Should You Buy Howmet Stock After Its Turbine Blade Scare

Howmet Aerospace (HWM) has fallen about 21% from its August high, and the question is whether that is a gift or a warning. Its own record says falls this size have paid off more often than not, and that you will probably watch it fall further first. What knocked the stock down is a scare about who else might make turbine blades. Start with what the record paid.

The Fourteen Times Howmet Has Fallen This Far

Since 2010, Howmet has dropped 20% or more inside 30 trading days on 14 separate occasions. Eight of those 14 ended higher twelve months later, with a median one-year return of 8%. Buying the falls worked more often than it failed. It rarely worked quickly.

The typical buyer sat through a further 24% decline, and the median wait until the recovery peaked ran 162 days, roughly five months. The record rewarded patience more than timing.

Is Howmet Worth Five Months Of Waiting?

That depends on what you own while you wait. Howmet clears every basic quality check on growth, cash generation and its balance sheet. Revenue grew 18.1% over the trailing twelve months, and the company turns 24.4% of revenue into operating cash flow.

Where that growth comes from matters too. Gas turbine revenue, pulled by the electricity data centers need, rose 38%, and spares across commercial aerospace, defense aerospace, and gas turbines rose 37%, both in the second quarter of 2026. Spares now run about 22% of revenue in the first half of 2026, aftermarket work that does not wait on new aircraft.

Should You Treat This Drop Like The Other Fourteen?

This one at least qualifies. At about 21% below the August high, it clears the same 20%-in-30-days bar the record is built on, so the history applies rather than merely rhymes. The selloff traces to a scare that SpaceX and Tesla could start making their own turbine blades. Howmet holds more than half the global market for turbine blades in gas turbines, and management says a commitment made in August 2026 brings new capacity in August 2028 at the earliest.

That cuts both ways. The wait that caps Howmet's own growth would likely cap a new blade maker too, in the same machine-tool queue.

The price is the harder part. Even after the fall, Howmet trades at about 52 times earnings against roughly 23 for the S&P 500, and it is still up 30.2% over the past year. The premium is smaller, not gone.

Howmet traded as low as $178.61 within the past year, and at about $231.53 today the range still allows room to fall. The next real evidence is the third-quarter 2026 report, where the line to watch is management's first read on 2027 revenue.

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