Thank you for standing by. Good day, everyone, and welcome to The Boeing Company's Fourth Quarter 2019 Earnings Conference Call. Today's call is being recorded. The management discussion and slide presentation, plus the analyst question-and-answer session, are being broadcast live over the Internet. [Operator Instructions]. At this time, for opening remarks and introductions, I am turning the call over to Ms. Maurita Sutedja, Vice President of Investor Relations for The Boeing Company. Ms. Sutedja, please go ahead.

Thank you and good morning. Welcome to Boeing's Fourth Quarter 2019 Earnings Call. I'm Maurita Sutedja, and with me today are David Calhoun, Boeing's President and Chief Executive Officer; and Greg Smith, Boeing's Chief Financial Officer and Executive Vice President of Enterprise Performance and Strategy. Dave will start with some opening comments and hand it over to Greg to address the business environment and our financial results. After management comments, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] As always, we have provided detailed financial information in our press release issued earlier today. And as a reminder, you can follow today's broadcast and slide presentation through our website at boeing.com. Before we begin, I need to remind you that any projections, estimates and goals we have included in our discussion today are likely to involve risks, which are detailed in our news release and our various SEC filings and in the forward-looking statement disclaimer at the end of this web presentation. In addition, we refer you to our earnings release and presentation for disclosures and reconciliation of certain non-GAAP measures. Now I will turn over the call to Dave Calhoun.

Thank you, Maurita. Good morning to everyone. I'll state the obvious. I've been here 2.5 weeks, and this is my first earnings call as the President and CEO of the company. While I'm new to the CEO role, I am certainly not new to the company and have long admired the business, the products that we build and the people that serve the company. It's a very challenging moment for Boeing. We got a lot of work to do. But I'm confident that we'll manage this situation in the right way, and I'm optimistic about the company's future, both in terms of the markets that we serve and maybe more importantly, the engineering and technical capabilities we bring. Before we proceed, let me just say to the families and the loved ones of those who perished in the Lion Air Flight 610 and Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 accidents, we -- I am truly and deeply sorry for your loss. I will repeat this many, many times in the years ahead. Their memories will drive me personally to do everything I can to make our airplanes and our industry safer, and I know I speak for all of my Boeing associates accordingly. I've been spending a lot of my first weeks meeting, connecting with, listening to my Boeing teammates across the country. What I'm seeing and hearing is that our employees are incredibly proud to work at Boeing, but they're also hurt and disappointed that we've let our stakeholders down. Together, we're committed to getting back on our front foot, learning with humility and building on the powerful legacy they and their predecessors have created over the last century. This includes engaging with one another and our stakeholders with greater transparency, holding ourselves accountable to the highest standards of safety and…

Great. Thanks, Dave, and good morning, everybody. As many of you know, I've had the distinct pleasure of knowing Dave for a long time. And we're extremely lucky to have him in the chair, helping us navigate through these challenging times and the path forward. I have a lot of respect for Dave and look forward to the continued partnership. And I can tell you, we are completely 100% aligned on our priorities and the path forward for our company. Let's now move to Slide 3, and we'll discuss our overall business environment. We continue to be operating in sizable sectors that are growing and backed by strong fundamentals with a combined market opportunity of $8.7 trillion over the next 10 years. We continue to see healthy global demand for our offerings in Commercial, Defense, Space and Services. However, we are starting to see some pressure, such as in the cargo market, that we will continue to monitor going forward. In Commercial Aviation, although we've seen some moderation in passenger traffic this year, we saw growth of a solid 4.2% through November. The fundamentals remain intact. However, the impact of the coronavirus on near-term traffic growth is clearly a watch item this year. On the air cargo side, volumes have contracted due to challenging trade environment, and improvements in industrial production and global trade will be key to rebound the air traffic cargo market in 2020. We will continue to see steady utilization of global freighters while carriers are placing incremental orders to support their fleet replacement needs, but this is definitely something we're keeping a close eye on. In the narrowbody segment, although the MAX grounding has presented us with near-term challenges, the depth and breadth of our backlog affords us the time to assess and mitigate the longer-term…

Greg, thanks. Thanks to everyone on the other end of this line. I want you to know I'm as excited as I can be about taking on this challenge. I wish the moment was different, but we can get through this moment and we will get through this moment. I'm confident in this airplane. The MAX is a sound airplane. We believe we're going to deliver the safest airplane in the sky, and we're committed to do just that and I know our regulator is as well. So with that, and again, open this line up to questions. And I want to thank Greg for the last time since now we're partners. But at any rate, he has really stood tall in this big transition process, and I appreciate it.

