Aerospace stock Boeing (BA) delivered some numbers today, and the numbers, on the whole, were actually not all bad. Some numbers proved a serious disappointment, and investors registered their displeasure by selling shares. Shares were down nearly 2% in Tuesday afternoon’s trading as a result.
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The good news for Boeing—based on a report from CNBC—is that it did about as well as it could. Boeing managed to deliver 30 airplanes in December, and its delivery count for all of 2024 hit 348. The comparisons, however, hurt Boeing substantially. Boeing’s deliveries were down about a third against 2023’s numbers, and worse, the gap between itself and chief rival Airbus (EADSY) only widened from there.
Airbus, for its part, managed to ship out 766 planes, beating Boeing by a factor of better than two to one. And more of Boeing’s numbers will come out in two weeks when it declares its fourth-quarter and full-year earnings on January 28. But between a labor strike, a federally-mandated production cap, and a supply chain that is still trying to get back on its feet, it is clear Boeing still has a ways to go.
And Speaking of that Supply Chain….
A Reuters report actually had some good news about the supply chain, at least in a manner of speaking. Word from Boeing’s vice president for commercial marketing Darren Hulst suggests that there is, at last, a light at the end of the tunnel of Boeing’s supply chain problems.
Hulst looks for a “balance between supply and market demand for passenger jets” to hit by the end of the decade. That is not exactly great news—sometime between now and 2030?—but it is a lot more definitive than any answers we were getting. But a five year plan that features Boeing catching up on its backlog and getting planes into service certainly sounds like a good play. That is especially true given the growing competition in this field, including the Chinese market.
Is Boeing a Good Stock to Buy Right Now?
Turning to Wall Street, analysts have a Moderate Buy consensus rating on BA stock based on 15 Buys, five Holds and one Sell assigned in the past three months, as indicated by the graphic below. After a 16.56% loss in its share price over the past year, the average BA price target of $195.26 per share implies 16.57% upside potential.
