Finance
Boeing’s new CFO sees ‘performance culture’ driving a return to positive cash flow next year | Fortune
Good morning. As a new hire, you never truly know a company’s culture until you experience it firsthand. For Boeing CFO Jay Malave, it has been a little over three months—and he is ready to offer an evaluation.
After a series of aircraft malfunctions, management challenges, and a strike by more than 33,000 machinists in 2024, Boeing has seen significant changes in its executive leadership over the past year. Malave began his tenure as EVP and CFO on Aug. 15, succeeding Brian West, who served as finance chief for four years. Kelly Ortberg became Boeing’s president and CEO in August 2024.
Speaking Tuesday at the UBS Global Industrials and Transportation Conference, Malave said that, by the time he joined the company, he was already benefiting from culture changes Ortberg had put in motion.
“What I’ve seen is a really engaged workforce, a very strong management team—one that has a can-do attitude,” Malave said. Management is focused on improvement and making Boeing better every day, he said. “To me, that is incredibly important, because that’s a sign of a performance culture, and that’s one of the things you look for when you join a company,” Malave said. “You can never really tell from the outside looking in what it’s actually like working in the company.”
He described “active management” as a leadership team that is “willing to roll up its sleeves, get its hands dirty, help solve problems, and be part of the solutions—and that’s exactly what I see here at Boeing,” he said. “I’m that type of person who likes to get into the details, to focus on how we solve a problem rather than just observing it. From my perspective, I’ve been able to transition pretty easily into an environment like that.”
At Boeing (No. 63 on the Fortune 500), Malave leads the finance organization, as well as strategy, business planning, and global real estate, and he serves on the company’s executive council. He was most recently CFO of Lockheed Martin and previously held senior finance roles at L3Harris Technologies. He also spent more than 20 years at United Technologies (UTC), including serving as CFO of Carrier Corporation when it was a UTC division.
Boeing’s path back to positive cash flow
During the conversation, Malave also sketched out a financial reset for Boeing. He expects the company to move back into positive free cash flow in 2026 in the low single-digit billions. This is dependent upon ramping up production of the 737 Max and 787 Dreamliner and working through its stockpile of undelivered jets.
Malave described next year as the start of rebuilding toward Boeing’s long-standing $10 billion annual cash-generation target, with higher production rates key toward that ambition. The outlook marks a sharp improvement from roughly $2 billion in expected free cash outflow in 2025, and his comments helped lift Boeing shares by nearly 10% on Tuesday.
Risk, opportunity—and no ‘grenades’ for BDS
In July, Boeing veteran Stephen Parker was appointed president and CEO of its Defense, Space & Security (BDS) business, after serving as interim leader since September 2024. Malave is temporarily separated from BDS because of his recent role at Lockheed Martin, and Boeing has formally agreed he will not take part in BDS activities until the end of the year to avoid potential conflicts of interest with his former employer.
Malave stressed that he does not plan to disrupt the BDS portfolio once he is able to engage there. “I think there’s been some investor angst in terms of, once Jay Malave gets access to the BDS program, there’s going to be a bunch of grenades that go off on all these programs,” he said. “I’m there to learn.” He added, “In any program, there’s going to be risk, there’s going to be opportunities. My job will be: How can I help them mitigate risk, and how can I help them realize opportunities? I’m not going in there with a mandate or an agenda to throw grenades at different programs.”
SherylEstrada
sheryl.estrada@fortune.com
Leaderboard
Michele Allen was appointed CFO of Jersey Mike’s Subs, a franchisor of fast-casual sandwich shops, effective Dec. 1. Allen succeeds Walter Tombs, who is retiring from Jersey Mike’s in January after 26 years with the company. Allen brings more than 25 years of financial leadership experience. Most recently, she served as CFO and head of strategy at Wyndham Hotels & Resorts. Allen began her career with Deloitte as an auditor.
Jessica Ross was appointed CFO of GitLab Inc. (Nasdaq: GTLB), a DevSecOps platform, effective Jan. 15. Ross joins the company from Frontdoor, where she served as CFO. She has more than 25 years of experience in finance, accounting, and operational leadership at companies like Salesforce and Stitch Fix, and spent 12 years in public accounting at Arthur Andersen and Deloitte.
Big Deal
Adobe has released online shopping data for the 2025 holiday season covering Cyber Week, the five-day shopping period from Thanksgiving through Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Consumers spent a total of $14.25 billion online on Cyber Monday, up 7.1% year over year and above Adobe’s initial projection of $14.2 billion (up 6.3% year over year). During the peak hours of 8 to 10 p.m., consumers spent $16 million every minute, according to Adobe.
Usage of the buy now, pay later payment method hit an all-time high on Cyber Monday, driving $1.03 billion in online spend (up 4.2% year over year), according to the data. Adobe also found that on Cyber Monday, AI-driven traffic to U.S. retail sites (measured by shoppers clicking on a link) increased by 670% compared with last year.
