Boeing is Cowen’s No. 1 aerospace stock pick for 2019.
According to Cowen aerospace analyst Can von Rumohr, the airplane manufacturer is “in a production sweet spot” going into the new year, and that “Concern over recent headline risks also look overblown,” CNBC reports.
Boeing’s stock is up more than 13% overall this year, even with a significant 6% drop in November while Indonesian authorities investigated the late October crash of a Boeing 737 MAX plane. Boeing allegedly knew about a potentially dangerous flaw in the in-flight control feature of the plane, but did not inform the airline. Following the incident, Boeing sent out an Operations Manual Bulletin to airlines on how to address the issue.
Cowen says, “It would take a sharp economic slowdown to disrupt the favorable current production outlook” for the company.
Earlier this year, Boeing announced that China is contracting the company to create 7,690 planes worth more than $1.2 trillion over the next two decades, representing a 6% increase from the platemaker’s projections a year ago. In August, Boeing raised its global forecast by 4% to 42,700 planes valued at more than $6 trillion. At the time, Boeing noted that those numbers could be negatively influenced by tariff’s imposed by the Trump Administration.
Beyond making consumer planes, Boeing is also a major defense contractor.