Should You Buy Boeing Stock While It Still Loses Money On Airplanes?
Boeing (BA) trades at $208.87, down 12.0% over the past twelve months while the S&P 500 returned 20.5%. The complaint behind it is simple: the company still loses money building airplanes. What complicates it is how fast that loss is shrinking.
Boeing Cut Its Operating Loss Rate By More Than Half
Operating margin over the past twelve months is negative 5.4%, up from negative 12.4% a year earlier. In the second quarter of 2026 alone it turned positive, at 0.6%. The trailing figure still carries the worse quarters behind it, which is why the two readings differ. Boeing managed that while delivering 171 airplanes, its highest quarterly total since 2018.
Why The 737 And The 787 Barely Break Even
The commercial airplane unit is where the loss still sits. Its operating margin was negative 2.7% in the second quarter of 2026, which management says improved on higher delivery volume and mix, though the quarter also carried about 150 basis points of other favorable adjustments. Program cash margins on the 737 and the 787 run only slightly above breakeven, a cash measure on those two programs rather than the reported margin for the whole unit, and management’s explanation for that is pricing drags that dissipate as it delivers through them. That distinction matters to a buyer: a margin held down by cost needs a fix, while a margin held down by price only needs the airplanes to keep moving.
Two further levers arrive with volume: fixed-cost absorption at higher rates, and better-priced airplanes in the backlog. Management expects those levers to bring 737 margins near their 2018 levels only by the end of the decade.
You Do Not Need Rate 63 For The Next Rate Break
The worry keeping this stock out of favor is whether suppliers can feed the ramp, and management puts the harder work at rates 57 and 63. The 737 is ramping to 47 airplanes per month, the new production line enables the next break to 52, and as of its second-quarter 2026 results management saw no supply-chain constraint on the way there. The 787 has stabilized at 8 airplanes per month in Charleston, where management, at those same results, put the step to 10 behind a GE engine recovery.
The Air Force One program took a $280 million charge in the second quarter of 2026, seat certifications will keep 787 deliveries lumpy through the rest of 2026, and the SPEEA union labor contract covering Puget Sound engineers expires in October 2026. Against $24.6 billion of revenue in that quarter, the defense charge does not decide the case on its own. While seat certification delays are primarily a matter of delivery timing, potential labor disruption ahead of the contract expiration poses a genuine operational risk—and together, they explain why the ramp faces skepticism.
The price-versus-cost distinction is what the market may be overlooking, and it forms the core argument for why the turnaround thesis remains compelling even while the manufacturer remains unprofitable. On the 737, the nearer rate steps are the ones management says it can already supply without constraint, while the 787’s next step remains gated by engine recoveries and the steeper supply-chain hurdles sit above them.
The shares sit at about 83% of their 52-week high, which makes this partly a pullback question, and our dip-buying screen ranks names on that question. Watch whether factory rollouts reach and then hold 47 per month and whether engine deliveries recover enough to unlock the next 787 step.
You Can Be Right About Boeing And Still Wait Too Long
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