Boeing's 737 Max Output Stabilization Slipping, CEO Ortberg Says

Boeing's 737 Max production is taking "a little bit longer" than expected to stabilize, CEO Kelly Ortberg told investors Wednesday — and the market punished the admission immediately, with the stock extending losses and falling more than 5% in afternoon trading.

Ortberg, speaking at a Morgan Stanley industry conference, gave investors a mixed picture of the recovery at Boeing's best-selling program. The company is producing about 47 of the aircraft per month and expects to increase output next year.

The bottleneck has shifted. Wing production at the Renton, Washington, factory is now the constraint on the 737 Max ramp, Ortberg said. The company has plans in place to address it, he added, without detailing a specific timeline for the fix.

The remarks land at a delicate moment for the manufacturer. Boeing has spent years working to steadily rebuild output of the 737 Max after a stretch of safety and quality crises that upended the program and triggered intense regulatory scrutiny of its factories. Each month of delayed stabilization pushes back the moment when the cash-generating workhorse of Boeing's commercial portfolio returns to full strength.

Ortberg also reiterated his expectation that the Max 10 — the largest variant in the 737 family — will win certification "very soon." That aircraft runs years behind its original schedule, and its approval is a critical milestone for Boeing's competitive position against Airbus in the narrow-body market's top end.

On China, Ortberg declined to predict new orders. President Donald Trump is scheduled to host Chinese leader Xi Jinping at the White House on Sept. 24, but the CEO would not say he expects aircraft orders to emerge from the meeting.

Orders from China are "going to be announced by the airlines at their pace," Ortberg said.

That stance signals Boeing is unwilling to bank on a diplomatic breakthrough restoring its access to a market that has periodically frozen out its deliveries during trade tensions. Chinese airlines, not the White House schedule, will set the tempo.

The takeaway for investors: the 737 Max recovery remains on track but slower than management's earlier framing, with wing output in Renton now the metric to watch before the promised production increase lands next year.