Investing

There Is Blood In Boeing's Streets, Is Buffett Buying

Austin Smith

Published: May 14, 2024 7:00 am

Boeing (NYSE:BA) is facing a multitude of problems, including issues with planes and rockets, leading to a decline in confidence from investors and the public. The suggestion is made to involve Warren Buffett, known for stabilizing troubled companies through strategic investments, to restore confidence in Boeing. Buffett’s potential investment could provide a vote of confidence and potentially stabilize Boeing’s stock.

Transcript:

It would be hard to get in as much trouble as Boeing is in. You’ve got problems with pieces of the planes falling off, you know, the plane’s not landing right. You now have their rocket sitting on a pad, supposed to take two astronauts into space. They’ve had problems with the systems. The confidence in Boeing is falling. And, you know, Elon Musk is probably saying to all his friends, if they’d use one of my rockets, they’d already be on the moon. Now, one of the problems you’ve got, and this happened to Boeing before, remember with the crashes, I guess it was five years ago, it is so hard to get confidence back. And it isn’t just investors, it’s also the flying public. Well, absolutely. Sure. One of the things that you and I have talked about in the past is the best thing you can do if you’re a big public company with a bad reputation is get Warren Buffett to buy some of your stock. It works for Oxy. It worked for Goldman during the financial crisis. Buffett always cuts a very good deal. It’s always he buys stock and then he gets some instrument to pick up some more money down the road on the side. So do you think that that’s a good idea? I think it would be a good idea. Boeing has had just a litany of issues. You know, you were talking about the crashes. I mean, there was 367 people killed in those two crashes, which were five years ago. The 737 MAX issue was… you know, which was, they said the crashes were a direct result of issues, but some of it said it was pilot error. But I mean, that held that up forever. Then the CEOs booted. And then they, like you said, the issues with the parts, the panel coming off in flight. And then there’s the, the guy that’s kind of singing tunes about how the safety checks were not up to snuff. Buffett is probably the only investor in the entire world where you could make the statement, if he puts money into the company, the vote of confidence is enough to at least put a floor under the stock. Does it make it take off? It probably goes up some, but… With him, it’s not just people looking at his intelligence. They’re also going back and looking at his track record when it comes to putting money into places that are troubled. Yeah. And like you said, the past maneuvers that he did, especially during he he looks for the Rothschild blood in the streets sort of situations where he can go in and cut the deal the way he wants it. And I think that Boeing is the kind of company that he could feel comfortable with on a long term perspective of going in large.