At profit making, Boeing now excelled. Two decades after Harry Stonecipher had berated its proud engineers as hobbyists who didn’t know how to run a business, Boeing had become a Wall Street darling. It had reported a 67 percent jump in 2017 earnings, to $8.2 billion from $4.9 billion the previous year, and its operating margin—the amount of sales left after expenses—had climbed to a once-unthinkable 11 percent. The stock price had responded, tripling in the three years of Muilenburg’s tenure.
