The Boeing Company (NYSE:BA) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Noah Poponak: Okay. And is China officially fully 100% taking deliveries? We see it in the press. We see the reading of the tail number of websites. But can you just declare that, that’s just fully officially on at this point?

Dave Calhoun: One at a time, and yes.

Noah Poponak: Okay. And then, Brian, just one more, defense. The margin is still not where you want it but better sequentially. Any framework you can provide around how that progresses through 2024? And what was the final defense cash burn in the 2023 cash, so we can think about where — what to work off of as we go into 2024.

Brian West: Yes. So, the cash burn, we put out some numbers a year ago, and we thought the operating cash flows by division. BDS, the worst case and for them in that range. They were much worse than that. And it’s all what we described last year, and we expect it to be better this year. And that’s behind us. But yes, they did a lot worse, obviously, offset by BGS and BCA doing better. But it was worse. And then the first part of your question on margins, we expect margin trajectories to get better over time, particularly as we focus on this 25% of the portfolio that is very specific, and there’s a lot of actions or activity around it. But we will get better. They will eventually get to the point where we’re putting positives on the board.

What I’m most interested is the team that’s got to execute over the next — between now and 2025-2026 in order to get these margins back in the high single-digit range. And I will remind you that that’s how we describe our defense margins. You really got to put two points on top of that, which is what we account for in our Global Services division for the defense side. So, it’s really more like a double-digit defense external view that we are aiming to get towards because we think that’s a pretty decent business.

Noah Poponak: Right. okay.

Matt Welch: You squeezed in three.

Noah Poponak: We got in and we got them all in. got the rest in. Thanks so much for the time. I appreciate it.

Dave Calhoun: Thanks Noah. Thanks everyone.

Matt Welch: Thanks everybody.

Operator: That completes the Boeing Company’s fourth quarter 2023 earnings conference call. Thank you for joining. You may now disconnect.