Today Boeing released its December and full year order and delivery numbers. Boeing confirmed my earlier post of 17 787s delivered in December and 145 deliveries in 2018. Boeing did not have any firmed 787 contracts in December thus their final net order tally is 109 while gross orders was 138. The net book-to-bill is .75 (anything above 1 is considered good).
Boeing's aim is to have more net orders for any given year compared to actual deliveries. The 787 book-to-bill for 2018 is .75 which is quite low but it has been lower in the past. However, Boeing is initiating a rate increase early this year to 14/month or 168 aircraft each year. If current trends hold then Boeing would have completed the current 787 backlog of 622 787 (84 x 787-8, 384 x 787-9, and 154 x 787-10) in about 3 years, 9 months. Of course they will get more 787s but the question is can they get enough each year to support 168. Clearly, Boeing has confidence that they will however, Boeing has yet to close on some announced LoIs which were placed over the last few years but not firmed up (Emirates, Bamboo Airways, and Garuda Indonesia). Given that they didn't get a single new order or firmed existing LoI/MoUs at a time where they traditionally make a mad dash to firm up orders to crow about at year end is concerning.
787 Spreadsheets
Curious: what's your basis for saying that >1 book-to-bill is good? Seems to me that for any given model, the overall program will always average out to 1.000000 (build every plane you sell). >1 B2B means the backlog (as measured in months, not raw units) is growing, and there's probably a bell curve of sorts to show the ideal backlog time: too short and suppliers are unable to know which submodel (-8, -9, -10) to prepare; too long and clients go elsewhere for their time-sensitive fleet needs.
ReplyDeleteBook-to-bill is always calculated as orders/deliveries. You want to show a growing order book after deliveries. Example: You take in 200 orders and deliver 100 during the past year. The book-to-bill is 200/100=2. This is better than if you received 100 orders to 100 deliveries...100/100=1.
ReplyDeleteWhat's happen to B-1216 that is suppossed to be Air China last 787-9?
ReplyDeleteShould be delivered this year.
ReplyDeleteI do realize the line of thinking in respect of book to bill, when seen from invester weue. But from a common small firm. 3 year of work is a good backlok. That being said I do realize that a airplane take time to finish.
ReplyDeleteThanks for a informative book. George