Shares of Boeing (NYSE: BA) traded 3% in the red today after the embattled aircraft giant reported a net loss of $466 million in the third quarter. A “core” loss per share was reported at $1.39 better than the market’s estimates of -$2.35. Cash flow remains in focus as the company works through the MAX issues and COVID. They see increased cash flow pressures near term.

Sales came in at $14.1 billion, higher than the analysts’ expectations for $13.9 billion. Revenue in the commercial aircraft unit dropped 56% to $3.6 billion. Free cash outflow, a metric closely followed by the investing community amid the pandemic, came in at $5.1 billion.

"The global pandemic continued to add pressure to our business this quarter, and we're aligning to this new reality by closely managing our liquidity and transforming our enterprise to be sharper, more resilient and more sustainable for the long term," said Boeing President and Chief Executive Officer Dave Calhoun.

Following the 3Q results, Cowen’s analyst Cai von Rumohr said that investors’ reaction was mostly neutral.

“Q3 results a bit better than est. due to lower abnormal MAX costs but slightly higher cash outflow than Street's $4.9B. Call focus will be on risk to unchanged production rate plan. Investors apt to be neutral to results,” the analyst said in a note on Wednesday.

Similarly, Robert Stallard of Vertical Research Partners called the quarter “relatively boring” for BA.

“While losing money and burning through over $5bn in three months is hardly good news, at least it wasn’t worse than this. While tax clearly helped the P&L in the quarter, the FCF burn was also sequentially better than 2Q, and there were no further cuts to BCA build rates. So compared to the last two quarters, we’d call this a relatively boring quarter from Boeing,” he wrote in a note.

“We expect the call this morning to feature lots of attempts to get some kind of clarity on where the financials are heading in 2021 and beyond, but that is clearly very dependent on assumptions for 737 MAX deliveries.”

Stallard and von Rumohr rate BA as “Hold” and “Market Perform”, respectively, with the price objective of $150.00 per share.

On the company's call, the CFO said they see cash flow pressures increasing near-term. They aim to return to a cash flow positive position in late 2021, but it will more likely be 2022.