Going deeper
“Anthropic is all in on ‘AI safety’—and that’s helping the $183 billion startup win over big business” is a new Fortunefeature by Jeremy Kahn.
Kahn writes: “Anthropic has emerged as one of the leading rivals to OpenAI and Google in the race to build ever-more-capable artificial intelligence. And while Anthropic and its Claude family of AI models don’t have quite the same brand recognition as crosstown rival OpenAI and its ChatGPT products, over the past year Claude has quietly emerged as the model that businesses seem to like best. Anthropic, currently valued at $183 billion, has by some metrics pulled ahead of its larger rivals, OpenAI and Google, in enterprise usage.” You can read the complete article here.
Overheard
“Today’s AI-ready employee brings more than technical skills — they work smarter, feel more fulfilled, and contribute more effectively.”
—Sarah Hoffman, director of AI Thought Leadership at AlphaSense, writes in a Fortune opinion piece.
BURLINGTON, Vt. (WCAX) – Initial public offerings, better known as IPOs, may seem like big investment opportunities, but a financial adviser is warning they could be a risky addition to your portfolio.
Dan Cunningham of the investment management company One Day in July, said he recommends that people stay away when a company starts selling initial shares on the stock market.
Most recently, Elon Musk’s SpaceX became the biggest IPO ever, but Cunningham said people shouldn’t get caught up in the hoopla.
“They generate a lot of excitement, but when you look at long term results, IPOs have not been a good investment. So we really try to encourage people to stay away from the hype. You are really betting on the future and taking an enormous amount of risk by buying IPO shares in many cases,” Cunningham said.
According to Cunningham, the good news is that, over the long term, the market and most retirement funds that mirror it will balance out.
Copyright 2026 WCAX. All rights reserved.
DULUTH — The Duluth Homegrown Music Festival is seeking both new operational leadership and a solution to financial filing issues that caused the organization to lose its federal tax-exempt status, which it has not held since 2022.
The organization is currently operating as a taxable nonprofit, confirmed Don Ness, the former Duluth mayor who serves as president of Homegrown’s
board of directors.
Ness and the board are working to discern whether there might be any outstanding tax liabilities in the wake of an apparent filing lapse.
“It’s a serious matter that requires diligence to do things right, and to correct past oversight, and to make sure that we are in full compliance with all tax and regulatory requirements,” Ness said. “The board is 100% committed to that course of action.”
As the Duluth Monitor first reported, Homegrown had its federal tax-exempt status revoked in 2022 after failing to make required financial reports for three years. The Monitor also reported that Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison’s office has notified the organization it may be in violation of state law requiring the proper registration of soliciting charities.
Clint Austin / Duluth Media Group file photo
“All but one of us have been on for less than a year,” Ness said of the current board members. “We’ve been committed to saying, ‘hey, we need to improve the points of accountability.’”
The organization will also require new operational leadership. Co-directors Cory Jezierski and Dereck Murphy-Williams resigned earlier this month, after leading Homegrown through four successful festivals.
“My contract ended at the end of May, and I knew a few days later that I did not want to continue in that position,” Jezierski said. “Simply put, it was the best thing for my mental health. It’s a job that requires many, many hours and a lot of work, and it can be very stressful as well.”
Amy Arntson / Duluth Media Group file photo
Murphy-Williams did not respond to an interview request for this article, nor did preceding Homegrown director Melissa LaTour. According to LaTour’s
LinkedIn profile,
she was Homegrown director from 2016 to 2022.
Jason Beckman, a recent president who is no longer serving on the board, responded to a News Tribune email but did not provide an interview availability before this article went to press.
Ness does not believe the reporting lapses were due to any ill intent. He praised Jezierski and Murphy-Williams for their success managing festival operations. “They cared deeply about the festival,” he said. “It’s amazing to see that our community continues to support this really unique and special festival.”
“Those guys run a hell of a festival,” said Scott Lunt, festival founder and a current board member. “I think they needed help with bookkeeping.”
Clint Austin / Duluth Media Group file photo
By Jezierski’s account, issues with the festival’s tax status became apparent shortly after he became co-director. “We went to file taxes, they were rejected,” Jezierski said. “At that time we, of course, didn’t know why right away, but once we started pulling on that thread, we unraveled a whole lot of the problems that were going on.”
Jezierski said “it took a long time to try to get any sort of help” from the board, but said that by the time he and Murphy-Williams left the organization, “everything had been turned over to be reconciled” with a financial professional.
Ness, like Lunt, was deeply involved with Homegrown in its first decade but had not had an official role with the festival since then. After launching the festival in 1999 and running it on his own for several years, Lunt was “burnt out,” Ness remembered.
Derek Montgomery / Duluth Media Group file photo
After a transition period during which the festival was run in partnership with the Ripsaw newspaper, Homegrown established a nonprofit organization in 2006 with Ness as festival director. Ness subsequently stepped down when he was elected mayor in 2007.
