Remember when Boeing felt like the ultimate widow-maker trade? Yeah, me too. For years it seemed like every headline was another multi-billion-dollar charge, another delayed program, another strike. Then Tuesday happened. The stock blasted 10% higher in a single session, and for once it wasn’t because of some short squeeze or meme frenzy. It was the CFO standing up and basically saying: “We’re actually going to throw off serious cash again.”
In a market that punishes hope and rewards hard numbers, that’s the kind of sentence that makes people hit the buy button without thinking twice. And honestly? I think they might be right this time.
The Comment That Moved a $120 Billion Company
At an industry conference, Boeing’s finance chief Jay Malave dropped a line that instantly became the most important sentence in aerospace this quarter. He expects pretty substantial year-over-year growth in positive free cash flow in 2026. Translation for normal humans: after burning cash like a teenager with dad’s credit card, Boeing finally sees daylight.
He went further. That old $10 billion free cash flow target everyone thought was dead? Suddenly it’s “very attainable” again. The market heard “very attainable” and decided it was time to send the stock screaming higher.
“The good news is there’s going to be upgrades tomorrow substantially because people want to get behind Boeing more than anything.”
– A very well-known market commentator on Tuesday morning
Why This Actually Matters More Than the Headline Move
Look, a 10% pop feels great when you’re long, but stocks do that all the time for dumb reasons. This one feels different. Free cash flow is the ultimate truth serum for industrial companies. Earnings can be massaged, non-GAAP numbers can tell fairy tales, but cash either shows up in the bank account or it doesn’t.
Boeing has been in cash-burn hell for years between the MAX crisis, Covid, supply-chain chaos, and massive fixed-cost overhang. The street had basically written off any hope of meaningful positive cash flow before 2027 or 2028. Malave just ripped up that script.
That’s why one research shop immediately came out and said the window for optimism on cash flow has officially reopened. They think the January earnings report is now heavily de-risked. In plain English: the odds of another nasty surprise just went way down.
Orders Are Pouring In Again (And They’re Big Ones)
Cash flow doesn’t fix itself by magic. It needs actual airplanes flying out the door and customers paying for them. Guess what? That part is finally happening too.
- 161 net commercial orders in Q3 2025 – that’s more than triple the number from a year ago
- Emirates just signed for $38 billion worth of 777-9s last month alone
- Backlog now sits at levels that give management real pricing power again
When Jim Cramer says “orders trump everything,” he’s not just doing TV hot takes. He’s stating the obvious for anyone who’s followed industrials for more than five minutes. You can have the best cost-cutting plan in the world, but if nobody is buying your product, you’re toast.
Boeing is finally seeing the order book refill at the exact moment production rates are starting to climb. That’s the holy grail combo for margins and cash conversion.
The Turnaround Play Everyone Gave Up On
Let’s be brutally honest for a second. Most professional investors had mentally written Boeing into the “too hard” pile. The 777X delays were the final straw after years of self-inflicted wounds. The stock was trading like a melting ice cube.
Then Kelly Ortberg took over as CEO. No drama, no splashy announcements, just an adult walking into the room and starting to fix things one by one. New labor deal? Done. Production ramp plans that actually look believable? Done. And now a finance chief willing to put a timeline on cash positivity? That’s starting to look like a real turnaround.
I’ve followed enough of these stories to know they rarely end with a straight line higher. There will be bumps. But the valuation gap here is ridiculous when you step back and look at it coldly.
Where the Stock Could Go From Here
Quick math that any value investor would love: Boeing still sits more than 50% below its 2019 peak despite the broader market hitting all-time highs repeatedly. If the company simply gets back to generating mid-single-digit free cash flow margins (totally reasonable for a duopoly), the current price looks laughably cheap.
Wall Street is already scrambling to upgrade numbers. Expect 2026 cash flow estimates to move from basically zero to something closer to $8-10 billion over the next few weeks. Every billion dollars of upward revision tends to add real dollars to the share price in this name.
And here’s the part that keeps me up at night in a good way: defense budgets are going up globally, space is becoming a real business again, and the commercial replacement cycle is just getting started. Boeing sits at the intersection of all three trends.
Risks? Of Course There Are Risks
I’d be doing you a disservice if I pretended this is a layup. Supply chain issues haven’t magically disappeared. The 777X program still has technical risk. Geopolitical tensions could mess with export approvals. And let’s not forget labor – peace today doesn’t guarantee peace tomorrow.
But here’s what’s changed: the downside surprises feel mostly priced in after years of pain, while the upside surprises (like Tuesday’s comments) are still fresh and unanticipated. That’s usually when the best risk/reward setups appear.
Sometimes the best trades are the ones everyone already hates. I’m not saying buy with both fists and close your eyes, but I am saying the conversation around Boeing just shifted in a meaningful way. And when the cash flow narrative flips from “maybe someday” to “very attainable,” smart money tends to listen.
The stock soared 10% on a promise. The next leg higher might come when they actually deliver on it.
