Boeing 777 Case

In October 1990, Boeing announced its plans of developing a new aircraft Boeing 777. In light of (Boeing's CEO) Frank Shrotz's goal of improving Boeing's ROE, whether this new project would help him pursue his objective is a key issue. Sustained success demands willingness to gamble regularly; however the pertinent question is whether the financial success of this gamble would prove to be spectacular or fatal. Given the huge cost outlays, it is imperative to assess the present worth of the investment before deciding to go ahead with the 777 project.

The basic intuition is to accept the project if the IRR is more than WACC or reject it if IRR is less than WACC. The defense division of Boeing was relatively more stable and was thriving during gulf war whereas commercial aircraft business became volatile. Therefore β for commercial division is more appropriate for calculating WACC for evaluating the commercial 777 jet project.

NYSE composite index presents a better portfolio than S&P 500 and βBoeing is analyzed for both short term (60 days) and long term impact (58 months) of gulf war. As the gulf war was projected not to extend beyond 6 months, it made sense to evaluate the WACC for both the time horizons.

Average of unlevered βs of Grumman, Northrop and Lockheed corporations, with higher percentages of revenues from defense, helps in calculating the βdefense for Boeing. This in turn gives the βcommercial for both short and long term periods using the following expression.

βBoeing = Weightcommercial * βcommercial + Weightdefense * βdefense

Using these, cost of equity is calculated for both short and long term periods. Cost of debt can be calculated from the bonds data in exhibit 2.

With βcommercial for long and short term impact being 1.015 and 2.307, the