What companies make, and report as income, depends on how they do their books. For Boeing, the problem is accounting for the fantastic expenses of new product development. Take the 787 program. Originally planned to cost $5 billion to develop, it went ten times that, $50 billion in outgo (expenses) before a single 787 could be sold. If Boeing had just reported the expenses in the year they were incurred, Boeing would have shown massive losses for five years in a row. Which would have done awful things to its stock value, its credit, and its image.
Boeing used "program accounting" instead. The horrible expenses of 787 development were held somewhere, off the books, until the 787 started to sell. Now these massive expenses are divvied up on each 787 sale, after sales begin. Which makes Boeing's books look a helova lot better during the development time. The Wall St Journal didn't explain a few crucial details, like how long Boeing can take to write down the 787 expenses. Clearly forecasting a production run of 50 years drops the expense per aircraft a lot compared to a production run of 10 years. Boeing could argue that since the old 747 stayed in production for 50 years, the newer and more fuel efficient 787 might last as long. And just where the expenses are recorded, (on the books, off the books, in the cloud, somewhere) is not mentioned. The Journal does say that "program accounting" is legal.
Spending $50 billion on new product development is clearly a good thing. Without the 787 Airbus would take over the market. We need a way for companies to make super expensive investments in plant, equipment, and new product development.
I'm not an accountant. In my simplistic view of the world, you do the books every year. You list expenses, and income, and report the profit or loss every year. But looking at the Boeing case, maybe we need "program accounting".
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