New Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg said he’s looking at the beleaguered company’s portfolio and everything outside of its core businesses of commercial aircraft and defense could face uncertain futures.

“I think that that we’re better off being doing less and doing it better than doing more and not doing it well,” he said during the company’s quarterly earnings call on Wednesday. “So we’re in the process of taking an evaluation of the portfolio. It’s something a new CEO always does when you come into a business and looking at those things and asking in the filter of what do we want this company look like, you know, five and 10 years from now?”

The company reported a loss of more than $6 billion for the third quarter overall as it deals with striking union workers that have shut down airplane production for nearly six weeks. The company has been amid years of continued losses while having major reputation issues. The company has already announced layoffs as it tries to raise cash and avoid bankruptcy.

The 33,000 machinists who mostly work in the Seattle area have a vote Wednesday night whether or not to accept Boeing’s offer of a 35% pay raise and other benefits.

The company has not seen a profitable quarter since 2018.

Ortberg, who became CEO in August, opened his prepared comments addressing the criticism of the company since it merged with McDonnell Douglas in 1997.

“Boeing was once a benchmark for what good culture looks like, and I believe we can return to that legacy,” he said. “I know culture change starts at the top. Our leaders, from me on down, need to be closely integrated with our business and the people who are doing the design and production of our products.”

He said that means being in touch with the workers on the factory floors and in the engineering labs.

“We need to know what’s going on, not only with our products, but with our people. And most importantly, we need to prevent the festering of issues and work better together to identify, fix and understand root cause,” he said.

Where its space efforts fit into that process is uncertain.

Boeing’s hand in space includes the CST-100 Starliner, constructing core stages for NASA’s Space Launch System and supporting the International Space Station. It also has a 50% stake in United Launch Alliance with Lockheed Martin.

Starliner has been a thorn in Boeing’s financial side in the years since it was awarded in 2016 alongside SpaceX the NASA contract to provide commercial ferry service to the International Space Station.

The company this summer suffered an incomplete Crew Flight Test mission, which started off with a successful launch with two NASA astronauts headed to the ISS for what was supposed to be an eight-day visit. But issues with the propulsion module pushed NASA to decide to send the spacecraft home without crew to err on the side of safety. The company needs the spacecraft to be certified before NASA will allow it to perform operational flights.

NASA this month went ahead and officially assigned SpaceX the second commercial crew launch planned for 2025, pushing a potential Starliner flight to no earlier than late 2025, but still without a certain path to certification.

Although the NASA contract is worth $4.6 billion to provide six operational missions to the ISS, Boeing has reported more than $1.8 billion in losses while only getting a portion of that contract for development of the spacecraft.

The last three months added another $250 million in loss “primarily to reflect schedule delays and higher testing and certification costs,” according to the quarterly report. That’s on top of the $125 million announced in the second quarter.

Overall, it’s among nearly $2.4 billion of operational losses in the third quarter as part of its overall Defense, Space & Security segment.

Through Sept. 30, 2024, Boeing said it has about $240 million of capitalized precontract costs and $257 million in “potential termination liabilities to suppliers related to fixed-price unauthorized future missions.”

This latter number jumped from $148 million announced in the second quarter, a $109 million increase.

“Risk remains that we may record additional losses in future periods,” the report stated.

One of the issues Boeing has faced in both its space and defense efforts has been fixed-price contracts, something the government prefers after having been burned by companies that face long delays and cost overruns. That approach, though, means Boeing is stuck with losses in the event of issues such as supply chain problems.

“We have to be better at understanding and managing the risks on these projects more proactively,” he said, noting that includes the bid phase.

“This is an area where we need the management team much more focused on their programs and much more active working with their customers on ensuring success and anticipating risk before they happen,” he said. “Clearly, we have some difficult contracts in our defense business, but we have to do better job of executing on the things that we can’t control.”

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said he had spoken with Ortberg after Starliner made its crewless landing in September, and that Ortberg indicated the company had every intention of following through on the contract.

Not calling out its space efforts specifically, but not discounting them among non-core business, Ortberg said, “Do these things add value to the company or distract us? So I’m in the process of going through that.”

He reiterated that the company’s core is commercial airplanes and defense systems, and that those would remain its long-run focus.

“But there’s probably some things on the fringe there that we can be more efficient with, or that just distract us from our main goal here,” he said.

He did ask for people to not get ahead of him on the notion that some of Boeing’s projects might be axed.

“I don’t have a specific list of things that we’re going to keep and we’re not going to keep, that’s something for us to evaluate, and the process is underway to start that,” he said.

Boeing’s figurative footprint in the space sector did get one shoutout in Ortberg’s speech, though.

“This is a company that ushered in the new era of air travel and helped land the first man on the moon,” he said. “Getting back to the values that helped define this legacy is what will define our future.”

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