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Marce Edwards is the business editor. She has been at The News Tribune for seven years and has written about technology and big businesses in the South Sound including Weyerhaeuser and Russell. Before moving to Tacoma, she worked at The Idaho Statesman in Boise. She is a Northwest native who likes to garden and refuses to use an umbrella. She lives in Tacoma with her husband and two kids.
C.R. Roberts is a Tacoma native. Before joining The News Tribune, he worked as a freelance writer and part-time cowhand on a cattle ranch in Northern Idaho. He writes about small business, personal finance and other business issues.
John Gillie writes about the aerospace and airline industries, commercial development and consumer issues. During his 30-year-tenure at The News Tribune he has covered issues as diverse as the Native American fishing rights disputes, crime and the courts, the wood products industry and energy. He lived in Tacoma with his family for 25 years, but now lives in Kent because his wife heads a five-state non-profit foundation headquartered in Ballard, and it only seemed a sensible compromise to make considering their workplaces are 40 miles apart.
Kelly Kearsley has been a business reporter at The News Tribune since 2005. She covers the Port of Tacoma and international trade. Being born and raised in Spokane she’s used to living in cities with inferiority complexes and, in fact, prefers it. Prior to working at The News Tribune, she spent three years as a reporter for The Bulletin in Bend, Oregon and another year working stints for The Associated Press and Seattle Times. She graduated from Pacific Lutheran University. She lives in Tacoma with her husband and miniature schnauzer.
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A spate of bad news about its 787 Dreamliner and its proposal for a new Air Force tanker haven't even scratched Boeing Co.'s stellar earnings the company said this morning.B
Earnings per share grew by 43 percent for the first quarter over the same period last year. Operating margins were up 2.8 percentage points to 11.3 percent and cash flow increased by 166 percent to $1.933 billion.
That performance easily surpassed analysts' estimates. That consensus estimate among Wall Street analysts that follow Boeing was for earnings of $1.35 a share.
Boeing stock closed today at $82.09 a share, up $3.53 over Tuesday's close. That price is the first time Boeing stock has crossed the $80 barrier since March 7 before the latest 787 delay news.
And the company continues to promise that results will get even better in the next few months and years. Earnings per share for this year will be in a range from $5.70 to $5.85 a share, and next year's results will show a 20 percent boost to between $6.80 and $7.00 a share.
Attribute all of this to the company's efforts to contain costs and a bulging order book. Boeing's backlog now totals $346 billion, more than five times its current annual sales.
The company's efficiencies were evident in comparing revenue growth versus earnings. While revenues in the first quarter of 2008 grew by a modest four percent, earnings per share grew by a disportionate 43 percent.
Some of that extra earnings growth was due to company stock buybacks. The number of shares outstanding has declined, so the earnings per share are somewhat greater.
But that phenomenon was only small factor in the disportionate earnings growth. Net income rose 38 percent in the first quarter to $1.211 billion.
"We're off to a good start in what we expect to be annother strong year of financial performance for Boeing,
said the company's chairman, Jim McNerney. "We are methodically working through our challenges, including the start up of the 787, and our people remain focused on satisfying our customes and leveraging growth and productivity into better bottom-lkine and top-line performance for our company."
The performance increase was particularly notable in the company's Puget Sound-based commercial airplanes operations where operating margins rose from 9.3 percent last year to 12 percent this year.
This comes in spite of major issues with the 787 Dreamliner which have three times postponed the plane's first flight and its first commercial delivery.
The Dreamliner is now scheduled to fly for the first time in the late fall or early winter this year and the first delivery will be in the third quarter of next year.
Originally the plane was to fly in late August last year and the delivery of the first plane to launch customer ANA was to be next month.
Customers continue to order the game-changing, fuel efficient airplane despite delivery delays. Boeing booked orders for 75 of the planes during the first quarter bringing the order total to 892 planes.
Boeing is also in the midst of a protest of the Air Force's award for a new airborne tanker to a consortium of Northrop Grumman and Airbus. Boeing had proposed a tanker based on the Everett-built 767.
