It hasn’t been a good day for aerospace company Boeing (NYSE:BA) as a couple of court cases that actually don’t have much to do with malfunctioning aircraft concluded with big judgments against it. Investors, though, were likely just happy to hear it wasn’t another plane losing a part mid-flight and sent shares up nearly 2% in Friday afternoon’s trading.
First, nearly 500 Boeing employees got some back pay as a result of a Washington Department of Labor and Industries suit over improperly withheld travel pay. Those 500 employees will each get a share of $11.5 million, which blows away the previous record for a settlement for the industry by a factor of five.
The previous largest settlement the agency ever saw was $2 million to rental car company employees back in 2017. Individual employees received amounts ranging from “a few hundred dollars” all the way up to $90,000 after traveling for work-related reasons on Boeing’s behalf but never getting compensated.
And Then It Got Worse
Things got worse when Boeing was hit with a $72 million judgment against it over a matter of trade secrets. Zunum Aero, an electric vehicle startup, sued Boeing over designs for hybrid electric aircraft. Zunum Aero convinced a jury that Boeing copied Zunum’s designs and put them to work in Boeing’s own operations.
That led to the jury awarding Zunum Aero $81.2 million for trade secrets misappropriation and $11.6 million for “tortious interference.” However, it didn’t go all Zunum’s way, as the jury found Zunum “failed to mitigate” roughly $20.8 million in damages, which brought the total award down to $72 million, as stated previously.
Is Boeing a Buy or Sell?
Turning to Wall Street, analysts have a Moderate Buy consensus rating on BA stock based on 17 Buys, seven Holds, and two Sells assigned in the past three months, as indicated by the graphic below. After a 15.49% loss in its share price over the past year, the average BA price target of $219.57 per share implies 24.41% upside potential.
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