NEW YORK (TheStreet) — Delta Airlines (DAL) was gaining 1.2% to $41.24 Tuesday after the airline reported financial and operating performance for May 2014.

Delta reported that consolidated passenger unit revenue, or PRASM, increased 7% year-over-year in May 2014. The increase was driven by revenue gains in domestic and transatlantic entities. The airline cited hubs in Atlanta, New York, and Seattle, as particularly strong in the month.

The airline reported a completion factor of 99.9% and an on-time arrival rate of 84.4% in May.

Must read: Warren Buffett’s 25 Favorite Stocks

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TheStreet Ratings team rates DELTA AIR LINES INC as a Buy with a ratings score of B. TheStreet Ratings Team has this to say about their recommendation:

“We rate DELTA AIR LINES INC (DAL) a BUY. This is driven by a few notable strengths, which we believe should have a greater impact than any weaknesses, and should give investors a better performance opportunity than most stocks we cover. The company’s strengths can be seen in multiple areas, such as its notable return on equity, reasonable valuation levels, solid stock price performance, compelling growth in net income and revenue growth. We feel these strengths outweigh the fact that the company shows weak operating cash flow.”

Highlights from the analysis by TheStreet Ratings Team goes as follows:

• Compared to other companies in the Airlines industry and the overall market, DELTA AIR LINES INC’s return on equity significantly exceeds that of both the industry average and the SP 500.
• Powered by its strong earnings growth of 2400.00% and other important driving factors, this stock has surged by 122.01% over the past year, outperforming the rise in the SP 500 Index during the same period. Regarding the stock’s future course, although almost any stock can fall in a broad market decline, DAL should continue to move higher despite the fact that it has already enjoyed a very nice gain in the past year.
• The net income growth from the same quarter one year ago has significantly exceeded that of the SP 500 and the Airlines industry. The net income increased by 2942.8% when compared to the same quarter one year prior, rising from $7.00 million to $213.00 million.
• The revenue growth significantly trails the industry average of 42.0%. Since the same quarter one year prior, revenues slightly increased by 4.9%. Growth in the company’s revenue appears to have helped boost the earnings per share.
• You can view the full analysis from the report here: DAL Ratings Report

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A Burnaby, B.C., woman had to leave her dog in Indianapolis because Delta Airlines wouldn’t allow it on her return flight.

Shirley Naf flew to Indiana at the beginning of March, paying a $1,000 for her round trip flight and $200 dollars for her dog Ryder to travel in the luggage hold as checked luggage.  

She also had to fill out pages of paperwork, get him certain shots and the proper-sized carrying kennel.

Naf says there weren’t any problems with the airline when they flew out of Vancouver, but when she went to the airport last week to come home, the Delta agents told her Ryder would not be allowed on the flight.

“They said you cannot take your dog back, and I go, “Why?” and she says, ‘Because we have a pet embargo between May 15 and September the 15th,'” said Naf.

The Delta Airlines website says the airline does not carry animals during the summer because it can get too hot in the hold for them.

“Delta has placed an embargo (a stoppage) on accepting pets as checked bags during hot weather. Extreme heat (85 F or 29 C) during the summer months can put animals in a life-threatening situation on board our aircraft. The embargo is in the best interest of the pet,” says the website.

But Naf says nobody told her anything about the policy.

“At the time that I booked the flight, nothing was said about a pet embargo, that I couldn’t stay longer than May the 15th,” she says.

“I asked her, why wasn’t I told at the time of booking? She goes, ‘It’s your travel agent’s fault.’ I talked to my travel agent. She said she never knew anything about it.”

After being contacted by the CBC, Delta says they’ve left a message with Naf to find a solution.

Meanwhile, Ryder remains in the care of an Indianapolis kennel, at a cost of $35 a day.

Naf says she misses Ryder, who is a Rhodesian ridgeback-Labrador retriever cross.

“I’ve been raising him, he’s my companion. I have nobody else in my life, besides my dog,” she said.

