Boeing Stock Falls Some 2% After Hours on Downbeat Q3 Guidance and Plans for 17,000 Job Cuts

BA shed 1.9% to $148.19 shortly after 5:30 p.m. ET after the company said It expects a $9.97 Q3 loss per share as revenues hit $17.8 billion – below the $18.4 billion analysts had reportedly forecast.

The company also expects to see $1.3 billion in negative operating cash flow for the period, and plans to take some $5 billion in one-time, pre-tax charges when it formally releases Q3 results on Oct. 23.

Additionally, President and CEO Kelly Ortberg issued an open letter to employees saying that he plans to cut "roughly" 10% of the aviation giant's workforce, which works out to about 17,000 jobs.

"Our business is in a difficult position, and it is hard to overstate the challenges we face together," Ortberg wrote in his letter."Beyond navigating our current environment, restoring our company requires tough decisions and we will have to make structural changes to ensure we can stay competitive and deliver for our customers over the long term."

In addition to the downbeat guidance and job cuts, the CEO announced a pushback of the first deliveries for the firm's 777X jet to 2026 – six years later than originally planned.

He also said the company plans to wind down production of the Boeing 767 Freighter after completing existing orders. However, Boeing will continue to produce the plane's KC-46A military version.

"We need to be clear-eyed about the work we face and realistic about the time it will take to achieve key milestones on the path to recovery," Ortberg wrote. "We also need to focus our resources on performing and innovating in the areas that are core to who we are, rather than spreading ourselves across too many efforts that can often result in underperformance and underinvestment."

The pullback comes as Boeing faces a bevy of business challenges, including a nearly month-old strike by some 30,000 factory workers in Oregon and Washington state.

The workers walked of their jobs in mid-September after rejecting a new contract that management negotiated with the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers union. S&P Global Ratings reportedly estimated this week that the strike is costing BA $1 billion a day.

Boeing's reputation has also taken a hit in recent years from several safety incidents:

-- NASA recently decided not to bring two astronauts home from the International Space Station via Boeing's Starliner spacecraft due to safety concerns. The two astronauts will instead stay in space for months on end until returning in February aboard a SpaceX craft with the crew of a different mission.

-- An Alaska Airline flight had to make an emergency landing this past January after a Boeing 737 MAX 9's door blew open in-flight. There were no fatalities, but a mother on board said she had to hold on to her son to keep the teenager from flying out of the plane. U.S. aviation officials temporarily grounded some 737 MAX 9s in response.

-- Nearly 350 people died in 2018 and 2019 when two Boeing 737 MAX planes crashed within less than five months of each other. As a result, aviation officials around the world grounded 737 MAXs for more than a year.