In the third season of Breaking Bad, Mike Ehrmentraut warns Walter White: “No more half-measures, Walter.” When you’re on a knife’s edge, you need to take decisive action.
Boeing’s management team seems to have taken that advice to heart, pulling off one of the boldest financial recovery manoeuvres in recent corporate history. On Monday, the beleaguered aerospace group went all-in with a humongous offering of shares and equity-linked instruments to shore up its balance sheet and stave off a credit rating downgrade to junk status.
This was no small ask. Market analysts had expected Boeing to tap the markets for $10bn-$15bn, but the company raised an eye-watering $24.3bn, following the exercise by the underwriters of the “greenshoe” option to increase the offering by an additional 15 per cent. Boeing has thus set a record for the largest ever US equity offering. The stock offering was priced at $143 per share, a roughly 5 per cent discount to Monday’s close — a reasonable level given the circumstances.