Boeing Stock Is Taking Off After Outlasting Turbulence.

BOEING Co. seems to have the right stuff these days.

Its stock price has soared to its highest altitude in more than two years, and the skies are wide open for it to climb even more.

Last week, the stock was trading in the low $50 range, a vast improvement over March when shares were trading in the low $30 range.

The Seattle-based company, the second largest private-sector employer in Los Angeles County, is in a prime position to grow for several reasons. The economy is bustling, the world's inventory of commercial jets is aging, and the company is diversifying.

"Their earnings for 2001 look good. I think Boeing is finally finding a groove for its business," said Collins & Co. financial analyst Bruce Raabe, who tracks Boeing.

Boeing officials did not return calls last week.

The company is the world's largest maker of commercial jets, but its recent past has been a rocky one. It suffered through production problems and weathered a 40-day engineering strike earlier this year. Fortunately for the company, both those problems seem to be behind it.

Now it is coming off a successful launch of its Delta III rocket nearly two weeks ago at Cape Canaveral, Fla., after two previous rockets failed to make it into orbit.

"They had a rocket launch that actually didn't blow up for a change," noted Raabe. "This just proves they are now the leader of their industry, both on the defense side and the commercial aviation side."

Financial analysts are very bullish about Boeing's stock. According to a recent report by analyst Robert Toomey of Dain Rauscher in Seattle, the commercial aerospace industry cycle is at the beginning of another multiyear climb and Boeing is positioned to take advantage of that.

Analysts note that there is a stronger demand for the company's aircraft, which make up 66 percent of its sales. During the next few years, Boeing is expected to produce roughly 500 airplanes a year, according to a report from Peter Jacobs at Ragen MacKenzie Group Inc. in Seattle. While that is down from the 620 aircraft ordered last year, it is still considered a healthy number.

Just this month, Delta Air Lines Inc. placed an order for 21 of Boeing's new generation of 767 jets, in a deal valued at $2.4 billion, based on current prices. Boeing also won a $1.1 billion contract in early August from American Airlines, which ordered nine jets,

"I have seen them winning a lot of contracts lately," said Pittsburg Institutional analyst Suzanne H. Betts, who is projecting that the aerospace company's stock will hit $72 within the next 12 to 18 months. Shares hit a 52-week high of $54.50 on Aug. 25 after dipping to a 52-week low of $32 on March 13.

Boeing Co. has only one main competitor in the aircraft-manufacturing sector, which is one of the few clouds on the horizon. That competitor is Airbus Industrie in Europe, which is restructuring itself into a single corporation to improve its competitiveness. Analysts believe that Airbus' s business will be growing as it gears up to deliver its new 550-seat superjumbo jet, the A3XX, by late 2005.

"Boeing is already witnessing a loss in its market share of aircraft deliveries," wrote Mark Vacheresse of H & R Block Financial Advisors Inc. "Airbus's portion of aircraft deliveries should grow from under 30 percent in 1998 to an estimated 40 percent in 2001."

But Boeing is diversifying its operations, concentrating less on commercial jet manufacturing and branching out into the satellite industry. In early August, it won the Defense Department's approval to buy Hughes Electronics Corp.'s El Segundo-based satellite-making business, called Hughes Space & Communications, in a $3.75 billion transaction. It will make Boeing the world's largest maker of commercial satellites. Under the deal, Boeing will add 9,000 Hughes employees to its 37,000 employees already working in California.

Boeing is also the U.S. military's largest builder of intelligence satellites. Last year it unseated Lockheed Martin Corp. in a multibillion-dollar contract to build the next generation of imaging satellites for the National Reconnaissance Office.

Now that the Delta III rocket has successfully been launched, Boeing hopes to launch the next Delta III carrying customers' payload in the first quarter of next year.

Dovetailing with its satellite business, Boeing recently agreed to pay $1.5 billion in cash to buy flight-data provider Jeppesen Sanderson Inc. from the Tribune Co. The deal will help Boeing enter the aviation services field and help further diversify its business. Jeppesen provides computerized flight planning, navigation, and weather data and aviation software.