Originally Posted by
Pro Fessional
acl-
It has nothing to do with operating profit (although I wish it did.) It is based on pre-tax income (excluding special items and expense associated with employee profit sharing.) Operating profit does not take interest expense into account, and unfortunately we have plenty of that. In the most recent quarter Delta had an operating profit of $852M but pre-tax income (excluding special items) of $549M. I'm not sure where you get the 4% of W2 figure. If we make $10M do we get 4% of W2? Uh, no.
The 4% was a rough guess. It is one that other have used for illustration.