STEVENS POINT, Wis., June 2 (UPI) —A Delta Airlines pilot and Air Force veteran died when his small plane crashed during an aerobatic display at the Stevens Point Airshow in Wisconsin.

The rest of the airshow was cancelled after the death of William M. Cowden, 47, of Menomonie.

The crash occurred shortly after noon Sunday about 1,000 feet from the runway. Cowden was flying a Yak 55-M, a Russian single-seater designed for aerobatics and can achieve speeds of up to 220 mph, he told the Eau Claire Leader-Telegram in an interview last year.

It’s very demanding,” Cowden said. “You’re going from high speeds to low speeds to going backwards. It’s all precision flying.”

Cowden learned to fly in the Air Force, serving for 20 years before he retired in 2006 as a major.

Rupert Crossley, 25, of Lynn, Eric Vick, 24, of Mattapan, Anthony Trotman, 24, of Boston, Dino Dunkley, 31, of Boston, and Alvin Leacock, 27, of Hollywood, Florida, were reportedly paid for their actions by a “cooperating witness involved in the investigation.”

Vick and Dunkley allegedly transported the smuggled cash aboard commercial airline flights from Boston to Florida. The four JetBlue Airways employees were ground operations crew members and Dunkley was a Delta customer service ramp agent.

“Security at our nation’s airports is paramount and the conduct alleged today is alarming,” said US Attorney Carmen Ortiz in the press release. “Thanks to the hard work and commitment of the federal and state investigators and airline security personnel, a potentially dangerous breach in security was identified.”

Shannon McMahon can be reached at shannon.mcmahon@globe.com. Follow her on twitter @shanmcmahon_.

Rupert Crossley, 25, of Lynn, Eric Vick, 24, of Mattapan, Anthony Trotman, 24, of Boston, Dino Dunkley, 31, of Boston, and Alvin Leacock, 27, of Hollywood, Florida, were reportedly paid for their actions by a “cooperating witness involved in the investigation.”

Vick and Dunkley allegedly transported the smuggled cash aboard commercial airline flights from Boston to Florida. The four JetBlue Airways employees were ground operations crew members and Dunkley was a Delta customer service ramp agent.

“Security at our nation’s airports is paramount and the conduct alleged today is alarming,” said US Attorney Carmen Ortiz in the press release. “Thanks to the hard work and commitment of the federal and state investigators and airline security personnel, a potentially dangerous breach in security was identified.”

Shannon McMahon can be reached at shannon.mcmahon@globe.com. Follow her on twitter @shanmcmahon_.

Rupert Crossley, 25, of Lynn, Eric Vick, 24, of Mattapan, Anthony Trotman, 24, of Boston, Dino Dunkley, 31, of Boston, and Alvin Leacock, 27, of Hollywood, Florida, were reportedly paid for their actions by a “cooperating witness involved in the investigation.”

Vick and Dunkley allegedly transported the smuggled cash aboard commercial airline flights from Boston to Florida. The four JetBlue Airways employees were ground operations crew members and Dunkley was a Delta customer service ramp agent.

“Security at our nation’s airports is paramount and the conduct alleged today is alarming,” said US Attorney Carmen Ortiz in the press release. “Thanks to the hard work and commitment of the federal and state investigators and airline security personnel, a potentially dangerous breach in security was identified.”

Shannon McMahon can be reached at shannon.mcmahon@globe.com. Follow her on twitter @shanmcmahon_.

A large investor is taking some big profits in Delta Airlines while repositioning for even more gains.

optionMONSTER’s Heat Seeker system shows that a trader sold 15,000 June 30 calls for the bid price of $10.30 against previous open interest of 17,316 this morning. Seconds later, 15,000 January 45 calls were bought for $2.35 in volume that was 10 times the open interest in that strike in what is clearly a new position.

The investor is closing the June long calls , which are now deep in the money , to take profits off the table. But he or she opened a new position in January at a strike that is $15 higher to maintain long-term upside exposure. (See our Education section)

DAL is down 0.45 percent to $40.09 this morning, a day after posting record highs. The airline operator’s shares have doubled since last summer.

