Boeing offers a cleaner binary trade on China-US relations as NVIDIA effectively prices its China exposure at zero, shifting the focus to Boeing's potential for order resumptions.
Boeing's Q2 revenue rose 8% and free cash flow turned positive, but core EPS missed and a record $715B backlog plus potential China order resumption create asymmetric summit upside.
NVIDIA beat EPS for the fifth straight quarter with data center revenue up 117%, but China data center compute is excluded from guidance, making any summit chip deal only incremental upside.
Boeing and NVIDIA enter the Trump-Xi summit with distinct China-related risk profiles. While Boeing stands to gain significantly from potential aircraft order resumptions against a $715B backlog, NVIDIA has already excluded China data center compute from its forward guidance, limiting the upside of any potential chip trade deals.
Boeing's commercial aircraft business is highly sensitive to Chinese order resumptions, which would directly impact its record backlog, whereas NVIDIA has already removed China-related revenue from its forward guidance.