Boeing earnings: 737 Max crisis leads to first annual loss in more than two decades and they may be underestimating cost

Boeing’s new chief executive, David Calhoun, assured investors Wednesday that the company will recover from the 737 MAX crisis, even as it posted its first annual loss in more than 20 years. He seemed to absolve himself of any responsibility he had as a board member during a time that Boeing put its commitment to shareholder payouts into overdrive. As a board member, “I simply had a front-row seat to everything you saw,” Calhoun said on Wednesday’s earnings call with financial analysts.

The MAX, Boeing’s popular single-aisle airplane, has been grounded around the world after two crashes—in October 2018 and March 2019—that killed 346 people. Boeing suspended MAX production in early January.

On the call Calhoun announced Boeing would take a smaller than expected $2.6 billion pre-tax charge for potential customer concessions, and that the company expects an additional $4 billion in costs from restarting 737 MAX production and deliveries later this year. Boeing also added $2.6 billion in deferred production costs to the program. Those figures plus $9 billion in previously disclosed MAX-related costs brings the total cost to $18 billon.

But some analysts were concerned that the charges were too low.

“Investors had expected a larger MAX charge, considering new CEO Calhoun was expected to take a ‘kitchen sink’ approach with this quarter, understanding he would get a pass and thus would want to get as much bad news out as possible,” Canaccord Genuity aerospace analyst Ken Herbert said in a note to clients.

Barclay’s analyst David Strauss calculates that customer concessions will hit $18 billion, more than twice what Boeing expects, he wrote in a note to clients following the earnings announcement.

Credit Suisse’s Robert Springarn says costs likely will be at least $21 billion, not including additional costs for stopping and restarting 737 MAX production.

During Wednesday’s conference call, Boeing executives were light on details into MAX-related cost projections, Springarn said in a note to clients. Given that, “we cannot really vouch for the accuracy of the costs, except to suggest that (Boeing) should better understand the magnitude of total costs today than it did in Q3.”

Calhoun stressed that he wants to change company culture and take other steps to ensure the aerospace giant never endures another crisis like the current one. He said developing new airplanes to compete with Airbus is not the top priority, but it remains a priority.

Despite his comments, Calhoun described the cultural problems as limited, more like a few bad apples, rather than a company-wide problem.

Internal emails and instant messages released by Boeing show its employees mocking airline customers, Federal Aviation Administration regulators, and even company managers. They also show Boeing workers raised safety concerns with the 737 MAX before the two fatal crashes. These messages are the latest in a growing mass of evidence that the company’s culture and finances-first orientation may have contributed to the MAX crashes.

Calhoun referred to the “horrible IMs” as being “relegated to a relatively small group of folks.”

The company needs to listen more, and “I have to do everything in my power to make sure going forward that it does,” he said.

Calhoun, though, ended Wednesday’s call without taking questions from the news media, as is standard practice.

In the wake of Boeing’s historic loss, analysts say the company may be underestimating MAX costs

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