Total volume in Delta Airlines tops 41,000 so far today, more than triple its full-session average for the last month. Overall calls outnumber puts by a bullish 10-to-1 ratio.

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Alaska and Delta Airlines on Tuesday each announced plans to expand service at Sea-Tac Airport.

Delta’s Vice President for Seattle, Mike Medeiros, told the Port of Seattle Commission that “in the near future, our plans will be to nearly double the 86 departures that you see here this summer.”

Earlier, the airline issued a news release saying it planned to add service from Sea-Tac to Spokane, Maui,  Bozeman, Calgary, and Cabo San Lucas and Puerto Vallarta in Mexico in the months ahead.

Alaska issued its own release saying next spring it would increase daily departures from Sea-Tac from 253 to 280, an 11 percent jump. The airline plans to add additional flights to existing and previously announced new destinations.

Increased demand at Sea-Tac is leading the Port of Seattle to pursue terminal upgrades, including a new international arrivals facility. The airport is also pursuing a renovation of the north satellite, which serves Alaska Airlines.

The project, originally estimated to cost around $315 million, could grow to as much as $490 million, under a new estimate presented Tuesday. To meet demand, the airport is now considering adding nine new gates to the north satellite instead of four, bringing the total to 20.

Commissioner Bill Bryant called the need to renovate the 1970s-era terminal “a good challenge to have.”

“At least we’re talking about how to refurbish it for growth,” Bryant said. “There are a lot of airports around the country that are talking about which terminal to mothball.”

The airport says renovations are paid for with concession and parking revenue and by charging the airlines, who then pass on the cost to passengers. The airport estimates the cost of renovations will mean cents on the dollar for each ticket. At a presentation before the port commission, an Alaska Airlines executive suggested ticket prices could go up around 67 cents.

Want to talk about the news of the day? Watch free streaming video on the KIRO 7 mobile app and iPad app, and join us here on Facebook.

In this battle between Big Oil and Big Corn, the Philly refiners have been the most effective players in the fight, Reuters reported last week, after comparing White House lobbying records to changes in federal fuel policy and ethanol costs.

Brady was joined in the cause by U.S. Rep. Patrick Meehan (R., Pa.). They had worked together on the campaign to recruit the new refinery operators, after Sunoco and other old-time refiners gave up and shut down.

Brady’s staff says he’s not against all biofuels, just ethanol. He agrees with oil lobbyists that it’s a wasteful use of corn.

But not all the local business or political establishment is lined up with Big Oil.

The DuPont Co. in Wilmington has joined with rival plant and pesticide developer Monsanto, grain shippers, and farm industry groups to support federal policies that favor biofuels, including ethanol.

At last week’s Biotechnology Industry Organization show at the Convention Center, Big Oil was slammed as a barrier to planetary progress.

“The oil-refining industry is trying to discourage development of biotech infrastructure,” charged Jim Greenwood, the former Republican congressman from Bucks County, in the group’s plenary session Tuesday.

“Just like Thomas Edison and his allies fought off (Standard Oil Co. monopolist John D.) Rockefeller’s attempt to derail electricity, we are fighting off efforts to stop renewable fuels,” Greenwood thundered. “And I promise we will be as successful.”

One of the week’s honorees, DuPont chief executive Ellen Kullman, rose next to tell how her predecessor at DuPont, Charles “Chad” Holliday, drafted her 15 years ago to unite chemists and industrial biologists to turn science research into real-world products. The chemists felt “threatened” by biotech. The biotech people’s “veins used to bulge when the chemists came into the room,” Kullman recalled.

But they learned to cooperate. And DuPont was determined to shed drug and chemical businesses to “follow the science” into biotech, Kullman said.

The hardest part, Kullman added, has been building a new supply chain linking raw materials, developers, engineers, processors, marketers, and distributors.

“We’re competing with petroleum-based supply chains that have had 100 years to figure it out,” she said.

