New Boeing CEO to give clues on company’s future, while striking workers vote on new contract

Boeing has already braced investors for a rough quarterly report. Now, new CEO Kelly Ortberg has the chance to share his vision for the troubled manufacturer, from a potential strike-ending labor agreement to a slimmed-down future. When he takes the mic for his first earnings call as Boeing’s CEO on Wednesday, more than 32,000 striking machinists will start voting on a new, sweetened contract proposal. Results of the labor vote are expected Wednesday night. Analysts are cautiously optimistic that the new proposal, which requires a simple majority of the vote, could pass, putting an end to the more than five-week work stoppage that has halted most of the company’s production of airplanes and added to its cash burn of about $8b in the first half of the year. Boeing last posted an annual profit in 2018. “I think it’s going to be a tight vote,” Jon Holden, president of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers District 751, told CNBC on Tuesday. During Boeing’s earnings call, investors, analysts and the public could get clues from Ortberg about what Boeing will look like in the coming years as well as clearer estimates on the company’s production targets for the next year. Executives at key Boeing suppliers GE Aerospace and RTX told investors on Tuesday that they are looking toward the work stoppage ending with a new agreement. RTX CFO Neil Mitchill said on an earnings call that in the company’s Collins unit, commercial aircraft component sales to manufacturers will be flat this year, down from mid-single-digit growth it previously forecast. “This outlook assumes that we’re able to restart some level of shipments to Boeing in the fourth quarter, and we see no change to the long-term structural demand” for products to plane makers, he said.<br/>