Boeing is the opposite of the Apple case — a case study in what financial statements look like when operations break. In March 2019 the 737 MAX was grounded worldwide after two fatal crashes. Deliveries of Boeing's best-selling jet stopped, but production initially didn't — the company kept building aircraft it couldn't deliver.
That combination — revenue frozen, production continuing — shows up in the statements in a predictable way. Undelivered aircraft accumulate in inventory. Operating cash flow turns deeply negative. To survive, Boeing issued enormous amounts of debt: financing cash flow swings sharply positive precisely because the operating side was bleeding. Watch the liabilities-to-equity ratio climb through the crisis years.
Then came the pandemic, collapsing air travel and airline orders just as the MAX was being cleared to fly again. The crisis years stack: negative OCF, a bloated balance sheet, and interest expense consuming a growing share of operating income — check the interest coverage ratio.
The repair phase is equally instructive. As deliveries resumed, inventory converts back into revenue and cash; OCF normalizes; the company begins the long work of paying down the debt stack. Every stage — buildup, collapse, financing bridge, recovery — is legible in the annual data.
Your task:
pull up Boeing's company page. Identify the years where operating cash flow was most negative. Then look at the financing column for the same years and the long-term debt trajectory. Finally, check the interest coverage ratio and the current ratio — describe in your own words how close the liquidity position came to the edge.