The Week Ahead: Delta Air Lines to Report Earnings

Delta Air Lines DAL and BlackRock BLK kick off 2021 with earnings reports on Thursday. JPMorgan Chase JPM, Citigroup C, and Wells Fargo WFC are expected to report on Friday.

Delta reported a difficult third quarter, and passenger revenue declined 83% year over year on capacity declines of 63%. Despite these results, the airline performed somewhat better than our expectations, and we expect a robust recovery following the COVID-19 vaccine distributions.

Wide-moat BlackRock has continued to recover from the steep coronavirus-induced sell-off in the first quarter of 2020. The firm's record $7.808 trillion in managed assets were up 6.7% sequentially and 12.1% year over year, and overall assets under management improved through organic growth, market gains, and favorable currency exchange.

Scenarios from the Federal Reserve's December stress test were less severe than the original COVID-19-related scenarios from June (but were still more severe than what is currently occurring), with projected losses lower and projected declines in common equity Tier 1 ratios smaller.