Boeing CEO lays out cautious path to turnaround as strike vote awaited
Al Jazeera
CEO Kelly Ortberg said he is reviewing Boeing businesses and may downsize assets and workforce to focus on core businesses.
Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg has laid out a cautious path to turn the company around, calling for a “fundamental culture change” at the struggling plane maker as its quarterly losses surged to $6bn due to a crippling strike.
Boeing has racked up losses of nearly $8bn for the current year, after the strike halted production of its 737 MAX, 777 and 767 planes and an ailing defence and space division hammer its business. The planemaker was already wrestling with a quality crisis from a January mid-air panel blowout.
Boeing CFO Brian West told analysts he expects the company will continue burning cash in full-year 2025 and the last three months of 2024, sending shares of Boeing down 1.7 percent to $157.15.
In a letter to employees Wednesday morning, Ortberg stressed the need for improving performance in its defence business and its 737 MAX and 777 programmes while broadly stabilising Boeing.
Ortberg went further than his recent predecessors in acknowledging that the damage to Boeing’s reputation has voided the company’s “iconic” status, a term he used to describe Boeing when he was named as its new chief executive in August.
