Boeing earnings are today. Here are its 7 biggest embarrassments since last quarter

Boeing (BA) presents earnings Wednesday, and Wall Street will have a lot of questions for its executives after a turbulent year that has only gotten shakier in its back half. There’s been a lot of news coming out about the company, and much of it puts the planemaker in a poor light to say the least.

Click through to read about the bad, the worse, and the even uglier from Boeing ahead of its third-quarter financials.

It fired its Defense CEO

In September, Defense News reported, Boeing’s new CEO for everything, Kelly Ortberg, fired the CEO of its Defense, Space & Security division, Theodore Colbert. The department is Boeing’s second-largest by revenue behind commercial airliners, contributing 30% of its bottom line, according to its most recent annual report. Though things were in rough shape when Colbert started the job in 2022, he wasn’t able to engineer a turnaround.

The company will have to explain why the defense business remains a loss-maker despite global turmoil in Ukraine, the Middle East, and elsewhere — which in part can be chalked up to “fixed-price contracts” with the U.S. government that make it hard to cut losses when developing new equipment becomes costlier than expected. That’s why fixing Boeing planes is the only profitable business Boeing has going right now.

Plus, Colbert presided over…

The Starliner mission’s failure

After more than a decade of work, Boeing finally launched a crewed mission to the International Space Station aboard its CST-100 Starliner capsule. There were a bunch of delays on the ground due to helium leaks in its thruster assemblies, but Boeing pushed through the issue and successfully launched its vessel into space. But once it docked at the International Space Station, it took a little longer than everyone thought it would for a return date to get announced.

It turned out that the thruster issue was bigger than Boeing realized. The company will have to address the fact that, after months of hand-wringing and earthbound lab tests, NASA decided that the astronauts who piloted the Starliner into orbit would have to catch a ride home with Boeing’s astro-rival SpaceX. Adding insult to injury, they couldn’t even wear their Boeing space suits home.

Though the Starliner made it back to Earth in one piece, that’s probably not how the company wanted a high-profile test flight to go when…

FAA officials said Boeing’s safety culture remains “not where it needs to be”

After a door plug fell off a 737 Max 9 earlier this year, the Federal Aviation Administration came down hard on Boeing to fix the quality-control issues that led to the incident (facilitated by what it says was lax previous FAA monitoring). The company gave the agency a safety plan earlier this year that talked about adding more in-house inspectors and giving closer oversight of suppliers, but that’s only the first step in what will be a long road.

In September, FAA administrator Mike Whitaker told the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee that “there’s progress” when it comes to making the government feel better about its operations, “but they’re not where they need to be yet.” Last week, the FAA said it would begin a new round of reviews to assess where things stand, but until further notice Boeing will be limited in how many of its key 737 Max planes it will be allowed to build.

The company will have to address its efforts to raise its esteem with regulators to ameliorate the delays that are why…

Airline executives yelled at the new CEO just like the old one

Boeing has had trouble getting customers their orders on time for years. The desire to speed up production and alleviate the problem is part of why Boeing even had its door plug blowout in the first place. But the backups only got worse after the FAA imposed a slowdown. Now, Kelly Ortberg is getting the same earfuls that his predecessor Dave Calhoun used to get and will have to address them just as well.

Sometimes the grumbling was restricted to the polite realm of earnings calls, such as when Southwest Airlines CEO Bob Jordan told analysts “it’s no secret that Boeing’s delivery delays have created significant issues for us” and that “it is very difficult to run a business with continuous recurring and close-in planning challenges.” Sometimes it was the more pointed barbs of longtime customer and critic Michael O’Leary, the CEO at Ryanair (RYAAY), who point-blank told Reuters of Boeing that “they continue to disappoint us.”

Customers not cutting checks upon delivery is a big reason why…

Boeing’s cash hemorrhage continued

It takes a lot of money to make the kind of money that a Boeing makes. Last year, the company brought in $77.8 billion. But it had to spend $70.1 billion to do that. And while it waits to get paid by its customers, it has to use its own cash to make sure its suppliers and employees get paid.

In recent weeks, the company has unveiled plans to secure as much as $35 billion to refill its coffers that suffer from a serious drainage issue. During its earnings call it will have to explain exactly how it plans to make that happen while maintaining the investment-grade credit rating that’s just a touch above junk-bond territory.

Though the company already borrowed $10 billion earlier this year, its cash crunch recently became much more urgent because…

Its employees went on strike for more than a month

Boeing offered its workers represented by the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, who build the vast majority of the planes that the company sells, a new contract with a 25% raise. The workers wanted 40% and the restoration of their pensions, so they voted the contract down and went on strike. Now Boeing is making far fewer planes, planning to lay off 10% of its workforce, and burning $50 million a day of much-needed cash. Investors will likely have questions about all of that.

Boeing tried to sweeten its offer to a 30% raise a few days into the work stoppage, but the company also called it the “best and final offer” it would put forward. The IAM rejected that figure and that language and remained on strike. Boeing decided to take its ball and go home. Acting Secretary of Labor Julie Su had to come to town and bring Boeing back to the table, where it and the IAM hammered out a new agreement that presents workers with a 35% raise.

Union members will vote on whether to ratify the agreement this week, and those ballots will have a lot riding on them because…

Boeing shares became worth even less

At the end of the day, companies have endless narratives about themselves and their existential concerns. But with public companies, there’s always one overriding narrative that world uses to judge them: the stock price. Boeing’s has spent the year in free-fall, sinking nearly 16% since the second-quarter earnings release and nearly 40% for the year so far. Time will tell how the market reacts to the company’s third-quarter earnings.