Boeing Locked In as Dow’s Top Stock

Despite a tiny share price gain last week, Boeing Co. (NYSE: BA) remains the best performing stock for the year to date among the 30 equities that comprise the Dow Jones industrial average. Boeing ended the week with a share price gain of about 0.2% and a year-to-date gain of 20.9%.

The second-best performer among the Dow 30 so far this year is Cisco Systems Inc. (NASDAQ: CSCO), up about 14.9%. That is followed by Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT), up about 10%; JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE: JPM), up about 9.7%; and Nike Inc. (NYSE: NKE), up about 9%. Just over half the Dow stocks (17) have posted year-to-date gains as of Friday.

The Dow added about 90 points over the course of the past week and closed the week at 25,309.99, a gain of about 0.3%.

Boeing’s big news for the week came on Wednesday. Reports indicated that U.S. carrier Hawaiian Airlines had canceled an order for six Airbus A330-800s and would be placing an order for an unspecified number of Boeing 787-9s. The canceled Airbus planes were the last six on Airbus’s order book and that made them easier for Hawaiian to shun. No one wants to buy the last of something that has a lifespan of 25 or more years.

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There were other issues at play for Boeing in the deal, and we discussed those in our story.

While that deal was going down, Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg met with President Trump to iron out some remaining details on the Air Force’s order for two 747-8s that will be designated Air Force One when they are delivered in 2024. No information has leaked out regarding the outcome of the meeting, but Boeing wants to avoid getting stuck with a fixed price contract like the one it signed to make the new KC-46A tanker. That contract has cost the company about $2 billion in cost overruns.

Boeing had little to say about a deal with Brazil’s Embraer S.A. (NYSE: ERJ) that would give Boeing a controlling stake in Embraer’s commercial jet business and leave the firm’s military business under Brazilian government control. Muilenburg did point out, however, that Boeing doesn’t really need to do the deal, so it’s all good.

Boeing’s shares closed up about 0.2% Friday, at $356.66 in a 52-week range of $173.75 to $361.45. The consensus 12-month price target on the stock is $385.35, unchanged in the past two weeks. The low end of the price target range is $289 and the high end is $470.

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