Boeing's year of turbulence in five charts

By Nathan Gomes

(Reuters) - Boeing has been mired in crisis all year.

The year began with a mid-air panel blowout on a new 737 MAX jet that exposed safety and quality problems; in March, then CEO Dave Calhoun decided to step down, and now new chief executive Kelly Ortberg is contending with an increasingly acrimonious standoff with about 33,000 unionized workers.

Here are five charts that illustrate the deepening challenges at the U.S. planemaker:

DELIVERIES

The U.S. planemaker has further ceded ground to arch-rival Airbus in the delivery race this year as production fell due to quality checks and audits by the aviation regulator.

Boeing had already slipped behind the European planemaker this decade as overlapping crises hit production.

Deliveries are key for jet makers, as they get the majority of payment when a plane is transferred to a customer. Year-to-date, it has delivered a total of 291 airplanes vs Airbus' 497.

CASH FLOW

The planemaker has burned through $8.3 billion in cash in the first half of 2024 and expects free cash flow to be negative this year.

S&P Global estimates Boeing's cash outflow will come to about $10 billion in 2024, assuming that the strike ends in the fourth quarter.

The company posted three consecutive years of negative cash flow from 2019 to 2021 following a pair of crashes and during the coronavirus pandemic.

Boeing has a forward 12 month price-to-earnings ratio of 214.7, compared to 18.8 for Airbus, according to LSEG data. A high P/E ratio could mean the stock is overvalued.

DEBT

Boeing's debt currently stands at roughly $60 billion, with more than $4 billion due in 2025.

The company had to borrow heavily to tide over overlapping crises caused by a separate halt in production of MAX jets due to the 2018 and 2019 crashes and the COVID-19 pandemic, which hammered global air travel.

Earlier this year, Boeing tapped debt markets to raise $10 billion.

STRIKE

Workers at Boeing's factories in the U.S. Pacific Northwest went on strike in September after rejecting a labor deal they viewed as inadequate.

The lead negotiator for the union told Reuters on Wednesday that members were prepared to wait out the planemaker after talks collapsed.

According to TD Cowen, a 50-day strike could cost Boeing $3 billion to $3.5 billion of cash flow. The last strike at Boeing was in 2008 and lasted nearly two months.

SHARES

Shares are down more than 40% in 2024, due to a combination of regulatory scrutiny, production issues and damage to Boeing's reputation.

The fall has erased approximately $60 billion in market value. Shares climbed 36.8% in 2023, the only year they have gained in value this decade.

The stock is the second-worst performer in the Dow Jones Industrial Average this year, after Intel Corp.

(Reporting by Nathan Gomes and Utkarsh Shetti in Bengaluru; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila)