Boeing posts 27% increase in earnings
Boeing Co. reported Wednesday that first-quarter earnings climbed 27% as it continued to rack up large passenger jet orders and defense contracts.
Net income rose to $877 million, or $1.13 a share, from $692 million, or 88 cents, a year earlier. Revenue rose 8% to $15.37 billion.
Analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial were expecting the company to post earnings of $1.01 a share. Boeing shares rose $1.02, or 1.1%, to an all-time high of $94.69.
In addition to higher deliveries of commercial airplanes, the Chicago-based company cited lower expenses, partly resulting from its getting out of the unprofitable satellite-based Internet service business and a 17% increase in revenue from a defense unit that maintains and upgrades military aircraft.
“We’re off to a good start,” Chairman James McNerney said during a conference call with analysts.
Boeing is the largest private employer in Southern California, with about 31,000 workers, most of whom work for the company’s integrated defense systems unit.
About half of its revenue comes from defense-related work and half from the commercial aircraft business.
The defense business posted a 7% increase in revenue to $7.72 billion as it sold more military aircraft to international customers and logged more Pentagon work maintaining and upgrading aging airplanes and helicopters.
But operating earnings -- profit before taxes -- fell 4% to $784 million. Boeing attributed the decline to the timing of contract closeouts compared with the same period a year earlier.
Revenue from Boeing’s commercial aircraft business rose 7% to $7.56 billion as the company delivered more passenger jets and booked 189 orders for new planes in the quarter.
Boeing delivered 106 planes, the largest quarterly rate in five years.
The company reiterated that development and production of its 787 Dreamliner remained on schedule, with expected first delivery to an airline targeted for May 2008.
Boeing has taken firm orders for 544 of the 250-seat jets, the most achieved by a commercial jet program in the first years of development.
The fuel-efficient plane, half of which will be made of composite material, is the first new jet for Boeing in more than a decade.
McNerney said airlines now ordering the 787 would not get their planes until the end of 2013 or later based on the current production rate. The demand for the plane is unprecedented, he said.
