Boeing said on Wednesday that it was making progress toward increasing production of its commercial planes and stabilizing its business after a quality crisis, but the company is facing new threats of disruption from President Trump’s trade war.
The company lost $31 million in the first three months of this year, a smaller loss than analysts had expected. In the same period last year, the company lost more than $350 million.
Boeing’s most recent crisis began when a poorly installed panel blew away from a relatively new plane during a flight in January 2024. A two-month worker strike in the fall also stalled production of the 737 Max, Boeing’s best-selling plane.
The company delivered 130 planes in the first quarter, up from 83 a year earlier. It also secured a contract to build the Air Force’s newest fighter jet, the F-47, and brought in $19.5 billion in revenue during the quarter, an 18 percent increase.
“There is a lot of good work happening across our teams, and we are seeing positive results,” Boeing’s chief executive, Kelly Ortberg, said in a message to employees, describing 2025 as “our turnaround year.”
Boeing’s share price was up 6 percent Wednesday morning.
On Tuesday, the company announced plans to sell several digital businesses for $10.5 billion to Thoma Bravo, a private equity firm.
“This was a good quarter for Boeing,” said Peter McNally, global head of sector analysts at Third Bridge, a research firm. He added that the digital businesses had sold for more than expected.
Mr. Ortberg, who joined Boeing last summer, wants to refocus the company on its core business of making planes. In a call with analysts on Wednesday, he said monthly production of the 737 Max was in the low 30s, up from the low to mid-20s in January, and should reach 38 in the next few months.
The company cannot exceed that rate without approval from the Federal Aviation Administration, which limited Max production after last year’s panel blowout. Mr. Ortberg said Boeing planned to seek approval to produce 42 planes per month later this year. Boeing would then aim for 47 Max planes per month no sooner than six months later.
Boeing has also stabilized production of the 787 Dreamliner at about five per month, with plans to increase that to seven planes later this year. The company’s commercial jet orders are valued at $460 billion.
The company’s efforts to recover from last year’s crisis and other disruptions could be stymied by Mr. Trump’s trade policies, which include a 10 percent tariff on nearly all imports and even higher levies on goods from China, whose airlines buy a lot of American planes.
Chinese customers have stopped taking deliveries in reaction to the high tariffs, Mr. Ortberg said on the call. Fifty planes worth more than $1 billion had been planned for delivery to Chinese customers this year. Boeing may redirect those planes if the delivery freeze remains.
A long-term loss of that business would be a substantial setback for Boeing. China is home to about one in seven passenger planes in use today, according to Cirium, an aviation data firm. The country commanded a similar share of Boeing’s deliveries over the past decade, though that slowed in recent years. Boeing said last summer that it expected China would need about 8,800 new planes over the next two decades.
While China is pumping money into a homegrown aircraft manufacturer, Comac, the country still relies heavily on Western companies for aerospace parts and expertise. It will also probably be years before Comac can make planes in substantial numbers, experts say.
On Tuesday, Mr. Trump said the 145 percent tariff on imports of Chinese goods would drop “substantially.” China has retaliated by imposing 125 percent tariffs on U.S. imports.
RTX, which makes plane engines and parts, said on Tuesday that tariffs would cost it about $850 million this year. GE Aerospace, another engine maker, said it expected $500 million in tariff costs this year.
Boeing has not provided a tariff cost estimate, but Mr. Ortberg described the direct effects so far as “immaterial.” Much of the company’s supply chain is in the United States, and Boeing has large inventories of parts.
But the company could be the target of retaliation to trade policies, and its suppliers could suffer. Boeing is paying 10 percent tariffs on components for wide-body jets imported from Japan and Italy, but the company expects to recover those costs when the planes are sold, Mr. Ortberg said.
“I don’t think a day goes by where we aren’t engaged with someone in the administration,” he said, adding that federal officials are receptive to the company’s concerns.
Mr. Ortberg has also set out to change Boeing’s culture, which has been blamed for promoting shortcuts that have led to the company’s recent problems. Last week, the company released the results of a survey that found that 67 percent of its employees said they were proud to be working at the company, down from 91 percent in 2013.
