Delta Airlines had predicted that 2025 would be its best year yet. Clearly, 2025 had other plans. This morning Delta reneged that prediction. And it didn’t provide a new one.
It’s weird, but it’s not an unprecedented move for companies to respond to market uncertainty with a big shoulder shrug.
The last time this happened was about five years ago, when the economy was in uncharted territory. I’ll give you one guess why.
“This is very much what happened during the COVID pandemic, where companies were highly uncertain about what their earnings would look like,” said Jamie Cox, managing partner of Harris Financial Group.
He said choosing not to issue guidance is the responsible thing to do.
Because the street is going to punish you more for trying to predict your earnings path when it's unclear.
Predicting earnings correctly is sometimes even more important than the earnings themselves, said Erik Gordon, a professor at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business.
If a company made $1 a share in profit last year, and makes $1.25 this year, but predicted that it would make $1.30, its stock will get pounded.
He calls these predictions an “art form,” because it’s so costly to make a prediction that a company fails to meet.
“The art form is to predict a number and beat it by just a little bit so that it looks like you know how to make predictions, but the company is doing especially well,” he said.
The recent tariffs have certainly made for a more tumultuous economy that’s difficult to predict.
But Sheraz Mian, director of research at Zacks Investment Research, said this cagey behavior started months ago.
“As we got going this year, January, February, March, that growth, particularly consumer spending, was decelerating,” he said.
That could have been tariff fears, or the recent slowdown in consumer spending, Mian said. But now?
“The current bout of uncertainty, and the resulting announcements we are seeing from companies, that's 100% tariff-centric,” he said.
Mian said it’s most likely companies that rely on international trade that will avoid future predictions. So he said look to retail companies to join the list next.
