Last year, I put the model I use to estimate the discounts applied by Boeing on the sales of its commercial aircraft to the test of trying to forecast in advance what would be Boeing Commercial Airplanes division revenues for the year. In this post I want to repeat that exercise (1).
The latest estimate of the discounts that I made, in 2015 yielded a 47% (same as the previous year). See here the post in which that estimate was explained (using Boeing’s reported figures of deliveries, orders, list prices and revenues) and below its evolution.
Boeing Average Discount Evolution, through 2014.
As of today, January 11th, Boeing revenues for the full year 2015 have not been announced yet. Boeing’s investors relations website informs that the 2015 earnings conference call will take place on January 27th.
The process and sources with which I will reach to my forecast are described below:
- See here Boeing (net) orders for the year 2015: 768 aircraft among all models.
- See here Boeing deliveries in the year 2015: 762 aircraft among all models.
- See here Boeing 2015 list prices.
- See in the above curve the average discount I will use: 47% (this is the figure calculated with 2014 data, and that is a hypothesis that will be put to test with how accurate the forecast turns out).
- See here [PDF, 839KB] Q3 2015 earnings press release. I use it to see how were faring in 2015 Boeing Commercial Airplanes services, deducing it from the reported figures of Sales of Services, Boeing Capital and Global Services & Support, reported in different pages of the release. Up to end September 2015, the services figures were increasing in comparison to 2014 figures. I will assume the global figure to follow the same proportional increase; arriving at ~1,636 m$ for Boeing Commercial Airplanes services (remember, this figure will not be actually explicitly reported).
With all these ingredients… my forecast is: 66.98 bn$ (2).
In the 2015 Q3 report you can see Boeing’s own guidance for year-end figures:
Boeing’s 2015 Financial Outlook at Q3 2015 earnings press release.
Some comments:
First, you can see that my forecast (66.98 bn$) is about a billion dollars more optimistic than Boeing’s own outlook 3 months ago, 65.0-66.0 bn$ (3), which was even lifted from 64.5 – 65.5 in the 2015 Q3 earnings release.
Second, in the 2015 Q3 release, you can see the revenues up to end September (below). In them, you can see that up to then, revenues of Boeing Commercial Airplanes had increased 16% in relation to 2014. My forecast is a bit less optimistic here for the year-end as it estimates the increase in revenues will be +12% (that is due to lower deliveries in the Q4 of 2015).
Boeing Commercial Airplanes revenues Q3 2015.
Final comment: if Boeing managed in 2015 to command better prices on delivered aircraft, the figure will be even higher. If the figure is lower than the 66.0 bn$, and in line with Boeing’s Outlook, it’ll mean that the market is forcing Boeing to apply ever higher discounts to their published list prices.
I am now looking forward to January 27th and Boeing’s earnings call!
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Note: After Boeing’s earnings call, in order to compare the results with the forecast and evaluate its accuracy I will either write an update of this post or a new entry.
(1) See here the post from last year, in which I missed the revenues by just a 0.3%, closer than analysts and Boeing’s own financial guidance provided in their 2014 Q3 earnings release.
(2) To be more precise the forecast from the model is 66,978 m$.
(3) As I mentioned in last year’s post, if my forecast turns out correct some may be tempted to say that this is the usual trick played by CFOs: to present better figures (in the results) than expected (in the outlook).
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