Thanks, Dave.

Thanks.

I appreciate it.

[Operator Instructions]. Our first question comes from the line of Carter Copeland from Melius Research.

Thanks gentlemen. Can you hear me?

Yes, we can, Carter.

We can.

Okay. I wondered if you might expand a little bit on the short comment you made about monitoring the market dynamic for the MAX and not having the value proposition change there. I mean, I guess, are you -- are we referring to sold aircraft or unsold aircraft? And I guess, more broadly, what's your level of confidence that longer term, MAX pricing won't be materially impacted by what you've seen? Or just can you expand on that comment for us?

Yes. No, Carter, look, I think first go to the backlog. And we've got 4,400 aircraft in backlog, and this has been a very challenging time obviously for our customers, but folks want the airplane. And the value proposition the airplane brings into the market is unchanged. So look, we're in a grounded period, and we realized the strain that's put on the customers. So we're monitoring that closely. But the value proposition of the franchise still remains intact. And like I said, Dave said, the focus right now, safely get this thing back in the air, and we're going to do it one airplane at a time, as Dave has said, and ensure that we have this production system stable as we move up and delivering on our commitments to our customers.

Yes. In the first couple of weeks, when I've talked with most of our large customers, they get to tell me whatever they want. They do still believe in the value prop of this airplane. They believe in everything about the airplane, and it means a lot, but I've heard it firsthand.

And our next question comes from the line of Myles Walton from UBS.

Dave, you're coming to the table with a decade of experience seeing the company from the inside. And I just wonder how you've been able to step outside of that familiarity, take an orthogonal view, kind of a different view of what went wrong and reorient everything so that this isn't maybe just changing tone and/or repairing relationships. But maybe it is, or if there's something more needed, how you've been able to step out of that familiarity role.

Well, let me maybe answer that question a little differently because I get a lot of media attention around the idea that I'm somehow an insider. What if I change that a little bit? What if I told you I simply had a front row seat to everything you saw? And so all the things I read and see and hear, make no mistake, they all have an impact, they have an effect, and I get a front row seat. And ultimately, our Board took action as a result of it. And now I'm the one sitting in the operating seat. So I don't want it to be lost on anybody. I know we've got things to work on and changes to make. I treasure my relationship across the industry with customers and with regulators and others. And when they tell me something, I believe them. I always fault to believing them. And so the work we have to do internally to restore all those confidences and, yes, modify our culture, you can bet I'm working on it. I don't think I see it any differently than you probably do. I might put a nuance here and there, but I think I know the job at hand and that's exactly what I'm going to do. I got to restore trust, confidence and faith in The Boeing Company.

And from that orthogonal view, do you think there is a deficiency in competitive narrowbody offering in the market?

Say that again?

Do you think there's a deficiency in your competitive narrowbody offering in the market today?

Yes. No, I don't. I know that in airplane type by type, sometimes you got to lead, sometimes you don't. But in the family and ultimately the performance of this MAX and the feedback I get from our customers, I'm not actually worried about that. All that said, we're in the airplane development business, and we're going to stay in the airplane development business. So we're going to keep looking at what the next one needs to be. I want to make sure everyone understands that me not immediately signing up to the NMA is not -- is me not wanting to do new airplanes. We'll do one. And I don't want to even suggest or convey to you that it's anywhere near the narrowbody fleet we have today. I don't see big deficiencies there. On the other hand, I'm going to -- I'm just simply going to listen to customers and markets. It's been over 2 years since we started that whole discussion. I'm going to refresh it every way I can think of, along with my new commercial airplane leader, and then we'll get out with new news. But honestly, right now, it's all about the MAX, getting it up. And yes, I believe in the product.

