Boeing Posts Quarterly Gains Despite Dreamliner Woes

Boeing Co. on Wednesday released better-than-expected first-quarter results and held on to its guidance for the year, despite its newest and most-heralded plane being grounded for most of the quarter.

The Chicago-based airplane manufacturer earned $1.1 billion, or $1.44 per share, in the first three months of the year, compared with $923 million, or $1.22 per share, in the same quarter a year ago.

Revenue slipped to $18.9 billion from $19.4 billion a year earlier, with slight declines in sales of both its commercial and defense units. Boeing said it was able to overcome the sales shortfall through efficiency improvements and cost reductions.

Boeing President and CEO Jim McNerney said the company’s commercial airplane unit, which is about half its business, worked “around the clock” to fix the battery issue with its 787 Dreamliner while improving production rates on its 777 and 737 models.

“We managed to absorb this,” Chief Financial Officer Greg Smith said in a conference call. The costs were included partly in research and development costs for the quarter, which fell compared with a year earlier. The cost will be spread over about 1,100 planes, and that number will increase slightly, Smith said, without providing a figure.

“Our first priority in the days ahead is to fully restore our customers’ 787 fleets to service and resume production deliveries,” McNerney added. Boeing’s fix to the battery problem was approved just days ago, and the company is now starting the process of repairing the planes.

He added, in a conference call, that he expects Boeing to resume Dreamliner deliveries in mid-May, Reuters reported.

Boeing will meet its target of delivering more than 60 of its 787 Dreamliner planes in 2013, a senior company executive said in the Ethiopian capital on Wednesday, Reuters reported.

“What I can tell you is that as we came into the year, we did have a delivery plan, and that plan was to deliver more than 60 airplanes this year. Although the timing has changed a little bit, we still expect to deliver those 60-plus airplanes in 2013,” Randy Tinseth, Boeing’s vice president for marketing, told reporters.

For all of 2013, the world’s largest airplane maker still expects to earn between $5 and $5.20 per share, on revenue of $82 billion to $85 billion. Boeing said it’s confident it can meet those thresholds through a ramp-up in commercial airplane production rates and continued growth in defense markets.