Chris Mecray Quotations

Singapore is an important airline. It's really the gateway to aircraft sales in Asia. But at end of the day, one company with 10 aircraft is not going to make or break any program.

My guess is it gets settled without too much time, rather than have them (the company) risk the progress they've made with Wall Street recently.

Neither of those companies makes a significant portion of their money in the segment. It's a low-margin business. It's not bad business, but it's not going to move the needle more than a big defense contract, (or) maybe even a medium-size defense contract.

Neither item is good news, so you can't say it's one or another. A plane crashes can always impact the stock, but it's probably not a big problem given the strong safety record of that aircraft.

Right now, I've recommended Boeing ( BA : Research , Estimates ) for the last couple of months. I did downgrade that about two weeks on the price move. I still think the stocks continue to perform however, although I think the gains will be modest from here in the near term.

I don't think it would cripple them. Boeing is looking to reduce production. It's a more ideal time for the company to take a strike than for the union to go out on one.

We look at it on a cash-flow basis. We regard it as pretty fairly valued. But even with this new contract there's no real near-term impact.

I think it's going to hurt them by around 15-to-20 cents a share, assuming it goes on to the end of the quarter.

It improves competitiveness overall. The more people that participate, the more powerful it becomes. It clearly benefits the buyers.

I think they've got their head in the sand, failing to recognize their market share is deteriorating and will continue to deteriorate much faster than they or anyone else anticipated a few years ago.

While they won't admit it, the primary driver of lower procurement costs will be by lowering prices out there, increasing competition through versus auctions.

First time around they were talking about charges that were purely restructuring, and now about half are operating charges. It indicates some severe problems that are creating a completely different picture at the company than we had been led to believe. It calls into question what's going to happen in following years.

The money's coming from both side of the business. You have commercial aerospace with explosive growth. The commercial aircraft orders have been exceptionally strong over the course of the summer and also on the defense side of the business where government budgets have been picking up in the last couple of years and are not expected to continue to pick up through the next administration.

They have still issues with demand on a couple of key areas of their business including the space launch side, the satellite manufacturing side and demand for some of their defense transport products. I'm heading over to an investor conference this morning where I expect them to talk about the turnaround in progress. They will focus on the increasing cash flows and I think we'll get a chance to ask them about some of those strategic issues.

I don't know if it would have killed the A3XX, but it would have been a major blow. With the aircraft in its infancy, every order is important. For Boeing, losing the order is too bad, but it was not a must-win order.

I don't think there's a whole lot at stake. The Republicans are clearly more vocal about supporting defense, more vocal about specific issues. But there's no reason to assume the Democrats are bad for defense. It's not supported by hard facts.