CFO Brian West said Boeing would produce fewer than the
maximum 38 737 aircraft allowed each month under a Federal Aviation
Administration imposed limit.
Shares of the company were down 1% before the bell.
“We’re deliberately going to slow to get this right,” West
told a Bank of America conference. “We are the ones who made the decision to
constrain rates on the 737 program...And we’ll feel the impact of that over the
next several months.”
Manufacturing quality at Boeing and major supplier Spirit
AeroSystems is under scrutiny following a Jan. 5 incident in which a door plug
blew off a 737 MAX 9 plane mid-flight. The two companies are now engaged in
tie-up talks.
West added that Boeing’s cash burn in the first quarter will
be somewhere between $4 billion and $4.5 billion, “higher than we originally
planned back in January.”
That is due to a combination of lower deliveries, lower
production volumes at its commercial division as well as some working capital
pressure.
It will also take longer for Boeing to hit a goal outlined
in 2022 of achieving annual cash flow of about $10 billion by 2025 or 2026.
“It’s going to take us longer to get there than we planned,”
West said, without elaborating further. “But we believe that the actions that
we’re taking right now better position us for that long term.”
West said margins at the commercial airplanes business would
be “more like negative 20%” in the first quarter, in part due to customer
compensation for delivery delays. They will improve through the year but still
be negative overall in 2024, he added.
The CFO said that in future Boeing would only take
deliveries of fully conforming fuselages from Spirit. Spirit currently
assembles the fuselage for the 737 before it is shipped to a Boeing factory in
Washington state to be completed.
The door panel that blew off the 737 MAX 9 jet appeared to
be missing four key bolts, according to a preliminary report from U.S.
investigators.
“For years, we prioritized the movement of the airplane
through the factory over getting it done right, and that’s got to change,” West
said.
On a possible buyout of Spirit, West said Boeing would fund
any deal with a mix of cash and debt, rather than using stock.
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