A year ago @Porter_and_Co published a dire warning about a mega-cap American stock. This was the only mega cap stock we told investors to avoid. And it is no ordinary business. It is America’s most strategically important company. We said it would soon “collapse.”
Our January 27th 2023 headline? COMING SOON: THE BOEING COLLAPSE. How did we know? For the last 20 years there hasn’t been a company in America that’s embraced more bad ideas – from financial engineering to ESG – than Boeing.
In 1997, Boeing merged with fellow aerospace manufacturer McDonnell Douglas in a $13 billion stock swap. It was a match made in hell. Boeing was known for quality, and McDonnell was known for financial engineering – with a focus on cost cutting and the company’s share price.
Although the Boeing name survived, it was the McDonnell Douglas attitude that prevailed. McDonnell CEO Harry Stonecipher, who took over day-to-day operations at Boeing, immediately took a carving knife to Boeing's highly-paid engineering staff.
And in May 2001, Boeing management made a physical break with its engineers: manufacturing headquarters stayed in Seattle, while corporate moved to downtown Chicago, 1,700 miles away. That split symbolized the growing distance between builders and bosses.
To say that the company’s engineers were disenfranchised doesn't describe it: Boeing’s entire culture was erased.
CEO Stonecipher even bragged about what he’d destroyed: “When people say I changed the culture of Boeing, that was the intent, so that’s run like a business rather than a great engineering firm.”
Today both Boeing’s CFO Brian West and CEO David Calhoun are formerly senior GE finance people. And they’ve done to Boeing what they did to GE: Destroy the balance sheet.
From 2010 to 2019 Boeing spent $44 billion (!) on buying back its own shares, while adding $50 billion in debt. This reduced the share count by 23% and sent the stock price up 200%. But the underlying business...?
Bean counters can't build airplanes. And Boeing’s planes started falling out of the sky. As a result, free cash flow plunged to negative $4.3 billion annually by 2019.
Today bankruptcy grows more certain. Cumulative net income over the last three years is negative $20 billion. And the company has $52 billion in total debt. Interest expense is currently $2.5 billion a year, but will move much higher as Boeing's debt will be downgraded to junk.
But -- never fear! Investors have nothing to worry about with one of America's greatest and most important companies spiraling towards bankruptcy (like their planes spiraling towards the ground) because Stephanie Pope will save the day!
Stephanie Pope is the chief operating officer of Boeing. She holds a bachelor’s degree in accounting from Southwest Missouri State University. And an MBA from another intellectual powerhouse, Lindenwood University. She has zero engineering background.
Why would someone with this kind of background be placed in charge of operations of the world’s leading aerospace engineering firm? Maybe because she is the executive sponsor of Boeing’s Women Inspiring Leadership, a group dedicated to “increasing gender diversity awareness.”
Boeing’s planes keep falling apart. These outcomes are the results of years and years of bad ideas – starting with the intentional destruction of Boeing’s engineering culture, followed by GE-style financial engineering, and now the company’s full embrace of modern Marxism – ESG.
Like we predicted a year ago, Boeing is going to collapse. When its debt gets downgraded, the stock will drop by more than 50% to below $100. And then, just like we warned about GE and GM, this once impregnable icon of capitalism is heading for bankruptcy.
Is this just piling on because of a freak accident? Nope. We reiterate our call two weeks ago. On December 22nd Porter & Co. updated its “Naughty List” – a list of 10 stocks we predict are going “straight to hell.” The first company on our list? Boeing.
Boeing is a wonderful metaphor for our entire society. When we promote people because of their political views (or their race, or their sex) instead of their competencies, we get planes that fall out of the sky. When will the madness end...?
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