On its Wednesday conference call following the announcement of first-quarter results, Boeing Co. (NYSE: BA) had a lot more to say about its cash flow in the quarter and the increase in its deferred production costs on the 787 program to a new total of $27 billion. Management may have to answer more questions at its annual shareholders meeting scheduled for Monday in Chicago.

In the three and a half years since Boeing began delivering the 787, the company has put more than 260 of the planes into customers’ hands and is now delivering 10 planes a month from its two assembly sites in Washington state and in South Carolina.

On Wednesday’s conference call, the company’s chief financial officer said, according to a transcript posted at Seeking Alpha:

On the 787-8, we’ve seen a decline in unit cost of approximately 30% over the last of 190 deliveries and furthermore the 787-9 unit cost declined approximately 25% over the first 20 deliveries. In line with our expectations and as declining rate, 787 deferred production increase $793 million to $27 billion in the first quarter and as we previously discussed we continued to anticipate 787 deferred production to grow at similar levels for the next couple of quarters before seeing a healthy decline in the growth later in this year.

Boeing expects to reach production of 12 787s per month by early next year and believes that will enable the company to begin making money on each 787 it sells. How fast it can pay back all those deferred production expenses remains to be seen, though.

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Adding $793 million in deferred costs during the first quarter on 30 new 787’s pencils out to a loss on each plane of more than $26 million. The good news for Boeing is that the amount is less than the approximately $32 million per plane that Boeing lost in the prior quarter.

Earlier this month Sterne Agee expected deferred costs on the 787 program to total about $28.5 billion at the end of the third quarter of this year and then to remain stable for a couple of quarters before beginning to decline. That estimate looks pretty good now, given the first-quarter drop in deferred costs, and it will help Boeing meet its other goal: keeping investors happy.

To do that, Boeing needs to offset those deferred costs with dividends and buybacks, and to do that the company needs cash flow. First-quarter free cash flow was negative, the first time that has happened at Boeing in more than four years. There is general agreement that the company pulled revenue forward into the fourth quarter of 2014 in order to meet its projections, and that is what stifled first-quarter cash flow.

Boeing has reaffirmed its previous guidance of $9 billion in cash flow from operations, and that should help mollify investors at the annual meeting on Monday. In other business, four shareholder proposals are on the proxy ballot, including one on clawbacks on compensation in the event of executive misconduct, another proposing that the board chairman be selected from among the independent board members, a third permitting written consent by shareholders to vote on certain items, and a fourth that would require Boeing to report annually on its lobbying activities. The company opposes all four shareholder proposals.

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Boeing stock traded down about 0.9% in the early afternoon on Friday, at $148.47 in a 52-week range of $116.32 to $158.83. Shares have fallen about 3.3% since Boeing announced first-quarter earnings on Wednesday morning.

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