Today featured an interesting set of circumstances for aerospace stock Boeing (BA). Boeing released its July delivery numbers. Though these numbers were not exactly high, and left Boeing on the back foot against key competitor Airbus (EADSY), the numbers were still reasonably good and even showed improvement by some measures. Boeing investors collectively decided to take a win where they could find it, and sent Boeing shares up over 2% in Tuesday afternoon’s trading.
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Boeing delivered 48 planes in July. In isolation, that is good news. The comparisons start to make things rocky, however. Boeing delivered 60 planes back in June, so the July numbers clearly faltered against the June numbers. However, considering that Boeing only delivered 43 planes in July 2024, the new July numbers became a bit of a victory. In fact, this is Boeing’s second-best July in almost a decade; Boeing’s best July was back in 2017, when it delivered 58 aircraft.
The comparisons to Airbus, meanwhile, were much more brutal. Airbus delivered 67 jets in July, which was down from 77 jets in July 2024. However, Airbus has also delivered 373 jets for the year so far, well ahead of the 328 Boeing has delivered so far. In fact, Airbus is increasingly hampered by a lack of engines to install in the aircraft, but is still rolling out planes at a prodigious rate.
Now Hiring: Brazilian Engineers
Meanwhile, good news for Boeing’s operations in Brazil, as the subsidiary Boeing operates in the country has been giving the green light by judicial officials to continue to hire Brazilian engineers. Reports noted that several national aerospace associations in the country were looking to restrict the amounts of engineers that Boeing could hire in the country.
Boeing reportedly recruited around 500 engineers from several Brazilian companies even before it opened its doors in the country, and around half of those were pulled directly from Embraer (ERJ). But with engineers being thin on the ground in Brazil, at last report, Boeing’s wholesale hiring practices left a lot fewer engineers available for literally anyone else. Thus the court case, which ultimately cleared the way for Boeing to carry on.
Is Boeing a Good Stock to Buy Right Now?
Turning to Wall Street, analysts have a Strong Buy consensus rating on BA stock based on 19 Buys and three Holds assigned in the past three months, as indicated by the graphic below. After a 33.89% rally in its share price over the past year, the average BA price target of $256 per share implies 10.62% upside potential.
