Remember back in June, when the United States dropped 14 “bunker-buster” bombs on Iran to wipe out their nuclear enrichment and processing operations? This move created a need for 14 new bombs to replace the expended ones, and reports suggest that aerospace stock Boeing (BA) will be landing the contract to handle that. Despite this, Boeing shares slipped fractionally in Tuesday afternoon’s trading.
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Reports note that the contract will be valued somewhere around $123 million to replace the bombs in question, the bunker-busters—perhaps more correctly known as Massive Ordnance Penetrators—are 20 feet long and weigh a whopping 30,000 pounds. They are also the world’s largest precision-guided weapon around, able to go up to 200 feet underground before detonating.
The June strikes were the first such use of these weapons, reports noted, and a budget document from August noted that the Pentagon was set to move $123 million into Air Force munitions procurement budgets from the operations and maintenance accounts. This new contract will be separate from the one the Air Force offered Boeing and Applied Research Associates Inc. to develop the bunker-buster’s next generation.
Try It Again
Meanwhile, the union in St. Louis is taking another stab at getting back to work, submitting a “modified offer” that was based on the one submitted previously, reports noted. IAM Union District 837 turned in what it called “…a modified offer to the company within the parameters of the pre-ratified agreement approved by our membership.”
The union submitted it through a federal mediator, and represents at least some advancement after reports suggested the union walked out of the last meeting. Though other reports suggested those reports might not have been accurate. Regardless, the picture is getting extremely complex and almost as contentious.
Is Boeing a Good Stock to Buy Right Now?
Turning to Wall Street, analysts have a Strong Buy consensus rating on BA stock based on 16 Buys and one Hold assigned in the past three months, as indicated by the graphic below. After a 41.17% rally in its share price over the past year, the average BA price target of $260.73 per share implies 21.79% upside potential.
