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Boeing (BA) is weighing selling new stock in an effort to boost its balance sheet.
Bloomberg, citing unnamed sources familiar with the matter, reports that the Virginia-based aerospace giant is considering selling roughly $10 billion worth of new stock to raise cash.
The plane maker has had a tough year, ever since a door plug blew out on a 737 Max 9 jet in January, inviting ongoing scrutiny and a Federal Aviation Administration production cap on its best-selling aircraft.
The stock sale isn’t expected to happen for another month, Bloomberg reports, and it depends on whether Boeing can end a strike that saw some 33,000 Boeing machinists walk off the job last month. That labor action is losing Boeing about $50 million per day, and is so big that researchers say it could even put a dent in Friday’s jobs report.
Despite being one of the largest U.S. manufacturers, Boeing doesn’t have a lot of extra cash. Against $77.8 billion in revenue last year, according to its annual report, it spent $70.1 billion on the materials to build planes and the people who do the building — including the machinists.
In the second quarter, Boeing reported negative free cash flow of more than $4 billion and a diluted loss per share of $2.90.
Boeing stock is down almost 40% so far this year, for a market capitalization of $93.2 billion. Shares closed out Monday down 2.74%, for a per-share price of $152.04, and were down less than 1% in pre-market trading Tuesday.
Chief finance officer Brian West said at a conference in mid-September that the strike “will impact production and deliveries and operations and will jeopardize our recovery.”
The company has been scrambling to get its finances — and reputation — righted. In July, Boeing tapped Robert “Kelly” Ortberg as its new chief executive, an industry veteran who is tasked with turning around the embattled aircraft maker.