By 2025, Ness was in his current position as executive director of the Ordean Foundation.
“I was approached by a couple of longtime music scenesters,” Ness recalled. “They said, ‘There are questions about (Homegrown’s) nonprofit status. There are questions about some governance issues. We’re concerned.’”
Ness agreed to join the board, and became president. The 2026 festival ran smoothly from an operational standpoint, but Ness found the financial reporting to be lacking.
Clint Austin / Duluth Media Group file photo
“The last board meeting that we had prior to the (co-directors’) resignations was intended to be an overview of the festival that was a month before,” Ness said. “I certainly felt very uncomfortable with how little financial information we were receiving.”
Lunt also joined the board in 2025, marking his first time serving in that capacity. He said the new board has been spending significant time addressing the accounting and reporting issues.
“Every year at Homegrown time I’m like, ‘I should get more involved,’ and then I don’t,” Lunt said. “Then this board thing came up, and it was kind of sold to me as, like, four meetings a year. I was like, ‘Oh, that’s perfect.’ And now we’re meeting weekly.”
Clint Austin / Duluth Media Group file photo
Although it’s unclear how the organization’s finances will look when the accounting and reporting issues have been fully addressed, along with any outstanding tax liabilities, both Ness and Lunt said they are confident the annual festival will continue without interruption.
“The organization will continue,” Ness said. “The festival will continue. Homegrown is in no danger in terms of its viability.” The financial documentation Ness initially received indicated budgeted revenues of about $140,000, against about $130,000 in expenses.
“Financially, I think we’re in a great spot. We have the money to hire the (financial) professionals, and we have (done so),” Lunt said. “We were hoping that we could get all this sorted out before it had to become more public.”
“We poured countless hours into this festival, and this is how it ends, with everyone talking about this,” Jezierski said. “It’s rough.”
“There’s a DIY ethos that is really at the core of Homegrown,” reflected Ness. “We’re throwing a music festival that isn’t waiting for some famous band from the East Coast to bless us with their presence. We are doing this on our own.”
Clint Austin / Duluth Media Group file photo
That DIY spirit also means “you’re kind of passing wisdom down from person to person, and sometimes that’s imperfect.” Ness continued. “The ways that we do things evolve over time, because it’s not a buttoned-down corporate sort of thing. That can create its own set of challenges.”
“It’s self-supporting,” said Lunt about the festival. “It’s widely volunteer-run. You do need to pay a couple people, obviously, to keep track of some things, but it’s going to be strong into the future. It’s gone through its bumps before.”
While most AI in financial services remains advisory, LUMIQ has built the layer that owns the decision — autonomous, auditable AI agents making regulated calls in production at leading banks, insurers, and capital markets firms. Today, LUMIQ serves clients across India, the United States, and Southeast Asia — leading institutions across insurance, banking, and capital markets.
NEW YORK and SINGAPORE, June 19, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — LUMIQ, an AI-native financial services company, today announced a strategic funding round to scale auto-decisioning for financial institutions across the United States and Southeast Asia. The round was led by Bajaj Finserv, one of India’s largest and most diversified financial services groups, with participation from existing investor Info Edge Ventures.
Right now, thousands of customers are waiting for a policy to be issued, a loan to be disbursed, a claim to be adjudicated, because somewhere an FSI employee is drowning in decisions, held back by the risk of getting it wrong. Today, when e-commerce delivers the same day, banks and insurers still decide in weeks. We built LiteCone to take that burden: AI decides the routine cases, completely and accountably, so humans spend their judgment on the one case that actually needs it. This round lets us bring that to every financial institution in the markets that matter most.
Shoaib Mohammad, Co-founder and CEO, LUMIQ
From AI that assists to AI that decides
For decades, financial institutions have bought technology that made their people faster — faster data, faster scoring, faster copilots. The decision still landed on a human. LUMIQ is changing that. Through its LiteCone platform, the company deploys AI agents that read the file, apply the institution’s own guidelines, and reach the decision end to end — escalating only the cases that genuinely require human judgment. The output is not a recommendation. It is a decision, with full reasoning attached, cross-referenced to policy, and defensible under audit.
The results in production speak clearly. At a leading life insurer, LUMIQ’s LEO agent decides 75–80% of underwriting cases with zero human touch, reduced policy issuance cost by roughly 25%, and compressed turnaround from days to under eight minutes — running 24×7 with complete auditability. Across its client base spanning insurance, banking, and capital markets in India, the US, and Southeast Asia, LUMIQ now processes millions of decisions annually.
LiteCone turns a real financial-services role into a working AI agent in weeks. Every agent we deploy is consistent, explainable, compliant, and auditable by design — not as an afterthought. This capital lets us go deeper on the platform and broader across roles. And through our cloud and AI lab partnerships, institutions will increasingly find LiteCone already embedded in the platforms they run today.
Vaibhav Dobriyal, Co-founder and Chief Product Officer, LUMIQ
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