Boeing is really bad at lots of very complicated things
That means it’s really good at losing money. Now it’s raising tens of billions of dollars and trying to sell its space operations.
A couple weeks ago on the Snacks Mix podcast, we contrasted Boeing’s recent miscues with SpaceX’s recent successes.
Boeing just posted a $6 billion quarterly loss (its second-largest quarterly loss on record), it is losing $50 million per day while its factory workers are still on strike, it made plans to lay off 10% of its workforce, it has $60 billion in debt, it had to raise $21 billion in a stock issuance to stave off a credit downgrade, and after years of PR crises thanks to its Boeing 737 MAX issues, Boeing left two astronauts stranded at the International Space Station after NASA deemed thruster failure and helium leaks on Boeing’s Starliner too risky to make the return trip with astronauts onboard.
Now, SpaceX, which just caught a 232-foot rocket booster with a set of “chopsticks” built into its launch facility, is handling the astronauts’ rescue mission in February.
As if things couldn’t get any worse, The Wall Street Journal reported Friday that Boeing is exploring a sale of its space business, which includes its Starliner spacecraft, as part of new CEO Kelly Ortberg’s plan to cut back the company’s financial losses. As noted above, Boeing lost $6 billion last quarter, and it’s currently losing $50 million a day as this strike drags on.
A big portion of that loss stems from the company’s Defense, Space & Security segment. This segment, which includes Boeing’s space program, lost $2.4 billion on $5.5 billion in revenue in Q3 this year, including a $250 million charge reflecting “schedule delays and higher testing and certification costs.”
News of this potential sale comes two months after Reuters reported that Boeing and Lockheed Martin want to sell the United Launch Alliance, their joint-venture launch provider that launched Boeing’s Starliner mission to the ISS in June. Given Boeing’s precarious financial situation (high debt load, mounting losses, etc.) and uncertainty surrounding its space business following the recent issues with its Starliner spacecraft, it makes sense for the company to focus on its core business of plane manufacturing, which has been dealing with its own problems. With Boeing’s former CEO stating in 2022 that Boeing had no plans for a new plane until the mid-2030s, and the company’s factory workers still costing it $50 million per day while they strike, one has to wonder when the bad news for Boeing will finally end.
