Boeing said Wednesday that it lost $355 million on falling revenue in the first quarter, another sign of the crisis gripping the aircraft manufacturer as it facesincreasing scrutinyover the safety of its planes and accusations of shoddy work from a growing number of whistleblowers.
CEO David Calhounsaid the company is in “a tough moment,” and its focus is on fixing its manufacturing issues, not the financial results.
Company executives have been forced to talk more about safety and less about finances since a door plugblew out of a Boeing 737 Maxduring an Alaska Airlines flight in January, leaving a gaping hole in the plane.
The accident halted progress that Boeing seemed to be making while recovering fromtwo deadly crashesof Max jets in 2018 and 2019.
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Those crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia now are back in the spotlight, too.
About a half-dozenrelatives of passengerswho died in the second crash met with government officials Wednesday in Washington. They asked the officials to revive a criminal fraud charge against the company by determining that Boeing violated terms of a 2021 settlement.
Boeing officials made no mention of the meeting, but talked repeatedly while discussing the quarterly earnings of a renewed focus on safety.
“Although we report first-quarter financial results today, our focus remains on the sweeping actions we are taking following the Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 accident,” Calhoun told employees in a memo Wednesday.
He ticked off a series of actions the company is taking and reported “significant progress” in improving manufacturing quality, much of it by slowing down production, which means fewer planes for its airline customers.
Calhoun told CNBC that closer inspections were resulting in 80% fewer flaws in the fuselages coming from key supplierSpirit AeroSystems.
“Near term, yes, we are in a tough moment,” he wrote to employees. “Lower deliveries can be difficult for our customers and for our financials. But safety and quality must and will come above all else.”
Calhoun, who willstep downat the end of the year, said again he is fully confident the company will recover.
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Calhoun became CEO in early 2020 as Boeing struggled to recover from the Max crashes, which led regulators to ground the planes worldwide for nearly two years. The company thought it had sidestepped any risk of criminal prosecution whenthe Justice Department agreednot to try the company for fraud if it complied with US anti-fraud laws for three years — a period that ended in January.
Boeing has been reaching confidential settlements with the families of passengers who died, but the relatives of those killed in the Ethiopia crash are continuing to press the Justice Department to prosecute the company. On Wednesday, department officials told relatives that the agency was still considering the matter.
Boeing said the first-quarter loss, excluding special items came to $1.13 per share, which was better than the loss of $1.63 per share that analysts had forecast, according to a FactSet survey.
Revenue fell 7.5%, to $16.57 billion.
Company shares rose less than 1%.
Boeing stock has plunged by about one-third since the Alaska Airlines door-plug blowout.
The Federal Aviation Administrationhas stepped up its oversight and given Boeing until late May to produce a plan to fix problems in manufacturing 737 Max jets.
Airline customers are unhappy about not getting all the new planes that they had ordered because of delivery disruptions.
Investigators looking into the Alaska flight say bolts that help keep the door plug in place weremissing after repair workat a Boeing factory.
The FBI told passengers that they might becrime victims.
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Several former and one current manager have reported various problems in manufacturing of Boeing 737 and 787 jetliners.
The most recent, a quality engineer, told Congress last week that Boeing is taking manufacturing shortcuts that could eventually cause 787 Dreamliners to break apart.
Boeing pushed backaggressively against his claims.
Boeing, however, has a couple things in its favor.
Along with Airbus, Boeing forms one-half of a duopoly that dominates the manufacturing of large passenger planes.
Both companies have years-long backlogs of orders from airlines eager for new, more fuel-efficient planes.
And Boeing is a major defense contractor for the Pentagon and governments around the world.
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Richard Aboulafia, a longtime industry analyst and consultant at AeroDynamic Advisory, said despite all the setbacks Boeing still has a powerful mix of products in high demand, technology and people.
“Even if they are No. 2 and have major issues, they are still in a very strong market and an industry that has very high barriers to entry,” he said.
And despite massive losses — about $24 billion in the last five years — the company is not at risk of failing, Aboulafia said.
“This isn’t General Motors in 2008 or Lockheed in 1971,” Aboulafia said, referring to two iconic corporations that needed massive government bailouts or loan guarantees to survive.
All of those factors help explain why 20 analysts in a FactSet survey rate Boeing shares as “Buy” or “Overweight” and only two have “Sell” ratings. (Five have “Hold” ratings.)
