A combination of better financial performance, improved day-to-day operations and individual efforts helped Boeing Co. boost the annual incentive bonus given to most of its workers to more than $1.2 billion pre-tax this year — up about 9 percent from 2021.
The bonus pay to roughly 143,000 Boeing workers nationwide — more than nine-tenths of the company’s workforce — will start showing up in paychecks as early as March 2. Boeing executives will share in the incentive plan.
More than 5,900 Boeing workers in South Carolina, including those at the company’s 787 Dreamliner assembly campus in North Charleston, will share in about $49 million in incentive awards.
“The hard work and dedication of Boeing teammates in 2022 help set the company on the right path as we delivered for our customers and built a stronger foundation for the future,” Mike D’Ambrose, Boeing’s vice president of human resources, said in a written statement. “Recognizing our teammates and their efforts through these incentives is one of the important ways we make Boeing the employer of choice for those who look to build rewarding, long-term careers.”
In a separate statement, Boeing said its employees “work hard to deliver on our customer commitments with safety and quality.”
The company’s incentive program aims to “recognize those efforts and provide an opportunity for our employees to share in the company’s success as we improve performance, focus on business priorities and position the company for the future,” Boeing said.
The payouts are based in part on Boeing’s financial performance in 2021, when the company reported a 6.6 percent increase in revenues to $66.6 billion but its losses widened to $5 billion. Free cash flow, a key statistic for investors, was up significantly from the previous year to $2.3 billion, driven by higher commercial plane deliveries and orders. Free cash flow was in the black following a negative $4.4 billion in 2021 and was positive for the first time since 2018.
Brian West, Boeing’s chief financial officer, said during last month’s Cowen Group aerospace conference that generating positive free cash flow “was an important milestone.” He reiterated the company’s outlook for between $3 billion and $5 billion in net cash flow this year.
Boeing delivered 480 planes in 2022, up 40 percent from 340 deliveries the previous year. The company netted 774 sales last year, a 62 percent increase from the 479 orders in 2021.
Dreamliner deliveries, which had been paused for about 15 months after Boeing discovered minor production flaws on the plane’s fuselage, totaled 31 after resuming in August. The company recently halted deliveries again following an error in certification records provided by a supplier. Boeing notched 114 orders for the wide-body Dreamliner last year.
Boeing’s improving financial and production metrics led to a 10.4 percent boost in employment levels company-wide last year and a 17.1 percent increase in South Carolina, including the Dreamliner campus off International Boulevard. Boeing employed 6,465 workers at its various Palmetto State locations as of Dec. 31, up from 5,521 in the previous year’s report.
The Dreamliner plant has been buoyed in recent months by big orders for the wide-body jet. In December, United Airlines said it will buy up to 200 Dreamliners in the largest deal for wide-body planes in U.S. aviation history. Last month, Air India announced an order for 20 787-9s as part of a historic commercial plane deal for up to 540 jets split between Boeing and rival manufacturer Airbus.
Even as overall orders, deliveries and workforce totals rise, Boeing said in February that it plans to cut about 2,000 white-collar jobs in its finance and human resources divisions. The company did not say how those job cuts might impact the South Carolina operations.
Reach David Wren at 843-937-5550 or on Twitter at @David_Wren_
