What happened
Shares of Boeing (BA -2.59%) traded down more than 8% on Monday, hitting lows unseen since the early days of the pandemic. Investors are increasingly pricing in a recession, and expressing with their feet their belief that Boeing will not be a safe haven stock if conditions go south from here.
So what
Historically, Boeing has been a bad investment during recessions. The company makes big-ticket airplanes and the customers who buy them, the airlines, tend to be more focused on survival than expansion when demand softens.
On Monday, Wall Street was firmly in sell mode as investors continue to worry the Federal Reserve's efforts to tame inflation will lead to a recession. Neither high inflation nor a recession is good news for the airlines, as consumers and businesses tend to forgo big-ticket items like plane tickets if belt-tightening is needed.
For Boeing, this new headwind comes at an inopportune time. The company has been bouncing from crisis to crisis since March 2019, when its 737 MAX was grounded after a pair of fatal accidents. In the quarters since, Boeing has also battled a pandemic-induced slowdown in new plane sales, issues on the defense side of its business, and fresh regulatory scrutiny of other Boeing commercial models including the 787 Dreamliner.
Boeing's total debt has grown by more than 400% over the past five years as the company borrowed heavily to avoid a liquidity crisis even as deliveries slowed. It will take robust demand for its planes to pay down that debt.
Shares of Boeing could also be under pressure due to a Puget Sound Business Journal report that warned the company is running out of time to get expedited Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) certification for a new variant of the 737 MAX.
The FAA determined that a more advanced cockpit alert system could have helped prevent the two deadly crashes of the MAX in 2018 and 2019 that led to its grounding. It could make lawmakers less inclined to allow the new version of the MAX to be certified without an alert system overlap.
Now what
Over the past five years, Boeing has been unable to escape turbulence. The last thing it needs is new macroeconomic troubles that are beyond its control.
In theory there is a lot to like about Boeing. The company today trades barely above a price-to-sales ratio of 1, well below the multiple of other aerospace companies including Lockheed Martin and Raytheon Technologies. The company enjoys a global duopoly with Airbus that should drive commercial sales for decades to come. And while the outlook on the quarters to come is murky, it is nowhere near as dire as it was in April 2020, the last time Boeing shares traded at these lows.
But given Boeing's recent track record, there are few investors left willing to give the company the benefit of the doubt right now. Even at these lows, it takes a leap of faith to buy into Boeing right now.
