Investors hate surprises, especially ones that cost them money. That explains a lot of what’s going on with Boeing stock lately.
Boeing (ticker: BA) stock fell 7.5% Wednesday after another huge earnings miss relative to Wall Street’s expectations. Boeing was supposed to lose about 25 cents a share in the first quarter of 2022. It lost $2.75 a share.
Vertical Research Partners analyst Rob Stallard called the quarter “a big old mess” in a Wednesday report. “The headline numbers made you do a double take,” Edward Jones analyst Jeff Windau told Barron’s Wednesday morning.
Boeing has missed Wall Street estimates in nine of the past 12 quarters, stretching back to the second quarter of 2019. That was the first period where the 737 MAX significantly impacted results. The MAX was grounded worldwide between March 2019 and November 2020 following two deadly crashes inside of five months.
The first quarter of 2019 was the last time investors had company guidance for reference. Boeing originally expected to earn about $20 a share in 2019. They ended up reporting a loss of about $3.50 a share.
Since the second quarter of 2019, Wall Street has projected losses of about $3 billion, cumulatively. Boeing has reported about $25 billion in losses over that span. Analysts just haven’t been able to forecast special charges or estimate how bad things could get.
Maybe that is their fault. But companies and analysts typically help each other out. There is usually nothing nefarious going on. Companies, oftentimes, will help make sure analysts have all they need to forecast results.
Take Dow Inc. (DOW). With quarterly earnings, it publishes expected depreciation, equity earnings, share counts, tax rates and other items so analysts and investors don’t have to guess.
There is a good reason for companies to hold analysts’ hands. Investors benefit.
A job of analysts is to set expectations for investors. And good forecasts results in less stock volatility. Boeing stock, for instance, is about 85% more volatile than Honeywell International (HON) shares over the past few years.
Honeywell, another large aerospace player, has had to deal with pan-market issues like Covid, but it has navigated them much better than Boeing. It hasn’t missed estimates over the past 12 quarters. It’s also reported more income than analysts forecast over that span, by about $1 billion.
Stocks that don’t surprise are worth a little more that stocks that can swing wildly. Honeywell trades for about 18 times estimated 2024 earnings. Boeing trades for about 16 times. It’s necessary to look out to 2024 because Boeing earnings are in flux with production, regulatory and competitive issues all weighing on results.
Modeling Boeing “is definitely challenging these days,” adds Windau. But he is somewhat sympathetic to Boeing’s plight. Boeing, he reckons, doesn’t want to predict things like return to service for grounded jets or regulatory approvals for new products after its experience with the MAX.
Windau remains positive on the stock, despite all the volatility, rating shares Buy. He doesn’t have a price target though. “There is still a long-term growth story here,” adds the analyst.
That’s the long run. He didn’t disagree with the idea that Boeing stock would be trading better in the short run if earnings were the same, but the misses were smaller—if the Street was projecting earnings that came closer to reported results.
Getting control of financial reports would be one sign that things are improving at Boeing after a rocky three years.
Over the past 12 months, Boeing shares are down about 37%. The S&P 500 is just about flat. The Dow Jones Industrial Average is down about 2%. Boeing, of course, is a Dow component. It’s stock is responsible for a lot of that underperformance relative to the S&P.
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