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Boeing to sell at least $10B in shares to plug cash drain

(www.wsj.com)
32 points bookofjoe | 1 comments | 15 Oct 24 21:34 UTC | HN request time: 0.213s | source
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xracy ◴[15 Oct 24 21:54 UTC] No.41853512[source]▶
Gosh, would be real cool if they hadn't bought all those shares, and just had the cash on hand to help... I don't know... invest in engineering and making planes fly with doors on them.
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s1artibartfast ◴[15 Oct 24 22:19 UTC] No.41853701[source]▶
Speaking abstractly,Why would that be any better?

Why keep the cash on hand when you can raise cash.

I get that people have an emotional reaction to Boeing, but it's not like owning 10 billion dollars of Treasury bonds would have prevented a door plug blowout

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burkaman ◴[15 Oct 24 22:35 UTC] No.41853841[source]▶
It's not an emotional reaction to Boeing, it's a logical reaction to the fact that stock buybacks are a blatant form of market manipulation that were illegal for most of the 20th century. Nobody should be doing them, it's nothing to do with Boeing specifically. Buybacks are almost always bad for employees, customers, and if you're a big enough corporation, the world.
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s1artibartfast ◴[15 Oct 24 23:03 UTC] No.41854011[source]▶
Negative reaction to stock BuyBacks are also emotional and irrational. I've never heard anyone articulate a cogent argument why they are worse than paying a dividend.
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1. xracy ◴[17 Oct 24 02:03 UTC] No.41865757[source]▶
The alternative to BuyBacks doesn't have to be a dividend... But yeah, if those are the only 2 options you're thinking of I could see why this looks emotional and irrational.

I could imagine 2 other possibilities that I like better:

#1, The government could reclaim that money as taxes. #2, Companies could invest that into R&D and new technologies... Like say, greener planes? That would be really cool for the last 12 years.

There has to be more to life than 'value to the shareholders'. We can do so much better than this as a society.