Boeing’s Earnings Showed Progress. Wall Street Targets Are Highest Since 2023.

A Southwest Airlines Boeing 737-700 airplane. (SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images)

Boeing’s second-quarter earnings report wasn’t perfect, but it showed progress. That has Wall Street feeling much better about the commercial jet maker.

On Tuesday, Boeing reported a second-quarter loss of $1.24 per share on sales of $22.7 billion. Wall Street had expected a loss of $1.40 on sales of $21.7 billion, according to Bloomberg. Shares traded as high as $242.69, a new 52-week high, but the gains didn’t last, and the stock closed 4.4% lower, at $226.08.

That wasn’t a sign of a big disappointment, though. Coming into earnings, Boeing stock was very strong, up 30% over the preceding three months.

Operating losses of $557 million in Boeing’s commercial jet business were a little larger than Vertical Research Partners analyst Rob Stallard expected, but its services business picked up the slack. What’s more, its defense business posted a profit of $110 million, the division’s second quarterly profit in a row after posting back-to-back quarterly losses north of $2 billion.

Stallard rates Boeing shares Hold, but took his price target to $242 a share from $205. Deutsche Bank analyst Scott Deuschle rates shares Buy. His price target went to $255 from $245. “Subjectively boring, objectively improving” is how he characterized the quarter.

Boring is just fine for Boeing investors. They have dealt with a lot over the years. The company hasn’t reported a full-year profit since 2018. Shares were north of $440 before March 2019, when the second of two crashes of the 737 MAX jet within five months led to the planes’ grounding worldwide.

Analysts at UBS, Barclays, J.P. Morgan, and others joined Stallard and Deuschle in hiking price targets. The average price target for Boeing stock is now about $259, according to FactSet. That’s the highest since, essentially, late 2023. Price targets declined early in 2024 after an emergency-door plug blew out of a 737 MAX 9 jet while in flight on Jan. 5.

That incident created significant turmoil for the company and investors. The average price targets bottomed at less than $180 for Boeing stock in around October 2024, a few months after new CEO Kelly Ortberg arrived in August to help turn things around.

Nineteen months after the door plug incident and less than a year with a new CEO, Wall Street is gaining confidence that things are going in the right direction for the iconic American manufacturer.

Boeing stock rose in early trading Wednesday, but the gain faded, along with the market, after the Federal Reserve announced its decision to hold interest rates steady. Shares closed down 0.1% at $225.84, while the S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 0.1% and 0.4%, respectively.

Write to Al Root at allen.root@dowjones.com