The News
Boeing on Tuesday revealed a $11.8 billion annual loss in 2024 — its worst in four years. The announcement came as the US aerospace giant tried to look ahead under new CEO Kelly Ortberg, having endured a tumultuous 12 months marked by safety and maintenance issues and a months-long labor strike.
Finance executive Brian West told investors Tuesday that production standards have improved, and that US regulators will likely soon greenlight the company to ramp back up production, especially as its European rival, Airbus, now has a clear sales lead worldwide.
On Wall Street more broadly, investors appear generally optimistic about new US President Donald Trump’s pro-business stance, although some have cautioned that federal budget cuts, trade measures, andAI could pose potential risks to growth.
SIGNALS
Boeing could spin off space, navigation business
In an effort to resuscitate its business, Boeing executives are mulling selling parts of the company, CEO Kelly Ortberg said Tuesday — an apparent bid to “shore up the company’s balance sheet and lift the stock from its doldrums,” MarketWatch wrote. Ortberg didn’t specify, but likely up for discussion are Boeing’s space business and its navigation-software arm Jeppesen, Semafor’s Liz Hoffman noted. Boeing executives seem to be realizing that “not a lot of people can compete with Space X,” as one investment manager told MarketWatch, and instead want to prioritize rebuilding confidence in its still-profitable passenger airliner division.
DOGE concerns hitting other blue-chip defense firms
Defense giant Lockheed Martin’s stock dropped more than seven points Tuesday after the company reported lower-than-expected fourth-quarter earnings — its deepest single-day decline in years. Investors are concerned that several signature contracts — including its F-35 fighter jet program — could be “in the crosshairs” of the new Department of Government Efficiency, charged with recommending sweeping government budget cuts, Barron’s reported. Other analysts are more sanguine, believing Lockheed could bounce back as the Trump administration doubles down on US security given ongoing global conflicts and geopolitical risks. “Now is the time to buy defense stocks,” one Truist analyst concluded in a recent report.
Wall Street may be over-confident over Trump
Despite Monday’s tech stock rout following the sudden popularity of Chinese AI DeepSeek, Wall Street has, overall, seen a rally as investors embrace US President Donald Trump’s “consistent message of deregulation and lower corporate taxes,” Business Insider wrote. But some seem to be “wearing Trump-tinted glasses that are hiding some real risks,” Insider noted, citing the threat of tariffs, which, if enacted, could raise inflation and tarnish hopes of future US Federal Reserve interest rate cuts. There is also growing concern among some analysts that Trump’s focus on big US tech companies could backfire: “Each and every bubble ends badly, and this one will be no different,” one investment bank strategist said.