It’s deja vu all over again. Boeing Co. (NYSE: BA) said Friday morning that it will take a charge of $536 million ($0.77 per share) related to higher engineering and manufacturing costs for the new KC-46A tanker it is building for the U.S. Air Force. The charge will be recognized when the company reports second quarter earnings. The contract for 179 new tankers is worth about $49 billion to Boeing’s defense, space, and military division.
It is not like this was unexpected. In a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report in April, the agency warned about possible delays in the program, and the Air Force program office estimated that Boeing was over budget by $1.4 billion, while Boeing claimed it was just $380 million overbudget. The new tanker’s development phase is being completed under a $4.9 billion fixed-price contract. Any costs above that are Boeing’s headache, and that is what the company got Friday.
If Boeing could have dodged this announcement for another quarter or two, the company almost certainly would have. Boeing has a history of denying that anything is amiss until it can no longer avoid doing so. The delivery schedule for the KC-46A calling for the first planes to be delivered in 2017 has already used up virtually all its slack. The rework that led to Boeing’s announced charge will also take time, in addition to money, to fix. The next announcement we could hear, and maybe not too far in the future, is that the schedule may slip.
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New president and CEO, Dennis Muilenburg, said:
While we are disappointed with this charge, we are investing the necessary resources to keep this vitally important program on schedule for our customer, and meet our commitments for delivering the initial 18 tankers to the U.S. Air Force by August 2017 and building 179 tankers by 2027. We have a clear understanding of the work to be done, and believe strongly that the long-term financial value of the KC-46 program will reward our additional investment.
The company also said that it will update guidance on July 22 when it reports second-quarter earnings, and that it expects to make an adjustment to full-year earnings per share guidance to reflect the impact of the charge to the tanker program. Boeing noted that it does not expect revenue or cash flow guidance to be changed.
Just about any other company’s stock would take a severe beating after an announcement like this. Boeing’s stock was down less than 1% in Friday’s premarket, and that is due to the company’s success in getting investors to focus on cash flow. Boeing has forecast cash flow of around $9 billion for the 2015 fiscal year, and the charges announced Friday will have essentially no impact on that estimate.
Boeing’s shares traded down about 1% early Friday, at $146.91 in a 52-week range of $116.32 to $158.83.
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