Boeing delivered two dozen 737 MAX jets in March, down 54% year over year. That result wasn’t entirely bad news, but the numbers mean investors should brace for lower quarterly earnings than Wall Street is forecasting.
The aerospace company said Tuesday that it shipped 29 jets, including 24 MAX planes, in March. It delivered 64 jets, including 52 MAX planes, in March 2023.
For the first quarter, Boeing delivered 83 planes, including 67 MAX jets. That compares with 130 jets, including 111 MAX models, in the first quarter of 2023.
Not only are the numbers lower than they were a year earlier, the quarterly results look light. Wall Street analysts had projected 104 first-quarter deliveries, including 71 MAX jets.
Boeing stock was unaffected in midday trading Tuesday. Shares were down 0.3% at $181.11, while the S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average were off 0.5% and 0.6%, respectively.
The stock is holding up because investors already knew things were going slow at Boeing. The company is making fewer planes in the aftermath of the Jan. 5 blowout of an emergency-door plug on a 737 MAX 9 jet operated by Alaska Air. The incident resulted in more oversight by the Federal Aviation Administration and a renewed focus on quality at the company.
Going slower isn’t necessarily a bad thing. To improve initial quality, Boeing management has committed to relaying less on traveled work. Traveled work refers to doing a job somewhere else on the assembly line than where it was originally designed to be completed.
Investors should still brace for a first-quarter earnings miss — unless Wall Street updates its numbers soon. Currently, analysts project a per-share loss of $1.21 and a cash outflow of $3.9 billion, according to Bloomberg. But Boeing has already told investors that the first-quarter cash outflow will exceed $4 billion.
A year ago, Boeing reported a first-quarter loss of $1.27 a share.
Boeing is set to report first-quarter results on April 24. Any comments from management about progress made in improving production and quality likely would offset the damage from a lower earnings number than Wall Street has penciled in.
The stock’s starting point is a big reason for that. Through midday trading, Boeing stock was down about 30% year to date. Shares were down about 27% since the Jan. 5 emergency-door-plug blowout.
Write to Al Root at allen.root@dowjones.com