘the recent reduction in consumer and corporate confidence caused by increased macro uncertainty’, which they say drove ‘softness and domestic demand’ in recent weeks. Now for a long time, Delta was the best of the airlines so you really don’t want to hear that kind of commentary from them. Now these guys cut their guidance ahead of an appearance at the JPMorgan Industrials conference on Tuesday.

But honestly, these names have already come down dramatically over the past few weeks. This makes them very interesting to me. After this week’s blood bath, you got a lot of them are down 35 to 40%.

So given all the newfound negativity, why on earth would I stick my neck out and recommend some cheap travel plays? Look, as tough as these airlines, the updates were, the collective news, frankly, it wasn’t that horrible, at least not if you listen closely…

Let’s start with Delta, which kicked things off with this guidance cut. Monday night, Delta CEO Ed Bastian spoke with CNBC’s Phil LeBeau on Closing Bell that night and explained that the domestic, corporate, and consumer spending ‘started to stall’ in February, mostly due to lower consumer confidence. But he also said he believes this weakness is transitory… Bastian is pretty confident we’re not headed for a real recession.

Delta cut the revenue growth forecast from 8% to 4%… It is not great but in a recession, they, they’d be down double digits. Bastian also noted that some of the weakness came after a couple of high-profile air safety instances.”

Since the above comment, the company’s stock has gained over 26%.

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Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.