Boeing to Sell Digital Businesses for $10 Billion
The company also wants to reduce the large amount of debt it has. It will sell four businesses to Thoma Bravo – a private equity company that specializes in software. Those include Jeppesen, which provides navigational charts and information to pilots, and ForeFlight, an app that helps plan flights and monitor weather.
“This transaction is an important component of our strategy to focus on core businesses, supplement the balance sheet and prioritize the investment-grade credit rating,” Kelly Ortberg, Boeing’s chief executive, said in a statement.
The company said it expected to close the all-cash deal by the end of the year. The digital unit, which houses these businesses, employs approximately 3,900 people. However, some of this unit will remain with Boeing. As of the beginning of the year, the company employed 172,000 people. Ortberg, who was hired by the company last summer to streamline its operations, has made this a strategic goal. He is trying to address concerns raised about the quality and safety of Boeing’s aircraft after a panel blew away from a 737 Max during a flight near Portland, Ore. in January 2024. Boeing’s commercial planes have been slowed down by safety and quality concerns in recent years. Then last fall, production of the 737 Max, Boeing’s most popular commercial plane, came to a near standstill during a two-month worker strike.
In January, Mr. Ortberg said the company had resumed production of the Max, and was making more than 20 of those planes per month as well as five of the larger 787 Dreamliners.
That is well below the goal the company had set before last year’s panel incident of delivering 50 of its 737s and 10 of its 787s per month. Boeing has 5,500 commercial plane orders worth hundreds of billions in value.
