Boeing's stock surges after wider-than-expected loss and revenue miss, but free cash flow beat

Published: April 29, 2020 at 7:48 a.m. ET
By Tomi Kilgore

Shares of Boeing Co. BA, +2.03% surged 5.0% in premarket trading Wednesday, after the aerospace and defense giant missed first-quarter profit and revenue expectations, while free cash flow was better than forecast. Boeing swung to a net loss of $641 million, or $1.11 a share, from net income of $2.15 billion, or $3.75 a share, in the year-ago period. Excluding non-recurring items, adjusted loss per share came ot $1.70, wider than the FactSet loss consensus of $1.60. Revenue fell 26% to $16.91 billion, below the FactSet consensus of $17.33 billion. Free cash flow swung to a negative $4.73 billion from positive $2.29 billion, but that beat the FactSet consensus of negative $5.79 billion. Commercial airplane revenue fell 48% to $6.21 billion, but was above expectations of $5.94 billion, while defense, space and security revenue declined 8% to $6.04 billion versus expectations of a rise to $6.76 billion. Boeing said "abnormal production costs" from the suspension of 737 MAX production have increased by $1 billion, bringing the estimated total to $5 billion. Boeing expects 737 MAX production will resume at "low rates" in 2020. Boeing's stock had plunged 59.2% over the past three months through Tuesday, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, -0.13% has lost 16.1%.


Tomi Kilgore is MarketWatch's deputy investing and corporate news editor and is based in New York. You can follow him on Twitter @TomiKilgore.