Military

Why Boeing Shares Were Hurt by Airbus Meeting Commentary

Qatar A380 Airbus
Qatar Airways
Shares in Boeing Co. (NYSE: BA) dropped nearly 4% on Wednesday even though there was little in the way of news to account for the tumble. Unfortunately for Boeing, the news was coming from across the pond, in Paris, where Airbus kicked off the first of its two-day investor meeting with news that sent its investors scurrying for the exits. Boeing investors joined the parade in sympathy.

Airbus started its Wednesday meeting by saying that it would cut the production rate on its current A330 from an already scheduled drop from 10 to nine planes a month in the fourth quarter of 2015 to some unspecified lower number in 2016.

And the hits just kept on coming. The company’s chief financial officer then said that the company may make a decision to kill its jumbo jet, the A380, in 2018. Airbus has not sold a single one of these planes this year.

Then, Qatar Airways CEO Akbar Al-Baker said that his company would delay delivery of its first A350, scheduled for delivery on Saturday. No reason was given for the delay, but it is likely that the famously picky airline is not satisfied with the plane’s fittings. No new delivery date was announced.

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Airbus’s CEO, Fabrice Bregier, began Thursday’s meeting with a little backing-and-filling, saying that the A380 has a future with the company. He was cited by industry analyst firm Leeham:

We have commercial momentum on A380, we will get additional customers. We have to get more customers, and convince them there is much more upside than downside to the A380. We are reducing the recurring costs. Longer term this aircraft has stronger potential. We will one day launch an A380neo and one day launch a stretched A380.

The A380 competes with Boeing’s 747-8, which is also suffering from a lack of orders. The four-engine jumbo jets may just be too expensive given the advances in dual-engine planes like the new version of the A330 and A350 from Airbus and the Boeing 777-9 and the 787.

Airbus chief operating officer for commercial jets, John Leahy, also said that Airbus will maintain its 60% market share in the single-aisle category with its A320 family of planes and that he expects a 50/50 split in the medium twin-aisle category, where Boeing’s 777X garnered 200 orders this year and Airbus lost an order for 70 of its A350s from Emirates. Leahy indicated that the A350 production rate would ramp beyond 10 per month. Leeham has forecast a rate of 13.

Analyst reactions were mixed, especially to a change in the way Airbus will account for the first few planes in its A350 program. They will now use contract accounting, which averages the costs for the planes over the contract for each delivery. This is similar to Boeing’s program accounting system, where the company spreads development costs out over each plane in a program by charging costs as each plane is delivered to a customer. A UBS analyst noted this would improve Airbus profits by 50 basis points in each of the next two years and reduce profits by the same amount in the following two years.

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Leeham reports the view of the analysts at Canaccord Genuity:

While it is true that even if many of these issues are unique to Airbus, they can easily result in increased aircraft pricing pressure, which would be negative for Boeing, or stepped up pressure on the supply chain, and it is valid on a certain level to apply this read through to the broader sector. Even with the caution around the A330, we remain generally confident in the wide-body backlogs, and we see little risk today for either the 787 or the A350 backlogs from either an execution or market standpoint. However, we view a prolonged drop in fuel prices as perhaps the greatest risk to the cycle, as it would imply greater risk to the replacement assumptions, even with a net positive impact on airline profitability.

Canaccord’s reading of the Airbus meeting squared with the reading taken by Boeing’s investors Wednesday. Airbus shares were down another 5% in Paris Thursday morning, after falling 10% Wednesday.

Boeing shares recovered somewhat Thursday morning, opening up about 0.4% at $125.22. The stock’s 52-week range is $116.32 to $144.57.

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