Boeing said on Wednesday that it was making progress toward increasing production of its commercial planes and stabilizing its business after a quality crisis last year, but the company is facing new threats of disruption from President Trump’s trade war.
Boeing said it lost $31 million in the first three months of this year, a smaller loss than analysts had expected. In the same quarter last year, the company lost more than $350 million.
Boeing’s most recent crisis began when a poorly installed panel blew away from a relatively new Boeing plane during a flight in January 2024. A two-month worker strike in the fall also stalled production of the 737 Max, Boeing’s best-selling plane.
The company has delivered 130 planes in the first quarter, up from 83 in the same period a year ago. It also made progress elsewhere, including securing a major contract to build the Air Force’s newest fighter jet, the F-47, Boeing’s chief executive, Kelly Ortberg, said in a message to employees. Boeing brought in $19.5 billion in revenue during the quarter, an 18 percent rise from last year.
“From delivering more airplanes to scoring a transformational win for the fighter of the future, there is a lot of good work happening across our teams, and we are seeing positive results,” Mr. Ortberg said.
Boeing’s share price jumped in premarket trading, gaining more than 4 percent.
Revenue at Boeing’s commercial unit was up 75 percent in the first quarter, compared with a year earlier, while its defense unit saw a 9 percent fall. Sales at its services unit, which has the biggest profit margins, were flat.
The quarterly financial results came a day after the company announced plans to sell several digital businesses for $10.5 billion to Thoma Bravo, a private equity firm. The sale was part of a strategic goal set by Mr. Ortberg, who joined the company last summer.
Mr. Ortberg wants to refocus the company on its core business of making planes. On Wednesday, Boeing said monthly production of the 737 Max had steadily increased from the low to mid-20s in January, and should reach 38 in the next few months.
The company cannot exceed that rate without permission from the Federal Aviation Administration, which limited Max production after last year’s panel blowout, but Mr. Ortberg said that Boeing planned to ask for approval to reach a rate of 42 planes per month later this year. Boeing has also stabilized production of the 787 Dreamliner at about five per month, with plans to increase that to seven planes later this year. The company’s commercial jet order book is valued at $460 billion.
But the company’s efforts to recover from last year’s crisis and other disruptions could be stymied by Mr. Trump’s trade policies, which have antagonized China, whose airlines are large buyers of planes.
Chinese officials recently ordered its carriers to stop buying or taking delivery of new Boeing planes, Bloomberg and The Wall Street Journal reported last week. Aircraft tracking data show that new Boeing planes have returned to the United States from China in recent days.
A long-term loss of that business would be a substantial setback for Boeing. China is one of the world’s fastest-growing travel markets and is home to about one in seven passenger planes in use today, according to Cirium, an aviation data firm. The country commanded a similar share of Boeing’s deliveries over the past decade, though that slowed in recent years, according to company data. And Boeing said last summer that it expected China would need about 8,800 new planes over the next two decades.
The United States may have some recourse to Chinese trade policies, though. While China is pumping money into a homegrown aircraft manufacturer, Comac, the country still relies heavily on Western companies for aerospace parts and expertise. It will also probably be years before Comac makes planes in substantial numbers, experts say, meaning China will still rely on planes purchased from Boeing or its European rival Airbus.
Aside from China, the direct effect of tariffs may be limited for Boeing, which has said that it is sitting on big inventories of parts, many of which are made in the United States. But the suppliers it relies on could suffer from higher tariffs and retaliation by other countries.
Niraj Chokshi writes about aviation, rail and other transportation industries.
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