Boeing's $8.4B Spirit Acquisition Leaves Questions About Overpayment

Boeing's $8.4 billion acquisition of Spirit AeroSystems has left many questioning whether the company overpaid for the fuselage supplier.

The deal, which closed on December 8, 2025, saw Boeing take back a factory it had sold to Onex in 2005 for about $900 million. The purchase price included $2.589 billion of loans and advances that Boeing had already pushed into Spirit to keep it running.

When the deal was finalized, Boeing provisionally assigned $9.997 billion of the purchase price to goodwill. By March 31, this figure had climbed to $10.360 billion, and by June 30, it settled at $10.278 billion.

The main driver behind this increase in goodwill was accrued liabilities, which rose from $1.784 billion to $2.202 billion in the allocation. This included $1.52 billion for off-market customer contracts, measured as the present value of the amount by which contract terms deviated from what a market buyer could have obtained.

Boeing's business model depends on a fuselage arriving at its Renton factory, and Spirit knew this when it priced its parts accordingly. The company had become reliant on Boeing for 58% of its revenue, with none of its output able to be sourced elsewhere.