Al Root

Boeing quarterly results are coming. Investors are concerned about depressed earnings amid constrained production, questionable quality, and cost-increasing trade wars.

It's a lot to digest, and for the company to manage through. Investors will want updates about all that, but what they might want most of all is less quarterly volatility.

Boeing has missed earnings estimates in 19 of the past 44 quarters, according to Bloomberg. That's unusual. Apple has missed earnings estimates three times over that span.

What's more, the Boeing average deviation from earnings estimates, positive or negative, is 667%. That's like reporting earnings of $7.67 a share when Wall Street projected $1. (That's a positive example, more of Boeing's recent examples are large misses.) Apple's average deviation is about 8%.

For the first quarter, Wall Street is looking for Boeing to produce operating income of $122 million and a per-share loss of $1.21 from sales of $19.6 billion, according to FactSet.

A year ago, Boeing reported a small operating loss and a per-share loss of $1.13 from sales of $16.6 billion.

Boeing delivered 130 commercial jets in the first quarter compared with 83 in the first quarter of 2024. For the full year, Wall Street expects deliveries of about 580 jets, up from 348 delivered in 2024.

A labor strike and quality problems impacted Boeing's production in 2024. An emergency door plug blew out of a 737 MAX 9 Alaska Air flight on Jan. 6, 2024.

Eventually investors expect more deliveries leading to more earnings. Updates about production and production quality will be important for the stock on Wednesday. So will comments about how Boeing plans to navigate tariffs and trade retaliation.

Chinese tariffs of 125% on U.S. imports led some Chinese airlines to refuse delivery of Boeing 737 MAX jets. Still, a few jet sales upended by tariffs shouldn't be significant for the industry. Demand just hasn't been a major concern for aerospace investors lately. Constraints on production resulting from Covid-19 and Boeing's quality problems have left airline customers wanting more jets for years. Boeing would like to be making close to 600 737 MAX jets a year but the number has been closer to 300 a year since 2021.

Boeing's production turnaround will take some time. There may be bumps in the road. Investors would like it, however, if quarterly reports were calmer.

Options markets imply shares will move about 5%, up or down, following earnings. Shares have moved an average of about 2% up or down following the past four quarterly reports. Shares have risen twice and fallen twice over that span.

Boeing management hosts a conference call at 10:30 a.m. Eastern time to discuss results.

Coming into Wednesday trading, Boeing stock was down about 8% year to date, while the S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average were off 10% and 8%, respectively.

Write to Al Root at allen.root@dowjones.com

This content was created by Barron's, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. Barron's is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

April 22, 2025 17:19 ET (21:19 GMT)

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