Shares of Boeing Co. hiked up 2.8% in premarket trading Wednesday, after the aerospace and defense company reported a wider-than-expected second-quarter loss and missed on revenue, but beat free cash flow (FCF) forecasts by a wide margin. Net income fell to $193 million, or 32 cents a share, from $587 million, or $1.00 a share, in the year-ago period. Excluding nonrecurring items, such as pension and postretirement cost adjustments and expenses, the core per-share loss of 37 cents missed the FactSet loss consensus of 13 cents. Revenue fell 1.9% to $16.68 billion, below the FactSet consensus of $17.57 billion. Commercial Airplanes revenue grew 3.4% to $6.22 billion, matching the FactSet consensus, while Defense, Space & Security revenue fell 10.0% to $6.19 billion, well below expectations of $6.60 billion. Operating cash flow improved to positive $81 million from negative $483 million, and free cash flow improved to negative $182 million from $705 million to beat expectations of negative $1.01 billion. Boeing’s stock has gained 1.0% over the past three months through Tuesday, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average has declined 4.6%.
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