Kullman cheered DuPont’s advances in cellulosic ethanol, which uses wood or weeds or farm waste instead of corn. But she also defended the EPA’s rising ethanol mandate: “I call on Congress to renew it,” she said. “It is about reduced dependence on fossil fuel. It is about independence. It is about jobs. I like that kind of return on investment.”

But even when a new technology is superior, it’s hard, and costly, to change old habits, minds, and relationships, Kullman said. So hard, she added, that “great change in technology can’t occur without government support.”

JoeD@phillynews.com

215-854-5194 @PhillyJoeD

www.inquirer.com/phillydeals

With all the ready-to-rent, easy-peasy SaaS software products on the market, the conventional wisdom has become that you’d be nuts to build your own software. For one thing, companies can sign up and pay for SaaS out of operating, not capital budgets, which has accounting advantages. For another — hey, it’s easy, and face it, software developers don’t come cheap.

But a couple interesting cases cropped up this week, with two big companies bringing more software development and related work back in-house. First, CIO Journal reported (registration required) that Facebook is building its own sales software internally, according to Facebook CIO Tim Campos. It will tie into Facebook’s existing Salesforce.com account, but Facebook will run the system.

And on Thursday, The Wall Street Journal reported (registration required) that Delta Airlines is buying data and intellectual property from Travelport LP so that it can control and manage — and presumably enhance and modify as needed – its own operational and reservations system, according to CEO Richard Anderson.

The argument for buying

At MIT’s CIO Symposium this week, ThomasNet CEO Mark Holst-Knudsen said the biggest mistake of his career was when he approved the building of some software when the company should have bought it. His takeaway, as reported earlier:

“‘You shouldn’t build anything that’s available off the shelf that’s not the source of competitive advantage,’ he noted. For ThomasNet, that advantage lies in its system for managing product and CAD information, which enables it to build product catalogs with specifications that can then be transmitted to distributors with different ERP requirements.”

It’s the definition of “core competitive advantage” that gives big companies wiggle room here, and some will doubtless hear the siren call of vendors who say it’s time for big companies to re-invent themselves through bold new software products.

No one could argue that Facebook’s core expertise lies in developing massively scaled infrastructure and the software that runs atop them, but the decision still flies in the face of convention that holds companies should buy what they can and reserve their BYO chops for the most core, valuable assets. As for Delta, I guess the reservations system is the epitome of core. But again, hiring on software expertise is a very expensive proposition in this day and age.

ROI is a tricky calculation

When it comes to Return on Investment (ROI) calculations on buy versus build, anything can happen. For one thing, all that SaaS software isn’t exactly cheap — and most SaaS vendors require at least a one-year buy in (and push for three years). For 100 users, Salesforce.com’s Enterprise edition lists for $150,000 per year. Many SaaS purchases are eerily reminiscent of the old enterprise software sales cycle that the SaaS players said they wanted to disrupt.

The IT executive of a large Bay Area company, who requested anonymity because he is not authorized to speak on buying decisions, told me his company did the math and concluded that creating its own cloud infrastructure out of open-source software was an attractive way to minimize VMware licensing costs. And it gives the company a way to build exactly what it needs without being constrained by vendor strictures.

When it comes to applications, he added, it’s not always a given that off-the-shelf packaged software is less pricey than building your own, but that has to be considered on a case-by-case basis.

The siren call of new and shiny apps

The ability to build and field truly new applications is a benefit that Pivotal CEO Paul Maritz has been hammering on for the last year. He paints Pivotal’s big data platform as the foundation for next-generation applications that could open up new revenue streams for companies. Speaking at Structure Data in March, he said rather ominously that for some companies in hyper-competitive markets, there is no option.

 “Some players…have clear enough line of sight to competitive opportunities that they’re willing to build afresh, leave IT legacy behind and build a new platform,” he said. “There’s nothing like the gallows to focus the mind.”

The demand for new, built-from-scratch applications will be one topic on tap for discussion with Scott Yara, president and head of products at Pivotal, at Structure next month in San Francisco.