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Boeing mulls price cuts as cost cutting czar becomes new CEO

US PLANEMAKER Boeing is studying redesigned versions of the 737 Max jetliner, cutting costs and rolling out more robotics in factories to keep pace with the relentless competition, Bloomberg reports.

But there are limits to what the company can do in its battles with rival Airbus and Canada's Bombardier, say Boeing executives.

During Boeing's annual investor conference webcast from Seattle, the new CEO Dennis Muilenburg sketched out a vision of the company as a "global industrial champion" with profit margins reaching the mid-teens by the end of the decade while cash still flows freely to shareholders.

"We won't chase market share for market share's sake," said Mr Muilenburg, who earned his reputation stripping billions of dollars in costs from Boeing's defence business government spending declined.

Said Barclays aerospace analyst Carter Coperland: "There is still a lot of fat that can be cut out of this organisation."

Boeing has stepped up cost-savings efforts at the commercial division to minimise the pricing advantage Airbus, its European rival, enjoys because of the strong US dollar.

While the planemakers now split annual deliveries evenly, Airbus holds a far larger backlog of unfilled orders that could give it a commanding lead in the next decade.

Airbus has logged 5,479 sales of its A320 family jets to 4,380 for Boeing's 737 models, according to data compiled by Bloomberg Intelligence.

Boeing will price its jets competitively and take narrow-body market share where "reasonable", said Ray Conner, CEO of Boeing's commercial aircraft unit. That doesn't mean every airline customer will get the same bargains as United Continental Holdings, which ordered 737s twice from Boeing earlier this year.

In fact, Boeing didn't even bid its best-selling single-aisle jetliner in a highly publicised contest for a Delta Air Lines order that was ultimately won by Bombardier's C Series.

"We competed for Delta with used 717s, used Embraers," Mr Conner told investors, referring to an out-of-production Boeing model and Embraer SA jets that compete directly with the smallest C Series plane.