Boeing Co. (NYSE: BA) stock dropped 1.65% last week, but that was hardly enough to make the company give up its top ranking as the best-performing stock among the 30 components of the Dow Jones Industrial Average index. Boeing’s stock is up 52.69% for the year to date.

All but six Dow stocks have posted year-to-date gains, with the best — other than Boeing — being Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL), up 35.03%; Visa Inc. (NYSE: V), up 29.31%; McDonald’s Corp. (NYSE: MCD), up 26.37%; and Caterpillar Inc. (NYSE: CAT) is up 23.30%.

Boeing is not resting on its laurels either. It and Spirit AeroSystems Holdings Inc. (NYSE: SPR) settled a four-year dispute that will help Boeing keep a lid on 737 MAX costs and could help the company avoid having to write down some of its massive deferred production costs on the 787 Dreamliner.

Boeing is also creating its own in-house avionics unit, according to a report at GeekWire. The company did not make a public announcement, but in an internal statement to employees obtained by GeekWire, CEO Dennis Muilenburg said the new unit exemplifies Boeing’s strategy “to build targeted vertical capability so that we can further drive cost down and value up for our customers, in all phases of a product’s life cycle.”

The avionics unit currently includes 120 employees, but that total is expected to rise to 900 by 2019, about the same time as Boeing would be tooling up for development of a new middle-of-the-market aircraft if the company decides to go ahead with the project.

Boeing stock closed at $237.71 on Friday, down 0.2% for the day, in a 52-week trading range of $126.31 to $246.49. The high was posted Monday. The 12-month consensus price target is $250.00.

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