Our next question comes from the line of Ron Epstein from Bank of America.

Maybe a big picture question for you. You've mentioned a couple of times in -- when you talked to the press before that you're focusing on the culture of the company, right? And so my question is how do you change the culture, it's a big organization? And particularly when you've got a workforce in some places, it might be a bit demoralized given some of the texts and things that went around. I mean that's something we can infer. And since you had this front row seat on the Board of what happened, and this is a question I asked your predecessor that he never really answered, how did we get here?

That's a big question. Yes. So first of all, let's go back to what happened. So the MCAS design failed to deal with a boundary condition in an environment we should have known something about. The regulators made the same mistake. There are engineering disciplines that you can and should apply to that question that I think can get fixed relatively quickly. I don't think culture contributed to that miss. I think simply disciplines did. The question with respect to training recommendations and the horrible IMs that people would like to think all of Boeing writes, really was relegated to a relatively small group of folks, but it wasn't detected. The system didn't apparently listen or watch for things like that, and it didn't react appropriately. And I have to do everything in my power to make sure going forward that it does. Listening starts with leadership, and it starts with me. And I think we need to do more of it. And then slowly, steadily, you change culture. People want to believe in that, and they will. They are all good engineers. They are all -- they all follow disciplined processes. And let's not mistake, this plane, this 777X, tested more technology, tested our patience, tested our disciplines in every way you can think of. And we did it successfully on that first flight, and we will move it through a certification process that will be more rigorous than history has ever seen. And we'll get to that finish line, and we'll fly it. And if you looked at that product and sat near or in or flew in it, you'd be impressed with everything about Boeing, I promise you. So this thing isn't entirely broken. Leaders have a massive role to play in setting culture, setting the stage for how to fix a culture. And I have to demonstrate that one step at a time, every inch of the way. I don't have to convince anybody that safety is in the best interest of every stakeholder and including investors. It is. It's perfectly obvious to everyone. So I have no convincing to do on that front. I will have no competing priorities as we step forward. And so I hate to reduce it to things that's simple, but I think that's what it's all about.

We have a question from the line of Sheila Kahyaoglu from Jefferies.

We talked about clearly a lot of challenges with the MAX grounding, the 787 rate cut and 777 potential delays. I guess how do we think about the longer-term implications of what the Commercial Airplane segment looks like in 2022, whether that's market dynamics, touching on Carter's question, impact of charges and some of that offset by manufacturing processes at Boeing? If you could maybe talk about what 2022 looks like.

Yes. Yes. Well, I think on the widebody side, we talked about kind of where we see the rate profiles today. And I think, as we said, we think it's prudent, considering the outlook and some of the global, I'll say, trade dynamics and the timing associated with taking a trade deal to a point of actually a delivery in a skyline, we still got some steps to work our way through. So I think we're being prudent here and looking at the marketplace in that time and moderating those rates. Now having said all that, there's still great demand for the widebody franchises, and you see that in the backlog and you see that in the market outlook. So I think the potential there going forward continues to be strong. On the narrowbody, in 2022 under these assumptions we talked about, you're certainly getting back up in rate, but all these investments we've been making during this time of grounding, Sheila, and I think if you saw the line today versus what you saw even a year ago, there's been tremendous activity put in place in tools and processes to have stability for the long term. That ultimately is going to help the overall franchise, our predictability on delivering to our customers on time and a healthier supply chain as a result of it. So that's been a huge level of effort today. But let's face it, that's a long-term play, but it's a really critical one to get in place during this time. So we have that stability and predictability, again, on our delivery profile and then ultimately on our financials. And then during this, we mentioned, we're still making investments. And we're making investments in the productivity as well as on the R&D side. So we're being prudent about it, and we're being -- we're sharpening the pencils. But that, again, is really focusing on the long-term franchise that we have and the potential franchises to come.

