Boeing Co. (NYSE: BA) announced on Friday that it had delivered a total of 184 commercial jets in the first quarter of 2015. The total includes 121 737s, 24 777s and 30 787 Dreamliners.
For the month of March the company delivered 11 787s, added to seven deliveries in January and 12 in February. The company has forecast total Dreamliner shipments of 135 for 2015. At its three-month average of 10 per month, Boeing will come up short. Since the plane’s first delivery in September 2011, Boeing has delivered a total of 285 to customers, and the company has 847 orders for the plane left to fill.
One interesting thing about March was that five of the 787s delivered were the 787-9. To date Boeing has delivered 20 of the larger models, compared with 238 of the smaller 787-8s. But unfilled orders for the 787-9 total 476, versus just 229 for the 787-8. That is important because the 787-9 carries a list price of $257.1 million, nearly $40 million higher than the 787-8.
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Boeing needs to build and deliver more of the 787-9s to pare down the deferred production costs that it continues to incur on every 787 built. As we noted last week, analysts at Sterne Agee expect the deferred production balance to peak at $28.5 billion in the third quarter of this year and then stabilize before the balance begins to fall in the first quarter of next year. Boeing’s total first quarter deliveries were higher than the 177 projected by the Sterne Agee analysts.
If Boeing can boost production of the more expensive 787-9, that whole virtuous cycle may get sped up. To date, Boeing has fulfilled more than 50% of its orders for the 787-8 (238 out of 467 orders) and just under 5% of the orders for its 787-9 (20 out of 496 orders).
Boeing also delivered eight of its 777 models in the month, bringing the quarterly total to 24. The company has unfilled orders for 215 777-300ERs and 46 of the freighter version of the airplane. Most analysts believe that the company needs to build between 40 and 60 of the planes annually between now and first deliveries of the new 777X, currently scheduled for late 2019. The list price on a 777-300ER is $330 million — that is why the plane is so important to Boeing’s cash flow.
Boeing stock closed at $149.28 on Thursday, up about 0.4% for the day, in a 52-week range of $116.32 to $158.83.
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