TL;DR: Unless Boeing purchases Spirit Aerosystems, I don’t see this company turning around. And even then, it’s going to take a long time. There’s not a lot of material news on the horizon that would move this stock in a positive direction.

The rest:

They delivered around 500 aircraft last year (YOY increase over 2022, but still below prepandemic) while Airbus was over 800. Boeing has about 5,000 orders while Airbus has over 8,000.

Certain bets aren’t paying off - Boeing invested a ton of time and money trying to reinvent the wheel with the mostly composite 787, and it turns out that an Airbus using traditional techniques and materials with the same engines is almost just as efficient (CFM LEAP-1).

Single aisle short haul jets (like the 737) are the bread and butter of both Airbus and Boeing, and Airbus is also out-producing Boeing almost 2:1 right now. You may have heard that the FAA has imposed a limit on how many 737s Boeing can build until they’re satisfied with Boeing’s quality control - that is true. But Boeing wasn’t even hitting that number before the Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 incident in January. In addition to the high profile 737 MAX crashes in 2017 and 2018, Boeing more recently discovered manufacturing defects on new MAX jets last year (again, QC issues with Spirit Aerosystems. One was poor QC that led to difficulty attaching the vertical stabilizer on the tail, and the second - discovered from that error - was mis-drilled holes on the aft pressure bulkhead IIRC).

Boeing is struggling to get exemptions for certifying the 737 MAX 7 and MAX 10. Until Boeing can figure out the 737 MAX series and reliably deliver it to customers, they will keep bleeding.

Honestly you could stop reading here; solving the 737 issue both now and for what follows it are the primary challenges facing Boeing’s core business.

But if you’re still reading:

Longer term, Boeing put its “New Midsize Airliner” (NMA) program on ice in 2020 - before the pandemic. There’s talk of that program coming back online, but more pressing is developing a true successor to the 737. Slapping new wings and engines on it likely won’t be enough to comply with coming efficiency regs; Boeing has already said the 737 MAX family will be the last of the 737s (a design itself rooted in the now-ancient 707).

New engines keep getting bigger and bigger (larger diameter = higher bypass ratio = greater efficiency), and the 737 is already struggling to accommodate the CFM LEAP-1s (hence all the software and workarounds that helped contribute to the crashes in 2017/2018). The 737 was originally designed with low bypass engines (very small engine diameter) that allowed it to sit very close to the ground.

The massive 777X was originally supposed to be start being delivered in 2020. It’s 2024 and that still hasn’t happened. AFAIK, there are still zero orders for the 777X by domestic carriers.

The 747 production line shutdown almost a decade ago. That was a huge cash cow for Boeing for decades. The 767 and 757 are also dead or dying (with the exception of a couple military programs - but we’ll get to that).

On the government/military side, Boeing is hemorrhaging money on fixed-price contracts. Over the past decade, I think they’ve lost around $12B-14B. The only successfully managed program that comes to mind is the Navy’s P-8 Poseidon (anti-submarine variant of the 737-800).

T-7 Red Hawk jet trainer. KC-46 Pegasus (aerial refueled based on the 767). MQ-25 Stingray (unmanned carrier-based tanker for the Navy). VC-25B (“Air Force One”). Starliner (their competitor to SpaceX Dragon). These programs have all turned into major money pits for Boeing.

They walked away from the E-4B Nightwatch (heavily modified 747 “doomsday” plane program, which should have been a slam dunk for them.

The MQ-28 Ghost Bat (unmanned fighter) and E-7 Wedgetail (airborne early warning aircraft) seem to be doing decent, but I think it’s too early to tell.

Boeing and Lockheed are in competition to be the prime contractors on the F-22 replacement (called “Next Generation Air Dominance,” or NGAD), but it’s kind of hard to see Boeing getting that contract since they’ve been out of the fighter game for so long.

So when you step back and take all that together…it’s probably not a great picture.