I'd like to follow on. I like everything about the portfolio of products that we field, widebody and narrowbody. The trade deal matters a lot. And I believe if it is what I think it is and our Chinese customers come back and we rebuild the relationship we've always had and enjoyed with them, I think that is a major stimulus. Secondly, this industry has been supply chain limited and constrained. And I believe that some of the actions have been taken on Boeing's side of that process. During this pause, some of the readiness questions that we -- I believe, are being fixed. I think that supply chain will begin to alleviate itself, and I don't think we'll be as supply-constrained going forward as we have been to date. And now I'm trying to speak for the industry, not just for us. So I am optimistic from lots of angles, but I think those are the big ones.

Our next question then will come from the line of Doug Harned from Bernstein.

The one thing I'm certain, Dave, is that a decade ago, we could not have predicted we'd be having this conversation. The thing I'd like to look at is the challenges you're looking at BCA. And in the short term, as you said, you're spending time with regulators and customers to support MAX certification. And then over the course of the year, you've also got to deliver on the restart operationally of the MAX, improve efficiency on the 787 as rate comes down, progress on the 777X, and then as you talked about, decide on how Boeing is going to look at what it does next. And I would think you wouldn't want to wait too long to see how you want to compete against Airbus in the back half of the decade. So with all of this on your plate, new leaders across BCA, so how are you prioritizing your time? And when we get to the end of the year, what would you consider a successful outcome on sort of short-, medium- and long-term issues there?

Well, one, Doug -- so thanks for the question. As you said, I remember looking at this chessboard all the way back in 2000. Didn't turn out actually as different with the exception of the MAX pickup, as you might think. We are on a very long cycle world. Getting decisions right is way more important than getting them fast. So I make no mistake about that. The MAX itself has to be my priority over the course of this year. It's important from a lot of points of view. One, the economics of our institution rely in a significant way on it. Rebuilding the relationships with our customers and our regulator in the process of getting the MAX back up is also critically important. We will always be dependent on those relationships. And then finally, with respect to new airplane development, I don't think anybody will enjoy working on that more than I will. I just want to get exactly the right airplane for the market that's out there. And I want to refresh our view as to what it is. The last 2.5 years have been tumultuous. It has tested some of the -- in my view, some of the edges of demand on all types of airplanes. And so we had to learn from that. But I will not hesitate to move forward on it. And I think creating competitive advantage in that next airplane, I think I have more tools to work with than I've ever had in my previous life. So at any rate, I have confidence in all of that. But I don't want to -- going back to your original question, I don't want to confuse anybody in the process. The fact that I will be focused on the MAX, the fact that I will talk about that almost exclusively across Boeing over the course of this coming year is not an indication that I'm going to start anything going forward. It is simply a necessity for us. We got to get it out there, and we have to get our confidence back and get on the front of our feet. And so, again, that's mostly what you'll hear from me, but don't get confused by it, please.

And if I can, when you look at this year, certainly, financially, this will be a rough year. But when you put all this together, do you have goals you're thinking of and how this should translate into financial goals in 2021 or 2022? Or is it too early to think that way? How do you treat that?

Yes, it's too early to think that way. While I might conjure up a notion here in my head, I'm going to listen to an awful lot of people before I do. And I'm also going to be certain that all the investments that are required to stand up our engineering function, have everybody regain their confidence and, again, simply believe in the safety of every airplane that The Boeing Company puts forward, I don't want to -- I'm not going to jump to that conclusion now. I'm simply going to get through this moment, restore our confidence and then projections will follow.

Our next question then will come from the line of David Strauss from Barclays.

I wanted to discuss the supply chain and how you're approaching the supply chain during this call. Greg, you mentioned some of this $4 billion, I guess, is to support the supply chain during the halt. How overall are you approaching -- it doesn't sound like you're telling everyone to halt. Who are you not telling to halt? How much financial support are you going to provide to the supply chain or do you think is needed for the supply chain during this?

