Is EADS (Airbus) stock really stock (ie, equity) or just a free loan (ie, debt)?

I did not see any dividend or earning per share listed for EADS.PA, the parent of Airbus (in Yahoo Finance, of course!); while they are not required to comply with Sarbaines-Oxley, I still think they would want to advertise these attributes to induce more stock purchases.

IF they are not actually paying out any dividend, what is the point of holding the stock? It certainly isn't going to see any dramatic growth, like a dot-com stock. Also, France OWNS 15% of the stock, Spain 5% and Germany a chunk as well; if these stocks don't pay out, aren't they just interest free loans?

That's odd; "EADS" on the French page shows a dividend, but "EAD.PA" in the US page shows no dividend. Having a dividend makes it look a lot more like equity.

Go to Yahoo Finance. At the foot of the page you will find a link to the various country sites. Choose France. In the search box type in EADS (Stock = Actons in French). Hit enter and you will see that EADS is in fact common stock. It closed yesterday at EUR 23.45 a share and pays a dividend of 0.65 a share.

It is not necessary for a growth company to pay a dividend. Remember Microsoft did not pay a single penny as dividend for 20 odd years. If a company believes either (a) it needs the cash for a rainy day (b) needs the cash to make acquisitions (c) can deploy the funds to grow the business at an attractive rate of return then it would not pay a dividend.