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  Boeing

  Stock Code:

  BA

  Date Founded:

  1916-07-15

  CEO:

  Dave Calhoun

  Headquarters Location:

  Chicago, USA

  Key Product Lines:

  Boeing 737, Boeing 747, Boeing 757, Boeing 767, Boeing 777, Boeing 787

  Business Type:

  Planemaker

Boeing has revealed that it is on track to meet positive free cash flow by the end of the year. The American aerospace giant made the comments alongside the release of its Q2 results earlier today, which come a week after the Farnborough Airshow.

Boeing hasn't had the easiest time recently. The Boeing 737 MAX grounding dealt a substantial financial and reputational hit to the planemaker. As soon as the company solved the MAX issues, 787 Dreamliner issues popped up, meaning that none of the widebodies have been delivered in the past year. Despite this, the company is on the rise, expecting to resume 787 deliveries, and by the end of the year hopes to be making more money than it is spending.

A profit for the quarter

It seems Q2 was prosperous for Boeing. The company posted a profit of $490 million for the second quarter of 2022. Unfortunately, thanks to a more significant loss in Q1, the planemaker is still on an overall loss of -$962 million for the year so far.

Since the start of 2019, Boeing has only posted four quarterly profits, including this latest one. The darkest quarter so far was Q4 in 2020, when a loss of -$8.377 billion was posted. While $490 million isn't back to the pre-MAX-crisis profits of $1.986 billion, it is undoubtedly a step in the right direction.

Drilling into commercial aviation

While the company posted a profit overall, this was primarily driven by its non-commercial aviation enterprises, primarily by the Global Services division of the business. Commercial Airplanes posted a quarterly loss of $242 million, compared to a $728 million profit from Global Services. Defense, Space, & Security brought in a smaller gain of $71 million.

Boeing revealed that its revenue from Commercial Airplanes had risen to $6.219 billion, mainly thanks to deliveries of the 737 MAX. Since its return, airlines have flown the MAX for more than 1.5 million hours (171 years) combined. Boeing is now building 31 MAXs per month.

However, the Boeing 787 holdup partially offset the MAX bump to the tune of $283 million, alongside higher than usual research and development expenses. Boeing expects that $2 billion of abnormal costs will arise from the 787 hiccups, with most of this coming by the end of next year. Right now, the planemaker is barely manufacturing Dreamliners, planning to return to 5 a month once deliveries resume gradually.

Boeing secured 169 737 MAX orders in Q2, and 13 freighter orders, with Lufthansa playing a significant role in the latter figure. Orders from the Farnborough Airshow will show up in Q3 results. At the end of Q2, Boeing has 4,200 commercial aircraft on order, worth $297 billion.

What do you make of Boeing's Q2 results? Is this the start of a string of quarterly profits? Let us know what you think and why in the comments!