Yes. No, David, I would tell you, it's a one-on-one engagement, and not just them but their suppliers. And so I'll say kind of tiered-down suppliers and understanding the impact that this is having on them and then what levers do we all have in order to help get them through this. And again, with the objective that we're playing a long game, and we want them to come out of this healthier, quite frankly. So each one of them is a little bit different about how we're working and how we're engaging and what type of assistance is needed. Everybody, as you know, has been at a little bit of a different level of production through this. So there's different levels of inventory. So I would tell you, if you went around supplier by supplier, you're going to get a variation of what their build rate is or where they are in inventory. But the engagement with them, I would say, has been very good by our supply chain folks and keeping them informed and trying to get ahead of this, and again, making smart decisions and assisting where we can assist. So, yes, we've got some provisioning in here to help them, and we'll continue to do that, again, with the long-term objective. We need them to be healthy. We want them to be healthy, and we're playing this for the long term. So even some of these productivity things that we've we talked about on the 37, the supply chain team has taken those into the supply chain that, again, ultimately will make them healthier, more stable, more predictable, which is going to be key to our production rates going forward.

I might just add, the -- their rate in return in these early months will be ahead of ours, and that's by design simply because we want the protection in our factories so that we never travel work. That's actually an important discipline that we will reinstall with our MAX line. And they will be the beneficiary to that as they, as I said, accelerated at a faster rate.

Can I ask one clarifying question, Dave? I think you mentioned that you see certification -- or for planning purposes, accounting purposes, certification and deliveries resuming in the middle of the year. Or is it cert and then I assume some sort of lag between cert and then deliveries resuming?

Yes. We've got a kind of time in the midyear time frame, Dave. But like we said, it's going to be a very moderated, slow, I'll say, prudent ramp-up. And as we talked about, priority 1, once the grounding is lifted, will be to start getting those airplanes off the tarmac, the inventoried aircraft, and then slowly bringing that line up in a very methodical way and monitoring stability each step of the way. And when we reach our objectives of stability, then we'll make the next move. But that will kind of be the priority and the time frame associated with that. Now we will -- currently, we're looking at starting the line earlier than the actual lifting of the grounding. But again, think of that as a risk mitigator. We'll look at that during that period of time and our confidence level of getting the grounding lifted, and then we'll start to slowly bring resources back onto the program, keeping in mind that these lines are empty. They're going to be empty. They're empty right now. And so we'll start in position 1, but again, very methodical, start bringing the crews over, get stability and then slowly bring them back into play. But we'll make that decision as we get closer to return to service, but that's the game plan that we see it today.

And if the question relates to this certificates by airplane, which, of course, is going to be a new and very, I think, tightly run process, of course, that involves us and the FAA. And I think we've provided for plenty of room for that process to unfold methodically and not with too much pressure on it. So that's important in the way we've laid out our time line.

We have a question from the line of Jon Raviv from Citi.

In the context of cash being a bigger use in '20 versus '19, certainly understand the moving pieces in BCA, can you talk about perhaps some of the cash generation and the state of the businesses outside of Boeing Commercial, which I think is still a relevant topic here?

Yes, yes. On BDS, slightly lower than last year. And I'd say a lot of that is timing. It's just around receipt timing and award timing. But outside of that, from an operating -- core operating performance, pretty much on par. But we'll see a little bit of headwind this year. And on BGS, a little bit of headwind but less than BDS, and again, a lot of that is just timing. It's nothing more than that. The core performance-wise or the conversion to earnings to cash, it remains pretty consistent with 2019. But again, the bulk of the variance in cash will be at BCA.

We have a question from Noah Poponak from Goldman Sachs.

I wanted to ask about 787 supply and demand and then also the margins given the changes there. Do you have visibility into the order pace stepping up into the kind of mid-100s per year for a while there? Because even at the 12 a month or the 10 a month and you're still building over 100, but the order rate has been below 100. So I know China is an input but not -- I don't know if China is planning to order that many widebodies that would fill that gap sustainably. And then, Greg, on the margin, on the cash margin, you've talked about being able to continue to increase it just at a slower pace at 12 versus 14. Is that still true or not at 10?

