Aviation Week&#x27;s Joe Anselmo, Michael Bruno, Jens Flottau and Guy Norris discuss recent earnings updates from Airbus and Boeing that saw the duopoly shrug off the Gulf War but note persisting supply chain issues. A freighter battle between the two is also heating up.

How's Business At Airbus And Boeing?

Aviation Week's Check 6 Podcast

# Full Transcript

**Podcast:** Aviation Week's Check 6 Podcast

## Participants

- **Joe Anselmo** (Aviation Week Network)
- **Michael Bruno** (Aviation Week)
- **Guy Norris** (Aviation Week Network)
- **Jens Flotau** (Aviation Week)

## Transcript

Welcome to the Check 6 Podcast. I'm Joe Anselmo, Aviation Week's Editorial Director. And today we're here to talk about all things Airbus and Boeing. Joining me, our Business Editor, Michael Bruno, Propulsion Editor, Guy Norris, and Executive Editor for Commercial Aviation, Jens Flotao. So, Michael, let's jump right into this. Boeing rolled out their earnings last week, and the big news was that there was no big news.

Yeah, that's right. Boeing was boring, and that's great news for Boeing. The financial analysts who cover Boeing regularly all pretty much proclaim that this was the first, quote-unquote, clean quarter in years. Certainly a long time in regards to quarterly performance.

And by clean, they mean that there were no charges on any of the embattled defense programs, those contracts that have been really haunting them for years. There were no charges on any commercial program. All of the commercial programs seem to be performing to what executives have already said.

And Guy Norris can talk a lot more smartly about that than I can. But it was a clean quarter, and that's great news for two reasons. One, nobody likes financial surprises when there's a quarterly teleconference.

And two, what this also means is that Boeing is well on its way to a financial recovery of generating cash, finally. But just to kind of like put a fine point on it, Boeing reported $22 billion in revenue for the latest quarter, and that was up from $19.5 billion a year ago.

Their cash flow, while still negative for this quarter, is expected to be maybe the last quarter and definitely the second to last if they have to report any negative cash flow in the second quarter. But otherwise, Boeing is expected to generate $1 to $3 billion in cash flow this year, which would be the first in years also.

So really, really good news financially from Boeing, except that it all depends on Boeing commercial airplanes and the programs continuing to deliver. That is the backbone of all of this. And of course, only time will tell if that actually happens. Let's go across the ocean to Jens Foto in Frankfurt. Jens, I mean, Airbus should be on top of the world. They've had substantial market share gains against Boeing, particularly in narrow bodies.

The A320 just passed up to 737 as the most produced aircraft in history. Airbus rolled out its earnings this week. And what was that story? Yeah, it was a little bit of the opposite. Well, you can't say a little bit of the opposite. It wasn't as good as Boeing's actually for the quarter. If you just look at the quarter, commercial aircraft earnings were actually down significantly. Negative free cash flow, which is not that unusual for a first quarter. But there were reasons for that.

One...

How's Business At Airbus And Boeing?

Transcript

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How's Business At Airbus And Boeing?

Transcript

Built for investment professionals

Every day you wait, your competitors are findingedge in conversations you're not hearing.

Every day you wait, your competitors are finding
edge in conversations you're not hearing.