Boeing (BA) Shares Slide After It Delays Its 737 Production Ramp
Boeing plunged 10.7% on Tuesday, its worst day in at least five years, after it said steady 737 output will slip to early 2027 and forecast about $3 billion of free cash flow next year.
What happened
Shares of Boeing (BA), the maker of the 737 and 787 jets, plunged 10.7% on Tuesday after it said it will take longer to speed up production of its best-selling plane, and that cash will come in more slowly than investors expected.
On the earnings call, Chief Executive Kelly Ortberg said Boeing is targeting 52 737 Max jets a month in the second half of 2027, Reuters and AFP reported. Boeing is still working to steady output at 47 a month, and now expects to get there in early 2027, after saying as recently as May that it would do so this summer, Reuters reported. Boeing also forecast about $3 billion of free cash flow next year, against the roughly $5.5 billion Wall Street expected, according to a Jefferies note cited by Reuters.
The quarter itself was mixed. Revenue rose 4% to $24.19 billion, Boeing said, but the adjusted loss of 34 cents a share was wider than the 21-cent loss analysts expected, according to LSEG data cited by Reuters. The shares closed at $168.18, down 10.7% from the previous close, making Boeing the worst performer in the Dow, AFP noted.
Why it matters
Boeing collects most of a plane’s price when it hands the jet over, so a slower ramp means cash arrives later. Commercial Airplanes, the jet unit, lost $697 million in the quarter, an operating margin of -6.5%, even as Boeing’s order backlog hit a record $745 billion, the company said.
“It’s more important that we do this ramp right than what particular month we achieve a rate break,” Ortberg said on the call, according to AFP. Investors will wait a while for the payoff: Boeing expects free cash flow of about $6 billion in 2028 and its $10 billion goal only in 2029, which Reuters said is a year later than analysts had expected, based on LSEG data.
What the market is telling us
Boeing’s shares moved 5% or more on 8 of the last 252 sessions, and Tuesday’s fall was the biggest of them; it was also the stock’s largest one-day drop in our five years of price data. The stock is down 22.5% this year, and at $168.18 it sits 33.3% below its 52-week closing high of $252.15 from 23 January 2026. That was its lowest close since 22 April 2025. $1,000 invested in Boeing five years ago would be worth $814 today.
Our view: a record backlog says demand isn’t the problem; the stock now hinges on Boeing holding 47 jets a month by early 2027, a milestone it has already pushed back once.
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Mostly Markets is for information and education only and isn't investment advice. Theo Park is a pen name. Prices are from Nasdaq and CNBC as of the time stated.