Yes, yes. Obviously, not at the same, I'll say, slope as it was, but we still continue to see improved cash margin over the profile for all the reasons we've discussed before between supply chain, mix and our own productivity. That story is unchanged. But again, the amount of growth over that period has moderated obviously under these lower rates. On the supply-demand, China is a big deal. Don't mistake it. It's a big deal, and that's a big play in these production rates. Outside of that, as you've seen, when we've been going head-to-head with the 787, we've been winning the marketplace. The airplane continues to bring great economics into the field. And the long-term market outlook continues. When you look at the 20-year forecast, there's still a lot of widebodies and more replacement in there. And the 787 family, I think, is extremely well suited to address that market. And I'd say the one that is probably underserved at this point is the 787-10. I think as we see that replacement market, I'll say coming more within our skyline, I think we're going to continue to see more demand for the -10. It's just an incredible value proposition and machine for our customers, especially considering what is going to be replacing in the market. So China, big watch item. Outside of that, do we have work to do on the skyline? Absolutely. And we're going to play that out one campaign at a time. And we'll continue to monitor, again, our lead times and make whatever adjustments are needed. But as we see it today, we think this is a prudent thing to do, and we have good confidence in the 10 to go into 12 a month.

Do you expect the China 787 order to come out of Phase 1 specifically? Or do we need to get past Phase 1?

I don't know at this point. No. I know -- we know that airplanes are a part of the -- certainly, a big part of the trade deal with China. And we'll get into those details when -- between the government and our customers, but we're actually engaged with them. And when we get more clarity on that, then we'll provide it. But at this point, we're -- we don't have model clarity.

There's no reason to believe it has to wait for Phase 2.

We have a question from the line of Hunter Keay from Wolfe Research.

So I realize, obviously, FAA is the decider here. You've made that very clear. But would you care to -- in the spirit of transparency, would you care to share your accounting assumptions for the MAX rate ramp 6 and 12 months after recertification? And then the second part of the question is how can you get comfortable potentially resuming production before certification given all the head fakes that we've had over the last few months or so?

Yes. Well, maybe on that one, I'll just, again, put a finer point on what the game plan is as we see it. Don't think of that as just turning the line back on. We're going to slowly bring crews back, but we're going to have to have a confidence level -- a higher confidence level in that exact time frame on return to service because, obviously, we don't want to build more airplanes and store them. So that's the game plan as it sits today. But again, remember, the line is empty. So it's going to be in the first position, and that's going to take some time to slowly bring that up. But obviously, we'll have cert flight behind us, which is a big milestone, and that will give us more confidence in our, I'll say, kind of slow introduction of the production line. So that's the game plan on that. As far as rate increases going forward, Hunter, I would just say, look, we got to get this thing back. We got to start delivering on the -- off the ramp and think of the rate increases one step at a time, or as Dave has said to many of us, one airplane at a time. We're going to keep work in position, and we're going to ensure we have stability and equally, if maybe not more important, the supply chain has stability. We'll make the next rate increase. So we've certainly made some assumptions in there, but we are going to do this one at a time. And again, really playing the long game here to ensure we've got stability that is, I'll say, institutionalized, not just with us but all suppliers, and then that will ultimately have a much more predictable production, I'll say, cadence to it and predictability and delivering to our customers. So we'll keep you posted on our rate plans going forward. But at this time, that's kind of the game plan, and we'll give you more clarity once we -- like I said, once we provide guidance and I'll say the moving pieces that will support that guidance.

I just will reiterate because I think it does matter. That philosophy, one at a time, is reflected in what we have built into this set of financials and our expectations. So I hope we can go one at a time at a rate that exceeds those expectations, but we're not going to think about it that way. We're simply going to get to every next airplane.

Please go ahead.

That concludes our question-and-answer session. Thank you for joining the call.

Thank you. That completes The Boeing Company Fourth Quarter 2019 Earnings Conference Call. Thank you for joining.