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“Change takes time, but we’re starting to see a difference in our performance across the business,” CEO Kelly Ortberg said in a note to staff outlining improvements.
“If we continue to tackle the important work ahead of us and focus on safety, quality and stability, we can navigate the dynamic global environment and make 2025 our turnaround year,” he said.
He told CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” Tuesday that the company aims to generate cash in the fourth quarter.
Boeing has been getting better by many metrics under Ortberg, a former aerospace executive and engineer who took the top job last August. Its airplane deliveries have improved, its production has become more stable and even once-critical airline CEOs have praised Boeing’s leadership.
The aerospace giant lost $176 million in the three months ended June 30, down from $1.09 billion a year earlier. Revenue rose 35% to $22.75 billion from $16.87 billion. Adjusting for one-time items, Boeing reported a loss of $433 million or $1.24 a share, better than the loss analysts expected.
Boeing’s earnings were hit by a $445 million charge from a deal with the Justice Department to avoid prosecution tied to two deadly crashes of the company’s best-selling 737 Max.
Here’s how Boeing performed in the second quarter, compared with estimates compiled by LSEG:
- Loss per share: $1.24 adjusted vs a loss of $1.48 expected
- Revenue: $22.75 billion vs $21.84 billion expected
Boeing burned through $200 million in the second quarter, down from more $4.3 billion in the same period of 2024, which the company had expected would be a pivotal year for the plane maker until a door plug blew out of one of its packed Max 737 9 planes several minutes into a flight, renewing federal scrutiny on the company and hobbling production.
In the second quarter of this year, sales in Boeing’s commercial airplane unit rose 81% from a year ago to $10.87 billion, and its negative operating margin more than halved to 5.1%.
Boeing has increased output of its 737 Max aircraft to 38 a month, the Federal Aviation Administration’s limit after the January 2024 door plug near catastrophe. Ortberg earlier this year said the company would seek FAA approval at some point this year to go beyond that limit.
“We want to be stable” at 38 a month and then work with the FAA on a rate increase, Ortberg told CNBC on Tuesday. “We will be working with the FAA in the third quarter for sure.”
Increased production and deliveries are key to Boeing’s recovery because airlines and other customer pay the bulk of a jet’s price when they receive it.
For the three months ended June 30, Boeing handed over 150 airplanes. The last time it delivered that many planes in a second quarter was in 2018, which was also the last year Boeing posted an annual profit.
The company still has challenges ahead. Boeing said Tuesday that the long-delayed certification of the Boeing 737 Max 7 and the Max 10, the smallest and largest members, respectively, of the Max family, likely won’t come this year as Ortberg forecast in May, but in 2026, which some airline executives had already expected. Boeing engineers are working on a fix for an anti-ice system for those aircraft.
Also, Boeing’s defense unit has been riddled by charges in past quarters and, as of Sunday, could face a factory worker strike after the 3,200-employee group voted down a new labor deal.
Boeing’s defense and space unit revenue rose 10% to more than $6.6 billion and its services business’s sales increased 8% to $5.3 billion.
Investors will look to Ortberg and the executive team on a 10:30 a.m. ET call on Tuesday for their outlook on further improved production, results and stability at a company that has been mired in crises since 2018, when the first of two deadly 737 Max crashes occurred.
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