Boeing stock at 52-week lows as plane maker furloughs workers to preserve cash

After a tumultuous year, the last thing Boeing needed was a union strike.

Shares of the aircraft manufacturing giant touched new 52-week lows on Friday as a labor dispute involving its largest unionized workforce — the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM) — was set to enter into a second week.

“Boeing — its entire infrastructure, its entire founding, if you will — right now is under severe stress. I think they’re going to be forced to try to settle this as quickly as they can," Mike Boyd, president of aviation research and consulting company Boyd Group International, told Yahoo Finance in a recent interview.

It’s estimated that the first full week of the strike has already cost Boeing's workers and shareholders at least $571 million, according to consulting firm Anderson Economic Group.

This past week, Boeing laid out aggressive cost-cutting measures culminating in the announcement of temporary furloughs expected to impact “a large number” of executives, managers, and employees.

“While this is a tough decision that impacts everybody, it is in an effort to preserve our long-term future and help us navigate through this very difficult time,” Boeing's CEO Kelly Ortberg wrote in a note to employees on Wednesday.

Ortberg, who took over the CEO job last month, said he and his leadership team would also take a pay cut for the duration of the strike.

While Moody's recently placed Boeing’s credit rating under review, S&P Global said its status is safe for now, provided the strike is short-lived.

“A shorter strike, on the order of weeks, would likely be manageable for Boeing and not lead to a negative rating action. However, we believe an extended strike would be costly and difficult to absorb, given the company's already strained financial position,” said S&P said in a statement this week.

Wall Street analysts anticipate the company will seek to raise cash by selling stock. At the end of the second quarter, Boeing had roughly $58 billion in total debt and $12.6 billion in cash.

"BA could target liquidity to support debt paydown over the next 18 months," wrote Jefferies analysts in a recent note.

It remains to be seen how patient investors will be about the ongoing dispute at a time when the company is aiming to ramp production of its bestselling 737 Max jets to 38 per month by the end of the year, up from roughly 25 per month in June and July.

Morningstar equity analyst Nicolas Owens wrote in a recent note that Boeing's relationship with its machinist union has been "contentious" for decades and that he expects the strike could last through the holidays until the end of the year.