Quick Read – Greg Abel spent $2.65 billion on Delta (DAL), directly contradicting Buffett’s famous view that airlines lack durable competitive advantages. – Delta’s Amex partnership topped $2 billion in one quarter, giving it a loyalty moat that United (UAL) and Southwest (LUV)…
nnot match. – Delta’s premium and loyalty streams now account for 62% of revenue, with management guiding to roughly 20% earnings growth in 2026. – Act now: the analyst who called NVIDIA in 2010 just named his top 10 AI stocks — and Delta Air Lines didn’t make the cut. Grab the names FREE today
Berkshire Hathaway, now under CEO Greg Abel, disclosed in its Q1 2026 13F filing the acquisition of almost 40 million shares of Delta Air Lines (NYSE:DAL), a position valued at approximately $2.65 billion. The disclosure landed alongside full exits from Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN), UnitedHealth (NYSE:UNH), and Domino’s Pizza (NASDAQ:DPZ), which makes the airline buy the loudest signal of a new posture inside Omaha. Warren Buffett, remember, dumped every airline holding in 2020 and once said “a durable competitive advantage has proven elusive to the airline industry since the days of the Wright Brothers.” Abel just spent $2.65 billion arguing the line no longer applies to Delta.
Why Delta, and why now The fundamentals Berkshire was looking at when it built the stake have moved well beyond the post-pandemic wreckage Buffett walked away from. Delta posted full-year 2025 free cash flow of $4.643 billion, a record, while adjusted net debt fell $3.68 billion to $14.30 billion. Q1 2026 adjusted EPS came in at $0.64, a 44% year-over-year jump, on revenue of $14.20 billion, up 9.4%.