She had a way different argument for me, and it was right. She said, you want to introduce this new airplane, a derivative, yes, but a new airplane. And nine months from now, you’ll have an engineered solution to it, to this issue. And why is that the right call? And in my view, it was a sound, principled position to take. I went home for the weekend. I talked to our customer, and you know who that is, unbelievably constructive, and this is the right thing to do for aviation. So, that is really how it happened, and it was that simple. But the passion and the argument that Senator Duckworth presented to me, I’m so glad I heard. Anyway, that’s what happened. The 7 will have to move until we get that engineered fix in place. And then I’ll let Brian sort of quantify the, okay, now what.
Brian West: Yes, and on the 7, the work at hand, we will design engineering solution. We’re applying the resources. Our view that, that could be within a year. But on the 7, remember, while it’s a very, very important customer, the number of deliveries you’re talking about is relatively small. As I mentioned, we’ve got 35 of -7 and -10 in inventory at the end of the quarter. There are a handful of 10s. They’re mostly 7. So, we’ll sort that out as the process works in that airplane for the FAA gets certified. On your question on the -10, I prefer not to get into what if. It is a great airplane. Customers love it, and there’s great demand for it, and it will get certified at some point when the FAA decides.
Sheila Kahyaoglu: Okay. Thank you.
Operator: Thank you. Our next question is from Myles Walton from Wolfe Research. Please go ahead.
Myles Walton: Thanks. Brian, you alluded to 2024 being another — I think the words were steady year of free cash flow. I think in sort of follow-on descriptions, you gave a lot of uppers to what’s going to happen year-on-year. So, is steady meaning growth in free cash flow and/or can you give some of the offsets to the uppers? Thanks.
Brian West: Yes. Thanks Myles. So, I did describe some of the key ones. Obviously, BCA volume up, BDS less of a drag, BGS steady. There’s a big investment in there that I probably should have called out now that you’re asking is the 777X investment. That’s important, and that’s big. And also, we got a plan for making sure that we stay laser like our supply based on the master schedule. We don’t want them to take their foot off what they’re doing. And if that means we got to hold more inventory, so be it. It’s important because at this moment, it will allow us to have any of our suppliers that might have been at the live meet, short of the line, they get a chance to catch up. So, all of that in the mix are levers that we got to deal with as we move into the year.
And in terms of what steady means, our belief we stand here today, the bottom end will look a lot like it did last year and maybe a little bit of growth. And once we know more, we’ll put more specificity around it, and we’ll give normal guidance when adequate, when appropriate.
Myles Walton: Okay. Thank you.
Operator: Thank you. Our next question is from Seth Seifman from JPMorgan. Please go ahead.
Seth Seifman: Hey, thanks very much and good morning.
Dave Calhoun: Good morning Seth.
Seth Seifman: Brian, you talked a couple of times about the shadow factories and the path towards winding them down over the next year and change. Is there any way to quantify how you think about what the cost of the shadow factories was in 2023 or what you expect it to be in 2024?
Brian West: Yes. So — thanks. I would — the impact you’re not going to see in 2024, just because we still have to move that work through the system. But as we exit, it will largely behind us. As we think about our expectations on BCA profitability over time, we’ve always talked to it getting back to normal. A lot of that productivity will be not only what volume might look like. I can’t say a lot about that now. But also, we don’t have this resource with the shadow factories. So, we won’t quantify it specifically, but it is an important component as we think about going from what our profitability has looked like at BCA historically and where we think we can get to.
Dave Calhoun: Maybe I’ll just add and refresh everybody’s memory because we’ve talked about it a couple of times. In our shadow factories, we put more hours into those airplanes than we do to produce it in the first place. So, anyway, that’s a metric I know everybody understands.
Seth Seifman: Great. And maybe if I could sneak in one more to — the advances, it was a nice tailwind in 2023. How do you think about that in 2024?
Brian West: Right now, we plan for, obviously, not to be quite what it was in 2023. That’s factored into my comments. The good news is, is that we still have a pretty robust demand environment. Our commercial teams are working hard to chase every next order. So, we’re not counting on a big one, but we know that our teams can go win campaigns.
Seth Seifman: Thanks very much.
Operator: Thank you. The next question is from Jason Gursky from Citi. Please go ahead.
