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Boeing’s chief executive has said the company’s turnaround plan is running ahead of schedule, as higher commercial jet deliveries drove revenues 35 per cent higher and helped it narrow losses in the second quarter.
The US aircraft maker reported a net loss of $612mn for the three months to the end of June, down from $1.44bn a year earlier, on revenue of $22.7bn. Analysts polled by LSEG had expected a loss of $631mn.
Boeing also reported better than expected free cash outflow of $200mn in the second quarter, down from $4.3bn in the same period a year earlier. The company burned through more than $14bn in cash in 2024 after a turbulent year marked by a damaging workforce strike and the blowout of a door panel on an Alaska Airlines jet mid-flight.
In a memo to staff on Tuesday, Kelly Ortberg, Boeing’s chief executive, said the company was “ahead” of where he thought it would be in stabilising its business.
Ortberg took the helm last August and was tasked with coordinating the company’s overhaul after a series of safety and manufacturing crises, which began with the Indonesia Lion Air 737 Max crash in 2018.
The crisis at the company intensified last year, when regulators imposed a production cap on its 737 Max following the Alaska Airlines incident in January.
Last month’s Air India crash involving a Boeing 787-8 aircraft — the cause of which is not yet known — has also cast a shadow over the company’s recovery plans.
Ortberg, who previously held leadership roles with United Technologies and Raytheon, has made progress in stabilising Boeing’s production and improved its quality control processes. He had hailed 2025 as the company’s “turnaround year” before the Air India crash.
“With the start of the second half of the year, we are moving in the right direction and ahead of where I thought we would be in our recovery,” Ortberg said in the message to employees.
The company said it produced 38 of its 737 jets in May but it will need the approval from the Federal Aviation Administration before raising the output to 42 a month. Monthly production of the larger 787 Dreamliner has been raised to seven a month, up from five.
Ortberg said Boeing had delivered 150 commercial jets in the first quarter and 280 in the first six months of 2025, the most for both periods since 2018.
Boeing also confirmed that certification of its final two Max models, the Max 7 and the Max 10, was likely to slip into 2026 as it continues a redesign of an anti-ice system.
The company’s defence business generated an operating profit of $110mn in the second quarter, compared with an operating loss of $913mn in the same period a year earlier. Ortberg said Boeing had seen “improved performance” on its fixed-price development programmes.
Shares in Boeing were up 2.5 per cent in pre-market trading.
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