With a backlog of orders going back quite some time, it should come as little surprise that aerospace stock Boeing (BA) wants to hike production, particularly for its 737 MAX jet. But that goal will likely take longer than expected, as a Reuters report noted that Boeing is pushing back its target another six months. Boeing shares were up fractionally in Wednesday afternoon’s trading on the news. Originally, Boeing planned to produce 42 jets per month by September 2024.
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Given that it is currently September and that a substantial production hike does not seem to have taken place just yet, it should prove little surprise that the goal posts got moved, and the new target date for 42 a month is March 2025.
It remains to be seen, though, if this factors in a potential union strike that could take place this week. At any rate, this is not an official production target but rather a signal of demand. Reports note that Boeing’s official production target is to reach 38 MAX jets per month before 2024 ends. Given that, back in July, it got out 25 jets in total, that’s still a fairly ambitious hike.
Starliner’s Post-Mortem Starts
We already learned that the Boeing Starliner managed to make it back to Earth safely, but what has to be particularly galling for the astronauts still up on the International Space Station is that they could have come back on the Starliner without incident. That is according to a report from NASA, which says there would have been no issues with the astronauts taking Starliner back down.
Commercial Crew Program manager Steve Stich elaborated, saying, “If we’d have had a crew on board the spacecraft, we would have followed the same back away sequence from the space station, the same deorbit burn and executed the same entry. And so it would have been a safe, successful landing with the crew on board.”
Is Boeing a Buy, Sell, or Hold?
Turning to Wall Street, analysts have a Moderate Buy consensus rating on BA stock based on 13 Buys, four Holds, and two Sells assigned in the past three months, as indicated by the graphic below. After a 24.01% loss in its share price over the past year, the average BA price target of $212.71 per share implies 32.92% upside potential.
