After Earnings, Is Boeing Stock a Buy, a Sell, or Fairly Valued?

Boeing released its fourth-quarter earnings report on Jan. 27. Here’s Morningstar’s take on Boeing’s earnings and stock.

Key Morningstar Metrics for Boeing

• Fair Value Estimate: $246.00
• Morningstar Rating: ★★★
• Morningstar Economic Moat Rating: Wide
• Morningstar Uncertainty Rating: High

What We Thought of Boeing’s Q4 Earnings

Boeing delivered 117 737 and 27 787 jets in fourth-quarter 2025, up 225% and 80%, respectively, since 2024. The firm also recorded $600 million more in losses on its KC-46 tanker program for the US Air Force, offset by a hefty $9.6 billion gain on the sale of its digital aviation business.

Why it matters: We estimate that half of Boeing’s enterprise value is derived from its 737 product line. Increasing the rate at which the company can make and deliver these jets is the single biggest driver of near- and long-term profitability and cash flow, and Boeing received Federal Aviation Administration approval to do so in October 2025.

• Boeing has designed four versions of its newest generation of 737 jets: the 737 MAX 8 and 737 MAX 9 entered service by 2018, but its shorter 737 MAX 7 and stretched 737 MAX 10 have had their flight certification delayed by the Federal Aviation Administration because new materials and temperature tolerances in their engine nacelles complicate deicing.
• Our forecast for 2026 deliveries of 737s (including shipping previously built ones from inventory) is 117 more jets than the 447 the company achieved in 2025, and we estimate the company may deliver 38 more 787s than it did last year. Both should be positive developments for the company’s turnaround trajectory.

The bottom line: Our fair value estimate for wide-moat Boeing remains $246 per share. The shares trade very close to our current fair value estimate.

Coming up: We’ll eagerly monitor Boeing’s progress on its 737 and 787 deliveries, as well as flight testing and certification of its newest and largest jet, the 777X, due later in 2026. Provided it progresses to plan, we believe the company will achieve its approximately $3 billion free cash flow goal in 2026 and reach $10 billion by 2028.

Fair Value Estimate for Boeing Stock

With its 3-star rating, we believe Boeing’s stock is fairly valued compared with our long-term fair value estimate of $246 per share, which represents an enterprise value of 25 times our 2026 EBITDA estimate. We think enormous special charges and fleet groundings are almost certainly behind Boeing, especially since it recorded a $4.9 billion charge in the third quarter of 2025 for further delays in the 777X certification process and yet another KC-46 tanker charge in the fourth quarter. We forecast one more year of really hard slogging as the company clears up certification, manufacturing, and supply chain issues that hamper its production pacing. Our valuation reflects healthy long-term global demand for Boeing’s products and successful scaling up of deliveries and eventually margins on its bread-and-butter 737 and 787 models in 2026-27.

Read more about Boeing’s fair value estimate.

Economic Moat Rating

We think Boeing merits a wide moat rating because it benefits from durable intangible assets and switching costs. Although Boeing has taken competitive hits from Airbus in the commercial aerospace duopoly, the commercial airplane market is large enough and so difficult to break into that it supports two wide-moat aircraft manufacturers: Airlines have almost no choice but to continue buying their products. We think Boeing’s defense business is more exposed to operational risk than peers’ due to its higher exposure to underbidding on fixed-price contracts in the mid-2010s. We think the firm is turning a corner operationally and benefits from intangible assets stemming from the technical complexity of its products, switching costs from the time and effort the military faces to switch suppliers, and a lack of viable alternative suppliers. We see the global services segment as possessing intangible assets from proprietary access to aftermarket part designs as the FAA and other regulators require that spare parts be identical to the original design, as well as benefiting from switching costs stemming from a lack of alternative suppliers for such parts.

Read more about Boeing’s economic moat.

Financial Strength

Boeing’s capitalization suffered the brunt of the last three years’ turmoil. To keep the lights on in 2019-20, the company borrowed nearly $50 billion and ceased dividends and share purchases.

The company ended 2023 with about $52 billion in debt and $16 billion in cash, $4 billion less net debt than at the end of 2022. But subsequent turmoil in its core businesses left the company with $10.5 billion in cash and $57.5 billion in debt at the end of the third quarter of 2024. Facing a prolonged machinists’ strike and to stave off a debt ratings downgrade, the company announced layoffs to cut costs and issued $23 billion of combined equity and convertible preferred stock due 2027, leaving it with $7 billion in cash and $53 billion of debt by mid-2025.

Read more about Boeing’s financial strength.

Risk and Uncertainty

We think Boeing’s biggest risks are operational risks that constrain supply and macroeconomic risks that limit demand, both of which the company has suffered over the last several years. We think Boeing deserves a High Uncertainty Rating. It is working through much thornier supply chain risks than Airbus as it revives 737 MAX and 787 production and deliveries.

On the demand side, the pandemic dramatically reduced air travel and aircraft deliveries: Trade group IATA reported that passenger demand declined by nearly two thirds in 2020. While travel has returned to prepandemic levels in most markets, its recovery was patchy and may face renewed disruption at any time, though temporary disruptions of air travel would affect Boeing’s services business much more immediately than its commercial jet business, which has years of orders in backlog. China is a major aviation market, and notwithstanding recertification of the 737 MAX in China and resumed deliveries of new planes in due course, we suspect it may be easier (if not simply more expedient) for some local airlines to substitute future marginal orders of 737s for Comac C919s while maintaining or growing their share of orders for Airbus narrow-bodies.

Boeing’s complex manufacturing process for commercial jets marred the company’s results as numerous errors and lapses in quality emerged between 2020 and 2024, made worse by turnover during the pandemic and a strike by the machinists’ union in late 2024. A second major risk in the aftermath of the 737 MAX grounding and production rework on the 787 lies in global supply chain disruptions that also affect Airbus’ and Boeing’s engine and subsystem suppliers. These suppliers may just not be able to ramp up production at Boeing’s desired pace, which would constrain or delay Boeing’s ability to get its assembly up to the volume where it can earn profit on plane deliveries, versus recording extraordinary charges for idle or duplicative assembly capacity.

Read more about Boeing’s risk and uncertainty.

BA Bulls Say

• Boeing has a large backlog that covers several years of production for its most popular aircraft, which gives us confidence in aggregate demand for aerospace products.
• Boeing is positioned to benefit from emerging-market growth in revenue passenger kilometers and a robust developed-market replacement cycle over the next two decades.
• We expect commercial airframe manufacturing to remain a duopoly for most of the world for the foreseeable future. We think customers will not have any meaningful options other than continuing to rely on incumbent aircraft suppliers.

BA Bears Say

• Boeing’s reputation for engineering prowess may have taken a permanent hit since repeated manufacturing flaws in 737 MAX jets have hampered the assembly pace and disrupted airlines’ and passengers’ schedules.
• In the long term, changed consumer behavior, especially among business travelers, could be unfavorable for aviation.
• Aircraft development is notoriously susceptible to development delays, hiccups, and cost overruns.

This article was compiled by Rachel Schlueter.