Southwest Airlines Was ‘Let Down’ by Boeing, Analyst Say
Southwest Airlines stock is trading down on Tuesday, following a downgrade by Evercore ISI, which lamented that the company is “a growth airline that has invested for growth, yet can’t grow. Southwest stock (ticker: LUV) is up 8.5% year to date, but has fallen nearly 5 percent in the past 12 months. Airlines in general have turned in a fairly mixed performance in 2019: Although no major players have managed to keep pace with the market, the level at which they’ve lagged as varied, in part due to their exposure to Boeing ’s (BA) MAX 737. That’s not surprising given that after March’s deadly Ethiopian Airlines crash, the aircraft has been out of service for months, which has caused big disruptions to airlines, like Southwest, that have fleets that are heavily reliant on the planes. Southwest has held up better than some, but is still feeling the pinch. That left the stock with a market-trailing year-to-date gain, despite raised dividends and rumors that Warren Buff